Our latest Backstage at Mountain Stage video with Loudon Wainwright is not to be missed. And also, not for the easily offended. Listen to the entire segment here.
That’s our Loudo! [Language. Not for the language sensitive…] Fine for the musically sensitive!
nypl:
The folks at JYHS Library made our lives easy today, finding a purrrrrfect picture for our weekly Caturday contribution. Yes, you should use your school library … AND your local neighborhood branch (we’ve got 91 locations)! Here in NYC, we actually work with public schools to supplement materials, so … go libraries!
Curiosity and the cat @your school library
Speaking as a school library volunteer and frequent public library user… what they said.
(Source: suricatem)
Action Comics #311, April 1964, cover by Curt Swan and Sheldon Moldoff
Curt Swan was the artist who made me believe in Superman. This was only a little before my time, but now, I have to read this (Was it “Imaginary”?) story… Nice hat, too.
“Trade card, distributed at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915. Vacuum was created by the user pumping up and down manually.”
(via Sheaff-Ephemera)
Unquestionably you would tire of pumping this vacuum!
(via vintascope)
“Remember Move it Forward One Hour To-night”
Uncle Sam and cartoonist Clifford Berryman’s teddy bear get ready to move their clocks forward by one hour, demonstrating the new “daylight savings time” to the general public.
(via vintascope)
Balfa Freres, c/o thenearsightedmonkey:
Dear Unthinkable Mind Class,
Here is a song about all of the images that come around asking for 9 minutes of your time.
Professor Old Skull
The [images] come from all around, all around the center of town.
They come by once per year, asking for charity.
Sometimes it’s a sweet potato, a sweet potato or pork rinds.
The [images] are on a great journey, all around the center of town.
They come by once per year, asking for charity.
Sometimes it’s a skinny chicken, or three or four corn cobs.
Captain, captain, wave your flag, let’s go to another neighbor’s.
Asking for charity for everyone who’ll come join us later,
Everyone who’ll come join us later at the gumbo tonight.
Les Mardi Gras s’en vient de tout partout,
Tout alentour le tour du moyeu,
Ça passe une fois par an, demandé la charité,
Quand-même ça c’est une patate, une patate ou des gratons
Les Mardi Gras sont dessus un grand voyage,
Tout alentour le tour du moyeu,
Ça passe une fois par an, demandé la charité,
Quand-même ça c’est un poule maigre, ou trois ou quatre coton maïs.
Capitaine, capitaine, voyage ton flag,
Allons chez un autre voisin,
Demandé la charité pour les autres qui viennent nous rejoindre,
Les autres qui viennent nous rejoindre,
Ouais, au gombo ce soir!
Happy birthday to Will Eisner, who was born in 1917 and died in 2005; he would have been 96 today. Neil Gaiman called him “an American storyteller, like Ray Bradbury, like O. Henry,” and Wizard magazine named Eisner “the most influential comic artist of all time.”
Visit the Will Eisner Week website for listings of celebrations across the country.
I met one of my heroes, Will Eisner, after a talk he gave at Clemson University in 1981-2. The “Spirit jam” issue was just out, featuring younger talents riffing on his great character in round-robin fashion in a run-on story, including the Eisnshpritz, the expressionist noir rain shower in background and foreground that always covered the Central City of his lead character, The Spirit. I began reading Eisner’s work through the 1970s newsstand b&w magazine reprints of his classic 1940s newspaper 7-page stories of The Spirit from Warren Publishing, later (and better) through Denis Kitchen and Kitchen Sink publishing, and now from DC Comics and W. W. Norton. Dive into Eisner’s comics, essays, interviews, and graphic novels: you will find a rich vein of American literature, storytelling from a master whose career continues to inspire new storytellers. Here’s to you, sir. And to your Eisnshpritz!
Carter Family (and pie) lovers take note
Today! This Event October 8 in Seattle… (Thanks to Spurge at Comics reporter for the fabulous image)
Cool Chicks from History: Biographies, Autobiographies, and Inspirational Books: Female Summer Olympians
Here’s a cool bibliography: thanks and a tip of the BAT hat to
Links go to Amazon, also see gymnast only list of biographies and autobiographies and picture books about female Olympians.
In the Water They Can’t See You Cry: A Memoir by Amanda Beard and Rebecca Paley (Swimming)
It’s Not About the Bra: Play Hard, Play Fair, and Put the Fun Back…
Take a memo. Happy National Memo Day. Send return message by carrier pidgeon. Courtesy of
June 23, 1919. Subject: Carrier Pigeons
Did you get the memo?
Today is national memo day, the day where we Americans celebrate (or maybe the better verb is recognize) the ever circulating, sometimes useful memo!
Here is one of our favorite memos. It is part of a series of General Correspondence Files created by the Army Air Forces at Ross Field between 1918-1929. The memo details the potential uses for carrier pigeons in the operations of the air field.
If nothing else, “The use of carrier pigeons might save a pilot and passengers from possible starvation in the mountains in case of forced landings…”
