"For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago...."

Angela + Angela, 1995.

Angela was my best friend from boarding school. I met her on the first day of freshman year at Marian Heights Academy, in August 1988. Eighteen days ago, on Wednesday, November 12th, I lost her to a car accident.

Although it's lifted somewhat, I'm still in a great deal of shock. Still doing that thing where I wake up in the morning and then it hits me all over again. "Oh that's right, Angela's gone." For the first few days after getting that phone call, I was 100% on autopilot, going around in a zombified grief-trance. I was so out of it that my family wouldn't let me drive. I notified a few classmates of Angela's passing, but selfishly gave up after the fourth call because it made me sick to say the words, and typing them out felt even worse.

Since attending Angela's visitation (John and I drove down to Missouri to pay our respects last weekend), the dam has broken and I've officially entered the blubbering, sobbing mess phase. The Sally Field "I want to know WHYYYYYY!" phase.   

Appropriately, Angela and I were in Steel Magnolias together our senior year of high school, and Angela played M'Lynn, the Sally Field character who gets to make that speech. (I was Miss Clairee -- I got to say, "Go ahead M'Lynn, slap her!")

Clairee and M'Lynn, backstage on the set of Steel Magnolias, 1992.

Angela and I played sisters a year earlier in another school production, Crimes of the Heart, and we had a blast. There was a scene where she and I were sitting at the kitchen table together, listening to another character talk. As this character wraps up her monologue, Angela and I were supposed to look at one another and sort of snicker for a minute, then burst into inappropriate laughter. We wanted to get the scene right and make the laughter genuine, so in rehearsals we would murmur nonsensical phrases under our breath to try to crack each other up. We talked to each other without moving our lips, like ventriloquists, saying things like "Poop Soup," and "Buffalo Farts" until we dissolved into punch drunk hysterics. And you know what? We nailed it every performance. (Such method actors we were!)   

I've gone through boxes of old pictures, looking for more gems from our four years at Marian Heights, but I'm finding that the best photos of Angela and I are the ones from our post-high school era. When we graduated MHA and left Ferdinand, I went back to Indianapolis to attend court reporting school, while Angela--a native of the Missouri "Bootheel" region--started her undergrad career at St. Louis University. Once Angela and I realized how quick and easy it was to just slide up and down Interstate 70 (only three and a half hours, depending on who's driving), we visited each other several times a year throughout the nineties. Sometimes Angela's sister Bonita would come with her on her sojourns to Indy, and I have a memory of the three of us singing Janet Jackson's "Nasty" for karaoke at the bar my boyfriend managed. Our song selection stands out because it was the most awkward song to sing for karaoke, full of long pauses and various grunts and "ooh"s and "uhhh"s. We were laughing so hard at how weird we sounded, we could barely finish it. 

Another time Angela came to Indy for a visit, she and I decided to catch a movie---When A Man Loves A Woman---the Meg Ryan drama where she plays an alcoholic mother bottoming out. Sitting in our seats before the show, we idly wondered how much of a tearjerker the movie would be. One of us brought up the Leslie Nielsen/Priscilla Presley scene in Naked Gun where they wander out of a movie theater, laughing their asses off, and the camera pans up to reveal that they've just seen Platoon. We both joked about recreating that scene if the movie turned out to be a major downer. I think we were actually expecting WAMLAW to be weepy but fairly light, maybe something along the lines of Beaches, or Lifetime Channel for Women-type fare. We were both unprepared by how dark WAMLAW is; in one memorable scene, Meg Ryan gets blackout drunk, slaps her children around, downs a fistful of pills, and crashes through a glass shower door. It's all very brutal. 

When the end credits started rolling and the lights went up, Angela and I both looked at each other, like, "Wow, that was....a lot." 

Then she started snickering. I was like, "What?" And then she looked at me, and laughed some more, and finally I got it. I broke into a Beavis and Butthead-esque "Oh yeah. Uh, huh huh huh huh huh huh," in recognition. Shenanigans continued as we headed up the aisle of the theater, walking and laughing, catching each other's eye, and laughing some more. 

By the time we reached the lobby, we were doubled over and hyperventilating, cackling wildly at absolutely nothing. We stumbled past the cheerful ticket taker, who, noticing our mirth, called out, "Glad you ladies enjoyed the show!" And that, of course, made us laugh even harder. 

 

Angela had this great, absurdist sense of humor. I'm pretty sure she was the only friend of mine who actually read Woody Allen's Without Feathers on my recommendation. I remember her getting a bang out of the chapter with the "lost" Biblical writings.  

(Sample passage: "And the Lord produced two stone tablets and snapped them closed on Job’s nose. And when Job’s wife saw this she wept and the Lord sent an angel of mercy who anointed her head with a polo mallet and of the 10 plagues, the Lord sent one through six, inclusive, and Job was sore and his wife angry and she rent her garment and then raised the rent but refused to paint.")

In turn, Angela introduced me to the Enneagram. One of her professors was really into it, and so Angela got into it, too, and gave me an armload of books on the Enneagram during one of my visits to St. Louis. (I'm a 4w3, in Ennagram parlance; Angela, a 2w3. Interesting stuff, and IMO more accurate than Myers-Briggs.) 

With Angela as a tour guide, visiting St. Louis was awesome. She lived in the Central West End, a hip neighborhood with fun, quirky shops (Heffalump's!), indie coffee houses, and Forest Park (sort of a small version of Central Park). Angela lived with a roommate in this giant loft apartment with exposed brick that was straight off the set of Friends. It was cool as hell.

One of my favorite trips, though, was the summer I visited Angela down in her hometown of Bernie, MO, in the aforementioned Bootheel of the state. It's an interesting region--on the north end of the Mississippi Delta--lots of rich history, southern-inspired cuisine (I had fried okra for the first time in Bernie!), and Delta blues music. 

Anyhoo, I loved it:

I can't even put into words how much I love this photo of Angela.

My favorite part of this photo? Angela's thumb. 

Never discard "imperfect" shots. 

Someday, you'll be glad you saved them. 

 Hanging in downtown Bernie, 1993.

Me, all countrified.

Angela feeding the sheep.

In the kitchen of Angela's childhood home. 

If I could, I would so time travel back to this moment in 1993 and just hang out there indefinitely.

Around 1997-ish, Angela was accepted to a graduate program at Tulsa University (I honestly can't remember if it was a PhD or Master's program. She didn't make a big deal out of that kind of stuff. She didn't need to. Girl was smart.) I was overjoyed, because Tulsa is where half of my family lives. That meant that even though Angela would no longer be as close as she was in St. Louis, I'd still get to see her anytime I was in Tulsa. The timing was perfect---my sister Michelle and my Aunt Donna had just moved into a large rental house in an up-and-coming neighborhood on the southside of the city, and they had a loft for a third roomie, so Angela joined them. 

Seriously, looking back on it all, I can't believe how lucky I was. How lucky we both were to have all the time together that we did. It's one of the things I hold onto now.

Hanging out with Angela in Tulsa during the summer of 1999, she had some news. She'd met a guy through her church that she really dug, and it seemed serious. Like, this dude might be The One. Angela introduced me to Brian, and I got a good vibe from him. He seemed really smitten with my friend and he treated her well, which was my biggest concern. I soon found out that he was a movie buff with an offbeat sense of humor. Another good sign. During my visit, he hosted a dinner party at his apartment, and we all watched Radioland Murders. I was like, "Okay, this guy's a keeper. Well done. Approval: granted."

Angela and Brian got married in 2000. They started a family a few years later, settling down in the Missouri Bootheel to work and live. I always thought it was cool that they did that. Angela worked in mental health, and in her hometown, she saw a community that was underserved, and felt compelled to change that. Her kids got to grow up close to grandparents and cousins, in the same place she'd grown up. There was a nice symmetry to it all.

Angela and I kept in touch over the years, but we didn't see each other like we used to. You know how it goes, you grow up (a little), you get married, life gets busy and complicated, suddenly you're 40, then 50....sigh. Yeah. You know how it goes.

I'm sad she is gone, but I'm glad she was here. I'm glad she found a great partner in Brian. I'm glad she went into mental health, because there was never a person more compassionate, more empathetic, more suited to that field than Angela. I'm glad she got to be a mom, because she was really good at it. 

I'm glad I got to be her friend. 

(If you know, you know.)

O.N.J. - R.I.P.

Of course, Xanadu is my favorite. How could it not be? ONJ and Gene Kelly on roller skates, the music of ELO, that cheesy-ass Don Bluth animated sequence, Sonny skating into the brick wall to join Kira in the mural, "got to believe we are magic," the insane closing musical number? Love. It.

Grease is the word, but Xanadu is da bomb.

 

HOWEVER.....there happens to be an overlooked ONJ classic called Two of a Kind. There was a huge publicity campaign for this movie ("Olivia and Travolta--together again!"), and it was savaged by critics and ignored by moviegoers in 1983. It's flawed but fun, and I kinda love it. 

And the theme song is seriously one of the greatest things ONJ ever recorded. In fact, if not for the Xanadu soundtrack, I'd argue that this was her best song ever. And holy shit, how did I live 49 years without knowing this music video existed? It's amazeballs. ONJ and Travolta are both beautiful people, but I swear neither of them have ever looked better than they do right here. Olivia can really rock an '80s mullet. And I don't care if that's a hairpiece on Travolta, it's working for him. HOT.

Rest in peace, Livs. Your fabulosity will live forever.

  

  

"That you are here, that life exists....that the powerful play 

goes on and you may contribute a verse."

Well it seems 2020 has turned me into one of those weepy middle-aged fraus who are perpetually hand-wringing over relatives and friends who are sick, dying, or deceased, but in the words of Hard Harry, SO BE IT.  

Two days ago I got word that Mr. Duane Verkamp--my favorite teacher from my beloved alma mater Marian Heights Academy--recently passed away from pneumonia. Fuck this fucking year. 

Me with Mr. Verkamp and his wife Maureen

at MHA Alumni Weekend, summer 2000.

In truth, Mr. Verkamp was so much more than just my favorite teacher, but it's near impossible to explain what that means to anyone who didn't know him. The only way to sort of explain it--to people from my generation, anyway--is to picture Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, but like a mellow hippie Boomer version. And instead of a New England boys' prep school in the 1950s, the setting was an all-girls Catholic boarding school in rural Indiana in the late 1980s - early 1990s. (Also, we weren't sneaking into the woods at midnight to read poetry to each other; we were sneaking into the woods to smoke and/or make out with our townie boyfriends. But that's another story.)   

A few photos from my high school yearbook, 1990-91 (junior year)

Jeez, could they have made the faculty photos 

look any more like mug shots? 

In addition to teaching English, Mr. V was also my forensics coach.

(Forensics club was what most other high schools called debate team.)

And then there's me at 17. 

I was a naughty Catholic schoolgirl before it was cool.

There's really not much I am able to put into words at the moment; grief has made me its bitch. All I can say is that an amazing human being is gone and I'm heartbroken and I didn't picture it happening this way. In the words of that song, I always thought that I'd see him again. 

I think I've earned the right to post this:

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY 

"And I don't know which end to burn..."

I won't comment on any real world shit going on, because fuck it. We all know 2020 sucks. We all know everything sucks. 

So take a break from the bullshit and escape with me to 1985, a comparatively innocent, COVID-free time when Julian Lennon's debut album Valotte was riding high on the music charts in the US and UK and the first two singles, the title track and Too Late For Goodbyes, were in heavy rotation on MTV with videos directed by.....Sam Peckinpah. (Seriously!)

But the Julian Lennon track I'm most fond of is the less remembered and woefully underrated third single, "Say You're Wrong." It's not groundbreaking or anything, but it's a fun little song and video (this one directed by Tim Pope). The thing I love about this tune is that while Julian's vocals are of course very reminiscent of his father's, the song's melody is quite McCartney-esque, an observation duly noted by someone in the YouTube comments. Incidentally, another commentator remarked on Julian's "nice figure," like he's a contestant in a Star Search spokesmodel competition (hee!), but I kinda know what they mean. Julian is adorable in this and I'm digging the '80s northern English vibe with the hat, boots, and long black coat. What can I say? It's definitely working for him.

Aw hell, let's just stay in the mid-80s. Pretend like 2020 never happened. Sound good? Cool.

Here's "Valotte," my second fave and also a damn fine song.

And also, there's this:

Smash Hits could always be counted on to stick John Taylor on the cover.

Julian was a bonus.

Hey, remember when I wrote about that odd little half-remembered Christian cartoon from my childhood called Jot? Well, apparently "Jot" means something really filthy in parts of the Indian subcontinent, because my innocent little post attracted a total of 63 comments from spambots hawking Bangalore escorts, Mumbai prostitutes, and the like. Yeah, I know. Third world spammers saw my musings on a wholesome children's show about an animated ping-pong ball learning lessons about Jesus and thought THAT was an appropriate venue to peddle their prostitution whores? 

SINNERS! You defile Jot, you defile Jesus, and now God is pissed. 

"You're going to hell, you blasphemous dickbags!"

Good thing I didn't write about Davey and Goliath. Who knows what sort of  unholy smut that would attract? 

Oh the humanity!

FUN FACT! Did you know that Davey and Goliath was made by Art Clokey, the same dude who created Gumby? Personally I always found D+G a bit creepy, but Gumby? Shit, Gumby rules! I love me some Gumby!

via GIPHY

An original from my own collection: 

Don't judge! Bendable figurines have needs just like the rest of us.

#sexpositive

Anyhoo, what really cheesed me off about all the spam that Jot post attracted was the time I had to spend going and deleting every comment individually. The bright side was, I did come across some comments that were amusing enough to use for blog fodder. Here are a few (BTW I removed all the hyperlinks, so your computer won't catch herpes): 

Y'ALL READY FOR THIS?

• My name is Nayra, I am a young Escort from Kanpur. I am tall, slender, and dress fashionably. I really love men. I don‘t care how yo look like or how old you are. If you are a real gentleman and you are polite, courteous and have very clean cleanliness I will give you the best time of your life.

Pictured: Nayra. Tall, slender, dress fashionably, and really loves men? 

Technically true, I suppose. Except for the "dress fashionably" bit. 

• I am a final graduate, i am having one week of holiday so i came here to Singapore. I have just arrived to Singapore this morning. I am now staying in a hotel in the central, i am looking forward to meet up with you all and have some good wild sex together.

Incidentally, the posting above had links advertising "Nagpur Escorts." Nagpur is not Singapore. 

Pictured: Not Singapore.

Like Miss Vanessa Williams, I went and saved the best for last:

• Our independent bangalore escorts are fully taught and perfect define entertainers. They are so beautiful and gracious than any other woman you have square with. How many men have bravery to deal all these things in this busy daily life? Now a day 19s woman always cheats their partner and treats them weakly. And these all are reason of a divide. Many of man who was dating with this kind of woman can tell you the story of tears, cry and sadness.

Wait a minute.

Am I crazy, or are those last two sentences sort of.....poetic?

And these all 

are reason 

of a divide. 

Many of man 

who was dating  

with this kind of woman

 can tell you 

the story. 

Of tears, 

cry 

and sadness.

via GIPHY

Whew, well at least I was able to make some art out of that annoying spam.

So another voice from my childhood is gone. 

I wasn't one of those teenage girls getting hot flashes over George Michael back in high school. I mean, I thought he was handsome and charismatic and talented and had a great voice and everything, but his 1987 Faith album was so huge when I was in high school--one single after another released for like a solid two years--that by 1989 I was all Faith-ed out. I also didn't have much time for the stuff in the Top 40, since sometime around 1988 (freshman year of high school) I had followed Duran Duran down the musical rabbit hole that led me to discover darker, edgier artists and I became hooked on bands like The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Siouxie, The Smiths, and early Blondie. 

But then Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 came out. The first single, "Freedom" (the famous one with the supermodels in the video) was released during my junior year of high school, and--while I really dug that song--it wasn't until the beginning of my senior year in September 1991 when I first heard the excellent "Waiting For That Day" that I reconsidered my foolish notions about George Michael being "too commercial" for my taste and developed a new appreciation for him. 

Every time I listen to it, it feels the same as it did when I first heard it at age 17. It just devastates me. 

Something I just can't explain

Something in me needs this pain

I know I'll never see your face again

Years later (1998-ish) when my sister and I shared an apartment for a few years and she had his Ladies and Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael double album, I started to get sort of obsessed with his musical catalog. While no amount of time could make me feel nostalgic about "I Want Your Sex" (I've always thought that song was corny as hell and, like, the opposite of sexy) I found that I started to take a liking to some of those old songs from Faith, like the title track and--especially--"Kissing a Fool."  

And going further back to that period of post-Wham, pre-Faith, there was "A Different Corner," which George said was not a song about the end of a big, sweeping love affair. Rather, the lyrics were inspired by the sort of relationship that comes out of nowhere; one of those super-intense, short-lived flings that leaves you completely shattered and bewildered and wondering what the hell just happened when it's over. I think we've all been there at some point. 

There is a glaring omission on that "Best of" album, a Wham song that I think has always gotten short shrift--the 1986 single "The Edge of Heaven,"--so much better than "I'm Your Man," the other Wham single from the same time period with an almost identical video that somehow people seem to favor. But they're all wrong. "Edge of Heaven" is the jam.

But enough pontificating. George Michael is gone, and it sucks. It's gotten to be a cliche that 2016 is killing all these great artists, but as the saying goes, cliches are only cliches because they're true. 

     

Sometimes It Snows in April

Damn, it just doesn't feel real, does it? The headline "Prince Dies at 57" still does not compute, and it's freaky to even type that. I had the same issue with Bowie's death. It's like both Prince and Bowie were sort of these ethereal figures--almost supernatural--like it was just sort of understood that the rules of the universe did not apply to them. They were on a higher plane than the rest of us mortals. 

My writer buddy Dan Kennedy said it best: 

As shocked as I was by Bowie's passing, the fact that Prince is gone just seems harder to fathom somehow. My friend Marcus posted on FB that although both deaths were a huge shock, Prince hits closer to home (for Gen-Xer's like us) because, growing up in the '80s, Prince was "our guy." I totally agree. 

"Little Red Corvette" (1982) was the first Prince song I remember being aware of. I recall my sister and other "big kids" really digging it, but I was just sort of neutral (also, at nine years old I was more obsessed with horses than current pop music). Then in 1984-85 there was an amazing explosion of artists and albums that coincided with that sort of musical awakening a lot of kids have at around 11 or 12 years old and I discovered Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince--specifically the Purple Rain soundtrack--which blew my mind. 

I saw Purple Rain (the movie) when it premiered on HBO in the summer of 1985. It was so dark and "adult" that it's funny to think of my little 12-year-old self watching that. I mean, my family (along with everyone else in our neighborhood) had gotten premium cable a few years earlier, and it was a big thing for us neighbor kids to secretly try to catch "the dirty parts" of movies like Porky's and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (or if we were feeling really brave, one of the Friday the 13th movies) when we were at each other's houses. But Purple Rain was a lot racier than the typical teen sex films of that era, so I'm pretty sure it was one of those movies I sneaked out to the living room to watch at like 2am while my mom and stepdad were sleeping. That was something I got really good at: creeping into the living room and turning on the TV so it was barely audible and sitting like five inches from the screen so I could hear the movie while simultaneously listening for my mom in case she woke up. (In the event that she did, I would switch off the TV, race into the kitchen, and pour myself a glass of milk so it would look like I'd just gotten up to get a drink. Back in the day, we had to be really creative with stuff like that. I think kids today have it a lot easier, they can just watch whatever they want to on their smart phones and their parents probably don't have a clue.)      

Speaking of access, everyone knows by now how impossible it is to find Prince clips on YouTube; the only ones that exist seem to be live performances from award shows (which are awesome, admittedly), and the only Purple Rain clips viewable online are the ones from the trailer.

I guess this is indicative of how many times I've seen Purple Rain over the last 30 years (um, a lot), because there are a few little flashes of scenes I don't recognize: 

00:28 -- Apollonia in a barn? WTF was that? 

00:51 -- Prince getting smacked around by his dad (I think?) at what looks like a rehearsal space?

Marcus, help me out....do you remember any of this? I'm also unsure about the snippet with the cop car driving by Morris and Jerome. I'm guessing they were deleted scenes, but I want your opinion. 

_______________________________________________________________

Anyway, Prince is gone, and it sucks. I have more to write on this subject but I'm still getting my head together. 

(Psst...looks like someone posted the video for Take Me With U in the past few days, but it will probably get yanked ASAP, maybe by the time this goes up.) 

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY

Graham Parker and the Shot

"Wake Up (Next To You)"

Recently I watched the Judd Apatow flick This Is 40, his middle-aged crisis comedy from a few years back. It wasn't very good. I didn't have high expectations going in, as Apatow films are pretty hit or miss. He's partly responsible for Freaks and Geeks, a show that I absolutely adored (though I suspect the real brains behind that one was writer/director Paul Feig, who truly is awesome). But I also enjoyed Forgetting Sara Marshall and Pineapple Express, which I seem to recall were Apatow productions. And of course I love Girls, another show he's partly responsible for. But the rest of his cannon....meh. 

The main problem with This Is 40 are the film's central characters; an unlikable yuppie couple and their annoying kids. And I'm usually willing to give unlikable characters a shot, because they are often--if handled right--among the most compelling. But there's unlikable and then there's unwatchable, and the central family of This Is 40 straddles a dangerous line between the two. I had a similar problem with Friends With Kids, which boasted a stellar cast (Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Westfeldt, Chris O'Dowd, and Kristen Wiig, among others) but the characters were so grating I literally only got through the first ten minutes of that one before pulling the plug.

Anyhoo, is all leading up to the only positive thing about This Is 40 that stuck with me, and that is Graham Parker, who is the focus of one of the movie's subplots. You see, Paul Rudd's character runs a struggling record label and he's busting his balls trying to promote Parker's latest effort, with little success. It jogged my memory; I hadn't thought about Graham Parker in years, perhaps not since around 1985, when the one song I'm familiar with was a very minor hit. The song is called "Wake Up (Next To You)," and it's a charming, bittersweet tune with a strong Elvis Costello-y vibe, and enough of an earworm that it's stayed with me after thirty years (which is really saying something). 

The video is pretty cool, too. And like I said, the song is something of an earworm. Good luck getting it out of your head--although it's a great song, so as earworms go that's not a bad thing.  

Dad's second grade class photo.
Centralia, Illinois

Happy Birthday Dad

My father would have been 84 years old today. I thought I'd post a few of my favorite photos of him throughout the month. 

Dad's 40th birthday.
I was born two years later. :-)

Mom and Dad's wedding, June 1st, 1971 (on his 40th bday, see above)
They got married at a park at midnight--my Mom's idea--in Tulsa.
A friend officiated. 

Me and Dad. He's making sure I don't eat the dandelion.

Dad's birthday, a few years later (me in the background--maybe about 8 years old?)
I love this photo. And I miss our yellow 1970s kitchen.

Dad and me, crashed out in his favorite armchair.

Hanging out on the banks of Lake Michigan.
Shortly after Dad moved to Sheboygan, WI (post-divorce) to work for Kohler.

More photos to come this month. 

YOU MAD, BRO?

Wow, they really know how to milk it, don't they? First they halve season 7--the usual 14 episodes--just to stretch the last season over two years. And then these trailers. Using "Love Hangover" by Diana Ross is a stroke of genius. Was that Don's idea?



I will officially go into mourning after the series finale. This show has meant so much to me over the years. That said, this last-last season better be EPIC, because part 1 of season 7 was sort of a let-down.

I admit, I got choked up over these clips....



Premieres Sunday, April 5th. Not that I'm counting the days or anything.

Rescued From Obscurity: Wendy & Lisa - "Waterfall"

"Watch out when you're headed for the waterfall..."

Man, I LOVED this song. I remember the video getting some airplay on MTV in the fall of '87, and I thought it was brilliant back then too. I even have recollections of my stepbrother's reaction to the clip: "Damn, that chick on guitar (Wendy) is SERIOUSLY hot." (I suspect this had a lot to do with the white bra top Wendy sports in the vid, but oh well). Personally, I liked Lisa. She looks awesome in this video, and I dug her funky, swirly-colored, water-filled piano.

"Waterfall" was the first single off the duo's debut album, and it didn't exactly set the world on fire. According to wikipedia (an unfailingly accurate source, as everyone knows) "Waterfall" only reached #66 on the UK charts in 1987. There was no mention of its chart position in the US; I tried to look it up on a message board devoted to Prince but the damn thing kept crashing my browser, so I gave up. 

I did find Wendy and Lisa's website, and it seems that the duo is still going strong. Over the years, they've done session work with Liz Phair, Michael Penn, Pearl Jam, Grace Jones, Joni Mitchell, OK Go, Gwen Stefani, and Seal, to name just a few. At any rate, I'm glad they're still around and still making music. They're fantastic songwriters and talented musicians.  
 

Lost and Found

I've been looking for an ancient children's book called Colors since the early days of the internet. Over the years I've perused ebay, abebooks, and hundreds of specialized blogs devoted to out-of-print books, but no dice. Turns out that there are about 8 billion children's books titled "Colors", and none of them ever turned out to be the one I wanted. 

Then I had an epiphany. I Googled "Colors" + 1970's 3-D puppet book. It led me to a curious site called The Trash Collector. I scrolled through the entries and stopped halfway down the page. My jaw dropped to the floor. After searching all these years, there it was--my old Colors book! I was ecstatic. 

I noticed that the artwork is credited to Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata, so--armed with this new information--I did a search on Amazon and whaddya know? There it was!

Of course, the book has been out of print for decades, but luckily there were some independent sellers that carried it. I ended up ordering two copies--one for $13 and one for the bargain price of 73 cents! I bought two because I want to use one for a future crafting project and keep the other one intact.    

I have fond memories of this long-lost tome from my childhood. My parents started reading to me when I was a baby, and Colors is one of the very first books I remember. I even have a photo--dated September 1975 (I would've been two years old)--of me and my cousin Jon huddled in my grandmother's armchair reading it together.

Cute little 1970's moppets!

I was thrilled to find this book, and not just for the nostalgia factor. The main reason is that I sincerely love the artwork: gorgeous color photographs of poseable puppets set against painstakingly rendered backgrounds. The effect is strange, beautiful, and somewhat creepy. 

Here are a few images from Colors, along with the accompanying text (the first copy arrived in the mail yesterday), photographed by yours truly.

Easter eggs to color--what fun it is to do! 

We'll paint them pretty colors, like purple, pink and blue.

The big yellow sun shines its light all day

But a small pink parasol keeps the brightness away.

On a shaggy green carpet, chasing a bright red ball,

A playful orange kitten has the most fun of all.

There were several 3D puppet books with artwork by Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata published between the 1960's and the 1980's. Unfortunately, there is precious little information online about the artists themselves. I'd love to learn more about them, and I'm curious to know if they have art that predates the work they did for the children's books. 

Here is some more info about the books, courtesy of The Trash Collector blog: 

Introduced in the 1960s, 3-D Picture Books were a popular import from Japan. These books featured full-page photographs of the action utlizing poseable puppets, many bearing the large eyes popular in Asian children's fare as well as in contemporary American pop-art. 

Although Colors is the only 3D puppet book I owned as a child, I do have recollections of other books from that genre, some checked out from the library, some belonged to friends. Many of them featured wicked cool lenticular (hologram) placards on the covers, like this one:

Izawa and Hijikata also did a series of fairytale books that I remember vividly, including Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and (my favorite) Snow White. I found some images online of the latter, and holy shit--they're absolutely stunning.

***SPOILER ALERT***

She ends up with the handsome prince.(Sorry if I ruined it for you.) 

It's ironic that I've spent years going out of my mind looking for Colors and I end up finding a copy on Amazon, the most prosaic of places. In fact, Amazon has a ton of the Izawa/Hijikata 3D puppet books. Some are outrageously priced--one copy of Nursery Tales is listed for $506.01 (???) but most of them are reasonably priced at under $20, and some go for under $10, depending on the condition of the book.

Of course, I'm not going to buy up all of them. For one, John would totally freak out if I spent all our money on old out-of-print children's books. Also, we don't have the space. 

I did break down and order that copy of Snow White, though. It was only nine bucks.    

Birds do it. Bees do it. And so do chickens, apparently.

I think I must have been about 4 years old when I asked The Question. My family was living in Greensburg, Indiana (this was before we made our big move to "The City" - Indianapolis) and Stuart, my buddy next door, was about to become a big brother. Stuart's mother was the first pregnant lady I'd encountered and, as the months went by and she grew steadily larger and wider, I must have been curious. I'm guessing that's what prompted The Question. I don't actually remember asking it, but I do remember The Answer, and it came in the form of a real doozy of a book: How Babies Are Made.



My mom, naturally, was the one to proffer the book and broach this delicate subject with me. She was the typical 1970's earth mother, quite different than the conservative mothers of my friends, and definitely more "with it" than the small-town mothers of Greensburg, so it makes sense that she would have used How Babies Are Made, a Time-Life book first published in 1968. Apparently it's quite famous (Judy Blume even mentions it in Superfudge) and pretty much the go-to book for forward-thinking parents of the era who wanted to teach their kids about the birds and the bees. The images in the book--crafted entirely from construction paper--have a sweet, touchy-feely quality, but at the same time are rather explicit (check out the equipment on the dog, for starters). I don't remember the details of "the talk" but--as the cliche goes--a picture is worth a thousand words. And this book had a lot of pictures.

Here are a few highlights....


Here we have the artist's rendering of a bee pollinating a flower, but I can't even pay attention to what's going on inside that flower because, seriously, that bee is AWESOME! And it's made completely out of construction paper.


A mommy chicken and a daddy chicken doing...well...The Funky Chicken.
But wait...there's more! Turns out that dogs do it too. (YOU probably thought I was going to make a joke about doing it doggie-style, didn't you? Well, ha! I resisted the urge, so there.)



Look, it's Angelina Jolie's wet dream! (Sorry, I had to.)


And here are the babies, all grown up! I was mistaken, that's not Angie's brood. Clearly it's (clockwise from upper left) Zac Efron, Jessica Simpson, Barack Obama, Adam Brody, and John Cho (sporting an unfortunate haircut and a seriously groovy shirt)!


This is how humans do it. Under the covers, missionary-style. End of story.
Note: I like that the woman seems to be enjoying herself; that's a sure sign that this book was crafted in the late 1960's. In the 1950's such a notion would have been soundly mocked and quickly dismissed. Women enjoying sex? Hahahahaha! Surely you jest!


After the mommy and the daddy get nekkid and lay in bed and kiss for a while, a baby comes out!


Awwwwww! I can't even make fun of this picture, it's too sweet. I'm gonna go call my mom now.

While searching for images from this book I came across other people who had blogged about it. Check 'em out:

One of a Kind Wisconsin -- I really loved this post and the writer's commentary!

Teri has a highly entertaining blog and a great story about how she discovered this book.

Jennifer blogged about this a few years back. Check out her recollections of How Babies Are Made. (Her current blog, btw, is here.)

Do you have memories of this book? How did you find out about the birds and the bees? Tell me about it in the comments.

And speaking of books, here's mine.