THE “POP-UP” DICK TRACY (1935)

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Excellent trip around and about to a new local(ish) comics shop, His and Hers Comics - will definitely be supporting (and not only because they had Beatty’s DICK TRACY film playing on the store TV) - and to The Toys That Time Forgot, for more treasure hunting. Came home with a big one: this gorgeous 1935 pop-up book:

A gorgeous addition to the collection – bee’s knees and all that.

dreamshelves

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Adore my PaintShop and its shelves of books and brain/soul food, its Dollar Store curtain rods of zip-tied carded action figures, its boxes of bagged and boarded comics from each of my collecting / procurement eras, then/now/in-between – love it but were I to consider the ideal (as I'm going to do now), I'd be surrounded by floor to ceiling shelves (ok, maybe one large wall open for original art and lobby cards for old horror flicks), dreamshelves, each tall and deep enough to hold everything from the smallest issue of isolarii to the burgeoning vinyl collection to the largest comics Omnibus / Absolute edition (or Ware's BUILDING STORIES - think that's the tallest but I'm not sure - that Taschen book on Magic is up there, as are the FAR SIDE and CALVIN AND HOBBES and NEW YORKER collections) and everything in between organized alphabetically by author and, most importantly, irrespective of the medium: vinyl between Blu-Ray Bergman doorstop boxsets and umpteen editions of HEAT and THE GODFATHER and MULHOLLAND DRIVE between books between bagged and boarded writers' runs on a particular comics series between Universal Monster VHS sub-organized within by year of release and, in the middle of it all, in the middle of a room wide enough to contain both these walls of dreamshelves AND toil upon both of its not-inconsiderable sides, KaijuDesk – or, hell, how about all four sides (it's called KaijuDesk for a reason) – spaced for optimal pacing and chair leaning underneath aforementioned and requisite Dollar Store curtain rods of ziptied action figures from on high like Mr. Choo-Choo's private car (though I wouldn't depend on them to prevent falling), memories and inspirations above and on all sides.

THE PAPER TIGERS (Tran, 2020)

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(Directed by Tran Quoc Bao from a script by Tran; starring Alain Uy, Ron Yuan, Mykel Shannon Jenkins, Jae Suh Park, Matthew Page, and Roger Yuan. Released 07 May 2021; watched sun/20230129 via Netflix)

A happy surprise thanks to Polygon's list of films leaving streaming services at the end of the month: a feel-good revenge story (this may be my first time writing that) featuring a memorable cast of characters - all of whom (including Carter) I miss now that the movie's over – whose travails through middle age stand toe-to-toe with COBRA KAI on reckoning with lost glories, nostalgia for times that used to be but never were, and the gift of someone willing to help you down the path to being a good, virtuous person. Leaves Netflix 04 February, so catch it this week. Loved it.

Update/20230205: It’s no longer available on Netflix, though you can either rent it or keep abreast of its streaming availability via Just Watch. More than worth the rental.