Superman Carnival Chalkware (early 1940s)

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Latest arrival of a burgeoning fascination with chalkware carnival prizes (and salt and pepper shakers), this bootleg Superman from the early 40s came in a variety of paints (and occasionally doubled as Shazam / Captain Marvel) and lacks the S to avoid being sued. Picked the one that now calls my desk his home because he was less painted up (here's a particularly... interesting take) and reminded me most of the Shuster drawings / Fleischer cartoons that remain my favorite incarnation of the character.

Chalkware, defined:

Carnival chalkware is a generic collecting term used for figures made from molded plaster of Paris or sculpted gypsum during the 1920s through the 1960s—the Great Depression through the mid-century. The name derives from their use as prizes at carnivals. They also served as prizes for games of chance at amusement parks and boardwalks.

Early carnival chalkware figures were painted with oil and watercolors. Airbrush painting was used extensively, starting in the 1920s.

For a brief period in the 1930 and early 1940s, carnival chalkware figures replaced stuffed animals as the primary carnival prize.

Doll and novelty companies produced carnival chalkware in large quantities. The wholesale price was as low as a dollar a dozen.

Suppose stuffed animals are less likely to be used to bludgeon people to death...

Aforementioned salt and pepper shakers: my delightfully fucked up Dick Tracy and Junior set(s) from the late 30s / early 40s.:

Note: were I to do a DICK TRACY film, part of it would be an EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE homage where DT and Junior enter into a universe where they're misshapen chalkware salt and pepper shakers: hot dog fingers, eat your heart out.

POKER FACE, s1 (2023)

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Took our time savoring each and every episode of this bit of throwback magic and antidote to standard streaming doldrums. Lyonne finally – along with RUSSIAN DOLL – gets the vehicle and the credit she's long-deserved for her talents; that she also directed one of the best episodes of the season, a welcome screen return for Nick Nolte (which, coupled with my recent BAY OF ANGELS viewing really made me want to watch Neil Jordan's Nolte-starring BOB LE FLAMBEUR remake, THE GOOD THIEF), makes her triumph here all the more satisfying.

Highlight remains the Judith Light guest-starring senior living episode: that was amazing. My only gripe – other than a tepid boredom with the Tim Meadows / Ellen Barkin episode (which may be a result of it coming after my favorite episode and my aversion to dinner theatre) – being the wrap-up of the season finale: enjoyed 90% of the episode, but a fork that should, IMO, have been taken, one that would have infused the second season and the show's formula with even more-heightened stakes (instead of the same stakes with a different voice(s) on the phone), wasn't taken, an opportunity lost, in favor of more cut-and-dry off-screen one. Maybe Johnson, et al, weren't sure that a second season was in the cards when that was written? Quite possibly: finale did feel like it could be a season or series finale. Relief that it's only a season finale – though I do wish they had taken the more challenging path.

That being said, count me in for whatever path Johnson, Lyonne, and company choose to take: what a great show – and what a joy to see Lyonne finally get the quality of role and the accolades she's so long-deserved.

latest shadow procurements

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Finally added these Madison SHADOW toys from the 70’s to the collection; they join a coloring book and “Crime Fighter Detection Belt” kit from the same era:

Other than my adoration for the character, the oddness of the licensed Shadow toys over the years fuels my passion for acquiring them. Such is the challenge of making toys from a a decidedly adult character…

of speculative lifefiction

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Need to stop looking at the Insta stories of one side of the family and tuning into the relayed happenings of another as both trigger me into wondering if any of the choices or the sacrifices I've made for this creative malarkey were worth any of it as I stare down decade two of offering little to the world beyond these picayune maunderings, weird shit, and triggered speculative lifefictions directed towards my illegible journal of what could have been if only if only.

Being that I was born 10 years before any of my cousins on either side to a complicated upbringing, I've felt, for the last 30, like the starter kid of both families, the beta launch: I am a cusper, the lost generation, born either ten years too late or ten years too early – though, considering all of my friends (wife included) are anywhere from 10 to 20 years older than me, I'm guessing it was the former.

I know I can't change the past and I know how pointless any and all of this speculative lifefiction is so maybe all I’m doing here is logging a reminder to myself. Note to self tag, activate.

THE BOOKS OF JACOB (Tokarczuk, 2014)

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This will, by no means, be a complete and incisive look at a Nobel-winning doorstop of a novel and its mesmerizing and often frustrating leaps and bounds. Not sure I'm equipped for that after one read, or even two, but I will re-read JACOB eventually – along with everything Tokarczuk has written.

What I can tell you / me is that I'm in love with her rhythm and voice – which speaks volumes about the brilliance of Jennifer Croft’s 2021 translation – and that, with JACOB, she has pushed the bounds of what a novel can do (see: mesmerizing and frustrating; I was happily mesmerized in my frustrations). Among those frustrations was that I couldn't keep the names of several of the characters straight, even after more than a month and a thousand pages together – though I suspect that this is a result of my own limitations as a reader and will be rectified in a revisit.

(This is also not an unusual occurrence for me, especially in books involving more than three or four characters. Or in life, really.)

Recommended – though with the caveat that it, like the history it mines and explores, requires diligent and mindful dedication: be prepared to not absorb all of it in one go – but also to witness a staggering exploration of all that a novel can do.

My complete list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.