Whine and Cheese

Reliving the 1980s in Comics

2021-05-06T00:48:37Z

Recently, I cashed in a lot of Amazon points (and some real cash) and bought the "Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition" omnibus and the "Who's Who in DC" omnibus. Both are collections of character profiles from each comic book company that came out in the 1980's.

While the information is very dated, it assembles the information from the heyday of comic book reading for me. As a kid who was very much in love with comic books and enjoyed thumbing through the encyclopedias when bored, these books hit a happy place for me on multiple fronts.

One of the character changes that occurred in the 1980s that always has the flavor of the time was the transformation of Aurora, a mutant member of Alpha Flight in the Marvel Universe. She could fly at supersonic speeds, having identical powers to her twin brother and teammate Northstar. She also had multiple personalities. After an altercation with her brother regarding her behavior, she severed all ties with him. As a final "f@%k you" to him, she had her powers altered by her scientist boyfriend, so they were no longer identical to her twin's. Her flight speed was diminished to the speed of sound, but she could generate bright light, a power that usually required contact with her twin. This hair and costume change came with her new found freedom.

Aurora in the mid-1980s

This outfit is TOTALLY 80s! The hairstyle, the jagged edges of the sleeve cuffs, the short gold lame gloves and sloping edge boots -- all of them scream 80s. I particularly love the alternating thick black lines around the bursts on her costume. Sadly, this costume only looked good when drawn by artist John Byrne who designed it and subsequent artists either didn't do it justice or changed it. Artist (and gay muscle hottie) Phil Jimenez made it look good in recent years when he drew some flashbacks, but this costume is likely left in the 80s for the most part.

Still, I enjoy revisiting them in the omnibus and the trade paperback of Alpha Flight from wayback when.

comments

Shopping and Old Time Dinner

2020-11-20T01:34:55Z

I went to the grocery store tonight. Traffic was a mess, mostly due to the main bridge between Covington, KY and Cincinnati, OH being shut down and everyone taking the side roads around.

The grocery was busy, but I managed to find everything I wanted and few things that caught my eye along the way. The one thing that caught my attention was the toilet paper aisle, as it was nearly empty again. With the governors of both Ohio and Kentucky making more serious lockdown arrangements, I assume that everyone is going back into hoarder mode. You'd think they'd have learned from last time, but apparently not.

After getting home and unloading the groceries, I made dinner. Tonight's dinner was a variation of what we in my family came to call "Poor Man's Pizza." When I was a kid, we really couldn't afford to order pizza often, but often craved the flavor of it. So we kids came up with making our pizza by putting spaghetti sauce and American cheese on white bread and toasting it in the oven. We often had the fixings for it, so it became a staple among the kids. My folks didn't seem to mind.

My variation tonight was low carb -- Low carb wheat bread toasted with Velvetta cheese, dunked into pizza sauce with garlic salt. I admit that it tasted pretty good, almost as good as the version from my youth, back when "low carb" had no meaning.

comments

Wild Bill Attacks The Shack

2020-08-02T02:42:43Z

Nothing spectacular happened today. I slept in, got a late lunch, went to Home Depot to look at storm doors, then back home, inked some comic book pages, watched TV.

I'm not sure what sparked my remembering of this, but I remembered a cousin and a location back home.

My great-uncle Matt and his sons had a small shack on a piece of property outside the city limits. Everyone referred to this as "The Shack." Uncle Matt was a moonshiner. The still itself was not at The Shack, its location never revealed to me. The Shack was where Matt and his boys would sell the 'shine and other alcohol (I hear). Matt and his sons were well known to have done this. Eventually, they sold the land to my Uncle Harold who put his house there. When he passed, a friend of his inherited it. My cousin Wade said it was a shame that one of us couldn't buy it since it had been in the family for generations, hinting I think that one of the well-off cousins should buy it (possibly me). Uhh... no, I thought, it's not like we farmed the land, it was a place where Matt and the boys could get wasted and sell booze. This is the setting for the rest of this entry.

William was a cousin to Matt, I think. The family relations get fuzzy as the generations go forward, so I think Matt and William were first cousins. William was known as "Wild Bill." He was a county sheriff or deputy and was called "Wild Bill" because of his unpredictable behavior. Supposedly, in the middle of shoot-out, he would launch forward, not caring about his own welfare, into the thick of it. Some call it bravery, others would describe it as recklessness. Knowing some of the family traits, I would lean toward the latter.

Matt and the boys were known to stay at The Shack late a night, usually passed out. They were loud drunks from what I have been told and would have firearms handy. I have always been told that you didn't go to The Shack at night because you never knew if they'd take a shot at you.

One dark night, Wild Bill eased his police vehicle as quietly up the gravel road to The Shack as he could. Matt and the boys were likely asleep or passed out. As soon as he got close enough, Wild Bill hit the police lights and the siren.

Calamity ensued.

Matt and the boys (and any other relatives and guests) were startled awake, thinking they were being raided, which had happened in the past. Instead of going for their guns, they were going for the woods. Hillbillies leaping out of windows and staggering as quickly as they could for the nearby woods, hoping in vain that the police wouldn't chase them down.

I can only imagine how this must have looked from the front where Wild Bill was standing, laughing his @$$ off at the absolute panic and pandemonium he had created.

I have no idea how this story concluded, as my Aunt Ruth relayed the story to me years ago and ended it at its climax. I imagine that the cousins stayed in the woods until Wild Bill turned the lights off and yelled for them to come back. I suspect there was lots of cursing and temporary hurt feelings

I never met Wild Bill, unless I was REALLY young, but it's nice to remember the fun stories he generated.

comments

17 Years and Counting

2020-01-11T21:09:00Z

I don't have a set date for the anniversary of my coming out. As I have posted before, I came out to myself when I turned 30 years old and started the process of coming out to others very soon after. I have never regretted it for a moment.

Yes, I have this many colors of these shirts...

A couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a co-worker about visiting family for the holidays. I don't recall exactly how, but the discussion came around to him asking me if my parents ever tried to "correct" any obvious gay traits (OGTs) that they may have seen in me.

Being non-athletic and a tad histrionic, I was often labeled as a sissy by other kids, including cousins and even siblings. I know my dad often shut me down whenever things got a bit over the top. I remember that he bought me and my siblings glossy tee-shirts, the kind you saw in the 1970s where a thick, photographic transfer was on the front. My sister had something girly, with a horse on it or a kitten (I think). My brother had the "General Lee" car from "The Dukes of Hazzard." Mine was "Daisy Duke" from the same show, played by Barbara Bach, sitting seductively on her jeep. I tried to find a photo of it online and I couldn't. While I would enjoy the shirt for its kitschy nature now, at the time I was unimpressed with it. Looking back, I see it for what it was, something with a hot girl on the front that I could be seen in by others.

When we would watch the show, there was a scene in the opening credits with Barbara Bach in a red bikini. If I hooted and hollered at it, my dad would laugh proudly. It was all for his benefit and in a house full of kids, I got dad's attention for a few seconds, so it became a weekly event.

My dad signed me and the twin up for football in 3rd grade without asking, that I recall. If he did, it was probably phrased "Do you guys want to go play football? It'll be fun!" without telling us exactly what was involved. I just remember being taken to a locker room one day and fitted with ill-fitting pads and pants, saddled with a helmet too small, and then dragged to a field for my first practice. It wasn't fun. I hated it. When I quit after two weeks, my dad was disappointed in me, giving me dirty stares and not speaking to me for a month after. At 8 years old, that was rough. Again, I'm sure it was done to try to butch me up, but luckily my mom said I didn't have to do it if I didn't want to.

On a side note, my sister took this same approach with her kid that Mom did. If my nephew didn't enjoy sports, he didn't have to play them. I often wonder if she doesn't remember my horrible foray into football as part of her decision-making process.

My folks always said I was the quiet child of their brood. The reason for that was that after being shut down so much for any dramatic behavior, I found being quiet got me less correction. Once my siblings and I hit our teen years, Mom and Dad had to give a lot more attention to my more rebellious twin and sis than me, so I was often left to do whatever I wanted.

Today, there is the movement for gender neutrality, no pushing boys toward boy-things or girls toward girl-things. Some (mostly conservative) folks hate it because it fights the comfortable norm they grew up with, while others love their kids no matter what and don't believe it's necessary to push them toward things they may not want.

So did my folks try to correct my behavior, yeah, but mostly my dad. I've heard and read horror stories of others' experience, so mine pale in comparison.

comments

The Spanking Question

2018-12-12T02:39:08Z

No, not that kind of spanking...

When I was home last, I was sitting with Mom, who has started living more and more in the past. She was watching "Gunsmoke," an episode where Matt Dillon was trying to get some rest but was being constantly disturbed by others, including a juvenile delinquent who he ended up spanking. Mom asked me if she and my dad overdid it with the spanking.

It's a funny question because spanking was really the only punishment they doled out. I rarely gave them reason, my sister got less physical punishment because she was a girl, and my brother got the brunt because he was easily the most disobedient kid. While I don't necessarily disagree with a spanking, it's effectiveness is severely limited. My brother was so accustomed to it that it no longer bothered him. The spanking was an immediate punishment with no real aftermath, so he was free to do whatever he wanted to do after a very brief cooldown period.

The mistake my parents made in our punishments was that they lacked any psychological component or follow-up consequence. Spanking was easy and quick, a lazy punishment that really didn't correct the problem. Looking at it through an adult viewpoint, they really sucked at this.

Now, if they really wanted to punish my brother, they would have grounded him. The twin loved being outside and hanging out with his friends, which is why he was never within the neighborhood boundaries our parents set up when he was yelled for. If they had grounded him, blocked him from his social outlets, it would have absolutely destroyed him. This would have involved my parents not backing off and sticking to their guns, but the effect would have been profound on the twin I think. He'd have toed the line far more I think.

Conversely, the grounding would likely have destroyed me too, because the twin would have been pestering the $#!+ out of me who spent most my time indoors reading comic books and drawing. While I wouldn't have enjoyed it, I think I'd have lived with it to see the twin really catch it once for his misbehaving.

comments

Revisiting "Slaughterhouse Rock"

2018-09-21T02:05:35Z

I miss video stores. Back when I was a teenager, they were everywhere. Not just Blockbuster Video, but a legion of mom-and-pop independent video stores. Walking through the aisles looking for a movie to watch was fun. The box art was often beautiful and it was a mix of blockbuster films and independent (sometimes just plain "cheap") movies.

One of the movies that I remember renting over and over was a 1988 horror movie called "Slaughterhouse Rock." A handsome, furry guy with big mullet hair has horrible dreams of a monster and he and his college friends go to Alcatraz Island to find out why where most of them get killed. It's full of 80's fashion, hair, and musical styles. In fact, the biggest star in the movie is Toni Basil and the soundtrack was written and performed by Mark Mothersbaugh and Devo.

The acting in this flick is average at best. The lead actor is the cutest, but he's also the worst actor in the bunch. He's not the only furry man in the movie either and all of them are shirtless at least once in the film.

Being a closeted gay teen, all that shirt-free furriness was intoxicating to watch. Whenever I had a spare dollar or two, I'd rent the movie over the weekend again. The movie crossed my mind earlier this week, so I checked to see if it finally got released on DVD via Amazon and was surprised that it had been. So I ordered it and it arrived today.

I watched it tonight and while the furriness held up, the movie is far more campy than I remember, but then it is 30 years older now. Still, it'll be fun to watch now and then.

comments