Tamara

Read Across America Day

Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Did you know that? Probably not. This is a holiday that is primarily for teachers and students. In the schools, this is a pretty big deal. Dr. Seuss helped to bring whimsy and lightness to the world of children’s literature and so we celebrate, each year on March 2nd, by dressing up as our favorite storybook characters and heading off to school for a magical day of reading!

This year Gigi went as Mary Ingalls – not to be confused with Laura Ingalls Wilder. Mary has blonds hair, and that makes all of the difference. For the past two years, as summer has rolled around and other folks are blasting their tunes through open car windows, we Littlejohns have blasted the Little House on the Prairie series from ours. While driving around listening to the tales of a pioneer girl does not earn many cool points from some, for us it has enriched our daughter’s life with historical stories of long ago and passed on a love of a book series from mother to daughter.

I dressed as Miss Viola Swamp from Miss Nelson is Missing. In the story, Miss Nelson’s class is terrible – spitwads fly, kids yell and even *gasp* fidget! Miss Nelson goes missing, and in her place is the dreaded, terrible Viola Swamp who gives out lots of math homework and never has story time. In the end, the beloved Miss Nelson returns to find her class exceptionally well behaved and everything in order. When I am Viola Swamp I act like her for the first 15-20 minutes and my students just don’t know how to respond. Some laugh nervously, others just sit, stunned into silence. After they meet the Swamp version of Mrs. L, they are always glad for my return. The best part is that later in the year, when my students start to get out of hand, I wear my Viola Swamp socks the next day and the very clear message is received!

Posted on 03.02.11 to Tamara. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Quickies

Handerpants

For those nevernudes out there. I was just looking for fingerless gloves for drawing on a capicitative screen and found more than I bargained for. It is sort of a Marky Mark/Like A Virgin era Madonna/ Homer Simpson sort of look for your hands. Unsure as to whether I am cool enough to pull these off.

Handerpantsâ„¢ – Underpants For Your Hands!
handerpants.com

Posted on 02.17.11 to Quickies. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Gigi Said

Stars wars costumes…with Lycra!

A light bulb went on over Gigi’s head and she said “Jude, we are brother and sister, we should be Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia for next Halloween!”. Now if I can coax Tami into that lycra spacesuit Padme wears then I can be Darth Vader.

Posted on 02.17.11 to Gigi Said. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Jude Said

Riddle me this!

Jude and I are playing Batman & Robin and hunting down some bad robots as well as the Penguin (how does he know about the Penguin?). For a while I thought I was Batman until Jude cleared things up: “No Dadda, YOU Robin, I am Batman!”. I wonder if they make Boy Wonder costumes in my size? Jude is currently screaming “To the Batmobile Robin!”, so I gotta go!

Posted on 02.17.11 to Jude Said. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.

Bradley

My Dearest One-Legged Batman Doll, How I Miss You

The other day I found scans of a Seventies toy catalog and in it were all the Mego brand super hero dolls. To my mind these ones were not “action figures”, they were dolls. They had real clothing and the way they were built led me to believe that someone at Mego crawled in through a window at Mattel and ran off with a couple Ken doll molds. They were even anatomically incorrect.

I had the Batman. I bought him at Bargainland and he was previously loved. He had a broken leg that I splinted with a toilet paper tube and stretched his tights over to get him back into the game.

One day when I was playing with him, Batman was into some high flying action and got stuck in one of the trees in Grandma and Grandpa’s front yard. I was sad and couldn’t get to him. I don’t know why I didn’t get Grandpa to help me get him down since that would have been right up his alley. Years later, in college, I was asked to trim those fir trees and when I did I found Batman chilling in the tree like the Steadfast Tin Soldier. I was at a point in my life when I was wasn’t necessarily nostalgic about my childhood yet and I can’t recall now what happened to poor Batman after i brought him back into the comic book continuity. It could have been like Captain America getting found in a block of ice all those years after WWII, but I was all Rock n Roll or Bloomsburian or whatever and so the Eskimo blood in my veins probably compelled me to detach and trash-bin Batman. To be fair, Batman was getting molested by Joel Schumacher at the box office at that time so I suppose there should be a little bit of forgiveness for my nineties counterpart. Still, looking at that catalog makes me ache to know his fate and to get ahold of little old one-leg Batman. If anyone sees one-leg Batman on that thrift store aisle, please say “hi” for me and tell him I miss him.

Boy toys never come with outfits anymore. I think that needs to change. Maybe my next comic strip will be about one-leg Batman. (BTW, Batman is really monkey slapping the Joker in the picture above, which draws my attention to those gloves. I am all for real clothes on boy toys, but what gives with those flippers for gloves!? Those are oven mitts. Try getting at your utility belt while sporting those humdingers.)

Posted on 02.16.11 to Bradley. Grab the feed. No comments yet. Comment or trackback from your own site.