Boys and Their Toys
Plus! Fun Facts about those toys
THIS WEEK:
Toys! True Stories! You Know Who!
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: Cowabunga!
WE RECOMMEND: Jenny Kelley!
BEHIND THE PAY WALL: The Suggestion Box and an admission
Like so many of the stories told on this Substack and in these comics, this one is true. I didn’t have a baseball but I did wind up and hit an old woman over the back of her head in the middle of mass when I was about three or four years old. I remember her turning around in disbelief (and anger) but that was nothing compared to my mother. If I’m not mistaken, this was the behavior that prompted the one and only time my mother took me to the very next mass.
My mother also wore these mega fancy hats to church on Sundays when we were children. I admire her attempts at trying to keep that tradition alive. I think she gave up on it in the early 90s. Valiant effort, Mom.
My great-grandfather gifted me his wooden baseball bat when I was a child. He probably thought I was going to use it for baseball.
Nope. I kept it under my bed for security measures and only took it out if I was home alone in high school and a stranger rang the doorbell.
My classmates went through a huge yo-yo craze in 6th grade. So much so that our teachers banned yo-yos from school for the rest of the year. Our class got POGs banned in 4th grade too. Also in 4th grade, our teacher banned girls and boys from “liking” each other. As if!
There’s No Time for Love, Charlie Brown.
I went through a craze of my own when I turned 30. No, it wasn’t the coffee or the paranoia — it was paddle ball! In my days as a caricaturist, I used to relieve pent up energy and pass the time using the paddle ball. It didn’t necessarily attract customers or attention but I wasn’t doing it for that. I was doing it for myself! Just a 30-year-old wearing a Spider-Man t-shirt taking a break from drawing pictures to play with a toy in public. What did I care? I was already married.
Instead of a guest book at our wedding, we had a box full of Jenga blocks that our guests signed. Every few years, we take the set out and read the blocks. We don’t play with them because
we don’t
want
them
to break.
Inking a strip and watching Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles in the studio on July 9, 2016 (at 11:08 am according to the meta data on the digital photo file).
Our dear friend Jenny Kelley is on Substack!
Jenny’s flowers are beautifully painted in oil and her stunning work has been exhibited across the country. The care and level of detail in her paintings is mesmerizing and we love the way she presents her subject against solid flat backdrops making them at once hyperrealistic and graphic. Though we love all of Jenny’s work, we especially love her dahlia paintings!
For more of Jenny Kelley’s work, please visit her website and, of course, follow her on Substack.
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