...and it is. Mine, anyway. It's been a good one so far, even if the skies are (mostly) tombstone gray today in "sunny" California.
But, hey, that doesn't bother me. I still plan to fire up the bbq tonight and grill a celebratory feast. There may even be a Margarita involved. Besides that, the mailman has been dropping stuff on the porch all week, and early this afternoon Tia finally unlocked the birthday vault and let me get my hands on the swag that's been coming my way. That means it's time to shoot some thanks into the electronic ether -- i.e. the musical
Twilight Zone card was great, and so was the greeting from Elvis P. I will try not to kill the batteries on these too quickly... and I probably won't have a chance given the other cool stuff I need to peruse, including a Tom Russell tribute CD and a great-looking 10-disc sixties/early seventies boxed CD set (obviously, "You're Pushin' Too Hard," "The Letter," and Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" will be on replay often). And, yes, it's true. I freely admit that I cling to dinosaur technology. Around here, it's five CDs on shuffle play every morning. Plus, I still have a Sony Walkman and several hundred cassette tapes. That's the power of Maxell Cr02 technology, baby... those suckers were built to last. Hey, even my cheapo TDKs still
rock on just fine, thank you very much.
Given the above, it's probably not a surprise that the Iron Man figure I unwrapped today is the old-school first-gen walking rustbucket version. However, the good news is that he does come complete with "snap-on repulsor blast!" On top of that, I received a couple more volumes in the fantastic Dark Horse reissue series of Creepy and Eerie, two favorites B&W comics from my monsterkid childhood. Crack the covers on these bad boys and you're eyeball-to-page with the work of guys like Frank Frazetta, Reed Crandall, Gray Morrow, John Severin, Wally Wood, and Steve Ditko. From where I'm sitting, it doesn't get much better than that.
Anyway, time to check out and get back to the birthday. Have to fire up that bbq and see if the heavens are going to spit on my charcoal. In the meantime, let me leave you with a blast from the past courtesy of Uncle Creepy and the late, great Frank Frazetta. This is horror from back in the day, when werewolves were testosteronic ass-kickers and vampires never sparkled....
