I want a ‘Buffy Staked Edward’ T-shirt

In the Buffy-verse, the human girl isn’t a wimp. She kicks ass.

Get your “And then Buffy Staked Edward…The End.” shirts here.

Scholastic book orders: win

The fun kids over at the Once Upon A Win web site have brought back a very happy childhood memory for me: ordering Scholastic books in school! Did you? Remember the little catalogs? They were thin and bright and they looked like this, except without Rachael Ray, who I reckon is now so ubiquitous, she can infiltrate our very memories:

I went through books like crazy as a kid, but my parents could afford to purchase Scholastic books only, like, once. I remember getting my shipment, but I don’t remember what the books were.

Last fall, when I returned after nearly 30 years to Palmer, the small town in Western Massachusetts where I started school, I was excited to visit the public library where I spent endless hours reading Amelia Bedelia, George and Martha (remember them? They were hippos!) and, later, Encyclopedia Brown books, wherein you got to choose your own adventure! (UPDATE: Actually, as faithful reader Mindy points out, you didn’t get to choose your own adventure in Encyclopedia Brown books, you just got to select from several different endings).

The Palmer library also housed a nifty collection of Dynomite! magazine. (I feel sorry for any kid who grew up without it).

Alas, I was told by an old neighbor I happened across — yes, all the same people live in my little town — that the old colonial-era library had been torn down and a new modern one was built on a nearby street. I was devastated. Such memories. What new ones would have flooded my brain had I the chance to walk into that old library?

What are your book memories? Did you read a lot as a kid? What were your favorite books?

Last book read

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. Boy, was it good. Now I wanna see the movie starring Humphrey Bogart as hardboiled detective Sam Spade.

Have you read the book? Seen the movie? Can you recommend both?

Allen Ginsberg’s words of wisdom

My advice to you is as follows:
one, learn meditation practice;
two, empower yourself with your own emotions -
don’t be afraid of grief, or heartthrob;
three, be willing to expose yourself and be a fool,
to not be intimidated in the presence of presidents
and rock stars, but come on as a gentle, living
flesh and blood human being.

Don’t treat people as icons.

If what you are doing is considered by all your friends
as too far out, think thrice -
so you don’t go outside the bounds of sanity -
check it out.

Get a good education in reading the Eastern and Western classics.
Avoid animal fat.
Be a slave to love.
Wear your heart on your sleeve.
Twenty rejections in a row are wiped out by one acceptance.

Happy Birthday, Bill!

Are you talking like Shakespeare today to celebrate what is maybe the Bard’s birthday? Or maybe it was yesterday? Because no one knows for sure.

Methinks no one is really doing this (save for the Renaissance Fair people).

Author J.G. Ballard has died

Author J.G. Ballard, who penned the novels Empire of the Sun and Crash, which both were made into Hollywood movies, has died at age 78.

Here is CNN’s obit.

Currently (re) reading: “Me” by Katharine Hepburn

This is such an engaging memoir. Ms. Hepburn wrote it in a completely conversational style as if she’s actually talking to the reader. It’s jam-packed with stories and insights about key early Hollywood players like Louis B. Mayer, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, as well as Hepburn’s former beau Howard Hughes and, of course, her beloved Spencer Tracy.

If you’re ever hankering for a bit of Hepburn’s behind-the-scenes personality, you should start with Me. Unless you’ve already read it. Have you?

Happy Anniversary!

It’s Gina Vivinetto’s Greatest Hits’s eight month anniversary! Woo-hoo! Let’s celebrate with a clip from The Flinstones:

This blog is way more popular than I ever thought it would be thanks to you guys.

We’re going to get our 190,000th hit today. Can you believe it?!

XOXO

Robert Frost’s “Birches”

In 1989, Frederick “Rick” Lamore, my AP English teacher at Gibbs High School, handpicked snippets of poems for each of his students upon graduation. Rick chose for me these last lines of Robert Frost’s “Birches” (and if he gave them to you, too, I don’t want to know about it because I still have that damn piece of paper. I cherish it).

I think these words show what the English language is capable of. May I share them with you?:

“I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. “

Nice, huh? It’s a great sentiment for a secretly sappy iconoclast like me. Oh, Rick, you saw right through me.

What a great teacher!

Our weird cartoons

My friend Marky Mae Brown and I have known each other a long time. On a recent trip to Brooklyn, Marky Mae dug up these old cartoons we created when we were mere twentysomethings, killing time at the daily newspaper where we worked as errand runners.

Marky Mae drew the pics and I wrote the quips. Here are two from a larger series:

and

We cracked up when we looked at them again. I keep trying to get Marky Mae to do a book-length series with me, but he doesn’t see their marketability.

But, seriously, wouldn’t you buy a book of these? Wouldn’t you?