Fanboy.com Summer 2002

the fanboy book shop:

Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of Animated Cartoonist by Chuck Jones, Steven Spielberg and Matt Groening
This is an autobiography of fanboy.com favorite the late great Chuck Jones, the brilliant Warner Brothers animator who created such enduring characters as Wile E. Coyote and Marvin the Martian. Like his best cartoons, Jones skips around to the fun parts, giving a bit of childhood here, a few words of drawing advice there, and a good yarn wherever one fits. He also manages to work in a detailed yet somehow never boring description of the long and silly process of making a cartoon. Jones is refreshingly generous about spreading credit around to others. He fondly remembers art teachers, tips his hat to fellow directors and mentors Friz Freleng and Tex Avery, and gives the reader a new appreciation of the layout men who create the backgrounds for animated features.

Most engaging are Jones's accounts of office life at Warner Brothers, which sounds like just as much fun as you hope it would be. Jones recounts stories of drawing tables wired to wake up sleeping animators when the boss approached and Cal Howard, a gag writer who ran an illegal commissary out of his metal-lined desk. The book is filled with sketches and color plates of much-loved moments from Warner Brothers cartoons and even includes a quick Road Runner and Coyote scene that comes to life when the pages are flipped. Highly recommended for kids who like to draw and adults who have not lost their appreciation for Looney Toons.

Lewis Carroll, Photographer:
The Princeton University Library Albums
Long before he published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ("Lewis Carroll" to the world) took up photography as a hobby. Unlike most of the other amateurs in his circle, he persevered to become a dedicated, prolific, and remarkably gifted photographer, creating approximately 3,000 images during his twenty-five years of photographic activity.

This handsomely designed volume makes clear the remarkable extent and complexity of Carroll's photographic art. It publishes for the first time the world's finest and most extensive collection of Carroll photographs, many of which have never been reproduced before and are unknown even to committed Carroll enthusiasts. This book features, in addition to a trove of loose prints, four rare albums made by Carroll himself to showcase his work to friends, family, and potential sitters. Reproduced in album order, these images offer new insight into how Carroll thought about his work–and how he wanted it to be seen. Compelling portraits of Alice Liddell and other children are presented alongside those of eminent Victorians such as Alfred Tennyson and William Holman Hunt, as well as evocative landscapes, narrative tableaux, and wonderfully strange studies of anatomical skeletons. The catalogue is followed by a chronological register of every known Carroll photograph–a remarkable resource for anyone studying his career as a photographer.

Toys of the Sixties : A Pictorial Price Guide by William R. Bruegman
This book will bring a flood of memories back! It’s like opening up a time capsule filled with all my fave toys from the 60's. This is much more than your average price guide - very informative and fun to read. Toys of the Sixties features over 1,000 vintage collectible 1960's toys are pictured, described, and valued in this 200-page all-sixties price guide. History, trivia, and anecdotes about the items are found throughout.

Toys of the Sixties also includes an overview of the toy business in that most creative era, a profile of the toys and the toy companies that still survive today, and an informative and entertaining interview with a former Mattel executive who was instrumental in bringing many of America's favorite toys to the marketplace. The author Bill Bruegman is an internationally recognized leader in the profitable hobby of collecting memorabilia, and is a certified member of the American Society of Appraisers, specializing in Post-War toys and popular culture items. Items from Bill's personal collection have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. as part of "It's Your Childhood, Charlie Brown," an exhibit of post-World War II children's life.

Spy Vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook
by Antonio Prohias
In the grand tradition of Krazy Kat & Ignatz Mouse and the Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, the Spies (one dressed in black, the other in white) are an endless variation on a Cold War theme—forever one-upping the other, til death do they part. This diabolical duo of double-cross and deceit are, as Art Spiegelman described them in The New York Times Magazine, “the comic strip equivalent of the yin-and-yang symbol, good and evil, interdependent and inter- changeable,...forever chasing each other’s tails.”

Spy vs. Spy made its first appearance in MAD #60, January 1961. The feature has run in virtually every issue since with nearly 1000 installments. Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook chronicles the creation and history of the Spies and features all 247 of the strips written and illustrated by its illustrious creator, Antonio Prohias. Delighted fans will discover a virtual treasure trove of fun-loving Spy vs. Spy material. Here for the first time are unpublished and never-before-seen preliminary sketches and artist roughs, photographs from his family scrapbooks, and rare political cartoons. Also included are eight biographical and historical essays, each detailing a different aspect and perspective on the Spies and their creator.

Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine by Stephen Braun
This book covers two favorite fanboy topics, beer and coffee! Not many users of the world's two most popular drugs know the details of their chemical or biological effects; here's a good introduction. Braun, a science writer and television producer, begins with alcohol, which was known to ancient Sumerians 5,500 years ago. Braun describes the progress of a shot of whiskey through the body, from the taste buds to the digestive tract, with amusing commentary on the journey. The alcohol's ultimate destination is the brain; scientists believe that it releases endorphins there, as do ether, valium, and morphine. Further chapters discuss alcohol's effects on sexual desire and performance, positive health benefits of moderate drinking, hangover cures, and current theories on the causes of alcoholism.

Then caffeine gets a similar treatment, from its introduction into the Western world to its current popularity in forms ranging from espresso to soft drinks. Braun explains the decaffeination process (most of the caffeine removed from coffee is sold to soft-drink manufacturers) and explores such questions as whether caffeine aids mental processes (and which ones), to what extent caffeine is addictive, and how caffeine and alcohol interact (as in Irish coffee). Here, as in the chapters on alcohol, bits of interesting lore –women's protests against 18th-century coffeehouses, Theodore Roosevelt's impromptu endorsement of Maxwell House, the formation of the first Caffeine Anonymous group–add the human dimension to the scientific discussion. In the end, the author admits that caffeine was an indispensable aid to his writing of this book, but he has since moderated his use of both caffeine and alcohol.

the fanboy DVD store:

Logan's Run (1976)
It’s an ultra-seventies fanboy favorite, set in the year 2274 when ecological disaster has driven civilization to the protection of domed cities, this flick revolves around a society that holds a ceremonial death ritual for all citizens who reach the age of 30. In a diseaseless city where free sex is encouraged and old age is virtually unknown, Logan (Michael York) is a "sandman," one who enforces this radical method of population control (but he's about to turn 30 and he doesn't want to die). Escaping from the domed city via a network of underground passages, Logan is joined by another "runner" named Jessica (Jenny Agutter), while his former sandman partner (Richard Jordan) is determined to terminate Logan's rebellion. Using a variety of splendid matte paintings and miniatures, Logan's Run earned a special Oscar for visual effects (images of a long-abandoned Washington, D.C., are particularly impressive), and in addition to fine performances by Jordan and Peter Ustinov, the film features '70s poster babe Farrah Fawcett in a cheesy supporting role. Jerry Goldsmith's semi-electronic score is still one of the prolific composer's best, and Logan's Run remains an interesting example of '70s sci-fi that preceded Star Wars by less than a year.

Davey and Goliath - Vol. 1: New Skates/Waterfall (1968)
Relive your childhood memories. Like Big Wheels, superballs and bell bottoms, "Davey and Goliath," the stop-motion, three-dimensional animated television program about a boy and his dog, was a much-cherished part of life for many children growing up in the '60s and '70s. Millions of parents and children embraced the lovable duo, their family and friends in warm and entertaining adventures every week from 1962 to 1977. Conceived by "Gumby" creator Art Clokey, "Davey and Goliath" provided a welcome alternative to violent children's programs. Produced by the Lutheran Church in America, the series featured moral themes, earning high praise from TV professionals, religious leaders and viewers alike. Includes eight 14-minute episodes.

Project Moon Base (1953)
Between the silliness of the script and the interesting space effects, we would recommend this movie for any fanboy who ever intentionally watched 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' and enjoyed it. Robert Heinlein's vision of space travel and the future of man are depicted in his second cinematic space travel adventure, his first being "Destination Moon" three years earlier. Colonel Breiteis, a female rocket pilot, and Major Moore, her co-pilot, are selected to orbit the Moon to survey a landing area for a future expedition, but a ruthless Russian spy-scientist aboard the ship causes it to land on the lunar surface, stranded and out of fuel. Will they live or die in these dire circumstances? Writer Heinlein gives us thrilling ideas of an orbital space station where people walk on the walls and ceilings, a rocketship that looks much like the real one that landed on the Moon in 1969, the American Space Force, commie spies and a woman President of the United States.

the fanboy music store:

Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology by Devo
Are we not fanboys? We are Devo! With the one-two punch of their mission statements "Jocko Homo" and "Mongoloid" from the early 70's, it's clear that Devo had it all figured out from the beginning. Theirs was a fight against the increasingly alienating modern world, a sort of "if you can't beat it, join it" idea. Devo would find more honest humanity by becoming less human. "Are we not men? We are Devo!" was their declaration, echoing the man-beast experiments in H.G. Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau. Devo were not just academic philosophers, or simple clowns. They could rock! Disjointed beats, Beefheart-worthy rhythms, and strange sounds combined with general outrageousness resulted in a great rock & roll band, and even a hit or two on the pop charts like 1980's "Whip It."

The first of the two CDs on the Rhino compilation Pioneers Who Got Scalped goes down like butter, every song a classic. Two or three more CDs could have easily been culled from these same fertile years between their debut album and 1981's New Traditionalists. The second CD starts to lose the plot a bit as the members of Devo started going in different directions, primarily Mark Mothersbaugh's developing interest in movie soundtracks and scoring. But it does still paint the picture of Devo and where they were during what Jerry Casale, Mothersbaugh's writing partner, refers to as "the enigmatic years."