And orange you glad that he didn’t?

Over the years, the LEGO Group has released a number of Batman sets, including a couple from the original television series which, among its many guest villains, included the great Latin Lover, Caesar Romero, as the Joker.

     Now, Romero was a vain man, and he refused to shave off his signature moustache for the role, but in those days of lo-res TV, this actually wasn’t much of a problem at all. They just slathered on the white pancake make-up, and nobody noticed. Decades later, though, when they finally released Batman on DVD, well . . . everyone noticed.

     Including the good folks at LEGO.

Inspired by Andy Reed’s stolen comic collection. Photo by the author. Orange wedge inspired by the late, great Gilbert Gottfried.

Only a Tyne Resemblance

In the ’seventies I really, really wanted to look like Marcia Brady, or maybe Jan, especially after that family vacation in Hawaii episode where they showcased their new boobs and long straight blonde hair. But no, not even a luke-warm ringer. In pure ’tween mortification, my doppelganger was . . . Tyne Daly.

     What thirteen year old gets linked to Tyne Daly? It started in grade nine after some St. Anne’s boys went to see The Enforcer. “Wow,” says one . . . you look just like that lady cop.” It could have been worse, I guess. I once met a baby who looked like Alfred Hitchcock.

Inspired by Nameless. Photo collage by Roy Schulze.

Nameless

I wrote a book that had a character a lot like me. He had many of my experiences. He lived in my neighbourhood. His family was a lot like mine. I knew people would assume he was me, that they’d see an anagram in any name I gave him. (“Hah! ‘Tom Ronson’ is really ‘Ron Thompson,’ right?!”) All the names I considered sounded false, so I avoided naming him at all. I completed the book without calling him anything. I found virtue and freedom in his anonymity. He was an everyman, a vessel, a doppelgänger who was and wasn’t me.

Inspired by Contemplating Fate & Destiny. Image by Dover Thrift Editions. The book I referenced is A Person of Letters. Let me tell you, it’s hard, and probably pretty dumb, for a first-time novelist to go novel length and not name his protagonist.  

Contemplating Fate & Destiny

I collect other Nancy Clarks. In the early ’80s at McGill during registration (before the process went online), I was given her forms by mistake (and she mine). I stood in the middle of the crowded gymnasium calling my name. She was shorter than me.
     According to Google, I’m a physiotherapist from Michigan with bouncy hair and a winning smile. In Nova Scotia, I find my gravestone. I die at 80, in case you’re wondering. In B.C., I am already dead, my name among the list of those scraped out of the muck in the pig pens at Picton’s farm.

Inspired by Seduction of the Innocent. Nancies Clark collage by Roy Schulze.

Seduction of the Innocent

I knew a kid in Grade 7 who liked to show off his comic collection, who made the mistake of showing it off to a kid in our class named Ned Kent, who then told his brother, who then told his friends, who then got together to steal the whole thing from Andy’s bedroom.
     I was catching up with Andy a while back, not long after I’d heard that Ned had died in his forties.
     “Fuck Ned Kent and his brother for stealing my comics!”
     So, I told him how Ned had died.
     “Fuck Ned Kent for making me care!”

Inspired by My late mother's collections. Seduction of the Innocent cover by Museum Press, London, 1955.

Daily Records

Empty Glass, Whooligans, Quadrophenia, Who’s Next, Who Are You, Face Dances, The Who by Numbers, Tommy, All the Good Cowboys Had Chinese Eyes, White City, Rough Mix…they all went for a quarter each in the Great Album Diaspora of 1988 when my parents decided to sell all my music thinking now that I was married and living in the big city these salad-day trappings would mean nothing to me. Some lucky bastard put down a $20 and scored the lot, leaving only La Soeur Sourire and the Cowsills in Concert. I’d call that a bargain, the best he ever had.

Inspired by The China Cabinent.

The China Cabinet

After the funeral, he settled into a solitary routine. When the funeral platters were finished, he ate a microwaved Swanson every night at the table where they’d shared their meals. Afterwards he’d linger there, staring into the China cabinet. She’d collected decorative plates, the souvenir kind, kitschy mementos of Disneyland, Mount Rushmore, Nashville. One day he boxed them all up and hauled them to the car, drove to the Niagara Escarpment, carried them to the cliff edge, and spun them like frisbees out into the void. He missed her desperately, but she should never have thrown out his Dylan records.

Inspired by My Late Mother's Collections. Photo by Jane Stotesbery.