It’s a question that every action figure collector asks themselves :

“I love posable action figures, but they’re for kids! What can I do to make my collection more… classy? You know, besides wearing a monocle while I smash Captain America into The Incredible Hulk?”

While playable action figures usually make up the core of any comic nerd’s collection, our favorite superheroes don’t exist only in plastic. Indeed, we can often find out superheroes in such mediums as polystone, resin, various die-cast metals and most recently, even lead - the deadliest of all elements!

Okay, maybe not the deadliest, because I’m pretty sure that the radiation poisoning of uranium is pretty far up there. And the explosive potential of raw potassium might singe a few hairs. And one gram of polonium killing 50 million people isn’t good news either. But man, lead can mess you up if you eat it. Sweet, delicious lead.

The Classic Marvel Figurine Collection has been around since 2005 in the UK, produced by Eaglemoss Publishing. While toy regulations in the United States don’t really smile upon making characters that are ostensibly geared towards children out of pure lead (or even with the slightest hint of lead paints), they’ve only recently been imported to the US through the machinations of Diamond Comics Distributors. Each lead figurine stands at about 4 inches tall (but are properly scaled for larger and smaller characters), is fully painted, and comes in a solid collectors’ box. Each is also accompanied by an informative magazine, detailing the history of the character. Some of the larger characters, like The Hulk and Juggernaut, actually weigh in at over one pound each - a significant weight for a 5” figure of solid metal.

The small scale keeps these figures relatively simple, and the paint is pretty much average in quality, but that doesn’t stop them from being great display pieces. With over 80 planned or in production, they’ll all make for a formidable display - just make sure it’s on something sturdy, and don’t forget to wash your hands after handling these! They’re made of death!

One concern of comic memorabilia collectors, when seeing a new line of items based on a particular comic universe, is the diversity of characters that will be produced. We don’t want 15 different Wolverine figures (I’m talking to you, Art Asylum) - we want a full array of X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and a whole bunch of popular and obscure villains. Eaglemoss has made some excellent choices in the character array we’re being given, and after about 80 announced and produced figures, the array of characters is staggering and fun.

These are all sculpted in iconic poses, so they’re not dynamic and ready for action - but they are classy. And I define classy by ‘could I kill an intruder into my home with this item?’ The answer is yes, if not through outright bludgeoning, the debilitating effects of lead poisoning would surely get to them eventually. We’ll see how they like hyperactivity, irritability and violent tendencies! That’ll learn ‘em to suffer from things they’re already probably suffering from!

Instead of importing these directly from the UK and paying hefty shipping charges, I patiently away the four or five that arrive in the states each month. So far, numbers 1 through 12, 30 through 41, and The Incredible Hulk and Juggernaut special editions have been released here, with my long-awaited Iron Man being one of the more recent releases. As far as heroes go, they’re some of the classier things you could decorate your shelves with.

Check out my complete gallery of US-released figures in our Community Section, as well as the collections of other Classic Figurine collectors!

When the definition of kitsch is limited to tacky, regardless of price, there is no better place to display your poor taste than in your own yard.

Some folks call their expensive junk “artwork.” Welded together car bumpers and plumbing parts sprinkled with a hub cap and tire iron. And we all pass by and scream YAK. Somewhat upscale from that group are flame cut sheet steel objects, bent and twisted into almost recognizable shapes. Or concrete subjects in abstracts forms, filling the yards in artistic cities like Madison, Wisconsin or the East side of Milwaukee and surely some artsy community in your own area.

Today I passed by the rear end of an old finned Caddy, sticking up from the ground as if had run into a giant pothole, right in the middle of a front yard in a newly rediscovered, older neighborhood.

Over the years we have laughed at many kitschy fads for the yard such as trolls and mushrooms, cut-outs of cowboys, dogs and bent over gals. Cement everything from peeing boy fountains, flowerpots, animals, and especially deer, lots of deer. Wooden plaques of bunnies, flowers, sheep and little girls with sprinkling cans.

Now we all probably have some or at least one of these objects of kitsch in our yard. We have friends in a gazillion dollar house with a moose cut-out at full size in their backyard, and do we dare point out the tackiness of it? No!

And another friend with a frog that croaks when approached. But that one is our fault, we placed the frog clandestinely in their yard one night.

We have all passed a nice display in tasteful kitsch and marveled at its artistic value, but at what point does one go from tasteful décor to down right tacky? I think I may have reached that point. Well, how could it happen, does one intentionally decide to become a garden kitsch addict? Is it the friend that urges you to - just try one, everybody else does it, what harm could it do?

Oh Woe Is Me!! In this case study, it was my own fault. When we moved into our house, and decided to have a big party so everyone could see the place, I wrote up an invitation suggesting the only gift acceptable would be tacky yard ornaments. Oh my, what a mistake.

Among the most notable, we received a painted concrete penguin with plastic bow tie, several birdhouses dressed up as other objects, a real tombstone, a concrete stepping stone, several wooden cut-outs of flowers, and pink flamingos, one that was anatomically correct with two pink golf balls. (Trading tacky flamingos is another day’s story.) All items were initially placed in our yard to scare our new neighbors.

But alas that is how it started. Oh, we took down many of the objects, but “stored” the tombstone behind bushes, stepping stone in the garden and birdhouses hung in trees. All other objects were placed on rafters in the garage for re-gifting.

Today! Well, let me mentally wander through the yard, and see if you agree we have reached the ultimate in Dictionary defined garden kitschy.

A five foot metal pole from the roof of an 1880s building with large finial at top and a deteriorating arrow to point the wind direction sits at the beginning of our driveway.

A four inch square, three foot long hunk of red marble sticking up out of the ground, an iron gate is a trellis for tea roses, the stepping stones, the tombstone, a sundial, bird bath bases holding colorful bowling balls and one with a huge round lathe turned wooden ball, are all along a garden fence at the drive.

Then in back we have two fire hydrants; one is a Watrus of St. Paul.

One corn planter, a dozen antique steel wheels of various sizes and designs many not visible in summer, a drinking fountain converted to a bird bath , a cement pond made from a discarded Bradley Wash Fountain with added cement egret.

Two wind chimes, a dinner bell, two bird baths, another gazing ball - this one official purchased from Abler Art Glass, near Elkart Lake, Wisconsin home of Road America.

A granite pathway made from a headstone company’s scrap, a wooden sign pointing to the “Garden Path”, several small metal pieces from the ends of antique foot treadle sewing machine stands now used as wall art on the garage, and a Heron weathervane on our garage. And a flamingo with clothing for each season and holiday.

Not to mention two “art” pieces, one is a glass topped table with the base in the form of a sewer pipe and signed by the artist, Carl E Funk of Akron Ohio and dated 1945.

The other looks like the chaps of a bowlegged cowboy that we placed a faux Roman statue head atop. Both purchased in the upscale area of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin at estate sales.

There is the cement angel, several small gargoyles, and child’s head, all from broken statues rescued from an antique store back lot located in Iowa.

Now you judge, are we in need of treatment? Would a 12-step plan put us on the right path or would we stray back to our old garden path ways? Should we get an exorcist to pluck these demon objects from our yard or just learn to live with them, promising never to purchase another? Help us before we sin again.

The newswires are filled with stories on the recent discovery of the remains of a Dodo bird found in a cave beneath bamboo and tea plantations in Mauritius, an island located in the Indian Ocean.

Dodo remains are rare finds. The last time Dodo skeletons were discovered was in 2005 when a mass grave was found in the southeastern part of the island known as Mare aux Songes — but the hot, wet, acidic environment meant poor DNA survival. Before that 2005 discovery the previous Dodo remains were found in 1920.

What really thrills scientists is that this skeleton, named Fred, was found intact and, having been isolated in a cave, well preserved enough that ‘he’ may be an excellent DNA source. Julian Hume, a palaeontologist at London’s Natural History Museum, said, “Then you can work out how it actually got to Mauritius, because it must have originally flown here before evolving into flightlessness and the big, fat bird that we know.”

While all of this is exciting, especially to a science geek like me, the reason the story’s been making the newswire rounds is because Fred was discovered just days after those wacky Kovels had mentioned the Dodo in one of their newsletters. Yet the Kovels knew nothing of Fred’s discovery because both he and the information of his existence were guarded until after he was safely removed.

In their newsletter, dated June 7, 2007, the Kovels told the story of a stuffed Dodo at the Ashmolean Museum in England:

It was in sad condition, and in 1755 the trustees decided to destroy it rather than spend the time and money to preserve it. The dilapidated stuffed bird was just tossed into a fire. Only a leg and the head survived the flames. Fortunately the parts were saved by another museum and we hear the relics have undergone DNA testing.

We can only guess what the value would be today of a whole stuffed dodo bird. So remember as you think about your collection: Never throw anything away just because it’s in bad condition. Sometimes it’s the only example you will ever find.

You know that I (as a hoarder, preserver of boxes, and mutant toy collector) agree with the Kovels. Don’t throw that out!

But this also reminded me of the expression, Dead as a Dodo, (and the similar or related Dumb as a Dodo, also discussed in Kovels June 14, 2007 newsletter), and of a conversation we had with the children just this past weekend.

We were discussing silent films and how many of these old films are gone forever because Hollywood actually reused the film. A combination of both conscious act (trying to save money by reusing celluloid) and ignorance (who knew that films which were no longer wanted by theaters would have any value?), film was recycled and thus we no longer have many of the old silent movies. The girls couldn’t fathom a universe in which movies and its related memorabilia weren’t valued and so they struggled with the concept, if not the actual losses in cinema history.

So Derek compared this to the original Disney animation cels which were dipped (just as Roger Rabbit et all feared!) so that the acetate could be reused for new animated films. This hit them hard, of course.

But all of this brings up the matter of technology. While Collin discusses, correctly, that vinyl has a short life and that one ought to preserve recordings digitally, what other advances render objects, collectibles, obsolete — as dead as Dodos?

Michael Sporn was similarly prompted by Dodos. Seeing the January 22, 2007, issue of The New Yorker, Sporn blogged:

This made me wonder if hand-drawn animation is going to go a similar way. Will they be able to find the bones a hundred years from now? Evidence seen in the past five years or so seems to give me little reason to doubt that it would be gone. MoCap will get better and the guise of animation will be front and center for the obvious future. There’s a good chance tomorrow will show us two of three nominees for Oscar’s Best Animated Feature will be Motion Capture. The animator as we knew it is virtually dead.

Still thinking of the issue, a week later Sporn revisited the issue with a deeper discussion of Motion Capture animation.

If technology threatens to render things obsolete, what will we do with all those things? They should be stored — and properly. But as recently as the 1960’s Warner Brothers destroyed nearly all the animation art they had in storage simply because they had no room for it. What will become of the things which exist now?

It is said that the Dodo died was because they were 1) fearless of people; 2) pushed out, made homeless, by humans cutting down their forest homes in the name of progress; and 3) flightless, so they laid their eggs on the ground where dogs, pigs and other critters ate them, dwindling their numbers.

As collectors we should learn from this.

We should be ‘afraid’ of what careless people will do with ‘obsolete’ objects. We should be sure to consider storage matters, make sure there will always be homes for items of value. And we should never leave our ‘babies’ where the ‘pigs’ can dwindle their numbers.

I regret to inform you that your vinyl collection is doomed. The more you love it, appreciate it, listen to what it has encoded into its grooves, the faster the cruel turntable stylus is going to carve away microscopic bits of data from the record itself. With every pass of metal-against-plastic, friction degrades your music. Unfortunately, there are still music performances on vinyl that haven’t made the leap to CD or mp3 formats, which are far more enduring (however also far less romantic) means of data storage.

The answer to surviving this degradation is to break out your old records for one last go. Embark on one last frictional farewell through the grooves - but this time, hook your turntable up to your computer and record the sound directly into a digital format. In this way, the music enjoyed for years to come without endangering the source material.

Now, I’m on a Mac computer, so this mini-tutorial is geared towards those of us on the Light Side of the Force, but the principles are universal. You’re going to need :

- a turntable with RCA ‘line out’ jacks
- a Dual RCA to Stereo (Male) cable
- a Griffin iMic
- a free USB port on your computer
- a little program called Audio Hijack.

The previously mentioned Numark PT-01 Turntable has the requisite audio jacks, and if you have any kind of electronics around the house, chances are that you have the RCA-to-Stereo cable in a drawer somewhere too, given to you as an extra part from some other device.

Of course, the first thing to do it to hook all of these crazy future-things up in sequence, all of which perform the function of translating the analog sound from the vibrating needle of your turntable, and into a format that your computer can understand. The rounded, circular RCA ends of the ‘RCA / Stereo’ cable get plugged into the ‘line out’ jacks on the turntable itself, and the other end of this cable (with the single plug) gets plugged into the Griffin iMic.

The Griffin iMic has two places where you can plug this cable in. On older models, these are marked by icons for a microphone & a stereo speaker, as well as a switch to choose between them. Plug the cord into the jack with the ‘microphone’ icon, making sure that the switch is positioned towards said icon. The jack with the ‘stereo’ icon is more for sounds coming out of the computer - and we’re sending sounds in. The newer models are slightly different, but also suitably self-explanatory.

The iMic’s USB cable (the wide, rectangle one attached to the iMic itself) gets plugged into your computer, which will usually recognize it as an external device and be immediately ready to take audio input. If you’re working from a Windows computer, you might need to install the software that comes with the iMic, but you’re on your own there. I dare not to tread in the chaotic, syrupy mess that is making sense of Windows. Now, your computer is ready to listen.I legally purchased a copy of Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba Software (linked above) for 16 bucks, and it’s been a great investment.

The user interface is completely intuitive & it’s done a great job recording my records into a variety of formats - though mostly mp3 and AIFF (which is the format the CDs are usually in). Not only can you record vinyl into your computer using Audio Hijack - but you can record audio from any source that your computer can hear. Input possibilities include your radio, a microphone, the TV, podcasts, and audio that streams into your browser (without given you the option of saving those awesome sound files directly). You can snag songs from MySpace pages and put them on your iPod, and other such things involving modern lingo and odd capitalizations.

Once you select an audio source from the menu on the left of the AudioHijack screen, and hit the ‘HIJACK’ button, your computer will start to listen to the source and play it back for you. Hit ‘RECORD’ and it’ll start to make a file of the sound - and it’s that simple. You can edit the sounds that you’ve captured using things like Quicktime Pro (to cut out extra bits at the beginnings and ends of recordings) and SoundSoap. SoundSoap is a popular (but expensive) program that will help you remove pops and crackles from your recordings, but it’s far from magic, and you’ll end up losing a lot general fidelity in the process.

With this process, I’ve archived a vast number of albums, and it barely takes longer than the actual listening time of the album. Your process may different slightly, but there’s the general layout of it. Save those records while you can, and by all means, ENJOY THEM!

I have been blessed with two daughters, just 18 months apart and inseparable through their childhood. They are both now ‘all growed up’ and are as much alike as “two peas in a Porche’.” These young ladies now have totally different tastes.
First, the oldest. Dee loves a lot of our antiques and collectibles. She enjoys the unusual items we place around, and in the house. She appreciates my ‘nudies’ while the younger one, Jay, avoids them like the plague. She has no desire to be in the same room with these gorgeous ladies who chose to display their attributes to all who would enjoy them.

Dee likes feathers, leopard skin and fancy ladies. Her home is decorated in an eclectic style – you never know what you’ll find when you enter a room. (Her somewhat shy father-in-law will attest to that.)

Jay prefers a tasteful water color or painted scene rather than deal with the ‘fantasy figures’ in these old prints. She would wrinkle her cute nose and say “butterfly wings, on a girl? That does not make any sense. And what man wears a jester’s suit anyway?”

Jay loves quality glassware! She proudly presents her lovely items in well-lit curios and prominently displays and uses her finery! She appreciates my glass items, especially anything with Waterford in its name. She hints about leaving her name taped to the bottom of a vase or cut-glass bowl. She need not worry – to Dee, these are just objects to clean. They’re OK to serve in, but if they can’t be popped in her dishwasher, who needs them.

I love ‘whimsy’ in the house and my ‘pig-butt picture’ is known far and wide. This was purchased with our granddaughter when she was about 6. I can remember that she picked it up at the yard sale and asked ‘how many pig butts are there?” We counted them and came up with 11, plus one proud farmer. I HAD to have this picture and it hangs in the back hallway, near the ‘farm-primitives.’ Dee is wild about it; even found bars of soap with pig butts on them so I could keep the theme going. Jay scoots past it on the way in the house, obviously not a favorite of hers.

Jay loves elegance! Fine china, top quality pottery and the classics. Her home is filled with beauty, almost all new, and in such good taste. Friends and family alike are impressed with the way she decorates her home.

Dee loves to shop at thrift stores and proudly boasts of great finds such as plaster cherubs and velvet paintings. She calls to tell about a funky picture she found for their unique bathroom or funny piece of yard-art. And she uses everything, many times having to get creative. She has used broken china to make a new top on a miserable-looking table. It now looks wonderful!
And jewelry-now we are really world’s apart. I like long, dangling earrings, the sparklier the better. And long ropes of crystal or rhinestones. Dee asks if I was born to gypsies, but admires them just the same. Jay love top-quality pieces. Real gold, gemstones, pearls; once again, the classics. I think my jangling unnerves her a little, but her attempts to make me more conservative have not worked.

Loving them both is easy! They are delightful ladies and I am proud of them! So, Dee wants the ‘basement stock’, and Jay wants the ‘corporate stock’, it’s just what makes my ‘small world’ go ‘round. Now, can you guess which one is which? Dee & Jay or Jay & Dee