Goof Friday

The Dark of the Covenant

Here’s a neat video retelling — in 4½ minutes — the story of the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt, performed by the Attraction Black-Light and Shadow Theatre group, forwarded to me by my mother.

Stocking Stuff

Christmas is here. I wish you a day of peace.


Image © 2005 David Malki.

Are you perchance dreaming of a Betty White Christmas? The saucy gal, whose
shtick these days melds the randiness of her Sue Ann from The Mary Tyler Moore Show with the cluelessness of her Rose from The Golden Girls to great comedic effect, dropped by The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on Monday night. While the seams showed a bit — I’m guessing not enough rehearsal time to memorize the lines or know what to riff on, hence the slight hiccups in dialogue betwixt her and Craig — she remains a national treasure. [bad link]

Ric Estrada 1928-2009

Splash panel of “The Mormon Battalion!” in Our Fighting Forces #135 © 1972 DC
Comics. Script, Pencils, Inks: Ric Estrada. Letters, Colors: Unknown.

Artist Ric Estrada passed away last Friday. He was 81.

While he didn’t rank among the best known comic-book pros, Estrada’s held a place
in my heart for decades thanks to his part in the revival of All-Star Comics in 1975.
I’ve been learning that he holds a place in the hearts of many others for very different work: illustrating passages from what’s popularly known as the New Testament, plus The Book of Mormon, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as sampled below. Or perhaps not so different, given the superhero genre’s modern spins on ancient myth and legend, but that’s not the purview of this post.

It’s Bananas

Purim was the other day. You often see it referred to as the Jewish Halloween or
the Jewish Mardi Gras. A festival like Chanukah, rather than a holy day such as Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Purim is indeed a time for people to dress up and be merry.


Cover to Magilla Gorilla #1 © 1964 Hanna-Barbera Productions.
Pencils, Inks: Pete Alvarado. Colors: Unknown.

The original idea behind the costumes was to emulate characters from the Hebrew
Book of Esther, since it’s from those events that the festival arose, but as with Halloween — where outfits are no longer limited to imitations of spirits and demons — in most communities a wider net is cast. Our synagogue held an annual Purim Carnival for the kids, and one year I made a pretty decent Mork (as in “… from Ork”).