Happy 100th, Crosswords!

The crossword puzzle hits the big one-oh-oh today.

On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne's "Word-Cross" (above) was published in the New York World. The rest, as they say, is fucking history.

Stay tuned for my 2013 New York Times word-cross crossword stats, in ten days or so.
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Happy 33rd, Sedins!

Creepy Canuck twins Daniel (L) and Henrik (R) hit the big three-three today.

Hockey season starts next Thursday Tuesday!
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Happy 74th, Fred!

Fred Willard hits the big seven-four today.

He's been in a countless movies and TV shows over the last 40 years, including personal faves King of the Hill, Anchorman, The Simpsons, This Is Spinal Tap and The Bob Newhart Show. However, he's never been funnier than in Christopher Guest's trilogy of mockumentaries: Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show and A Mighty Wind (2003), from which the above clip comes.

Then there was this unexpected bit of unpleasantness last year.
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Happy 46th, Louis!

Louis C.K. hits the big four-six today.

Aside from directing/editing/producing/starring in the consistently awesome, completely unpredictable Louie, he also created and starred in the criminally underrated Lucky Louie, and directed the criminally underrated Pootie Tang. As well as a bunch of other stuff.

He's also my favorite standup comedian -- I can totally relate to the above clip.
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Happy 40th, Ghost Rider!

Issue #1 of Ghost Rider, starring my third-favorite comic book superhero (behind Batman and Spider-Man), was released 40 years ago this month. That's it above, though the character first appeared in Marvel Spotlight #5 in August 1972, with a cooler cover, below.

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Happy 52nd, Eddie!

Eddie Murphy hits the big five-two today.

In the early '80s, the then-shit-hot Murphy could do no wrong: he ruled Saturday Night Live (playing Gumby, Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson, James Brown and Stevie Wonder, among others), he starred in a few decent films (48 Hrs., Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop), and he recorded the novelty classic "Boogie in Your Butt" (above). Pretty much everything since then sucked... What happened?

What made the biggest impression on me by far was his 1983 standup special Delirious. I first saw it at the relatively tender age of 14, after school one day at the home of a pal who taped it off HBO. I'd never heard anything so incredibly filthy in my young life, and despite its grossly homophobic moments, I'd never heard anything so incredibly hilarious either. I don't think I'd even seen a full standup performance before, and though I was too young (and sheltered) to get many of the 22-year-old's jokes, Delirious thoroughly blew my mind.

Watch the whole thing here...



Goonie goo goo.
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Happy 25th, Sub Pop!

The venerable Seattle label hits the big two-five today, at least according to Sub Pop. Wikipedia says otherwise -- a lame April Fool's joke?

Toeing the company line, Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm mentioned today's 25th anniversary during tonight's in-store show at the West Seattle Easy Street Records. A good performance, and afterwards I went into total fanboy mode: I had all four band members shake my hand and sign my free Ed Fotheringham poster, and I even got a photo with Mark Arm himself, one of my all-time rock 'n' roll idols...

 

Sub Pop was the shit in late-'80s/early-'90s Seattle, when Mudhoney was king (tho' soon dethroned by lesser label-mates Soundgarden and Nirvana). While Sub Pop worked with heaps of cool acts, my other all-time favorite band to record for the label is Girl Trouble.

Looking forward to July's Sub Pop Silver Jubilee...
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Happy 25th, Surfer Rosa!

The Pixies' first full-length record hits the big two-five today.

Surfer Rosa was released in the UK on March 21, 1988, and it came out in the US that August. Sometime that summer I first heard the album's lead single, "Gigantic," on Seattle's KJET. Then that fall, my college roommate had the full-length LP, which I immediately dug (though I was disappointed that "Gigantic" was the record's only song sung by "Mrs. John Murphy"). I soon bought myself Rough Trade's import CD, which also had 1987's Come on Pilgrim EP tacked on at the end. To me, the two releases on that single disc have always run together like double album -- Rosa's "Brick is Red" flows seamlessly into Pilgrim's "Caribou."

Part of the fascination was that, at the time, the Pixies were largely a mystery to me. I had no idea what the band members looked like, nor was even sure of their real names. The CD booklet, designed by Vaughan Oliver, just had those sepia photos of a topless senorita.

Twenty-five years later, it's still my second-favorite album ever of all-time ever. This remains my number one.
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Happy 40th, Raw Power!

The Iggy and the Stooges classic hit the big four-oh this month -- February 7, to be exact.

This occurred to me today, upon reading that "Iggy and the Stooges" will be releasing a follow-up record in April. The new album apparently shouldn't be confused with The Weirdness, which "The Stooges" released in 2007 as a follow-up to 1970's Fun House. (I was too kind to The Weirdness here -- it totally sucked.)

Anyway, here's hoping Ready to Die -- featuring Raw Power guitar ace James Williamson -- doesn't totally suck.
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Happy 25th, Mudhoney!

My favorite hometown band -- and my third-fave band ever, behind the Stones and the 'Mats -- hits the big two-five today. Long may they rock.
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2012: The Year of the Chickens!

In this, the last of this blog's measly 26 posts in 2012, I'll recap the stuff I've covered over the previous year, along with some things I didn't address. For starters, in February, Eliza and I installed a chicken coop in our backyard, and then brought home four two-month-old pullets: Rocky, Dolly, Rhodey, and Li'l Sweetie (above, shot by Eliza). Sadly, Rocky and Dolly succumbed to Marek's Disease, but Sweetie and Rhodey have thrived - since May, those gals have pumped out a whopping 334 eggs!

In other bird news, a day after Rocky was put to sleep, three robins were hatched in a nest by our back porch. Here are two of the eggs...

Within a day, all three robin chicks were eaten by some goddamn crows.

In non-bird deaths, in 2012 we said goodbye to the Beastie Boys and Ween, Ralph McQuarrie, and John Belushi (albeit 30 years after the fact). Also passing this year, but unacknowledged by this blog, were Matt Groening's Life in Hell, and the Seattle TV clown who inspired Krusty the Clown on Groening's The Simpsons, JP Patches... In July was I driving through the U-District when I happened upon the demolition of the UW's Lander Hall, a dormitory where I lived for a couple years in my late teens and did many grown-up, um, things, that I never done before...

Celebrating birthdays in 2012 were Paul Stanley and Muhammad Ali, as well as the 50th anniversaries of Mad, the Rolling Stones, the Seattle Monorail, the Seattle World's Fair and Spider-Man, along with the 25th anniversaries of Pleased to Meet Me and the 1987 NBA All-Star Game.

On top of this being the sixth full calendar year of the SteveMandich.com blog, I continued to maintain two other blogs -- Super Ichiro Crazy! (where the big news was his trade from Seattle to the Yankees) and Bigfoot is Real (which I just put on "temporary hiatus"). Upon the (galaxy) golden anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair, I started a commemorative blog. It was soon aborted, due to lack of both interest and inspiration. Still, I came away with this cool photo of some Space Needle models, taken at an art gallery near the Needle itself...

I visited Minnesota and New Mexico in 2012, though I didn't blog about my April SoCal trip -- in San Diego I met up with another Steve Mandich, a swell guy who's a credit to our name...

In Anaheim, my pal JP and I saw the Edmonton Oilers beat the Ducks, and the next night, we saw the eventual Stanley Cup-winning Kings beat the Oilers in L.A. I stupidly lost all my photos from those games, so here's a picture I took of the Watts Towers...

Earlier, and closer to home, I rode the Amtrak Cascades up to Vancouver, where I witnessed the Canucks beat the Coyotes in an overtime shootout. While in town, I attended the Vancouver International Boat Show, if only to see the insides of the revamped BC Place Stadium...

Here's another Vancouver photo, taken in Stanley Park...

In medical news, my Morton's toe that I viciously stubbed in 2004 finally got fixed in October -- the good foot doctor shaved away some arthritic bone and inserted a temporary three-inch pin. Here's a gnarly pic of how it looked a week after surgery...

Though 2012 was the Year of the Chickens, Eliza and I figure 2013 will be the Year of the Babies -- we're expecting fraternal twin girls on January 9! Here we are in our backyard on Thanksgiving...

Going into the new year, if I'm not blogging about it here, I'll be posting it on facebook.

As always, thanks for reading!
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Happy 50th, MAD!

MAD magazine hits the big five-oh this month, joining the Seattle Monorail, the Seattle World's Fair, the Rolling Stones, and Spider-Man as cool things that hit the big five-oh this year.

Other than the MAD Presents Batman special I picked up over the summer, I probably haven't bought a single issue since the '80s. (For that matter, I don't think I've ever sat through a full episode of MADtv.) Perhaps the best MAD-related thing to come out in the last 25 years is the awesome, unauthorized Roctober tribute issue -- here's a better look at the cover.

MAD meant the most to me between 1977 and 1984 or so (ages 8 through 15), when it spoofed the first Star Wars and Indiana Jones installments, along with the other movies and TV shows and video games (above) that I was tuned into. I didn't quite get all the political humor and social commentary, but I dug Spy vs. Spy, the Fold-ins, and all the stuff by Al Jaffee, Don Martin, Mort Drucker, and especially Jack Davis. And I must've played that stupid Makin' Out flex-disc a million times.

Anyway, congrats to the usual gang of idiots!
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Happy 50th, Spider-Man!

My second-favorite superhero ever of all-time ever hits the big five-oh today.

At least it was 50 years ago this month that Spidey made his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15. I've always dug Spider-Man, even if I didn't actively read his comics as a kid. Instead, I watched his cartoons on TV and had this Mead folder and listened to this book/record set over and over...

I also had one of these...

Sam Raimi's film trilogy of the '00s was pretty awesome (the first two, anyway). I was really looking forward to this summer's reboot, but was pretty much underwhelmed by its cliches and redundancy and general pointlessness. Still, I'll probably watch it again sometime.

Batman is still my favorite superhero.
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Happy 50th, the Rolling Stones!

My favorite band ever of all-time ever hits the big five-oh today.

At least it was 50 years ago today that the "Rollin' Stones" played their first-ever gig, at London's Marquee Jazz Club. The above photo was taken outside the Marquee yesterday, though Mick and Keith are the only two who played that first show -- Charlie Watts didn't join the Stones until 1963, and Ron Wood didn't join 'til '75.

Shepard Fairey's 50th anniversary logo sucks.
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Happy 25th, Pleased to Meet Me!

My favorite album ever of all-time ever hits the big two-five today.
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Happy 50th, Seattle World's Fair!

To commemorate the golden anniversary of Seattle's Space-Age expo, I've started yet another blog: It Happened at the World's Fair.

Along with Bigfoot is Real, Super Ichiro Crazy!, Quatchi Watch and this thing you're looking at now, that's five blogs I'm responsible for... Is that some kind of record?

UPDATE
I killed the blog after a few weeks -- I just didn't have the time, the enthusiasm, or frankly, the viewers to keep it going.
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Happy 50th, Monorail!

The Seattle Monorail hit the big five-oh on Saturday.

Eliza and I lined up early Saturday morning at the Westlake Station ticket window to get our free commemorative medallions, then we rode the blue train to Seattle Center for the festivities: an Elvis impersonator, a table with some vintage memorabilia (brochures, toys, etc.), 50th-anniversary souvenirs (we bought a poster, and Eliza got a T-shirt), some guest speakers, and this eighth-grade kid demonstrated his new monorail video game. We also got to tour the service bays below the trains at the station. Pretty cool.

For the occasion, I scanned in my circa '62 Seattle Monorail booklet (above) and uploaded it as a flickr set -- incidentally, this brings my entire flickr collection to exactly 1,000 images.

The monorail's birthday is the first of what will be many 50th-anniversary celebrations of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, which I'm planning to fully commemorate myself -- stay tuned.
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Happy 60th, Paul!

The Starchild hits the big six-oh today.
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Happy 70th, Muhammad!

The Greatest hits the big seven-oh today.
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Happy 71st, Don Francisco!

The host of the long-running Sabado Gigante hits the big seven-one today.

I wish I could watch his show more often, but unfortunately I have to work most Sabados.
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