Thursday, April 12, 2007
Keep the Good Stuff
Mrs. Mentok and I are cleaning out our basement due to the aforementioned foundation repairs.
Now, here's a factoid some of you web stalkers may not know: I'm a former comic collector and an ongoing collector of Batman kitsch.
Not my fault, really. I was born in the midst of the first Batman craze so my older brother was eager to cast me in the role of Robin the millisecond I was able to walk. He did a thorough job of ensuring I was thoroughly programmed into the ways of all things Batman.
But now, 40 years on, I've got all this stuff. About a dozen large storage bins full of it. It's all good stuff, mind you. As I've been repacking it, my kids have been continually exclaiming "Wow, that's so cool! Can we play with it?"
But, of course, the heart-breaking answer is "No!". You can't play with the collectibles. And that in a nutshell is the whole travesty of pop-culture collecting. Stuff that was designed to be toys cannot be enjoyed as toys.
Consequently, I'm finding this encounter with my collection to be quite depressing. I've got all this stuff that I can't enjoy just sitting in bins cluttering up my life. Yet, there's no way I could ever part with them. I feel enslaved by these stupid objects.
I take some little solace in recalling that the mythical Dark Knight himself was a fanatic collector who maintained a gigantic room of trophies. He had the benefit of an apparently infinitely large network of caves to store his stuff. Nonetheless, I can easily imagine arguments breaking out between the Caped Crusader and Alfred the butler. "Seriously, Master Bruce, what are you ever going to do with a giant coin and a robot dinosaur? Do you know how long it takes to dust those things? Why do you bother keeping this crap?"
So I moped to Mrs. Mentok about these frustrations. In the past, she's acted as though she finds the collection a bit of an embarrassment, so I expected her to join in on my anti-collection bitching.
Instead, she asked "If you had your absolute ideal choice, what would you do with this stuff?".
"Well, there's no use talking about my ideal, because its impossible," I replied.
"Don't tell me what's practical, tell me your ideal."
"My ideal would be like those crazy old men you see in the paper sometimes who have their whole basement dedicated to their model train set or John Deere collection or something."
"OK, well, someday you'll be an old man, and you're already crazy. Someday the basement will be all fixed up and the kids will have moved out so you can do whatever you want down there. So just store all this stuff until then and we'll set up your dream display when that day comes."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the moment when I realized that my most valuable collectible is my wife.
[So, no, you can't play with her... although, just out of curiosity, I wonder what she'd fetch on Ebay.]
Now, how about you guys: Got a collection? Got a friend or relative who's a loony collector?
posted by Mentok @ 9:55 a.m.,
11 Comments:
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At 4:26 p.m.,
Library Mama said...
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Awwww, shucks. Thanks, Hon!
You're a keeper, too. -
At 10:14 a.m.,
Elizabeth said...
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Very sweet. Any woman who understands a man's attachment to his comic books is a keeper.
Erm, I collect Nancy Drew memorabilia. It's not a huge collection by any means, but it's what made me realize I might be hopelessly twee.
Interesting side note...the Hardy Boys used to be really, really, really racist! You would sort of expect that given when the run originally began, around 1920, but let's just say Frank and Joe could make Don Imus blush. -
At 10:33 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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Liz - yes, I've heard that before about the Hardy Boys. Likewise, the old Johny Quest cartoon, quite racist; as we discovered in a recent viewing of the DVD, the series was pretty much "evil minority villain of the week", usually Asian.
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At 4:09 p.m.,
Grumps said...
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I collect memories. They're easy to move, don't take up much space and are priceless.
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At 4:19 p.m.,
Mentok said...
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Unfortunately, I seem to have almost no long-term memory. There are, for example, many anecdotes from my college days which others have told me were very funny, but which I appear no clear recollection.
Anyway, nice to meet you Mr. Grumps and hope you drop by again sometime ;-) -
At 7:40 a.m.,
said...
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i don't have much in the way of a collection, per se, although i do have a shitload of stuff in my basement. i seem to be the keeper of dead people's memories.
also, my brother ALWAYS made me play robin. i mean, just once, couldn't i have been batman? would it have killed him?? -
At 9:46 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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I was lucky that my older brother often cast me as Batman, although he had an agenda.
We would dress up in our costumes (home-made that my mom had sewn from a pattern. I still have a chunk of it somewhere.) He'd load me up in our home-made Batmobile (a cardboard box decorated with crayons and tin cans) and push me all around the house.
Then, when he was ready to get rid of me, he'd say "Let's head back to the Batcave" and lock me up in a closet. I know that last part sounds bad, but boys will be boys and the whole bit is actually one of my most cherished childhood memories. -
At 10:01 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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JC - thanks for your forgiveness. On your site, I was playing at the whole 'obnoxiously ignorant North American' bit, but on review I may have been a little too convincing at it. In real life, I have far too much affection for all things Scottish to make such an error ;-)
VHS tapes... bad ties... Yes, your pack-rat habits sound precisely like mine!
Best Batman? I'm bought and sold on Christian Bale. I'm more in the Dark Knight school than the Caped Crusader one. But I'll always have a special place for Adam West; one of my earliest memories is watching the TV Batman escape from a cage of Catwoman's lions and tigers. -
At 5:10 p.m.,
Library Mama said...
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So tell us, dear Mentok - how long did it take for Batman to come out of the closet?
Inquiring minds want to know. -
At 7:35 p.m.,
said...
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good one, l.m.! :D
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At 4:33 a.m.,
jamwall said...
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i keep sudanian refugees in my basement.
actually, my basement persay, is an underground parking garage. so they have to huddle between the lines of my parking spot..with the car there.
