The Story of "StoogeWorld"

First and foremost, I would like to thank God for the skills and opportunity to create this site. By his mercy, I've been granted the opportunity to make a choice, (life or death). I choose life.

 

Hello Stoogebuffs...my name is Kevin. I live in a landlocked asphalt jungle called the D/FW metroplex. (Dallas/Ft. Worth) in case your geographically challenged. Growing up in Texas and watching Slam Bang Theater in the mornings was a treat. I realized at a very early age that I would always like the Stooges, and their type of comic genius would never die in my mind, or in my heart. The earliest memories of my childhood bring back the same enjoyable classics that I watch today. I am a die hard Three Stooges lover, and collector. I decided to dedicate my time and efforts to building a web site that other Stooges collectors might benefit from. Years of my own research, and the research of the other serious Stooge collectors is the final product. I call this product "StoogeWorld". Welcome to the most informative Three Stooges Collectible Site on the World Wide Web. I hope that this web site will be as much fun for the viewers as it is for me. I really enjoy working on it and hope that it will serve as a Three Stooges information reservoir for many years to come.

"www.StoogeWorld.com" was an idea that I birthed back in 1997. I had been collecting tons of Three Stooges merchandise and was getting very frustrated at the lack of resources available for a serious collector, especially a serious Three Stooges collector. So, I began doing research. I collected photographs, prices, stories, collectibles and more collectibles. I started thinking of ways to bring it all to the public. At the time, the Internet was very new and a fraction of the size it is today. But I knew that one day it would be a great tool. I got into computers and started teaching myself how to edit photographs. I mastered that, and moved onto creating snazzy computer graphics. As a Graphic Designer, I felt I had an edge there. So I honed in on my skills and became fast at it. I studied this wild new concept called HTML that I'd been hearing so much about, and started to learn what it did and how it worked. Then, about 2 1/2 years later, on Friday June 30, 2000 I uploaded StoogeWorld onto the Internet for the rest of the world to see. I've been updating and changing things ever since.

I guess I started acquiring my own personal Three Stooges merchandise when I was about 17 years of age. I'm now in my thirties and went on a collecting rampage a few years ago. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet and eBay I was able to increase my own personal collection about 50 fold in just a few short years. I now have over 1000 pieces in my personal collection valued in the vicinity of $15,000 and I'm working on a complete inventory and price list of what I've obtained. I would hope that all of my hard work and research is helpful to all 3 Stooges collectors and connoisseurs alike. I love getting feedback on how my web site is beneficial to other collectors out there, so speak up! Don't get discouraged if I don't reply to all of the e-mail right away. As much as I like talking to other Stooge fanatics, I don't spend that much of my time chatting. I have a lot of work to do here and it consumes a lot of time. So if it takes me a while to respond to your e-mail, don't take it personally, that's just my schedule. As you've probably figured out by the "100% nonprofit" disclaimers...I'm not making money for my time invested into this site. I guess you could say, this is a passion turned ugly for me. Or in Stooge terms, "I'm a victim of soicumstance!" Nevertheless, it is a passion, and I love it.

O.K. enough belly-aching and on to some serious business here. I will feature some of my more cherished items in this section of StoogeWorld. (The items I have, that I consider either very rare, or very unique). Like I said, my collection is large, so this portion of the site, will get continuous updates. I would love to showcase other rare & unique stooge items in the Collectible Vault section of StoogeWorld, so send them my way. Send high quality scans ONLY, and a brief description of what the item is, and how you obtained it. (Send as much info about it as possible). Send info about yourself also. I like giving credit where it's due, so speak up there "Bird Brain". Oh, one more thing...If you see a picture anywhere on my site that you can improve on, let me know. I'll swap the existing photo with a better one. I only want the best images possible. I also have a flatbed scanner and can scan photos if needed. Send only good, clear photos if you want a collectible showcased. If you send a photo of a book, comic, magazine, or flat object, try to get a good straight shot. I do all my own Photoshop editing and I really appreciate good pictures.

Now, just in case you're wondering who the heck I am, or what I look like, I've posted some photos below. The beautiful blonde in the picture is my wife, Stacey. I won't say that Stacey is always on board with my stooge habit, but she tolerates it and even watches the stooges with me sometimes before bed. I really must say that I have been blessed! How many women will actually "watch" the stooges with you? Not many that I ever knew...most of them hated the stooges...correction, "misunderstood" the stooges.

In my opinion, people that didn't like the stooges, just didn't get the stooges. Or maybe it's just that they didn't want to give them a chance. The stooges weren't famous for their mastery of the art of slapstick comedy. Sure slapstick was in fact the comedy style for that time era, but that's not what it was about. The stooges were about making people laugh. And in their time era, there really wasn't a whole lot to laugh about. Consider the timeframe in which the Stooges performed their magic. The country was in a great depression, and going through terrible times. The Stooges were about everything but reality. They were an escape then, and they still serve as an escape today. So tell all of those "Anti-stoogers" out there to take them for what they were, and enjoy them for that. They had an very unexplainable ability to simply make you smile. Whether you love them, or you hate them, you must admit that.

The Three Stooges truly were, and still are today "The Godfathers of Comedy"!

 

My wife Stacey and I at the Treasure Island Resort in Grand Cayman. This is a photo of us on our honeymoon. I broke down and married her because I couldn't get her out of the house and couldn't use her as a tax write-off unless I did. :) kidding...of course!

 

Incase you wondering what design tools were used in creating StoogeWorld, I have listed my Graphics arsenal below. For page building and design, I highly suggest Macromedia Dreamweaver, Cold Fusion and Flash. I do both HTML and CFM. Right now you don't see a lot of dynamic code here at SW, but you most likely will in the future.

For Graphics, I love all of the Adobe Products, but especially Photoshop and Illustrator. When you do a ton of image editing such as re-sizing, cropping, colorizing and special effects such as glows, drop shadows & bevels there is no other alternative that is worth mentioning...save yourself some time and purchase Photoshop. My most valued tool!

My video capture arsenal includes a Belkin USB VideoBus II with Roxio's VideoWave III software for editing the captured video. This solutions is by no means studio quality videoware, but for what I do with the Stooges film captures for the Filmography, it works to perfection. Since I'm also only capturing the video and no audio, it works like a dream. Although the software is setup to capture audio as well, I don't know how well that portion works.

For complicated objects such as the SW Globe, I use Discreet's 3ds Max (more commonly known as 3d Studio Max). Discreet makes many special effects applications which I use for all of my 3-dimensional modeling work. You don't see a whole lot of 3d here at SW, but I've used this application since it's first release and I swear by it.

As far as General Tools: Other notables include a really good image viewer which is a must for a site that displays tons of images, like SW. I like many of the image thumbnail browsers, but the three I recommend (and you only need one) are Thumbs Plus, LView Pro or ACDSee Viewer. Any of these are great tools.

For the word processing and spreadsheets, I use the Microsoft Office Suite which includes MS Word & MS Excel.

For more information on any of the above mentioned software solutions,

simply click the corresponding company logos displayed below...