International Business Times Offers Ode To Callista's Hairdo

The popularity of Callista Gingrich's hairdo continues unabated. The International Business Times, which is exactly what it sounds like, published a great love letter to the remarkable coiffure today for some reason. Why is a business newspaper publishing a rumination on the "mystery" of the platinum orb? I'm baffled, but it's filled with gigantic pictures, so I love it!

Important Callista Gingrich Hairdo Status Report

(See below for full picture and caption)

Ooooooh, Honey, you have got to get those roots done! Where is the mobile hairdo command center? The shape is perfect, firm and sharp, I'll grant you that, but those roots absolutely must be whipped into submission. That die job must be 1 1/2 weeks old!

Because I'm telling you, My Queen (sorry, I've been watching Game of Thrones. So good!), your hair is getting a LOT of attention right now. I recently wrote about traffic to this humble Callista fan site spiking dramatically in part because of your mighty coiffure. Well, let me tell you that today this trend swelled even more alarmingly, generating more than four times my normal page views, due entirely to massive amounts of hits from Yahoo, all because people specifically want to view your incredible platinum orb.

So anyway, Queen of All Whom She Orbits, I'm just saying that hairdo maintenance is critical right now. If you don't do it for yourself, at least do it for the Pony Pals™.

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, accompanied by his wife Callista, waits to speak at a Tea Party Rally, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, in Mount Dora, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Jennifer Rubin Newt-Panic Roundup

Oh, Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer... I just love Jennifer Rubin so much! She is absolutely freaking the fuck out about Newt Gingrich, and it is the cutest thing ever. She simply... sparkles when she gets like this! It's times like this that I just want to dress Jennifer Rubin up in an adorable outfit and place her on one of those plinths at Trafalgar Square so that a whole bunch of random tourists can stare at her and see how great she is.

So anyway! Newt! OMG, here's just one day's worth:

• Grover Norquist hates Newt and so does Jen!
• Jen compares Newt to Bill Clinton.
• Reading a post titled "Gingrich has repeatedly sold out the right" is somewhat unnecessary after just reading the title.
• Gingrich was so too a lobbyist!
• Marco Rubio hates Newt and so does Jen! Note: these first five posts all appeared in a row!
• Ramesh Ponnuru hates Newt and so does Jen!
• Morning Newt-bashing link roundup.

For those keeping track, out of eight posts today (so far), seven have been mostly about how awful Newt Gingrich is.

Are you trying to tell us something, Jen? What are you implying about Newt Gingrich? She's so subtle, it can be hard to tell sometimes.

Perhaps Newt's Obsession With The Moon Explains Callista's Hairdo?

Figure 1:

(AP Photo, 01-24-12)

Figure 2:

I've already written about how easy it is to mix up Callista and Callisto, Jupiter's fourth Galilean moon, but perhaps the resemblance between her hairdo and a spherical orb is intentional? Because Newt is really, really into the moon. It could explain the spherical nature of his own coiffure, come to think about it. He's just so INTO it! Maybe even the similarity of Callista's name to that of a moon's attracted him to her in the first place! Oh, I could go on and on.

There are other theories, of course. My favorite one (thanks for the tip, Pony Pal™ Todd!) is that eventually Callista will move, mollusk-like, to a bigger shell.

Random Nancy Panel

(1971)

Callista Roundup!

It's a Gingrichpalooza out there these days! What could be better? Soon, everywhere you look you will see Goddess Callista smiling at you, from official portraits in every workplace, to stamps and coins, and on huge flying billboards like in Blade Runner. CALLISTA EVERYWHERE NOW PLEASE! Speaking of loose Philip K. Dick adaptations, imagine also that all those pictures of Callista are calling to you by name, like in The Minority Report. In fact, I'm mentally casting Callista in all sorts of Philip K. Dick scenarios: she could be permanent First Lady to a succession of presidents like "Nicole" in The Simulacra; she's easy to imagine as a brittle colonist in Martian Time Slip; thrill as Callista regresses first to a teen, then a toddler in Counter-Clock World!

In other words: bring on the Callistabots!

So what are other people saying about Queen Callie-Lou? Let's see:

• Gawker's post about Callista's coiffure is just another "we interviewed a hairdresser and this is how difficult and old-fashioned he says the hairdo is," but that's not a bad thing! That's a good thing!
• Andrew Sullivan linked to a gross sex fantasy about Newt, but also referred to the Callista hair object as a "pointy helmet."
• This isn't about Callista, but PSP fantasy mistress Jen Rubin at the Washington Post is, hilariously, on the Newt warpath again, all panicky-like, and it is wonderful unintentional satire.
• You should probably view this magnificent video inspired by the sphericality of The Hairdo immediately.
• What would it be like to BE Callista? Buzzfeed wants to help.
• The Orange County Register wonders out loud if Callista has had "work" done: "Dr. Douglas Hendricks sounded quite certain: "Without question she has had extensive botox to the forehead, crows feet and the frown lines…no matter what expression she has, there are no lines and no movement or change in her expession in the upper 1/3 of her face."" Oh, it's mean, and it's good.

Newtmentum Is Back!

Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich waves to the crowd after speaking during a†South Carolina Republican presidential primary night rally, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Columbia, S.C. Callista Gingrich looks on at right. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Looks like it's time for Newt Gingrich Hand Turkeys! Yay!

Digital Graveyard: How To Design A CD Cover For Negativland, 1998-99, Part Two

When I left off in the last post, Mark Hosler of Negativland and I had expanded the CD cover artwork from a single square with artwork on one side and text on the other to a double-square folded in the middle. Meanwhile, the band's lawyer was nervous about how we were using the Teletubbies.

What happened next was that Mark really loved how the artwork was looking (find me an illustrator who can resist such praise from a client), so he wanted more of it. He now wanted the cover to be four squares in a row, accordion folded, with art on one side and text on the other side. So now I really had to double the length of the artwork once again. I still wanted to show a continuous Teletubby-inspired landscape, but just having more rolling hills and flowers seemed like a cop-out. What else could I add?

Inspiration arrived in a CD of rough mixes and fragments of the Negativland audio for the album. There was a lot of stuff about polluted water and factories, so that gave me the idea of showing a factory in the shape of the Teletubby house. My first rough try was feeble:

The revised version is modeled much more closely on the Teletubby house, and is much better (excuse the flop):

For the third panel, I wanted to include the Teletubby "sun with a face," but with a face based on the front cover of Chumbawamba's boffo smash, Tubthumper:

There was too much empty space, and I couldn't figure out how to fill it. But then I got the best idea: I suggested to Mark that there was now ample room on the artwork side to include all the credits they were originally going to put on the back of the insert. My new idea for the reverse side was to write and illustrate a "Highlights for Children"-style picture story which could weave together all the political and satirical themes in a story starring our Teletubby characters, which I would call "The RolyPolies, " thus making their use all the more obviously parodic and, therefore, more lawsuit-proof. Everybody was happy with this idea, so this is what I came up with:

Next I had to round up some photographic images of real bunnies, just as the rabbits on the Teletubbies were the only "real" things. I particularly wanted to find an image of rabbits having sex for the back cover, and it says a lot about the internet in 1998-9 that I was unable to find a suitable one on the web. I had to buy a rabbit manual at a pet store to finally find a good one:

 

Now it was time to pull it all together. Here's how the whole front side of the folding cover art came out with the credits added and the typography toned way down (with lines to indicate where it folds. Click the image to see lots bigger):

The rabbits in the image above, by the way, are place-holders; somebody else ended up placing the bunnies for me later.

I also put together the back cover image for the CD. Here's the first attempt:

And then more-or-less the final design, with provisional type:

(Click for larger)

The CD itself:

And the image beneath the clear plastic tray behind the CD, combining the Teletubby head, the Chumbawamba face, and Negativland's logo sprouting from the ghastly creature's head:

So anyway, that ended up being a LOT more work than what I first signed up for, considering that I first thought I was simply going to provide one 5" x 5" image. I wouldn't say I was a beginner in 1999, but I sure wasn't advanced enough for this project. All in all, however, I'm still really pleased with the candy-like end product, so cheerful and (mostly) innocent looking. I wanted to create a Teletubby vibe and I think I at least accomplished that. I don't think I'd do a much better job today; maybe the drawings would be more refined. I'm not wild about the Chuimbawamba face.

The CD didn't have much of an impact, even by Negativland's fairly cultish standards. I think they manufactured a shitload of them, thinking all of Chumbawamba's new fans would leap on the release. Negativland openly admitted to a purposeful intention to piggyback on the success of their British friends, hot on the heels of Chumbawamba's unexpected massive worldwide #1 hit. Too bad that once the CD came out, people had had it up to HERE with "Tubthumping."

You can get it still, brand new, for crazy cheap through Amazon affiliates.

Next time from the digital graveyard: surf/rave fashion logo designs from the mid-to-late 90s!