Princess Sparkle Pony's Photo Blog

International Business Times Offers Ode To Callista's Hairdo

2012-01-27T07:19:00.002-05:00

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

2012-01-26T19:19:00.001-05:00

(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

2012-01-25T20:13:00.003-05:00

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?

2012-01-25T18:58:00.002-05:00

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

2012-01-24T19:50:00.001-05:00

(1971)

Callista Roundup!

2012-01-23T18:07:00.001-05:00

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!

2012-01-22T07:19:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-20T20:00:00.001-05:00

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!

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

2012-01-18T20:55:00.003-05:00

I was recently going through some old computer hard drives, and come across weird old archives of stuff I haven't thought about in years. It's like a digital graveyard of finished and unfinished old projects, Adobe Illustrator drawings, things I did when I briefly, painfully, freelanced for a while between jobs in the 90s, etc. In other words, I'll get quite a few posts out of this stuff. I thought a fun way to start would be with the evolution of the most elaborate "commercial" (to use the term loosely) production I ever took part in: the design for the packaging of Negativland's 1999 CD "The ABCs of Anarchism", a sort-of collaboration with the English band Chumbawamba, and in my opinion one of Negativland's most entertaining and "listenable" releases.

All the emails between me and Negativland are long gone, alas, but I can more or less go through the process from start to finish through the jpegs and Illustrator drawings I've scavenged from various hard drives and (LOL) Zip discs.

What I don't remember at all is how I got in touch with Negativland to begin with. It had something to do with this drawing I did in 1998, during the early height of the Teletubby craze, for a certain Pony Pal's pirate radio station in Tucson:

I think it was on some copyright infringement activist website that I showed somebody the Teletubby logo, and he said, "Oh, Negativland is working on something that involves the Teletubbies, so you should show that to them." Basically, after sending Negativland the image and examples of my other work, Mark Hosler, who ended up being the only person from the band I corresponded with throughout the entire process, more or less immediately asked me if I wanted to design the cover for their next EP, which he said was going to be a mashup of the Teletubbies, Chumbawamba, and excerpts from a classic text on anarchism. How could I say no? Before I knew it, I was in way, way over my head. Negativland was, at this point, slick; I was not.

First I threw out some really rough ideas. I think Mark and I both came up with the four different symbols to put on the Teletubbies' head. This was the first (bad, cliché) idea:

But then right after that, I came up with the one single image which would end up exactly the same at the end:

The plan was for this to be the image for the front cover of the CD, a single sheet with credits typeset on the back. Plain 'n' simple. That was easy!

Not so fast. I believe next the lawyer consulting Negativland on the project got a little nervous about putting such a blatant rip-off of the Teletubbies, all parody aside, right on the front cover of the album. We briefly toyed with the idea of changing their appearance more, such as giving them different colors. I came up with this gruesome pirate theme, for instance:

Note that I was already determined to use my all-time favorite typestyle: VAG Rounded. Mark then decided that rather than putting the Teletubby artwork on the front of a single sheet, that it would go on the back of a single-folded insert with a different image on the front. I decided a nice idea to do would be to have the typical Teletubby landscape (with the cutest sewage spill) continue onto the front, like so (still with the pirates!):

Stay tuned for part two, in which I finally start using the correct title, and then the work suddenly quadruples, and then octuples!

EDIT: In the comments, Comrade PhysioProf kindly points out the terribleness of the typography in these early examples. Um... I agree? That's why we ended up changing it. You can see above that I kept trying to come up with ways to put the two band names on equal footing, with neither coming "first." Mark Hosler ended up saying, "Look, I can tell what you're trying to do, and it's a nice idea, but just put us first; it's our record."

When Is A New Yorker Profile Of Callista Gingrich Not Really A Profile Of Callista Gingrich?

2012-01-18T17:02:00.003-05:00

It is, of course, a trick question. Don't get me wrong, Ariel Levy's feature on Newt 'n' Callista (or Cally Lou, as we are mortified to discover her family calls her) is entertaining and well written. I was excited when I first viewed it: 7 whole (internet) pages of Callista! Wow!

Here's the problem: it's bait and switch. Just a couple of pages in, the author, perhaps frustrated with Goddess Callista's inner boringness, turns what first promised to be a Callista Festival into... a boring retelling of Newt's career and previous marriages. And she never gets back to Callista! She just drops her!

There are some new, tiny tidbits, sure, but what a letdown! Favorite part: a fan brings up the specter of hair dye, and Callista, not pleased, quickly changes the subject to Ellis the Elephant.

At least Jorge Arévalo's mean, Risko-esque caricature is a winner.

Callista Gingrich Search 'N' Find!

2012-01-17T18:23:00.000-05:00

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, accompanied by his wife Callista, speaks at Florence Hospital, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, in Florence, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

See what I mean? Last Friday I noted that photographers were getting bored with Goddess Callista, and the result was the inevitable rise of arty, desperate shots from bored, possibly comatose Associated Press and Reuters snappers. It happened to Condi, it happened to Dick Cheney, it happened to Sarah Palin, and now, as spectacularly shown in the ridiculous photo above, it's happening to Newt 'n' Cally. Again.

This is disrespectful of such a wondrous creature.

Fixed.

Quickie: Favorite AP Caption Correction Of The Year (So Far)

2012-01-17T17:59:00.000-05:00

Cookies 4 Victory!

2012-01-17T10:13:00.001-05:00

I'm employed at a large workplace, so naturally there are a lot of people with a lot of kids selling a lot of things. As a rule, I stay out of this kindermarketing stuff, because once you're identified as a wrapping paper purchaser or an aficionado of huge tins of popcorn, it's all over for you. You are marked. My one exception is Girl Scout Cookies, because they are just too damn good for me to punish myself because of some stupid "principle." Also: I like the GSA! They are a cute, positive and, yes, liberal organization. What a contrast to the bummer I briefly went through, the god and pledge-filled Boy Scouts!

So anyway, the news that lots of dumb "conservative" groups want to boycott Girl Scout Cookies this year just happened to coincide with the order form from my coworker Jeannette arriving in my office. This year, I'm buying twice as many as usual. For great justice!

Wire Photographers Officially Getting Bored With Callista Gingrich

2012-01-13T14:33:00.000-05:00

(01-09-12, AP)

You may have noticed a bit of tapering off of PSP Callista worship. She's kind of a one-note symphony! Don't get me wrong, I still love our golden-helmeted goddess, but the pickings are getting a little slim as the wire service photographers get increasingly bored with her.

Longtime PSP readers will certainly recognize this trend, as it was extensively remarked upon in my Condoleezza Rice coverage when the increasing Condi-ennui of the boys from Reuters, AFP and AP became evident in a series of arty, convoluted shots where the desperate artists were trying... well, desperately... to come up with new ways to make middle-aged people standing behind podiums look interesting.

And so it is, as you can see above, with Callista.

Mama needs a new hairdo.

Everybody Is Hot For Mitt Romney's Wedding Photo, And Rick Santorum's OTHER Google Problem

2012-01-11T17:38:00.003-05:00

Traffic is way, way up at the Pink Pony, but don't congratulate me, because that doesn't mean I'm getting new readers or anything. It's largely because of Google image searches. Oh, new readers are definitely coming by for the latest Callista visions, but you'll be surprised to hear just what's driving all this sharply increased traffic: photographs of Mitt Romney's and Rick Santorum's families.

Back in March, 2007, the Associated Press released a heaping passel of Romney family photos, but apparently I'm one of the only ones who noticed and made use of them. As a result, PSP is now THE go-to place for fab pics of 14-year-old scrub-headed Mitt, teen Mitt, and newlywed Mitt, and for some reason, this is something tons of people really, really want to see. No accounting for taste, I guess.

And then if that's not strange enough, the other big Google hit these days is this post, the most commented upon PSP post ever, featuring a Reuters photograph of Rick Santorum's deeply disturbed, abused and crying children. The fact that this photo, alongside other shots of the weeping tots at the same event, shows up in the top row of the Google Image Search for the terms "Santorum Family" and "Santorum Children" and "Santorum Kids" demonstrates that Rick Santorum's famous "Google problem" is hardly limited to Dan Savage's notorious daffynition.

But other than that, yeah, PSP incoming links still mainly involve Gay Aaron Schock, sexy pony outrage, mop dogs, and, of course, Angela Merkel porn.

So I'm a little curious: are there any regular Pony Pals who first stumbled across this blog in such an indirect way? I don't mean from a link on another blog, but from doing something like an image search for pink Ouija boards or something?

Art Collection: "Fritzi Ritz" Comic Strip Drawings by Ernie Bushmiller, 1927

2012-01-10T17:46:00.014-05:00

Click for bigger, details below.

This is the original pen, brush, ink, and blue pencil drawing by Ernie Bushmiller for the Fritzi Ritz strip which originally ran in newspapers on Wednesday, February 16, 1927. The panels have been cut apart for framing sometime in the past, but otherwise the artwork is complete. Each panel is about 5.75" x 7.75".

Ah, Fritzi! Before Nancy came along in 1933 to ruin her life forever, she was a kicky flapper, irresponsible and carefree, a glamorous film actress and a shameless gold-digger, forever throwing herself at wealthy bachelors. She was vain and fickle, and always dressed to the nines in the latest fashions.

Ernie Bushmiller inherited the feature, begun in 1922 by Larry Whittington, in 1925 when he was barely twenty years old. His earliest efforts are crude, but he came up to speed rapidly. This strip shows elements he was to refine later (like the clumsy "pools of brick detail" on the wall in the second panel; compare to the more strategic, skillful use of the same technique here, over forty years later), and some of the elements are understandably weak (he had been a daily strip artist for only 1 1/2 years at this point). Otherwise, this pantomime gag already shows his expert storytelling, and the concept of a gag built around the use of an everyday object to solve an unrelated problem in an unexpected way is classic Bushmiller, very similar to the types of gags he'd do much later. Let's take a look:

That's Fritzi's protective father sitting unaware in the adjoining room. It's a great gag! It's easy to imagine seeing it in a silent film. And that's Fritzi's on-again-off-again boyfriend, the nebbishy Wally. Fritzi tossed him aside all the time, but always came back to poor, patient Wally. Here, he's having a fine ol' time with sexy Fritzi. Surprisingly fine, in fact:

My goodness! He's really going for it! I've looked at a lot of comic strips from the 1890s to the present day, and I must say that's pretty surprising. I can honestly say that I've never seen a mainstream newspaper comic strip character getting her boob felt up while making out with her boyfriend other than this one (it certainly never happened to
"Cathy"!). Some editor wasn't paying very close attention. And certainly such a passionate kiss would be out of place in Bushmiller's later, squeaky clean comics (Freudian occurrences notwithstanding).

But that's Fritzi for you! Alas, after Nancy entered the picture, Fritzi lost a lot of her vivaciousness, quickly relegated to the sidelines as a generic, yet still comely, authority figure. Wally disappeared forever. Although the title of the daily strip was officially changed to "Nancy" in 1938, a Fritzi Ritz Sunday page persisted into the 50s, increasingly ghostwritten by Bushmiller's assistants, and featuring her chaste adventures with boyfriend Phil Fumble. But Fritzi was never the same.

You can see an awesome collection of classic Fritzi Ritz Sunday pages and daily strips, reprinted from comic books and including some excellent extended continuities, mostly from the 30s, at the superb, lovingly curated fritziritz.com.

And, finally, curse the hacks Guy and Brad Gilchrist for their blasphemous, horror inducing zombie rockabilly white trash Fritzi Ritz, unacceptable in every way, still garbaging up the comics pages today. Ew, gross, gross, gross, look at all the positive comments on that awful thing!

Reflect On The Fact That YOU, Like Me, Don't Have An Autographed Gingrich Helmet. Seethe In Jealousy.

2012-01-09T20:14:00.000-05:00

Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's and his wife Callista's signatures are seen at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire January 9, 2012. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

Oooooh, that's almost as good as the pointless Fred "Fred Who?" Karger Frisbee. Neither Cally nor Newt has a particularly impressive signature, but Goddess Callista's is cuter, natch.

Newt + Callista = TLA

2012-01-09T06:08:00.000-05:00

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich kisses his wife Callista after a Republican presidential candidate debate at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, N.H., Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The graininess of the photo indicates this was taken with a long lens, and that makes sense because –ew– who wants to get too close to that? *Shudder*

The close-up:

Gahhhhhh!

In other news, there is no other news! A Google News search indicates that journalists have completely given up on finding out more about Callista. They all dutifully filed their "what the hell is this?" pieces weeks ago, and there's nothing left to report. This indicates that Team Newt has totally circled the wagons around Goddess Callista, or that there's simply no there there, simply an empty hairdo with beak attached. But that's what we love about her!

Real Food: Cheeseburger

2012-01-07T16:58:00.000-05:00

Click for bigger.

Art Collection: "Nancy" Comic Strip By Ernie Bushmiller, 1941, With Bonus Gordo Junk Gag

2012-01-06T11:34:00.004-05:00

(Click for bigger!)

This pen, brush, and ink drawing on Strathmore illustration board, 6.5" x 23", is for the Nancy strip which ran on Thursday, January 16, 1941, and until very recently was the earliest Bushmiller art in my collection by far (Wait until you see my 1927 Fritzi Ritz!).

As you can see, this is filled with a lot more detail (the tweed of Sluggo's cap, the extra patches on his pants and the hole in the sole of his shoe, the more-or-less unnecessary garbage can in the second panel, etc.) than Ernie would feel the need to include in his later work, and it's a lot more urban in character.

But let's talk instead about Floy Floy, Nancy and Sluggo's Chinese friend! This is from about a month's worth of gags revolving around this new, short-lived character. It's hardly surprising that the tyke embodies certain stereotypes: his slanty eyes, his cap, his tunic, the way he holds his hands, the fact that his father runs a laundry, etc. At least he doesn't have a pigtail and buck teeth! But elsewhere in the series, Bushmiller played against stereotypes in a very funny way. When Nancy and Sluggo first meet Floy Floy, for instance, they talk to him in ridiculous and insulting Engrish: "Me Nancy. Him Sluggo. We velly glad to meet you. Telly us your namee!" Floy Floy responds, to their mortification, "You twerps can skip that corny talk, if you don't mind. Delighted to meet you!" In my favorite episode, Nancy throws a costume party and dresses like a Chinese girl to make Floy Floy feel "at home." Imagine her surprise when she answers the door to find her friend dressed in full Scottish regalia! And again, in the strip shown above, it's Sluggo's ignorance which drives the gag. Great stuff.

Coincidentally, I have another comic strip drawing in my collection featuring a corny "Chinese Junk" gag, a "Gordo" by Gus Arriola from June 27, 1979:

(Click for bigger)

I liked Gordo when I was a kid, probably because it was the only comic strip which took place in a landscape familiar to me, but never as much as I loved Peanuts or Nancy. What Gordo really demonstrates, however, is that drawing beautifully, which Arriola certainly did, isn't enough to make a great comic strip. His draftsmanship, fluid and economical, was beyond reproach, but the example above shows that the writing wasn't all that great, nor were the compositions (note that the dropped border on the third panel creates a lopsided effect). His Sunday pages (great example on the Wikipedia page) were a lot better, more adventurous, but the dailies just... missed. I'm happy to have this drawing*, but it's not a collection I can see pursuing.

*Update: this strip was given to me! I've bought several "Nancy" strips from one great dealer, and he always throws in some extras, which is really weird and wonderful (who does that?). He's given me some awful stuff (several "Priscilla's Pop" strips, blecch) but recently he actually gave me an Alley Oop! I was surprised to say the least. Wow!

Callista Gingrich Goes Neo-Noir

2012-01-03T18:03:00.000-05:00

Callista Gingrich, wife of Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, campaigns at Elly's Tea and Coffee House in Muscatine, Iowa, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

The hits just keep coming! She looks like she's about to trick Fred MacMurray into killing her husband, doesn't she?

Quickie: One Person's Hair In This Picture Is Unaffected By Wind

2012-01-02T21:22:00.001-05:00

Republican presidential candidate, former House speaker Newt Gingrich's hair blows in the wind as he and wife, Callista, left, pose with students during a campaign stop, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, in Ames, Iowa. Republican presidential candidates are largely shifting from persuading voters to mobilizing them for Tuesday's caucuses. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

OK, mayyybe more than one, but I couldn't resist. Also, note that after a frantic day of Iowa hopping, Cally's side tendril of hair has collapsed. Call in the Mobile Hairdo Command Center!

Happy Newt Year!

2012-01-01T19:08:00.001-05:00

Republican presidential candidate, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, left, and wife, Callista, right, move through a crowded pub during a campaign stop, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

OK, the wire photographers are definitely TRYING to be mean to Goddess Callista now, am I right? I mean... c'mon. That's not fair. She can distort her own appearance well enough on her own without some Gay photographer (check the caption!) going the extra mile. Strangely enough, though, this is the first photo I've seen where Newt manages to look crazier than Callista.

And here's the happy couple yesterday:

(AP Photo)

She's really got that Nancy Reagan/Laura Bush "obedient wifey gaze" thing down pat. Well done, missy! Here's the close-up:

Ha ha! Sorry about that.

And, of course, Cally debuted her music education video day before yesterday, and as I said before, I've got no problem with that. She's right! And it's great to see her in action, playing the horn and singing, etc. Fine.

And, finally, Newt referred to Callista as a "cradle Catholic" today, a term I've never heard before but LOVE, and admitted that he's not a perfect human being, which I'm sure came as a revelation to one or two people. Humility!

Jeez, this blog has kinda become "all Callista all the time" lately. I've done worse.

Happy 2012!

Callista Gingrich Hairdo Origin Story! Plus Other Fab Recent Callistapics!

2011-12-29T07:51:00.004-05:00

(From Fantastic Four #16, July 1963)

Pony Pal™ Matt has done something amazing! He has discovered the origin of Callista's mighty hair helmet in an unexpected place, the early renderings of Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl from the Fantastic Four! As you can see above, the coiffure is reversed, but otherwise the resemblance is so exact as to be downright stunning. So good. All four sparkly hooves AND a combable tail way, way up! Wow!

In Iowa, the "real" Callista has been making the rounds with that lumpy pale thing she married. Here they are on Tuesday:

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, is accompanied by his wife Callista during a campaign stop at the National Farm Toy Museum in Dyersville, Iowa, Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

I know you all live for these close-ups:

I'm telling you, she really brings out the mean side of wire photographers, more so than even Michele Bachmann. But anyway, the National Farm Toy Museum? Something tells me Cally is looking forward to this campaign being OVER if it means hanging out in places like that.

Speaking of museums and Newt Gingrich, do you want to hear a funny Newt Gingrich museum story with the details only slightly obscured? Once upon a time there was a spectacular, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at a major museum which had to temporarily close because of Newt's famous 1995 government shutdown. During the shutdown, Newt thought, "Hey, I'd love to see that exhibition since all the pesky general public is locked out!" So he called the curator and actually had the nerve to request a private tour. The curator, for whom this exhibition was the culmination of decades of study and literally years of begging for loans, and was less than thrilled (practically suicidal, in fact) about it being shut down, responded something like this: "Are you kidding me? Fuck off." Paraphrased, but true story, and you heard it here first!

Back to Iowa, 2011. I'm guessing that Newt makes allowances to his much better half, you know, one stop for you, one stop for me? So after the farm toy place, it was Callista's turn to choose a stop yesterday, and she naturally picked a nail salon. The result is this fabulously creepy photo-op:

(AP Photo)

Sieg Heil, Newt!

Movie Review: The Adventures of Tintin

2011-12-27T06:51:00.000-05:00

Here's Your Godawful Gingrich Christmas Card

2011-12-23T15:06:00.003-05:00

(Click for bigger)

I actually don't have much to say about this blatantly badly designed card. You don't need me to tell you why it's tasteless on several competing levels.

OK, maybe just a couple of observations:

Callista looks like her head got Photoshop-swapped, and not very convincingly (look at the larger version).
How tacky is it to use your Christmas card to promote your book?
WHY ARE THEY STANDING ON A BLUE SPIRAL?

It's Already Time For ANOTHER Callista Gingrich Roundup

2011-12-22T17:50:00.002-05:00

(All photos AP Photo, 12-21-11, cropped details)

Callistamas celebrations continue! Enjoy it while you can. OK, so first it's the Washington Post, because Jennifer Rubin and Kathleen Parker writing about Callista wasn't enough, I guess. It's a good thing, though, because this time it's Amy Gardner, on the ground in Des Moines, and there are fun new Callista quotes and you will just love this article, I guarantee it. At one point she says that something "was totally Newt's idea," (a website called "Pets with Newt," I kid you not), calls campaigning "fun," and, best of all, describes the important job of designing Newt's Ugly Tour Bus:

It’s clear that Gingrich is taking the job seriously and even enjoying it, focusing on particular projects such as the videos and the design of the Gingriches’ new campaign bus with a zeal and attention to detail. Showing a reporter a photograph of the bus design, which features the slogan “Rebuilding the America We Love” and an enormous picture of her husband’s head, Gingrich said with a laugh, “There’s the Newtster!”

And it turns out that Callista's big project is about music education in schools, which I can't find anything snide or mean to say about, so yes, you go, Cally! This is actually the first article I've read about her which makes her seem fun and kind of airheaded, so these are promising developments.

I'm a little worried about the whole "Pets with Newt" thing, especially after reading this bit at Politico in which Maggie Haberman brings up the specter of the political use of puppies. Longtime readers of this blog know that I'm somewhat of a specialist in the treacheries and futility of using puppies as political props: it generally doesn't work, even when every bone in your body tells you it should. In fact, the Gingrich YouTube Christmas card includes a stuffed puppy! Tread carefully, Newt. Try kittens.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph meanly describes Newt 'n' Cally's video Christmas card as "sickly sweet," and Pony Pal™ Jim at Gawker explains accurately how all this "running for president" stuff is really just a front for Callista's video 'n' book home shopping network. And finally for today, NPR goes on and on about Newt's conversion to Catholicism and how it's all Callista's fault here.

Everybody hop on board the Callista train! Toot! Toot!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Callistapalooza

2011-12-21T19:56:00.002-05:00

It's a shame that Newt has apparently already crested, as the nation says in one voice, "Oh, right, that guy. Now I remember why I hate that guy." The happiest side-effect of the Newtstravaganza was that a lot of people got all excited about Goddess Callista. A lot of people! I'd say that right now, about 80% of this blog's traffic is Callista-driven (the other 20% is interested mostly in inappropriately sexy children's toys and Angela Merkel porn). There's even an anti-Newt website run by conservatives (is that you, Sparkle Pony blogcrush Jennifer Rubin?) which links approvingly to PSP's coverage of Ms. Gingrich's crazy eyeballs.

Callista Gingrich superstar! I think Pony Pal™ Blue Gal is homing in on a great idea here: Callista biopic! They could get Charlize Theron with a prosthetic nose to star! Elsewhere, intrepid reporter Holly Allen at Slate wondered what it would be like to become Callista, but wasn't quite intrepid enough to pull it off –seriously, she didn't even come close– leading one to wonder why she bothered.

And what's-her-name McCain! The very nerve! "I'm sorry, but I don't find this woman terribly appealing," she blasphemed, proving that she is completely unfamiliar with all concepts of beauty and superior hairdo appreciation. And you'd think Meghan would know! She's the daughter of one of the galaxy's supreme beings (Cindy, not John, duh)!

Meghan, is that any way to treat the lady who bestowed this stirring and in no way robotic video Christmas card upon the world?

Speaking of blasphemers, PSP girlfriend Jennifer Rubin also hopped on the Callista train, calling her "Newt's enabler." I'll say! She enables him to be ten times more fabulous! You'll be surprised to hear that's not how Jen sees it:

Now let’s take a look at Callista. There was that interview when she begged for Marianne’s forgiveness. There was the one when she expressed remorse for having broken up a marriage. Oh, wait. She’s not done any of that.

[...]

How would she feel if another woman had an affair with Gingrich? And by the way, how did she manage to ring up six figures in Tiffany charges?

MeOUCH! But Jen was mostly just reacting to Kathleen Parker's thing about how Callista shouldn't tweet or something. Whatever.

And finally, the Huffington Thing has a "Callista through the years" slide show which they could have put a lot more work into; it's just pictures with no commentary. It's fascinating, though, because it's in chronological order, so you can see lumpy 2000 caterpillar Cally morph majestically into the gorgeous, brittle butterfly she is today, but it's frustrating because you wish they had started in the 90s and there's a lazy, abrupt jump from 2000 to 2007 (or perhaps that's when she was in her chrysalis?).

Sadly, this may be the crest of Callista Media Saturation, unless an unforeseen dramatic change happens in the Republican primaries, so let's hope Mitt Romney and Ron Paul get caught gay marrying each other at an Occupy Wall Street protest or harboring Mexican Al Queda jihadists in their basements, and then Newt 'n' Callista can have another chance (but only then, I'm afraid).

You Don't Have To Be A Genius At Wheel Of Fortune To Figure Out What Mediaite's Headline Is Trying To Say

2011-12-21T17:08:00.008-05:00

Wait, called him a what? Flicking Arthole? If it said "F*cking A**hole," I'd totally get it, but that extra asterisk is confounding me.

This kind of cutesy censorship has become one of my pet peeves. It's one thing to delete expletives completely, but when you do that lame partial censorship, like saying "sh*t" or "c*nt" or, worst of all, "the f-word" or "the n-word," it drives me up the wall. It's a completely hypocritical way to exploit vulgarity while pretending to be above it all. Who, exactly, is Mediaite trying not-very-hard to protect? All the toddlers who read their site?

Condi Veep Rumors: Bigger, Longer, Uncut

2011-12-20T20:04:00.001-05:00

It is my sad... OK, actually fun duty to report to you that the monster that cannot die, the Condi Veep Rumor, has surfaced anew! Again! Now it's some idiot at the Washington Times, and it's a combination of hilariously wanton guesswork and pleading wouldn't it be great-iness, totally unfounded, completely contrary to everything we know about Condi, so naturally the blogosphere is reacting with great excitement and positivity.

Here, for instance, is The Root, in a post which basically says "here's why this Washington Times guy thinks Condi's the perfect veep choice," while at News One for Black America, "The Grio" claims that the Times "reports that Condi is ready to get back into politics," even though they do no such thing. Next we jump the pond to the Daily Mail, where they claim that "speculation is mounting" about the rumors. No, really, it's just one guy at the Washington Times clicking his heels and making a wish.

And that is how Condi Veep Rumors return from the grave, over and over and over and over again. Pony Pal™ Alex gets it exactly right, and offers yet more examples of false Condi Veep Rumors throughout the years over at Salon.

A Quick Note About Commenting On PSP

2011-12-20T17:01:00.001-05:00

Hello! What's that you say? There's something perfect for me to write about? Here's a good idea: send me an email with the tip. Here's a bad idea that makes me sad: write about it yourself in the comments section before I even have a chance to get to it, thus scooping me on my own blog. God, I love that.

Watch Out, Michele! They're Right Behind You!

2011-12-19T20:14:00.002-05:00

Republican presidential hopeful U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., makes her way to her bus after speaking to local residents during a campaign stop at the Merry Bees coffee shop, Monday, Dec. 19, 2011, in Hampton, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Obviously, I had to shove those Spinning Callista Heads™ down the page, fantastic though they are, because they were seriously interfering with my day. I'd start staring, and before I knew what was happening, my coworkers were shaking my shoulders and it was three hours later. Thanks, Spinning Callista Heads™!

But anyway! Here's Michele Bachmann looking not-at-all manic. But what's this? Somebody call Sheriff Joe:

Spinning Callista Heads!

2011-12-18T08:25:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: The trend these days is to do profiles of Callista without interviewing her and without any new information. Politico did just that and managed to stretch it into three whole internet pages.

Catching Up With Jennifer Rubin, PSP's Latest Blogcrush

2011-12-16T18:41:00.000-05:00

Remember how I recently admitted, because I feel like I can trust you, to having an embarrassing Jennifer Rubin problem? Ohhhh, I've still got it. Bad. Her blog is officially my most visited page on the Washington Post's website. She is just, like, a preposterous wind-up neocon doll twirling around in a badly designed music box and I love her. And, OMG, her obsession with Newt Gingrich has gotten even more severe! It is so good!

So anyway, here's a summary of what Jen's been writing about this past week:

Friday question: Is Newt sexist or just a jerk?
Newt is so scary that he's making Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney perform flawlessly!
Somebody calls Jen on the phone and explains that Newt is a liar.
Congressional Democrats are hopeless pussies. This post is actually distressingly accurate.
The New York Times hates Israel.
Gingrich bad, Romney good.
Santorum great!
Morning "negative stories about Newt" round-up.
Jen's debate predictions come true: Gingrich, Huntsman, Perry, Paul bad, Romney, Bachmann, Santorum good.
Paul, Huntsman so bad.
Jen and Paul Ryan agree: Obama is the worst.
Gingrich, Perry bad, Bachmann ("remarkably nuanced on foreign policy" LOL), Santorum good.
Everybody in Iowa who talks to Jen on the phone hates Newt.
Obama needs to make good with the Jews, but they shouldn't fall for it.
Jen copies/pastes spam emails and press releases from Paul Ryan
Jen's debate predictions: Gingrich, Huntsman, Perry and Paul will be bad, Romney, Bachmann and Santorum will be good.
Five more reasons why Newt is bad.
Congressional Democrats are hopeless pussies.

And that's just two days worth! How great is Jennifer Rubin?

Art Collection: More Fun With "TAD" Dorgan, Ca. 1918 - 1925

2011-12-15T19:11:00.009-05:00

(Click for bigger. Highly, highly recommended)

Here are three more pieces of Hearst newspaper art from my collection of works by Thomas Aloysius "TAD" Dorgan. Once again, these pen, brush, ink, and blue pencil drawings are on TAD's typically rough-hewn, irregular 9"-ish by 12"-ish illustration boards. The above example shows, unfortunately, rubber cement staining left over from some foolish engraving assistant's bright idea to apply the Benday/Zip-a-Tone dot screens (which have since fallen off) directly to the original drawing rather than the photostat. Tsk.

Workaholic TAD's two daily features throughout the late Teens and Twenties were "Indoor Sports," his single-panel slice-of-urban-life, and "Judge Rummy/Old Judge Rumhauser", his multi-panel anthropomorphic philandering dogs strip. Usually they would run side-by-side at the top of the front page of the sports section in Hearst papers and King Features client papers, and this primo real estate is a good indication of just how popular Dorgan's work was. You can download a characteristic example of a TAD-dominated front page from 1919 (the Washington Times, of all things!) here.

Every once in a while, TAD's slice-of-urban-life panel took place outside, and so "Indoor Sports" became "Outdoor Sports" for the day. The one above (probably mid-1920s; I can't track down the exact date of this one or the next one) is one of my favorites, a classic city scene showing a meter reader under siege by the neighborhood dogs while onlookers, none-too-fond of the victim's occupation, do nothing to help him. Here are some details:

I love this dog gleefully making off with the meter reader's notebook:

TAD doesn't have to waste a lot of lines to create action and expression:

Next up is everybody's favorite monocled canine jurist, Judge Rummy, and his lisping wife in a pretty simple wise-cracky gag strip from 1918-20:

(Click for bigger)

This is a very typical Judge Rummy for this period. These strips were minimalistic and usually the drawings varied little from frame to frame, a real contrast to the more laborious and sophisticated Indoor/Outdoor Sports panels. I always imagined that Dorgan spent the majority of his time working on Indoor Sports and then dashed off the Judge Rummys, which at this point he could probably do in his sleep, quickly. As the 20s progressed, the cartoonist phased out ol' Rummy, by then an old-fashioned relic of the previous decade.

But speaking of Indoor Sports, here's today's last selection, another great speakeasy scene from 1922*:

(Click for bigger)

The speakeasy shown here doesn't seem quite as swanky as this one (note the spittoon on the floor and the cheap lighting fixture). I like how he shows a moment leading up to mayhem, rather than the mayhem itself. The cat appears to be using a variation of Cockney rhyming slang: "That's the anteater's trunk" = "That's the bunk." Seems like a mean and painful prank! I love the drawing of the sleeping guy:

You can see four more works from my TAD collection here and here. Next up: A rare book illustration by Dorgan, the fascinating woman who inspired it, and a horrible, fatal irony for TAD.

*Note how yellow the paper is? When I bought this, it was in a garbagey frame and I'm betting it was hung on a wall for years like that (the high-quality India Ink, unlike the board, is unaffected). Let this be a lesson to you about putting cheap glass on your drawings! If you can't frame a work on paper properly, don't display it.

Callista Roundup: 92 Out Of 100 TMZ Readers Would "Rather" Ann Romney Than Goddess Callista Gingrich

2011-12-13T19:10:00.001-05:00

What is wrong with these people? I think TMZ is asking "Who would you rather fuck," which is... well, ew. What a charming regular feature!

Look, neither is bound to be much fun, but for the sake of comedy, I'd have to go with Callista.

Elsewhere! Would you like to read an error-riddled yet by-the-numbers "Meet Callista" article from the UK? I honestly don't recommend it, but if you must, here it is.

I Drew A Picture Of Callista Gingrich For You

2011-12-12T18:58:00.002-05:00

UPDATE – Robin Givhan decided to examine Callistastyle at the Daily Beast, and it's pretty good, but she doesn't really say anything you haven't already read here. Givhan decides that Callista, whom she compares unfavorably to rival goddess Cindy McCain, appears to be out of touch, old-fashioned, and her appearance requires too much effort. She notes that Goddess Callista dresses older than she is, but doesn't connect the dots to arrive at the explanation I've given here: she does it in part to minimize the obvious age difference between her and Newt. Anyway, for the most part Givhan's observations are spot-on.

Your Monday Morning Callista Moment

2011-12-12T05:46:00.001-05:00

Republican presidential hopeful former and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista, right, arrive at the Iowa Veterans Presidential Candidate Forum, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

And, as has now become traditional, the close-up:

New York Magazine has a little trifle about Callista, but I couldn't read the whole thing. Why? Take a look at the beginning of the first paragraph:

The most crucial detail about Callista Gingrich isn’t how old she was when she and Newt began their six-year affair (27), or how old he was when she convinced him to convert to Catholicism (66). It isn’t her famous platinum helmet of hair [...]

So, yeah, that's where they lost me. The photo is fantastic, though, so you should at least click through for that.

Newt Gingrich Tries To Plant Big Wet One On Neocons, Misses, They Still Hate Him, Maybe Even More

2011-12-07T19:55:00.004-05:00

I laughed and laughed earlier today when I read about Newt Gingrich's scary/funny promise that President Newt make John Bolton his secretary of state, an instant disqualifier if ever there was one. See, the GOP clown car made a trip to the Republican Jewish Coallition forum today, neocon central, and this was Newt's clumsy way of sucking up to them. The story soon became funnier when it was revealed that John Bolton's staff (let THAT phrase roll around in your mind for awhile, won't you?) claimed to know nothing about Newt's love for the bespectacled old warmonger.

"Will they fall for it?" I wondered. Will hot Boltonluv make the neocons, the most important group of establishment Republican Newt-skeptics, cut him some slack? I knew I'd have to wait for my new girlfriend, Sparklecrush Jennifer Rubin, to weigh in on the matter.

Well, she has. Did it work? Noooooo, it sure didn't! OMG, I think Newt's appearance at the RJC actually succeeded in making Rubin hate him more: "The speech certainly revealed Gingrich’s exaggerated regard for his own intellect," she sniffs. And to top it all off, she doesn't even mention the John Bolton thing! How could she leave out the single most noteworthy thing Newt said, the concept of appointing John Bolton to be US Secretary of State, something which surely Jennifer Rubin would love, love, love to happen! It's almost like she intentionally left out the one thing he said that her crowd would like in order to make him sound as bad as possible. Ha, ha: "It's almost like." I'm so charitable towards my Jennifer.

So anyway, whoops! Sorry Newt, no neocons for you.

And you know what's totally scary about all this? Even the people the neocons hate the most keep trying to suck up to them: Cain talked about admiring John Bolton; Perry supposedly hired Doug Feith as an advisor; Bachmann's been sucking up to Frank Gaffney; now it's Newt's turn. So it's like this: if a neocon GOP candidate wins (Santorum, Romney), he'll hire all the neocons. If a non-neocon wins (the rest, with the exceptions of Paul and Huntsman*), they will likewise hire all the neocons. Paul Wolfowitz must be totally licking his chops.

*And I'm not so sure about Huntsman's allergy towards the neocons. He's been doing plenty of "nuclear Iran" fearmongering.

Begun the Leesburg Courthouse Holiday Display War Has

2011-12-07T06:52:00.001-05:00

(photo via Leesburg Today)

Leesburg, Virginia wanted to have a nativity scene on display at their courthouse, obviously, so to make everything "fair," they gave out slots, on a first-come first-served basis, for others to erect alternative seasonal displays. What could possibly go wrong?

I love the skeleton Santa on a cross, shown above, but Virginians decidedly did not: within hours, the stirring depiction of Saint Nick had been torn apart and destroyed. You can read some hilariously pearl-clutchy reactions (and nobody supporting it, naturally) here at the venerable Washington Times.

The really fun thing is that the other groups, including atheist groups, haven't even put up their displays yet! Should be entertaining to see what they come up with for the local Christians to vandalize.

Reuters Offers A Callista Round-Up

2011-12-07T06:12:00.001-05:00

It's both exciting and frustrating that Reuters today has a "meet Callista Gingrich" article to help out those who are first encountering the existence of this goddess among us, this magnificent orb-coiffured vision. Obviously, the article doesn't do her justice, can't do her justice! It's frustrating because we learn all the things we already knew, about how she's a dedicated musician, that Gingrich Productions is "her baby," (which is sad, because I bet when she was a teenager she thought she'd end up with real babies, not production company babies), she wrote a children's book, spends a lot of time on her hair and wardrobe, etc., etc.

It's exciting, however, because there are some tantalizing glimpses of Callista past and Callista future. "She would even hold a beer bottle elegantly," a college friend says, which is surprising because I can't imagine her holding a beer bottle at all, so that leaves me wanting more. Those most thrilling phrase in the whole article, though, is this: "If the pattern holds, she would also be involved in most aspects of a Gingrich presidency."

Yes, please!

Another Kennedy Center Honors Night, Another Crazy Callista Gingrich Pic

2011-12-05T06:11:00.004-05:00

Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista Gingrich, arrive at the Kennedy Center for the Preforming Arts for the Kennedy Center Honors gala performance on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

About once a week, somebody will email me, saying, "OMG, have you seen THIS picture of Callista Gingrich?!" Before I click on the link in the email, I always know it's going to be this photo of Goddess Callista at last year's Kennedy Center extravaganza, because it's hard to get koo-kooier than that.

And so it's that time of year again, the Kennedy Center thing! It's not as much fun as when Condi used to host it (see here, here, and here, for instance), but Callista was there again, so that's got to count for something. So did the event bring out her nuttier side once more? You be the judge:

Don't ever change, Cally baby!

Note: those earrings aren't currently offered by Tiffany & Co., but are certainly in the $7,000 - $10,000 range.

More Pulse-Pounding, Thrilling Adventures Of Glori, Your Movie Theater Concessions Customer Service Representative

2011-12-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

This really happened:

And so did this, a lot:

(All drawings circa 1992, colored 2011)

Chicks Dig Herman Cain

2011-12-03T07:35:00.003-05:00

I was very amused by this report at Mediasnack™ and this feature at the Atlantic about the new "Women for Cain" website's use of the hilariously generic stock photo seen in the thumbnail at left. Stock photo spotting has become something of a sport on the internets!

So I visited Women for Cain, and as many have already pointed out, it's a doozy, filled with heated female-bashing-female action. But where was the amusing stock photo? It was gone! The header just had "Women for [big blank space] Cain" on it. Now, today, as you can see, the space is filled with a picture of Herman Cain tightly gripping his tiny, smiling wife. (UPDATE: Jim Newell at Gawker documented the missing stock photo.)

So anyway, I was concerned. I'm sure Cain's team didn't let blog mockery of their stock photo intimidate them. They must have lost it! So as a service to the Cain Train, I've found some replacement stock photos of women giving Herman the ol' thumbs-up:

"We're having a pool party for Herman Cain"

"We're white. Not that that matters or anything, because it doesn't. But we love Herman Cain! And not just because he's black, because that doesn't matter either, honestly!"

"Speaking as your doctor, I recommend a good dose of Herman Cain!"

Two out of five Herman Cain supporters prefer pointy shoes!

"Who, me? I'm hitchhiking. Oh, and I LOVE Herman Cain!"

"This is how we share our mutual admiration for Herman Cain."

"I'm pregnant, and I keep a picture of Herman Cain tucked into my panties!"

I Think I May Have A Jennifer Rubin Problem

2011-12-02T17:38:00.000-05:00

My Jennifer Rubin problem is embarrassing: against all better judgement, I can't stopping reading her crazy/wonderful blog at the Washington Post! It's so good! It has honestly become my first stop when I visit the Post online. Given the state of the once great paper these days, that's not saying much, but still!

Rubin is so relentlessly neoconservative that she reads like a hilarious, deadpan parody. Mostly it's just, you know, Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel, bomb Iran, bomb Iran, bomb Iran, to the point where she makes John Bolton sound like an isolationist, but you never really know what Jen will come up with next.

And she's super prolific and always so obvious! When the rising popularity of Herman Cain alarmed her, she didn't just write a strongly worded condemnation of him, but post after post, numbering in the dozens, relentlessly flogging the hapless candidate. Before that it was Perry. Now she's currently doing the exact same thing to Newt Gingrich, and it is stunning. Here are some recent post titles: "In the Iraq War, Gingrich was with Obama, Clinton and Reid"; "Gingrich leveled by his own words"; "Gingrich's hand in the Washington cookie jar"; "Newt and NewtCare: The biggest liabilities for Gingrich"; "Gingrich wins the hypocrisy primary", and, hilariously just today, "The right begins to dissect Gingrich".

Rubin is so much fun. She'll claim one moment that she isn't concerned with "social issues", but then will proceed to use them every chance she gets when they can be employed as a weapon. Just today, for instance, she approvingly linked to an article by somebody from Concerned Women for America to justify further bashing... you guessed it... Cain and Gingrich. Also enjoyable is her arrested name-dropping: people are forever emailing Jennifer and calling her on the phone to offer her hyper-insidery info 'n' opinions, in practically every post, but these people are almost never identified by name. Rubin is the anonymice grand champion! And wouldn't you know it, these anonymous sources, entertainingly, say the meanest things about everybody! Like, really funny mean things that sound like Jennifer wrote them herself.

But Jennifer Rubin doesn't hate everybody and everything! She luuuuuuuvs Rick Santorum, of course, since he's the purest neocon muslim-hater in the running, and still writes about him approvingly as if he's a viable candidate. When Santorum didn't gain any traction, she quickly jumped on the Romney train and rarely says a bad thing about him.

And... and... OMG, I could just go on and on about how great/horrible Jennifer Rubin is. She is the world's first and funniest neocon cartoon character! It's like... one of Josie's Pussycats grew up all wrong? They should make her a character in Archie Comics. You should read her blog all the time.

Callista Gingrich Goes To Airports, Just Like Regular People!

2011-11-29T20:31:00.002-05:00

(Photo by: The Georgetown Dish)

Put the phrases "Callista Gingrich" and "next first lady" in the same article, and THAT is what I call hard-hitting Callistagoddess reportage: The Empress Gingrich, immaculately turned out, was spotted enduring Dulles Airport's shuttle train with bedazzled, gawking inferiors. Did she lash out at these ants, laying waste to those who dared speak to her, who even looked directly into her eyes? No! She managed to get through it all by acting perfectly pleasant and even making light chit-chat! It is exactly like a fairy tale. How does she do it? My god, she is totally even pulling her own wheelie carry-on thingy, like a saint. Just like a saint!

And everybody knows that old-timey saints got their powers from their halos, which were not just artistic conventions but real objects powered by a kind of technology known only by Jesus. And so, too, does this latter-day saint (LOL, sorry), this majestic, most aglitter point on the holy trinity that is Newt Gingrich's combined wives, have a halo of her own, a celestial orb of gossamer titanium with its magic Bézier tentacle forever reaching for the great beyond.

Whoops! Sorry, I fell into a Callista hairdo reverie again.

Here's Your Latest Recurrent Callista Gingrich Scream Nightmare Horror

2011-11-27T18:19:00.000-05:00

Callista Gingrich, wife of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, greets supporters at Gingrich's book-signing event at Books-A-Million in Naples, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011. (AP Photo/Erik Kellar)

Art Collection: "Nancy" Comic Strip By Ernie Bushmiller, 1944

2011-11-25T17:22:00.003-05:00

Click for much bigger, Fritzier!

Above is an original drawing by Ernie Bushmiller, 6.5" x 20.75", pen, brush, and ink with Benday dot screen on Strathmore illustration board, for the Nancy strip which ran in newspapers on June 23, 1944. Note that it has the same arrangement of pre-printed panels seen in the other strip from the 40s in my collection.

This is a coveted, rare Aunt Fritzi-centric episode, but even here, Nancy dominates. Poor Fritzi Ritz! Relegated to a "generic authority figure" role in a strip she used to be the star of, one which bore her name until Nancy came along and ruined everything.

This is a weird cartoon for Bushmiller with two entire panels of the illegible writing, and it's another example of his transitional 1940s style, where he still retains a a lot of his earlier, fussier techniques. Look, for instance, and how much more detailed Fritzi's hair is compared to what would come later:

The 40s were also a transitional period for Bushmiller because he was moving away from continuing stories and into a "gag a day" approach. This one has a foot in both worlds: in this two-week-long "story", Fritzi is "out of town" (at a farm, presumably?), so Nancy is staying with the fussy, mean guy next store who hates her. Most of the strips feature Nancy inadvertently tormenting her uptight host, and then there's this "meanwhile" one where Fritzi receives Nancy's letter.

I don't know if this gag works all that well, but I love the drawings of Fritzi, and the schematic barn and silo in the first panel hint at the radical simplification which was to come. There is visible underdrawing in the word balloons, but Fritzi and the other details were inked freehand (see above). Impressive! Note that he didn't leave himself any room for a signature.

Quickie: Ellen Barkin Is Understandably Upset

2011-11-23T07:29:00.000-05:00

I'm only vaguely aware of the existence of Ellen Barkin, but I can understand that this must have come as a terrible blow to her. Ellen, honey, relax: you don't have Callista's bizarre curl tentacle, so it's OK. Please refer to this instructional drawing so you can know exactly what to avoid.

Consumer's Phrenologist's Guide To Glori's Hair

2011-11-22T08:27:00.001-05:00

Contents under pressure!

Serving suggestion:

Glori's hair with potatoes, carrots and peas.

Newt Gingrich Modestly Proposes Child Janitorial Servitude

2011-11-20T11:42:00.001-05:00

(Photo: Getty Images)

It's gotten to the point where all the Republican candidates are constantly saying such crazy things that some of their more egregious statements are kind of passing by without much notice.

And so it is with Newt Gingrich, who on Friday proposed a bold new plan to basically create whole new generations of child laborers:

"You say to somebody, you shouldn't go to work before you're what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I've tried for years to have a very simple model," he said. "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."

[...]

The former House Speaker acknowledged that it was an unconventional pitch, saying, "You're going to see from me extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and give people a chance to rise very rapidly."

Hey, kill two birds with one stone: fire almost all of the union janitors, and get those damn kids off the couch! What's killing a few childhoods if it sticks it to the unions?

Miscellaneous Glori Possibilities

2011-11-17T21:24:00.004-05:00

My freehand pencil drawings aren't as "good" as my computer drawings, but they have a lot more personality.

In other news, I've fallen in love with Glori all over again. I'm going to have to start drawing her again.

UPDATE: Wow, I guess I'm the only one in love with Glori.

Photoblogging: Soup 2 Nuts

2011-11-16T16:52:00.004-05:00

Click for bigger!

Spotted right outside my work today, this gorgeous sticker* was stuck to a bus stop sign. And, yes, we do have a Warhol exhibition currently running (highly recommended!). My colleagues reacted with laughter and skepticism. One thing is for sure: if Warhol were still alive and saw this, he would probably appropriate it instantly.

*Points off, though, for using Arial rather than Helvetica. Tsk. When will people learn?

UPDATE: Ugh, OK, this is some kind of installation art thing. That's a little disappointing. If I had Googled this first, I wouldn't have posted it.

How To Draw Glori, The Popcorn Girl

2011-11-16T06:48:00.000-05:00

Now let's have some fun! Think of something exciting to do with Glori! Draw a picture of her in a typical situation (Glori falls into a reverie while contemplating Milk Duds) or an atypical one (Glori mud-wrestles Linda Ronstadt):

America's Next First Lady!!!!

2011-11-14T10:04:00.000-05:00

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, and his wife Callista Gingrich speak after the debate at the Benjamin Johnson Arena, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)

OMG, have you heard? Newt's rising in the polls! Personally, I credit not Cain's and Perry's gaffestreams (I just made that word up. Good, isn't it?) but the continuing presence of Goddess Callista everywhere he goes. As you can see above, Callista is always ready, willing and able to bite all comers. Watch out, Herman! Watch out, Rick! Watch out, Mittens!

Did you know that Callista Gingrich's bite strength is greater than a mountain lion's? No? Well, that's probably because I just made that up, too.

And I know you guys LOVE close-ups, so here you go:

Happy Monday!

Junk Drawer/Sketchbook: Glori Comics And Stories

2011-11-12T11:36:00.002-05:00

In the early 90s, I worked as a full-time promoter for an animated film festival. The festival "four-walled" theaters in certain cities, and I was part of a five- or six-person team which would typically arrive in the city three or four weeks ahead of time to promote the show, and then to run the show (the box office, t-shirt and video sales, etc.) once it opened.

Sometimes we rented university halls for our exhibition space, sometimes independent single-screen houses, and sometimes just regular chain movie theaters, like Edwards or Harkins. One of the fun things is that you never knew what kind of weird native staffs you'd have to deal with. Usually they were just the usual assortment of bored and lazy high school students and young college hipsters, but every once in a while there would be a real oddity, a totally memorable employee, whether it was because they were particularly funny or interesting, or because they were bizarre and unfathomable. Glori was an example of the latter.

Glori was a concessions worker at a Southern California chain movie theater with, I think, two screens. I'm not going to name the city or theater, but I've checked to make sure Glori herself doesn't have any kind of online presence, because Glori was her real name, and it's an integral part of what made her such a charming, peculiar character. Poor Glori: she was gangly and awkward, with a curious cloud of frizzy pale blond hair floating above a pair of bulging eyes and a vacant, slack-jawed expression. She was jittery and high-strung, jumpy and skittish. We loved Glori. We genuinely liked her (unlike the rest of the theater staff, who routinely snubbed her), and went out of our way to be nice to her, all the while marveling over her other-worldliness. I know that sounds kind of mean; what can I say?

Soon enough I was drawing pictures and comics starring Glori, some of which featured her in unlikely scenarios, and some of which were based on stories she told us about her own life, her likes and dislikes, etc. I just came across these drawings for the first time in many years, so I'll be featuring them in a couple of posts. Some of them I'm scanning as-is, while others have been doctored up, colored, etc. Here's the basic Glori character design, showing her in her theater uniform:

And a typical page of Glori comics (click for bigger) scrawled in pencil on popcorn-stained paper:

Note: the bottom two panels above are firmly based on reality. Glori LOVED Barney Miller reruns, and profusely thanked us for any and all kindnesses and considerations. Sometimes we imagined that Glori's hairdo led an exciting life of its own:

On the other hand, we always knew that Glori would always be Glori, no matter what:

More to come!

Arizona Voters, Against All Odds, Make Admirable Decision

2011-11-09T06:05:00.001-05:00

What a pleasant surprise! I was totally expecting voters in my home state to keep tacky idiot (see above) Russell Pearce around. Nobody thought this recall would work... but it did! Incredible. I am officially amazed. It turns out that Arizonans care about things other than Mexicans and guns.

Random Nancy Panel

2011-11-07T19:27:00.002-05:00

(1969)

Night Of The Dawn Of The Day Of The Land Of The Diary Of The Survival Of The Return Of The Condi Veep Rumors

2011-11-05T22:00:00.008-04:00

OMG, I wasn't expecting this. All of a sudden, we've got Condi Veep Rumors™ again! This time, seemingly out of the blue at Politico, it's former Democratic congressman Artur Davis of Alabama passing on an absolutely insane rumor, utterly and completely sourceless, that Romney's people are trying to recruit America's Princess Diplomat, Retired, to be Mitten's running mate.

I'm basically gasping for air as I type this. I hardly know where to start.

Can I get back to you on this? This one is going to take some unpacking. Meanwhile, you may wish to revisit vintage Condi Veep Rumors™ here and here and here and, most revealingly, here on PSP and here at Wonkette.

I'll write more about this, but *spoiler* I feel confident enough to say that this new Condi Veep Rumor™ will play out exactly like all the old Condi Veep Rumors™.

UPDATE: Recorded just four days ago on CBS News, is this an explicit enough denial for you? No?

Quickie: Ew, Gross

2011-11-03T18:48:00.000-04:00

Do I Have A "Special Disdain" For Black Conservatives?

2011-11-02T06:08:00.002-04:00

(AP Photo)

My goodness, the Republicans, famous for decrying the playing of the "race card," certainly have been doing a lot of it lately! Last night on CNN, for instance, Brent Bozell claimed that "there is a special disdain that the left has for black conservatives."

Well, I can't answer for everybody, but you may have noticed over the years that African American Republicans/conservatives have been featured quite a bit on this site, so I'm definitely qualified to speak for myself.

So is it true? Do I have a special disdain for black conservatives?

Yes.

*shrugs*

Art Collection: Four "Bungle Family" Sunday Pages By Harry J. Tuthill, 1932

2011-10-31T19:51:00.001-04:00

Click each for huge (2400 x 3000) but readable. All photos by Ricardo Blanc.

On the slab today are four original pen, brush and ink drawings by Harry J. Tuthill for Sunday editions of his popular comic strip The Bungle Family (as well as its topper strip, "Little Brother"). These are large, executed on whole sheets (about 22" x 32") of highest-quality Strathmore watercolor paper, and they all date from a few weeks of each other. You can read more about the Bungles, as they were affectionately called, here and here.

The Bungle Family, which ran from 1918 until 1945, was extremely popular in the 30s; basically, if your local paper didn't have Thimble Theatre (starring Popeye) on the front page of their comics section, they had the Bungle Family, and if they had neither, they were in trouble (Thimble Theatre was distributed by King Features, the Bungles by King rival the McNaughton Syndicate). Tuthill's work was so successful because he took the proven popularity of the family-centered comic strip (such as Sydney Smith's The Gumps) and combined it with, and even anticipated in the 20s, the new realism seen in features like Buck Rogers and Tarzan.

The Bungle Family themselves, lower-middle-class apartment dwellers, were totally unlikeable: they were ignorant, nosy, loud, buffoonish; they were everything readers were sure they themselves were not. The Bungles weren't lovably out-of-it like the families in Bringing Up Father or The Gumps. They were, however, realistic. They were the bad neighbors everybody had. Nobody wanted to live downstairs from this:

Yet the Bungle Family went through the same hardships everybody else was going through during the Depression (although they were luckier than many; dumb luck, to be sure). Yes, they schemed and plotted (ineptly), but were also prey to scammers and plotters themselves:

On a formal note, few cartoonists have matched Harry Tuthill in his mastery of the form. His line is thin and fluid; he manages to pack in plenty of detail without making his panels look crowded or overworked; he creates airy, coherent spaces with the confidence of an architect. He used solid blacks very sparingly (he's almost the anti-Chester Gould) but cunningly to emphasize the central figure in each scene (usually George Bungle), as can be seen especially well in the examples above and below. He also wasn't lazy: he eschewed assistants completely, and avoided labor-saving techniques like the use of halftone screens (Ben-Day/Zip-a-Tone) and lettering shortcuts (note that he redrew the "Little Brother" title with fresh lettering for each installment) until much later in his career. On the other hand, he also showed no interest in fanciful layouts or other gimmicks; note that all four strips on this page adhere strictly to a twelve-panel grid, a prison within which the artist thrived. It's easy to see why a formalist like Art Spiegelman admires Tuthill's work:

So why did The Bungle Family, so popular during its initial run, fade so quickly after Tuthill retired? Why did it sink into obscurity, its praises sung only by the most hopeless comic strip nerds (ahem!), while Popeye achieved immortality? First of all, despite George Bungle's frequent pratfalls, the strip was popular primarily with adults. The weekday strip consisted of long, complicated narrative continuities (not evident in these stand-alone Sunday pages) which I can't imagine were all that appealing to kids. Plus, as I pointed out before, the characters were totally unsympathetic, and because of this, the Bungles didn't get merchandised as toys or games or, like Popeye, made into animated cartoons. The strips also didn't lend themselves well to reprinting, as they were so filled with torrents of dialog in tiny lettering that reduction in size rendered them illegible. These factors, and perhaps Harry Tuthill's apparent lack of interest in promoting his own work, basically guaranteed that once the Bungles stopping running in the newspapers, they more or less stopped appearing anywhere.

That's a real shame, as in my opinion The Bungle Family is one of the great, epic achievements in American comics. I'd love for one of the reprint publishers (Fantagraphics? The Library of American Comics?) to republish the strip in its entirety (one measly year, 1928, was published in the 70s), but I'm not holding my breath.

You can see a fantastic selection of scanned color Sunday Bungles from 1937 here. Get into the Bungle Family!

Oh My God The Voices! The Words! They're Everywhere!

2011-10-27T19:31:00.003-04:00

How can you stand it? The words? You can't get away from the words or the voices. George Will cannot get away from the voices. They surround him! They clamor away like ghastly disembodied spirits, filling every nook and cranny with their woeful din. Make the voices stop! Make them stop! WHY AREN'T THEY STOPPING?!? OMG.

George Will went to the airport once, and JESUS, THE VOICES AND THE WORDS! And the underground trains, again with the voices saying things, things... things George Will already knew! And another airport and more words, and trial lawyers, and something about daydreaming and foolishness and minatory pronouncements. MINATORY. That is a word that George Will uses, and nobody is going to take that right away from him.

And why can't George Will sit in a chair quietly without Wolf Blitzer just NOT SHUTTING UP. The whole entire world is closing in on him, inching ever nearer, nearer, nearer, whispering mocking nothings in his ears. His exquisite ears. Those ears know what torture is. They've seen it. I mean they've heard it. Everywhere. There is nowhere quiet for George Will. Ever.

Here's how it happens: George Will is somewhere, it could be anywhere. And maybe that particular time isn't a good time for him to be stuffing clay in his ears; maybe he has a companion, or maybe he wishes to talk on the phone. And then some voice somewhere starts some words going, and that sound travels along, radiating outward from the source, and eventually those words, speeding along, come across something new: it's George Will's ears. And do they ask permission before they go ahead and enter those ears? No, they do not. And then it's merely a hop, skip, and a jump through George Will's head, vibrating bones everywhere along the way, and then it's off along the auditory nerve and then, POW! Voices in his head! New combinations of words have been integrated into George Will's brain and, sheesh, the gall!

Look, words are just better when George Will is writing them. This is the exception to the "too many words, everywhere" problem. Words are particularly good when George Will is quoting them, like, oh, say, George Eliot. Middlemarch! I bet you weren't expecting THAT, were you? Ha! George Will snuck up on you and did a fine number on you, didn't he, with his fancy Middlemarch?

But all the words, OMG. WHY WON'T THEY STOP?

Stupid words.

Quickie: Careful With That Axe, Callista

2011-10-26T11:51:00.001-04:00

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with his wife Callista, holds an oversize replica of an ax after signing a pledge to cut taxes, spending and government, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

Part of me, of course, says, Oooh, bad idea. The other, more dominant part of my brain, however, shrieks, Giant-sized novelty axe! Giant-sized novelty axe!

UPDATE:

Fake Herman Cain Ad Almost As Funny As Real Herman Cain Ad

2011-10-26T06:48:00.000-04:00

Big Surprise: "Candid" Excerpts From New Condibook Not Particularly Candid

2011-10-24T18:15:00.003-04:00

Here we go, let the Condibook circus begin! Long-time Pony Pals™ aren't likely to fall for any of this nonsense: we all know this book is going to be boring and will contain, at most, one or two amusing stories and zero percent actual reflection or insight.

And now the proof is in as Newsweek and The Daily Thing have published what are probably the only parts anybody will care to read. Now, you'd think that "The Wounds of Katrina," Newsweek's excerpt, would be especially interesting to readers of this blog, because it covers one of her signature moments, her NYC shopping/theater spree which gave birth to "Dr. Ferragamo," her most enduring nickname:

That evening, upon arriving at the Palace Hotel, I flipped on the television. Indeed, the hurricane had hit New Orleans. I called Henrietta, who said that the main issue was making sure our people [Note: she means "State Department People"] were safe. She’d also convened a departmental task force because offers of foreign assistance were pouring in. I called Secretary of Homeland Security Mike Chertoff, inquiring if there was anything I could do. “It’s pretty bad,” he said. We discussed the question of foreign help briefly, but Mike was clearly in a hurry. He said he’d call if he needed me. I hung up, got dressed, and went to see Spamalot.

The next morning, I went shopping at the Ferragamo shoe store down the block from my hotel, returned to the Palace to await Randy and Mariann’s arrival, and again turned on the television. The airwaves were filled with devastating pictures from New Orleans. And the faces of most of the people in distress were black. I knew right away that I should never have left Washington. I called my chief of staff, Brian Gunderson. “I’m coming home,” I said.

Haw: I made some phone calls, saw a show, watched some TV, went shoe shopping. Notice that she doesn't mention that she caused a mini-riot while she was at Ferragamo, with people screaming at her about shopping for luxuries while people were dying. No, she just leaves that part out. How candid! She also somehow forgot to mention that she had been openly heckled and booed at Spamalot. How did these reactions make her feel? I guess we'll never know.

Anyway, it turns out that through it all, Condi was an absolute paragon of racial sensitivity. Phew.

Much, much more fun is the excerpt at The Daily Tina Brown, because finally we get Condi's side of the whole "meeting with Muammar Gaddafi" show, and it is amusing and alarming ("...after sundown the “Brother Leader” insisted that I join him for dinner in his private kitchen."), but Condi is such a robotic, unstylish writer that she even makes that sound boring. Here's the best part:

At the end of dinner, Qaddafi told me that he’d made a videotape for me. Uh oh, I thought, what is this going to be? It was a quite innocent collection of photos of me with world leaders—President Bush, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, and so on—set to the music of a song called “Black Flower in the White House,” written for me by a Libyan composer. It was weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy.

Dear me, yes, at least it wasn't raunchy! Because that would have been, you know, interesting.

Next up: Condi appears on 400 television programs and candidly reveals what a great honor it was to be made secretary of state. It will be thrilling!

Herman Cain's Ugly Tour Bus

2011-10-24T06:24:00.002-04:00

Herman Cain steps out of his campaign bus for a rally in front of Michigan Central Station. Bill Pugliano / GETTY IMAGES

A lot of people –people like me– think Herman Cain's campaign is just a publicity stunt meant to raise his public profile and, by extension, his book sales and speaking fees. So it makes sense that his tour bus would be plastered with a gigantic Herman Cain head. Here, last month, is either the other side of the bus above or a different Herman's Head bus:

(Tjomsland Tyler / AP)

He's also pushing, apparently, Herman Cain Urine in a Bottle™:

(Washington Post)

Now you can test Herman Cain at home!

Hillary Flips Out

2011-10-24T05:49:00.001-04:00

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton walks past a General Motors "Spark" while touring the GM Powertrain plant in Tashkent, Uzbekistan Sunday Oct. 23, 2011. Iran should not misread the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq as affecting the U.S. commitment to the fledgling democracy, Secretary of State Clinton said Sunday. (AP Photo/Kevin Lamarque, Pool)

Yes, it is funny that Hillary went to Uzbekistan right after Herman Cain's mortifying "beki beki stan stan" gaffe, but what I really want to talk about, obviously, is her hair. What. On. Earth. Is Hillary doing with her hair? An ironed-out, shoulder-length blonde flip? Really, Hillary?

You might recall that I once described Jan Brewer as a 65-year-old woman trapped in a 30-year-old's hairdo. This is worse: Hillary is a 64-year-old woman trapped in a 17-year-old's hairdo... from 1965.

There's something about this that screams "makeover," and it's making her look ridiculous.

And you'd think I'd be happy about the return of The Flip to the State Department!

Venn Diagram For Michele Bachmann

2011-10-19T06:17:00.000-04:00

Funny/Sad Fred Karger Also Has Funny/Sad Campaign Merchandise

2011-10-18T17:45:00.001-04:00

Oh, Fred.

See, last week I meanly referred to the bizarre presidential candidate as Fred "Fred Who?" Karger. Little did I know that "Fred Who?" is literally his campaign slogan! This is funny! And sad! And again, it leads us the wonder what the hell is Fred Karger doing?**

Remember how jealous we all got on Thursday when we saw that lucky, puzzled couple in New Hampshire receiving a special Fred Karger Frisbee™ from the man himself? Hooray for us, we can pretend it happened to us, too, by cheating and purchasing one ($20!) from his fantastic campaign shop. There you will also find Fred Karger notepads (WHY?), stickers, t-shirts and bumper stickers, all with the funny/sad "Fred Who?" logo, and all modeled by gay-republicany-looking young men. These items are the makings for a clever Halloween costume, except that nobody would get it. Just imagine:

YOUR FRIEND: What are you?
YOU: I'm a Fred Karger fan!
YOUR FRIEND: Fred who?
YOU: Ha ha! That's what it says!
YOUR FRIEND: No, really, who the fuck is Fred Karger?
YOU: [20-minute description of Karger's baffling and pointless run for president ensues]
YOUR FRIEND: Isn't that [OTHER, LESS BORING FRIEND] over there? I need to go talk to him.

OK, maybe not, then. The shop site does, however, contain one hilarious joke. They offer an ugly American/rainbow flag combo pin, and look who they chose to model it:

Now that is for real funny. Still kinda sad, though.

Oh, Fred.

**Here's my official guess: Fred is trying to become the "go-to Republican Gay™" for media appearances, etc. The problem with this, obviously, is that nobody wants or needs a go-to Republican Gay™.

Real Food: Meat

2011-10-17T19:05:00.002-04:00

Please click for 900x1200

Random Nancy Panel

2011-10-17T18:51:00.000-04:00

(1970)

Herman Cain Has No Idea What A Neoconservative Is

2011-10-17T06:12:00.005-04:00

This is the face of a very, very stupid man.

I haven't paid much attention to Herman Cain beyond being vaguely aware that he's a blowhard and obviously from the "know nothing" wing of the GOP. His appearance on Meet the Nation (or Face the Press or whatever) yesterday was a real eye-opener, though, because until watching it, I had no idea just how out-of-it he is.

It was bad enough that he trotted out lame concepts like "Liberals want to destroy America" and "I was joking when I said I'd erect a lethal electric fence on the Mexican border" or, hilariously, "I admire Clarence Thomas", but where David Gregory really unleashed a geyser of ignorance was when he asked Cain about the Neocons:

"I'm not sure what you mean by neoconservative," said Cain. "I am a conservative, yes. Neoconservative -- labels sometimes will put you in a box. I'm very conservative."

"But you're familiar with the neoconservative movement?" asked Gregory.

"I'm not familiar with the neoconservative movement," admitted Cain. "I'm familiar with the conservative movement. Let me define what I mean by the conservative movement -- less government, less taxes, more individual responsibility."

And he said this right after praising John Bolton! This, Pony Pals, is a complete disqualifier. This means, basically, that Cain has absolutely no idea what Goerge Bush's foreign policy philosophy was, and no idea why we declared war on Iraq. No clue!

But that's OK, because when pressed on his foreign policy, Cain simply said he'd hire people to figure it out for him. People like John Bolton.

It will be interesting to see how the Neocons react to this. Will they be offended at his ignorance, or, like Sarah Palin, will they salivate at the prospects of a new, unwitting convert (I'm guessing the latter)? Stay tuned to the Weekly Standard and Jennifer Rubin's blog at the Washington Post to find out!

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin is confused, doesn't know what to think: "[He needs to] reject isolationism." The rallying cry of the Neocon!

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin is no longer confused, knows what to think. She ended up posting three items in a row bashing Cain.

Quixotic Gay Republican Still Thinks He's A "Presidential Candidate," Makes Obscure 70s Homo-Culture References Just Like Any Old Queen

2011-10-13T20:42:00.007-04:00

Oh, gosh, Fred Karger. Lonely ol' Fred. I shouldn't be so mean about him, but let's face it: he is the saddest sad-sack in the whole GOP field. Here is a guy who has been utterly shunned by the vast majority of his own party, systematically excluded from every debate, and worse than being spoken ill of, he's not spoken of at all, and yet still he comes back for more. So is he Pollyanna, eternally optimistic that "they'll come around"? Is he Edina from Absolutely Fabulous, totally oblivious to all the hostility surrounding him? Is he Howard the Duck, trapped in a world he never made? Or is he simply a masochist?

Maybe he's totally weird. Or stupid, possibly? Both? Soooo hard to tell. For instance, now he's upset with Florida for all their primary date shenanigans, so he threatened –threatened!– the state with an orange juice boycott if they didn't cut it out. For real! OMG, how seventies. But... what is Fred Karger doing? Seriously, a Florida orange juice boycott? Is this an incoherent attempt to blow a gay dog whistle? If so, what does the Anita Bryant boycott of 1977 have to do with a wonky primary scheduling issue? It doesn't make any sense. Or, maybe Fred Karger is totally unaware of the strength of the gay cultural memory of the original orange juice boycott, in which case: WTF? Either way, I just totally can't make any sense of Fred Karger.

There's strong evidence that he's just plain odd. Here he is last Saturday wandering around New Hampshire giving his gay Republican Frisbees™ to skeptical-looking suburbanites:

(Photo: Grant Morris, Nashua Telegraph)

From the Telegraph's article:

“Hi, I’m Fred Karger, and I’m running for president,” Karger said, introducing himself with a handshake, a business card and a blue frisbee with his name etched on it.

Meanwhile, residents began spilling out of their homes, lured by the sound of bagpipes and the parade of campaign workers carrying blue frisbees and business cards.

Later in the article, Karger actually utters the words "I've hustled," and that's when you realize that this guy is totally, hilariously great, and we should enjoy this piece of inadvertent performance art while we can.

Quickie: Forms Stiff Peaks

2011-10-12T07:20:00.001-04:00

Callista Gingrich's hairdo at last night's debate (AP Photo detail)

I know I've already compared Callista Gingrich's mighty hair helmet to celestial objects, but the more and more I look at it, the more I'm convinced that the hairdo itself is of extraterrestrial origin.

National Coming Out Day Special: Aaron Schock Has A Bit Of A "Gay Aaron Schock" Google Problem™

2011-10-11T07:24:00.003-04:00

You may recall that back in May I posted a totally irresponsible, anonymously-sourced, and yet perfectly plausible item about how everybody knows that Aaron Schock is as gay as pink ink (as my father used to say), or, I suppose more appropriately, as gay as a teal blue cloth belt. We hold these truths to be self-evident, as the saying goes.

The item got a little bit of attention, and then Wonkette reblogged it, humorously referring to me as a "trusted DC source" (hey, I've had my moments), and that got the "news" quite a bit more attention. And then people in the blogosphere moved along to other important topics, the end.

Well, not quite the end! Just in the last couple of days, I've noticed a considerable uptick in the number of people clicking over to the PSP Gay Aaron Schock story from the Wonkette version. Why now? It seems that Schock was recently on Meet the Press, and whenever somebody most people have never heard of is on Meet the Press, it results in a lot of Googling, and when you Google "Aaron Schock", you-know-who shows up right at the bottom of the first page:

And it doesn't get much better (ha ha) when you do a Google image search:

And say you're watching Aaron Schock on Meet the Press and you think, "Gosh, that guy looks like he was separated at birth from Neil Patrick Harris," (doesn't he?), and you decide to throw the word "gay" into your Google search:

This all adds up to Aaron Shock having what the tech-savvy reporters call a Google Problem™. Poor Aaron! But Schock has an absolutely immaculately right-wing voting history, including voting against anything which could be perceived as hairdresser-friendly, such as the repeal of "Don't Ask/Don't Tell", so why doesn't he just go ahead and step out of the closet and be a Gay Republican™ like those cool GOProud guys?

The answer, of course, is that there are no successful openly-gay GOP politicians (just ask Fred "Fred who?" Karger), and the concept might not (ha, make that "probably wouldn't") go over like gangbusters in Schock's rural/small town Illinois district. It would literally not play well in Peoria.

As a result, Schock has to obfuscate. Take a look at his rudimentary home page (all that is missing is the "under construction" gifs) and his congressional webpage, and you'll notice that so-called "social issues" are nowhere to be found... like, anywhere. He simply acts like these issues don't exist, despite his "clean" voting record on them.

This must be soooo awkward for Aaron! Think of all the time and energy he has to put into all this! Think of how careful he has to be!

So that's why I'm nominating Gay Aaron Schock as the official poster boy for National Coming Out Day. Well, that and because he'd look so totally cute on the posters.

CNN Posts Brilliant, Brutal, Hilarious Parody Of Sally Quinn

2011-10-09T11:29:00.003-04:00

Sally Quinn contains multitudes.

Did you know that Sally Quinn's brain is like a labyrinth? It's true! I know I mock CNN all the time, but this incredible parody of an insane Sally Quinn experiencing enlightenment on the lush grounds of a California spa is too, too funny. Two sparkly hooves way up to whomever wrote it, although the "I lie down in a spread eagle position or in a corpse pose" bit was a little over the top. Kudos to CNN for having the nerve to run it as if it were really written by Sally Quinn, which of course it isn't. It can't be, because Sally Quinn is ridiculous, but not that ridiculous. Right?

Next: Sally Quinn locates Nirvana within the lining of a Judith Leiber purse.

Book Shelf: THE ROGUE By Joe McGinniss

2011-10-08T20:25:00.001-04:00

Unlike some people, I thought it would be a good idea to actually read The Rogue before commenting upon it. It's unfortunate that a lot of coverage of the book merely trots out bullet points OF NEW FUNNY/OUTRAGEOUS REVELATIONS!! rather than taking a look at it as an organic whole, because there's a lot more to McGinniss' excellent volume than a simple laundry list of Sarahisms. Indeed, it's the overall structure of the book which makes it such an entertaining and fascinating read. The author skillfully interweaves two stories: the tale of Sarah Palin's life and career, and the personal narrative of his own journey to Alaska to research her alarming rise to prominence, his encounters with those who know/knew her, with the land itself, and, of course, the trumped-up media circus which surrounded his renting of the house next-door to the Palin's lakeside compound. One of the most delicious ironies in The Rogue is that the hysterical reaction to McGinniss' journey to Alaska from the Palins themselves, their deranged fans, and even the well-meaning locals who defy Palin to assist the author (in a hilarious running gag, they keep offering him guns: "Take all you want; I've got plenty!"), provided him with just the structure he needed to tie the whole thing together seamlessly. Perhaps a better subtitle for the volume would have been "Beneath the Valley of the Assembly of God," because it's not just a portrait of a person, but of a place, a place which Sarah Palin succeeded in single-handedly dividing and conquering.

I guess my main point is that Joe McGinniss is an outstanding writer, so if you think you "already know all about Sarah Palin" due to all the spoilers and laundry lists of funny stories from the book here and there on the web, you're missing out on an absorbing and entertaining book. But beyond that, the author really succeeds in answering the question what makes Sarah Palin? in a fully-rounded way, taking a sharp look at how the state, the landscape (both physical and political), her family and friends, religion, and a fairly shocking case of arrested development all worked together to produce her, a quintessentially American story if there ever was one. Highly recommended!

Richard Cohen Is Totally Confused About This Sarah Palin Lady

2011-10-07T06:02:00.004-04:00

Richard Cohen's editors, if there are any, have clearly thrown up their hands and given up on the dunderheaded typist. Maybe they simply run his stuff through a spell checker and call it a day?

He's got this totally confusing thing on the "Post Partisan" blog about Sarah Palin quitting/never getting into the presidential race. Lucky for us, it's only the second paragraph that makes us click "close tab" this time:

It would be a mistake, however, to bid her farewell without noting her accomplishment. She was maybe the first of our celebrity politicians — not, mind you, a politician who achieved celebrity but one who did it the other way around. It’s true she was governor of Alaska when John McCain selected her for his ticket, but no one knew that. She had the name recognition of a dead dog catcher.

Got that? Sarah Palin was an unknown politician who then became a celebrity. Wait, no, she was a celebrity who then became a politician! Which is it, Richard? It isn't the former, because plenty of people had heard of the Thrilla from Wasilla well before McCain chose her as his running mate: Wonkette had already, by that time, posted several items about this new, wacky governor who was dumb and funny; Talking Points Memo had already published, like, four hundred things about "Troopergate"; Vogue had already done a feature on her, not an honor generally bestowed upon "unknown" politicians. Oh, also: she was chosen by McCain to be his running mate.

How about the second concept, where she was "maybe the first of our celebrity politicians – not, mind you, a politician who achieved celebrity but one who did it the other way around"? Let's see: Sonny Bono, Ronald Reagan, Al Franken, Jesse Ventura, Clint Eastwood, and even Gopher from the Love Boat all spring quickly to mind.

So Cohen has managed to squeeze into a single paragraph two concepts which not only contradict each other, but are each inherently incorrect. Good work if you can get it (you can't get it)!

Quickie: Hordes Of Fans And Interested Reporters Throng To Michele Bachmann Press Conference

2011-10-05T07:33:00.001-04:00

Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., speaks during a Faith and Family Council news conference, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Whoa, everybody, try to contain your excitement.

She must know it's over by now, right?

What Does It Take To Frighten Away Michele Bachmann? "Several Dozen College Students"

2011-10-05T06:56:00.002-04:00

Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., speaks during a Faith and Family Council news conference, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Michele Bachmann knows when she's beaten, when danger levels are too high. All she wanted to do was have a cute photo-op at a pumpkin patch, but alas, "several dozen" college students scared her away. Indeed, in one photo, I can count nearly 30 youngsters standing around, chatting amongst themselves. Terrifying! I'm so glad Michele is safe and unharmed and that she got through this horrifying ordeal.

And I know you love this sort of thing, so here's a close-up of one of Michele's eyes:

Finally, I love this guy's sign:

Art Collection: Animation Cels From "Pink Komkommer" By Marv Newland, 1991

2011-10-02T17:51:00.006-04:00

(Click for bigger, uncensored, not safe for work!!)

Above is a cropped scan of a two-cel setup (the figure is on one cel, the chair and bunny slippers on another) by Marv Newland from his 1991 experiment in dirty cartoons, Pink Komkommer.

Pink Komkommer was a quasi-sequel to Newland's Anijam, a film which featured a collaboration by 22 animators all working independently with the same character. For Komkommer, Marv and Dutch animator Paul Driessen created a short soundtrack full of suggestive sounds: moans, squeaking bed springs, whip cracks, squirts, splashes, groans, etc. They then sent this soundtrack to seven different teams of animators, including themselves. The rules were simple: synch your cartoon to the soundtrack, and make it dirty.

The animators chosen for this experiment, in addition to Driessen and Newland, were abstract animator Sara Petty, Academy Award nominee Janet Perlman, collaborators (and Oscar winners) Alison Snowden and David Fine, Bulgarian animator Stoyan Dukov, and, surprisingly, "Hey Arnold" and "Penny" creator Craig Bartlett. The different responses the animators, with their very disparate styles, had to the same soundtrack are sometimes shocking, sometimes hilarious, and always fascinating. Petty's effort, for instance, is drawn in charcoals and pastels and manages to be gorgeous and erotic and reminiscent of Georgia O'Keeffe, while Snowden and Fine's segment is absurd and silly big-nosed cartooniness at its best. Perlman manages to be both funny and artistic, while Driessen's will probably disgust you. Finally, Marv Newland's bit, seen in the cel above, is almost like a fantasy/porno foreshadowing of The Human Centipede.

To tie it all together, Newland and Driessen cast the resulting segments by the different animators as dirty dreams experienced by an old woman animated by Canadian master Christopher Hinton (don't take my word for it). At the end of the film, she too goes through the soundtrack, but with more mundane results than her previous sexy visions. In retrospect, some of the animators did a better job than others (it was probably wise to get Bartlett's and Dukov's parts out of the way early), but overall I'd call the experiment a success. I think Snowden and Fine get the prize for the most hilarious and unexpected interpretations of the sound effects.

This film had a short life on the festival circuit and it's vulgarity doomed it to more or less instant obscurity. When I worked for Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation, audience response wasn't quite what we hoped for, as it was a little too maddening and intellectual for the "sick and twisted" crowd, and people hated Hinton's linking animation. I finally located a copy (sorry, best quality I could find; it's never been released on DVD) and uploaded it to the Youtubes, and who knows if they'll delete it or not, so watch it while you have the chance. This is definitely NOT safe for work:

Here's Why Nobody Listens To Neocons And Other "Intellectual" Conservatives Anymore

2011-09-30T10:51:00.007-04:00

Over at Andrew Sullivan's place, they've been going back 'n' forth about, you know, "What is a real conservative?" and all that. This is one of Sully's big preoccupations since forever, of course. But today one of his readers wrote in and provided compelling evidence of exactly why these Conservative Intellectuals (almost an oxymoron, I know) are so sidelined these days:

A reader writes:

Just a reminder of Oakeshott's view of Burke, from "On Being Conservative":

"And, in my opinion, there is more to be learnt about this disposition from Montaigne, Pascal, Hobbes and Hume than from Burke or Bentham."

And, furthermore, let us recall that Hayek rejected the term conservative. See his essay titled ..."Why I am not a Conservative."

Who talks like that?* 9 arcane academic references in one short note! My response to this is, basically, "Ajklfjsiohdiofhiodsklnglha." Seriously, can you imagine going up to some Mississippi tea partier and saying that to his face and expecting him to know what the hell you are talking about, much less respond to it?

*To be fair, lefty Matthew Yglesias talks like that all that time, too. Then again, nobody listens to him, either.

Ted Nugent Thinks African Americans Had It SO Much Better 60 Years Ago

2011-09-28T06:06:00.004-04:00

(Photo: PSP flashback to November, 2010, AP)

Every once in a while I visit the Washington Times to see what's up. This morning I was treated to a column by Ted Nugent where he lectures Morgan Freeman about how Morgan Freeman is the real racist for saying that other people are racists, and there's nothing more racist than that, OK? OK. This statement really jumped out at me:

If Mr. Freeman could further remove his racist blinders and study the historical condition of black America, he would find the black community was vibrant and strong 60 years ago. This is not the case today.

60 years ago? What a strange number to use. So Nugent is pointing towards the early 1950s as some sort of Golden Age for African Americans. Obviously Nugent wouldn't say "50 years ago," because slight civil rights gains had already been made by the early 1960s.

But there you have it, blacks! Morgan Freeman, you should take off your racist blinders and realize just how great it was to have your own special section, for instance, on public transportation and at (some) lunch counters. There were special drinking fountains and bathrooms and sections of (some) parks set aside just for you! Oh, you had it so good back then! Until, that is, unsatisfied complainers like Rosa Parks, the Greensboro Four, and Martin Luther King, Jr. came along and ruined everything. Tsk.

So if anybody comes up to you today and says, "Hey, could you summarize Ted Nugent's latest column?" here are your bullet points:

Racism in the Tea Party is not the problem; racism in Morgan Freeman is the problem.
African Americans were better off before the civil rights era.
African American culture today is neither vibrant nor strong.

No Child Should Be Left Behind From Reading Callista Gingrich's Superfantastic New Children's Book! Out Now! Plus Callista Promotional Tours And Media Appearances!

2011-09-26T22:25:00.003-04:00

(photo via the Official Ellis the Elephant site!!!)

OK, well obviously that is one of my favorite awkward Callistapics ever. But now, fresh Callista product is upon us, her bland, maudlin Sweet Land of Liberty children's book, wherein Ellis the Elephant learns about American Exceptionalism 'n' such.

Basically, this book probably won't ever be joining Where the Wild Things Are or One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish on the children's classics shelf, but it may bear beautiful fruit nevertheless: Callista Gingrich media appearances! She's on Hannity tonight, so somebody will have to tell me how that turns out, and Fox and Friends tomorrow, so... well, so somebody will have to tell me how that turns out, too. From there it's a smattering of book signings at three chain stores, a tea party, a Republican Women's event, and... hey, how about that? A signing at a tiny book store in a tiny, humble Iowa city! I wonder if Newt might accompany her to that one?

My favorite thing so far is Callista lamely claiming that her kiddie book's protagonist just happens to be an elephant, and the fact that the Republican Party's symbol is an elephant is just a crazy coincidence. No connection was intended! To think otherwise would be crass.

UPDATE: I watched the Hannity thing online, and OMG it is boring. And once again Callista denies that Ellis is a Republican elephant. Sheer happenstance, people!

It seems like Callista is outright lying about Ellis the Elephant. In recent interviews, she claims it could have been any animal, but that they "came across this adorable elephant," which implies that she saw it in the artist's portfolio or something, or otherwise "stumbled upon it." But in Publishers Weekly's article about the book, the illustrator plainly says, "Callista Gingrich came up with the idea for Ellie the elephant."

Rick Perry Hand Turkeys!

2011-09-24T22:25:00.001-04:00

Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry arrives at the Republican Leadership Conference at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Mich., Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Who is this Rick Perry? A better question seems to be "Who isn't Rick Perry?" He isn't Mitt Romney; he mostly isn't Michele Bachmann; and now, officially, he also isn't Herman Cain. So I guess that brings us back to our original question: Who is Rick Perry? The Hand Turkeys™ are here to help, sort of:

UPDATE: Vindication! Talking Points Memo referred to Rick Perry today as "Fred Thompson-eque." I can't find the link now, though.

Question Time With Rick Santorum

2011-09-23T07:35:00.002-04:00

Three for three Republican debates with mortifying audience moments. Well done, GOP! But here's what really puzzled me: asked about hairdressers in the military, Rick Santorum said he's against it because "sexual activity has no place in the military." OK, so if soldiers just simply can't help having sex with their fellow soldiers, given the availability of willing or even possible sexytime partners, doesn't it follow that straight women also shouldn't be allowed in the military because they, too, might have sex with their fellow soldiers (lesbians, obv, are disqualified because they'll have sex with each other, duh)? If it's really all about the specter of sex amongst soldiers, why doesn't Rick Santorum talk about this aspect of the issue? Shouldn't "wanting to have sex with men" as a disqualifier apply equally to everybody who wants to have sex with men?

Just curious.

...And Then They Kissed

2011-09-21T20:20:00.001-04:00

Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, center is surrounded by security, right, and supporters after a news conference, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Audioblogging: Peteykins College Radio Show, 1985

2011-09-21T18:49:00.004-04:00

Click for larger

When I was at UC San Diego, I worked at KSDT, the college radio station absolutely nobody ever listened to, ever. My show was called Radio Exotica, and I generally played interesting new releases mixed with what was then obscure easy listening (Martin Denny, Les Baxter, etc.), industrial noise, dated children's records, spoken word oddities, etc.

Sometimes I would get inspired and rather than simply playing records, I would throw together "mega-mixes" with up to four or five sound sources all playing simultaneously.

This one, a 40-minute mega-mix called "One Left" (because those are the first words you hear on it), is the only one I managed to save for posterity, and was broadcast on February 16, 1985. It includes tape loops, lock grooves, sound effect albums, cassette tapes, ethnographic recordings, selections from Chaino's Jungle Echoes LP, nursery rhymes, Lenny Dee on the organ, a guide to the Catholic Mass, Jack van Impe ranting about Communism, and, somewhere in there, an actual song, a dub version of "Confusion" by New Order. I split it into four parts because you'll probably never want to listen to the first two longer and noisier parts ever again, and because the shorter third and fourth parts are hypnotic and very listenable. The fourth part also features a very beautiful melody played on an ancient computer by Pony Pal™ Joe Humble.

So anyway, if you can get through the first five minutes, you'll probably enjoy the whole thing. You can retrieve the zipped up 52mb archive with fake cover art (see above – I tried to imitate my 1985 design sensibilities) here.

Keep The Dream Alive

2011-09-20T20:45:00.000-04:00

Gosh, Rick Santorum is ever so upset! He just can't seem to get this whole Santorum Google daffynition thing behind him! It's so unfair! And Google is clearly prejudiced against Santorums because otherwise why would they allow all this Santorum nonsense to continue? They wouldn't do that to somebody other than Rick Santorum, like, say, Joe Biden. And bloggers are probably to blame, too, because they just love linking the name Santorum to that awful Santorum internet site over and over again, Santorum, Santorum, Santorum, like it's going out of style or something (he is, I mean it is). So everybody, please, stop it with the Santorum stuff, because it is totally gross and upsetting and unfair to Rick Santorum.

Quickie: Michele Bachmann Locates Core Constituency

2011-09-20T17:14:00.004-04:00

Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., looks at hanging beef carcasses during a plant tour at Amend Packing Co., Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Finally, somebody who won't "fact check" me!

Art Collection: Three Prohibition Era Comic Strips By "TAD" Dorgan With Bonus Slang Origin Story

2011-09-18T19:30:00.007-04:00

(Click for bigger, legible)

These original pen, brush, and ink drawings for King Features Syndicate by Thomas A. "TAD" Dorgan are all on Tad's typically irregular 9"-ish by 12"-ish illustration boards. Dorgan was no fan of prohibition ("Silk Hat Harry's Divorce Suit" is easily one of the drinking-est comic strips of all time), but it sure provided him with a lot of material!

Up top is an "Indoor Sports" panel from 1926, and it's one of the most dynamic and complex drawings by Tad I've ever seen. It's a speakeasy scene, and it shows the owner of the establishment furious because his patrons are egging on a drunk to yodel Slim Whitman's "Roll On Silvery Moon" for their amusement. Loud drunken singing is just the sort of thing which would attract the police to an illegal bar (that's why they were called "speak easy"s), so the host is understandably upset. Note that the other patrons aren't particularly concerned, a typical prohibition attitude in which the illegality of alcohol was more of an inconvenience than anything.

"Indoor Sports" was Tad's daily urban slice-of-life panel which ran in the sports section of Hearst's newspapers coast to coast from 1914 until Tad's death in 1929. These gag cartoons had no continuing characters, unlike the Silk Hat Harry/Judge Rummy strips, but were generally more carefully composed and elaborately drawn than his sequential strips. It was immensely popular and influential.

One detail requires some unpacking: the little stick figure in the lower left corner exclaiming, "What! No Spinach?" This was the title and refrain of a popular mid-20s novelty song by Irving Aaronson and His Commanders. Something about it must have really tickled Tad, because he used variations on the phrase over and over in his comics during this period, resulting in its wide dissemination as a slang phrase which lasted at least through 1936, when it was used as the title of a Popeye cartoon.

Tad is often credited with the invention of dozens of slang terms and phrases which we still use to this day, and that is certainly true. In the case above with "What! No Spinach?", we see that he didn't so much invent the phrase; he picked up on it in his relentless pursuit of American vernacular language and then, through his wide readership and popularity, spread the new phrase and meme far and wide. Because of that, it can be hard to determine which phrases Tad invented himself, and which he simply picked up on and spread. Our next selection for today, an "Old Judge Rumhauser/Judge Rummy's Court" strip from September, 1919, provides a great example of this phenomenon:

(Click for bigger)

Here Judge Rummy calls his buddy a "dumb-bell", a term Tad is generally crediting with creating (as applied to a person, not a piece of sporting equipment). I can't find any such use of the phrase in print before this cartoon, so this comic strip may very well be ground zero for a slang term we still know and use today. Or not! Who knows?** The rest of the strip is packed with slang and a great prohibition gag worth showing in detail:

It's no wonder the poor guy is mortified: in 1919 the fight over alcohol prohibition was at a fever pitch, but it was too late, and people were angry at, yet resigned to, their fate. The 18th Amendment was ratified in January, The Wartime Prohibition Act passed in June, and in October the Volstead Act was passed by Congress, sealing the deal for a dry country beginning in January of 1920.

And last for today, another "Indoor Sports" drawing, this one from 1925:

(Click for bigger)

Note that even though the above panel isn't about prohibition, Tad has managed to cram in no fewer than three alcohol-related jokes: amongst the chores the guest doctor is hoped to perform is the writing of a prescription for "medicinal" booze; the cat regales the dog with a tale of a mouse soaked in "good natured" alcohol; the stick figure in the lower right exclaims that he's "fulla frog beer," which I assume is slang for some kind of bathtub concoction.

Finally, take a moment to admire Tad's draftsmanship in these, especially the "Indoor Sports" panels. His influence on contemporary cartoonists (he mentored George Herriman and Milt Gross, among others) and even much later artists (like Robert Crumb) should be obvious. Fun fact: Tad was born right-handed, but lost all but his right thumb and half of his index finger in an accident early in his life. He taught himself to draw with his left hand, but is reported to still have used his mangled right hand as well. Quite an accomplishment! His pen lines are spare, clean and assured, and only the vaguest, sketchiest hints of pencil underdrawing are detectable. Tad's handling of perspective (look at the chair in the foreground of the drawing above) is impressive for a self-taught artist. He also had an interesting way of composing his panels, often having a shallow space in part of the cartoon and a recession in depth elsewhere; this can be seen in varying degrees in both of the "Indoor Sports" examples above. He used this scheme to create something of a hierarchy of gags in the panel. This is sophisticated cartooning.

It's too bad Tad Dorgan's star, so bright during his lifetime, faded so quickly after his tragically early death. Most people today have never heard of him, even though they utter phrases like "for crying out loud," "drug-store cowboy" and "cat's pajamas," all of which he introduced to the world. I think he may also have invented the "falling over backwards in the last panel" gag response (what Lileks calls the "flip take" and early cartoonists called "plop gags."), still a comics mainstay (a friend of mine suggested Bud "Mutt and Jeff" Fisher may be responsible for this, but I can't find him using it before Tad did in the 'teens).

See the other "Judge Rummy" drawing in my collection here. I also own the original drawing for the 1921 boxing-themed "City Life" strip shown on the Tad Dorgan Wikipedia page.

**UPDATE: it really looks like this may be the earliest use of "dumbbell" in print. Oxford English Dictionary claims it can be traced to the 20s, but this strip is definitely from 1919. Whether or not Tad coined the usage is arguable; my guess is that he heard it around the boxing/gym scene. Swish of the sparkly tail to the anonymous commenter who tipped me off to OED's citation.

Totally Reasonable Restrictions

2011-09-16T06:37:00.001-04:00

(PSP-on-Wonkette flashback to January 22, 2008)

All the fetuses are talking about Virginia's new restrictions on abortion clinics, but do they go far enough? There is an miniscule chance, after all, that some clinic may be actually able to work within the new rules. Some suggestions:

Abortion clinics should be required to have petting zoos featuring Tasmanian wolves, dodos, and velociraptors.
Doctors should be compelled to present to each patient a staged musical portraying the unborn child's first birthday party.
Bathroom fixtures must be solid platinum with rubies to indicate hot water, emeralds for cold.
Clinics must provide a five-story parking garage for each bed.
Each facility must include a cafeteria designed and administrated by Wolfgang Puck.
Any fetus aborted must first be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to eventually grow up to be either a terrorist or a hairdresser.

Only then can we be sure that Virginia's women will be protected.

Goats Think They're Birds

2011-09-15T07:35:00.002-04:00

(Image via)

If I keep those animated gifs at the top o' the blog, people are going to get angry, so here are some goats in a tree.

Oh, sure, there's a perfectly logical reason for it, but I prefer to think of it as this Monty Python sketch turned fabulously true.

Republicans React To Things

2011-09-13T18:30:00.000-04:00

Rick Perry's enthusiastic embrace of death penalty:

Hypothetical man dies due to lack of health insurance:

Piano falls on box of kittens:

Piano falls on box of socialist, Muslim kittens with HPV:

Object Of Breathtaking Beauty

2011-09-10T18:19:00.004-04:00

(Click for much bigger, your new desktop picture)

Pony Pal™/coworker Barbara recently went on a trip to my home state. Before she went, I requested a box of my favorite confection, prickly pear fruit candy. Just look at this gorgeous box design, the upper 4/5 of which hasn't changed since 1969! You don't have to go all the way to an Arizona airport to get it. It's expensive, but so good: a subtly flavored square jelly candy dusted in sugar, with a flavor almost like plum with a dash of lemon. Mmmm.

Prickly pear fruit really is good. I grew up in an area dominated by prickly pears. My mom made prickly pear jelly several times, and it was delicious. They can also be served simply skinned and chilled as a refreshing novelty side. My father even tried to make prickly pear wine once, and the result was... interesting, more like a cognac or sherry. Speaking of which, sometimes if it gets super hot when the prickly pears are ripe, whole flocks of birds will get totally drunk on the fermented fruit and crash comically into all the suburban windows and sliding glass doors. Funny!

The wonderful cartoon on the cactus candy box with its excellent hand-drawn lettering is signed by "McGinnis", an artist about whom I can find no information whatsoever. Pity, because that cute cactus with its Nancy-hair-like spines has a lot of potential:

Speaking Of Flag Pins...

2011-09-09T20:22:00.000-04:00

(AP Photo)

GOP Debate Lapel Scorecard

2011-09-08T06:00:00.000-04:00

(PSP flashback to September 7, 2008, AFP photo)

Flag pin: Bachmann, Huntsman, Cain.
Eagle Scout pin: Perry.
No pin: Paul, Gingrich, Romney, Santorum.

Shorter Erick Erickson: Sarah Palin Is A Waste Of Time And Her Fans Are Insane

2011-09-07T18:48:00.000-04:00

OMG, you have to actually go over to Red State and read Erick Erickson's highly entertaining post about Sarah Palin, because you will love it. Make no mistake: it's not that I think it's a good piece of writing; it's Erick Erickson after all*. Basically, Erick has just totally HAD IT with Palin's coy "will she or won't she run" schtick, and he wants it to stop. Also, he's upset that every time he writes about her, all her fans inundate his site with stupider and/or crazier comments than usual, and he wants that to stop, too. Shed a tear for Erick, won't you? Here's more of what I love about Erickson's rant:

The hypocrisy: Erickson decries Palin's fans for their attackiness and venom, which is kind of a pot calling the kettle black situation, no? Also, his list of Sarah Palin's shortcomings sounds an awful lot like a list of Erick Erickson's shortcomings. Then again, he's not running for office (yet).
The equivocating: the very, very negative post about Sarah and her fans includes the pussy phrases "There are many, many good people who support Sarah Palin" (can you hear the "But..." coming from a mile away?) and "Sarah Palin is a great person" (check the timetable, I think there's another "But..." due any second now).
Sarah Palin's fans compared to Scientologists more than once.
The comments! The positive comments demonstrate the same kind of loyalty to Erickson which he decries in Palin's fans. The negative comments from Palin fans easily prove Erickson's thesis. And then Erickson's fans point this out, and then Palin's fans call Erickson a sell-out/mainstream GOP shill, etc.

Next stop: Schadenfreude City!

*Can you believe that this guy is, like, SO totally influential? I don't get it either.

Ayn Would Have Been Proud

2011-09-06T06:30:00.005-04:00

So what do you do when your boutique Conservative™ movie flops hard at the box office? Well, obviously you release it on DVD as quickly as possible. But what if you're afraid that won't go over so well either? Simple! Just convince the few people interested to buy it four times! And that is what the Atlas Shrugged people have done: they've released four slightly different DVDs of the film, but they really want you to buy them all. The four versions are the Special Edition, the Atlas Society Edition, the FreedomWorks edition, and the Reason (Magazine) Edition. All four editions contain the same version of the movie, but with ever-so-slightly different bonus features which don't seem terribly substantial to begin with, and could all probably fit on one DVD. Lucky Randites, however, are definitely going to want to buy the Collector's Box Set, which features all four DVDs of the same movie four times with their slightly different bonus features, or the Galt Collection, which features the same movie four times plus geegaws, or the Deluxe Galt Collection, which features the same movie four times plus slightly different geegaws.

This is textbook core-audience soaking, like when Marvel cynically puts out the same comic book with five different front covers. It's just free enterprise at work, people! You may also wish to purchase actual frames from the release prints (or "Cels" as they incorrectly call them), which are certain to be in pristine condition. There's also an overpriced aluminum bracelet (?) which is actually attractive, and a lapel pin of the film's ugly logo which I only like because it reminds me of the old K-tel logo. Oddly enough, trucker hats are not available, so they obviously don't know their audience very well.

I hope fans of the movie and/or Ayn Rand really do buy and wear those lapel pins, because it's hard to imagine a better warning sign (other than a Gadsden Flag draped over the shoulders).