Callista Gingrich Forces Her Hairdressers, Probably At Gunpoint, To Leave Positive Reviews On Amazon

(10-18-14, via the Goddess Callista's Instathing.)

How many more trips to the well can our Beloved Moon Goddess make? Once again, we have a new soft-core patriotism adventure with our favorite twee time-traveling elephant. This time it's Lewis and Clark.

And just as before, I'm wondering who is buying these books?  Let's take a look. Amazon currently has 26 reviews, and just as before, most of these books are being bought for other people's children:

• Ellis is such a delight, as my nieces read along
• I look forward to sharing his newest adventures with my nieces and nephews!
• Perfect birthday gift for our great grandson to encourage patriotism in our young.
• Great educational gift for my younger cousin!
• I gave this book as a gift to my niece and she loved it
• We have loved the series and look forward to more treasured memories sharing this book with our grandchildren.
• I have gifted these books to our little private elementary school.
• Our grandchildren love these books & we have donated the 1st 3 books to a local school library.
• It has been a favorite gift to my grandkids and friends' kids.

So, basically the book is being used as an "American Exceptionalism"  proselytizing tool, as intended.

But what's this? A lot of these reviews are by people who seem to have signed up specifically to give Callista's book a five-star rave.

And, again, I ask: who are these people?

Well, they are her beauticians, for instance.

I spotted one review written by an oddly named person, Wioleta Frackiewicz, and thought, "That's easy to Google." It turns out she's the "Manager/Esthetician at Sugar House Day Spa and Salon" in Alexandria. Finding that led me to noticing that there was another five-star review of Callista's book by a user named "sugar house". What an amazing coincidence!

The next question I asked to myself was, of course, "I wonder where Callista gets her hair done?" For that I turned to the New Yorker:

“Where do you get your hair done?” a red-haired woman asked as she got her book signed.

“At Sugar House in Old Town,” Mrs. Gingrich said quietly, referring to a salon in Alexandria. (Her stylist, Tatjana Belajic, told me she has yet to get a request for “the Callista,” though that would surely change if Mrs. Gingrich became First Lady.)

Another incredible coincidence! 

Another reviewer, Carmen Omiste, is also a hairdresser in Alexandria!

Five-star reviewer Sonya Harrison is not a hairdresser, and she does not manage a day spa, but my goodness, there's a LOT of Gingrich in her LinkedIn profile.

Five-star reviewer Rick Story may be the same Rick Story who worked on Newt's staff alongside... Callista!

So I feel like I've finally answered that nagging "Who is reading Callista's boring books?" question: ancient people who are worried about their nieces, nephews and grandchildren, people who work for the Gingriches, and people who work for the Gingriches' hairdressers.

Oh, and supposedly actual children, too.

Erudite Political Commentary

UPDATE:

Did Eric Cantor Really Have A Shoe Problem?

(Image via Amazon.)

Had enough of the endless analysis of Eric Cantor's loss? Then maybe this will amuse you from Talking Points Memo:

A former House GOP leadership aide (who didn't work for Cantor) had a similar take.

"He lost because he spent more time galavanting around the country, raising his profile for Speaker/potential VP nominee than tending to the folks in his district," said the aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. "He wears Prada shoes with lifts and regularly attends Davos. None of those things make him a bad man, but they do make him an absentee representative for the people of his district."

(Emphasis mine.)

Oh! Prada shoes! WITH LIFTS.

The "Prada shoes" part is obviously Republican dog-whistle for "He is a big city fancy-man, out of touch with his constituents" which could have easily been stated outright, especially undercover as an anonymous source,  as "He is a big city fancy-man who is out of touch with his constituents."

But what about the "with lifts" part? This implies he's an insecure Napoleon as well as paying undue attention to his own appearance. I have a couple of problems with this. First of all, shoe lifts are generally only employed by the VERY short. Browse Amazon's wonderful shoe lift page, and you'll see that they offer, at most, a 2" height supplement. And as you can see in the photo up top, 2" lifts aren't really going to work with low business-style loafers.

Here's the kicker (ha ha): Eric Cantor is 6'2"! He is a tall man! Even if he's wearing 2" lifts, he'd still be six-feet-tall, not "short" by any standards. 

I'm calling bullshit. Not on the Prada shoes part, but definitely on the "with lifts" part.

Also: what does that putdown say about the source? Is that the most metrosexual insult you've ever heard or what?

As for Davos, what does Game of Thrones have to do with all this? KIDDING.

More Merch Ideas For 9/11 Memorial Museum Giftshop

T-Shirt Idea For The 9-11 Museum Giftshop

Fashion Victim: The Ability To Accessorize

(Photograph by John Schwartz. Click for bigger.)

It's what separates us from the animals, right? Here we have a quilted cotton sport coat by Dries van Noten paired with a white cotton shirt by John Varvatos, accessorized with an industrial catsup bladder to add an aura of grandeur.

I have a feeling they're going to stop leaving these things lying around where I can get at them. Either that, or I'll get an email from some division head with the subject line PLEASE STOP PLAYING WITH THE INDUSTRIAL CONDIMENT BLADDERS.

How easily this photo shoot could have gone spectacularly wrong!

See, What "Turn The Other Cheek" ACTUALLY Means Is...

I was obsessing over my favorite new website, Barbwire.com, again, and I noticed they had a store! Well, no, they don't actually have "Barbwire" merchandise; instead, they simply link to the Patriot Depot, your one-stop-shop for all your Government-Hating Patriot (!?) needs.

I especially enjoyed the shirt pictured above, and just in case you think they're intentionally trying to be ironic, there's an explanation which should clear that right up for you:

"Blessed are the peacemakers". These words, spoken by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, are often misinterpreted as a call to pacifism. However, the truth is quite the opposite. Sometimes being a peacemaker requires standing against evil, including by force if necessary. As Harrison Ford said in Air Force One, "Peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice."

George Orwell is smirking in his grave.

Also: needs more wings and skulls.

Condibox! Because Tech Companies Are Still Supercool!

Great news, everybody! Now, every time you use Dropbox, you're helping to keep Condi in her Ferragamos! The annoying app company or whatever it is selected Condi because she's always been known to show superior business acumen, displayed great knowledge of Silicon Valley in general and "Cloud" technology (ugh) in particular. Ha, ha, just kidding! They hired her because she's a celebrity spokesmodel who on occasion may be called upon to help grease a few foreign palms.

Hooray for Condi! Hooray for Dropbox! Oh, and don't forget that Condi is also the RNC's new spokeslady for income inequality issues 'n' such. It's great to be Condi!

UPDATE: Holy cow, response on Twitter is brutal.

And, as was inevitable, here's Drop Dropbox.

Photoblogging: Conventional Wisdom

Who ever would have guessed...

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... that twee French mime dolls would fail to sell?

Other than "everybody."

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

Microsoft executive on phone: Can we use a shot of them closer together in the car? [...] Why not? [...] Oh.

Digital Graveyard: Covers And Artwork For Genetic Disorder Magazine, Part 6

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This is my most recent design for Larry Harmon's Genetic Disorder magazine, published in Spring of 2008. I wonder if there will ever be another issue? Today, with the blogs and the youtubes and the facebooks and whatnot, is it worth the effort to make a print magazine like GD? (The answer is YES.)

For this issue, I chose photography again, and illustration was kept to a bare minimum. I wanted the front cover to look grimy, but the newness of the shoes kind of undermines that. One the other hand, the shoes' newness made it really easy to Photoshop-swap the Converse logo with Genetic Disorder's beloved Li'l Kunty version. Here's the simple design ripoff:

The back cover, originally intended for the front, is an exaggerated illustration of a real story in the issue about a San Diego grocery clerk who was caught sticking pins in doughnuts:

I went to at least three different doughnut shops before finding the most photogenic sprinkles. Considering that I took that photo in my bathroom with two table lamps for lighting and a fake sky backdrop, I think it came out pretty well, but it somehow just... misses.

Larry and I bumped that image to the back cover for a couple of reasons: first, we didn't want to have two issues in a row with food on the cover. Second, we both just loved having the Chuck Taylors on the front.

It isn't because Chucks are such a classic punk rock icon, but that made for perfect camouflage. The issue is heavy on retro-punk, so they work well for that. What made the shoes the perfect choice, though, is that the most interesting story in the magazine was about Kenneth Bogard, a Pacific Beach musician with a double identity who headed a cheesy Jimmy Buffet-esque good-times beach band (Dr. Chico's Island Sounds!) on weekends and was a violent serial rapist on weekdays. On stage he wore Hawaiian shirts and his signature item of apparel... red Chuck Taylor high-tops. Showing those shoes (bought especially for the cover!) discarded on a bathroom floor made it almost like a crime scene photograph. So the idea was that anybody reading the magazine would be treated to the cover design suddenly changing in meaning, from fun and innocent to sinister and queezy, after reading the article.

I don't think this is the most attractive or well-designed cover I did for Larry, especially with the deliberately bad shot of the shoes, but I think it's the most interesting conceptually.

And, finally, I also contributed a silly picture of Patricia Hearst wearing a Ronald Reagan mask for the inside of the magazine, but I can't find a copy of it anywhere.

I hope to work with Larry again! I'm proud of this series of covers, each more or less flawed yet more or less successful at the same time. And I love that Larry left me completely alone to do each of them, yet provided crucial inspiration for every single one. The key to it all: we barely know each other!

Part one is here, two is here, three is here, four is here, and five is here. Purchase copies of these wonderful zines here.

Digital Graveyard: Covers And Artwork For Genetic Disorder Magazine, Part 5

(Click front and back designs for bigger.)

I mentioned before that Larry from Genetic Disorder would provide me with copies of the articles from forthcoming issues to generate cover ideas. Nothing much inspired me for issue #18 in 2006 other than a really funny piece about Sambo's restaurant. The article reminded me that I had in my possession a vintage coffee mug from the erstwhile family feed trough, so I realized that this gave me an opportunity to indulge in one of my favorite obsessions: bad food photography! I thought I'd give it a whirl. The good thing about attempting bad food photography is that... well, it's difficult to mess it up, right? It's much easier to make food look awful than it is to make it look good.

The National Gallery of Art serves breakfast for staff members prior to opening hours, and every Wednesday is pancake day, so on that particular Wednesday I came prepared with my camera, tripod,  and a plastic menu card holder (given to me by Pony Pal Ricky Rebel!). I ordered pancakes from Rose, my favorite cafeteria worker, and told her that her flapjacks were going to be stars, much to her bafflement. I located a table facing a blank wall, set up the shot, snapped about a dozen pictures, and then... sat down and ate most of my breakfast. I then adjusted the remains to look gross, and got the second shot for the back cover:

The cigarette butt and the cockroach are, by the way, Photoshopped in.

For the contents of the magazine, I designed a fake menu for the plastic holder, using an illustration of, once again, Li'l Kunty, this time in the guise of Sambo's late, post-racist logo:

The "menu" was, like the roach and butt, Photoshopped into the scene (the plastic holder just had a piece of blank paper in it). I was thrilled to call back the cat from my first Genetic Disorder cover to play the tiger.

Here's the Li'l Kunty logo by itself:

This time I didn't do an "ad" for my illustration services on the inside-front cover, because I was no longer seeking such work.

Overall, I'm super happy with how this one came out. It's probably the slickest of all the covers I've done for GD.

Next up: the most recent, and hopefully not the last in this series, features one of my other favorite things, shoes, as well as a frightening doughnut and my own hand.

Part one is here, two is here, three is here, four is here, and six is here. Purchase copies of these wonderful zines here.   Or on eBay if you aren't very bright.

Digital Graveyard: Covers And Artwork For Genetic Disorder Magazine, Part 4

(Click most for bigger. Apologies for the vector parsing error on the red rat.)

My fourth cover for Larry H's Genetic Disorder zine, completed in 2003, was another case of "This super-complicated idea seems easy! I can do that!" followed, ultimately, with "OMG, what was I thinking?"

Searching for a gimmick, I approached Larry with the idea of doing a 3D cover, something I had always wanted to do. He liked the idea a lot, but said he could never afford to bind in the 3D glasses. "What if I paid for it?" I asked, and we were off to the races.

It ended up being a nightmare. Once again I had assigned myself a task for which I was ill-suited. In the end, however, I think it came out really pretty well, although I believe (I don't currently have a pair of the glasses, so you tell me) I did it backwards, with the reds and blues flipped (so turn over your glasses if you have them).

Li'l Kunty, again, is the star of the cover, surrounded by random symbols of death, decay, and destruction, as suits her evil nature. Note that there are several call-backs here to details from the previous covers, as well as a post-911 boxcutter. The hands holding the guns are swiped from Roy Lichtenstein's famous "Pistol" of 1964/68:

After sending in the finished design, Larry and his layout person told me they wanted to put it on a gray background, feeling that the cover looked too anemic on white. I objected strongly, feeling that the gray would blunt the impact of the 3D, and I was right, so above you can see what it was supposed to look like. Alas.

Here's the back cover:

The hands/guns are lifted straight from Bushmiller (surprise!), while the layout is, obviously, based on the Sex Pistols' album cover.

Here's my inside-front-cover "advertisement":

 

Next up: I turn to (bad) food photography for Genetic Disorder #18.

UPDATE: Part one is here, two is here, three is here, five is here, and six is here. Purchase copies of these wonderful zines here. 

Digital Graveyard: Covers And Artwork For Genetic Disorder Magazine, Part 1

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I first met Larry Harmon, creator of Genetic Disorder, in about 1997 in San Diego. GD was (is?)  a lively, hilarious, and well-written "zine", and Larry was a respected and influential member of the underground publishing community. Like many other zines, GD was, at its core, a music fanzine, featuring record and concert reviews, interviews with bands, etc. But the remainder of the publication was a highly inventive grab-bag of random, well-written and scrupulously researched, articles about whatever was obsessing Larry and his rowdy friends at the moment. At the time, I was working full-time for Hypno, a magazine with commercial, mainstream aspirations, and always felt a little embarrassed when I saw how cool Genetic Disorder was.

In 1995, Larry mentioned to me that he was going to do a big theme issue on Satanism, and I immediately begged him to do the cover. I think Larry had met my over-the-top "Satanic" friend Ricky Rebel, and had seen what we had done with Satan Brand Magazine, so he enthusiastically agreed.

I came up with the idea of cute kids about to sacrifice a cat almost instantaneously; it was my first idea and required no revision. I drew the characters in a kind of wireframe style using the most pitiful, primitive PC graphics programs imaginable. I'm pretty sure it was Autodesk Animator. I then printed all the individual elements out, pasted them up, and then "reverse painted" the illustration with cel vinyl on a sheet of stiff acrylic at a 1:1 ratio. Larry added the title lettering in Photoshop, using VAG Rounded at my request, and I loved how the whole thing came out. And the whole issue, brimming with hilarious and astonishing tales of Christian Satanic Panic, bone-headed metal fans, and an incredible calendar of daily Satanic fun facts, one relevant to every single day of the year, was a new high water mark for Larry and GD.

Larry and I worked so well together that I ended up doing the next five covers (all of which feature the grinning little girl with pigtails) for Genetic Disorder, too, and if he ever produces another issue, I hope to do that one as well. I never charged Larry a cent, because it was just so much fun doing the covers for him, and so gratifying to have something physically printed (remember those pre-internet days?). I even paid to make one expensive cover idea possible! Part of that bargain, I suppose, is that I made mistakes on every single one of them, so it was a valuable learning experience for a totally untrained dilettante like me (I'm not being modest; I have never taken a single course in graphics, so doing these covers was literally my education).

About a year after doing this cover, I started learning how to use Adobe Illustrator, and remade the illustration as a proper vector image:

You can still buy all of these, including the one featured here, which is highly recommended, at Larry's somewhat rudimentary GD website. Collect them all!

Next: Larry and my cover design hit the road in Genetic Disorder #15! Live the adventure!

UPDATE: Part two is here, three is here, four is here, five is here, and six is here. Purchase copies of these wonderful zines here.

Photoblogging: Wutz?

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Recently, Pony Pal Comradde PhysioProffe expressed a desire that I photograph an Utz delivery truck. Little did he know that I already had, just weeks earlier! I didn't post it at the time because... well, as you can see, it isn't a good photograph. Like, at all. But! PhysioProffe made a simple request I was able to fulfill, so here it is, your Utz delivery truck.

Photoblogging: Half Nelson

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And... I'm back! Anything interesting in the news lately? No? OK, let's carry on, then.

Custom Deluxe Packaging

I made these drawings for a coworker because... uhhhh... oh, no reason.

Photoblogging: Lilies And Dentistry

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Photoblogging: Picture Which Will Amuse Only Those From Australia Or New Zealand

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Amy's Baking Company: A Modest Proposal

Has everybody else been enjoying the ongoing saga of Amy's Baking Company, the otherwise unimportant restaurant which blew up the internet last week, what with the Twitters, the Facebooks, the Yelps, and whatnot? I don't know why I find the whole thing so terribly entertaining. Is it partly because it's an Arizona story?

Anyway, after their brutal encounter with the Steisand Effect, the bistro is trying to clean up its act and save itself. They'll try to not steal so much from their staff, to serve decent, edible pizzas, to not hurl obscenities at their customers, etc.

But here's the thing: I think they should do the exact opposite!

See, it's never going to be any great shakes as a restaurant. It's just one of those cutesy places that inevitably pops up across the street from a movie theater. Even calling it a "restaurant" is a bit of a misnomer; it's more of a "food vendor" than anything.

So why not play up their bad reputation? They should immediately alter the name to be "Crazy Amy's Baking Company" and turn it into a theme restaurant. So not only should they not try to be nice to their customers, they should promise to be horrible.  It's not unprecedented; after all, the awful frat boy chain Dick's Last Resort takes pride in its rude service. Amy's should take a similar path. After all, the only reason to go there right now is in the hope that the owners will freak out and pop off, so why not give the people what they want?

It wouldn't be that hard: Amy and Sammy should stage several screaming arguments each night to amuse their patrons. They could play amplified tapes of more arguments and crashing pans, etc., from the kitchen. They could stagger the staff's hours so that each employee's shift ends with a tearful "firing" by a manic Amy in full view of the dining room. They'd never again have to worry about the "quality" of the food*. It could be like "Bad Restaurant Theater."

It would be such a huge hit.

*In fact, they could do away with the food altogether: after 90 minutes, Amy or Sammy approach the customer and ask if they've gotten their meals. When the customer replies, "No," the owners would fly into a rage, scream, "Oh, I suppose you're going to BASH US ON YELP now!" and then kick them out (obviously, this would require an up-front cover charge. Details, details.).