Hairdressers and Fetuses Will Destroy The Teabaggers

Kerry Schimelfenig, center, waits on customers looking over shirts at his stand in the vendor area of the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Friday Feb. 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke)

Doesn't exactly look bustling, does it? But yes, the Tea Party Convention is in full swing. Every "MSM" article I've read in the last few days asks, basically, whither the tea party movement? What's next?

One thing the teabaggers themselves have yet to resolve is this: does the movement's still vaguely-defined platform include so-called social conservative issues or does it not? The Washington Post's writeup today features a couple of consecutive paragraphs which demonstrate that this is going to be a real problem:

Annie and Tom Runn, who have done missionary work in Haiti and Cuba, spent last week at the Republican National Committee gathering in Hawaii, where they live, and then came here. They can't support Obama because he's for "abortion and homosexuals," Tom Runn said. "We would support and vote for Sarah [Palin] over and over and over."

Lori Christenson, who started the Evergreen-Conifer Tea Party in Colorado in her house using the social networking site Meetup.com, wants politicians to act like their power comes from the people, not from their celebrity. Her group refuses to get involved with conservative social issues, which she calls "very, very divisive."

Why yes, those issues are very divisive, indeed! Unfortunately for them, they can't simply ignore those prickly issues and hope nobody notices. Will we see tea party candidates who refuse "to get involved with conservative social issues" in the upcoming elections? It will be interesting to see how that works out.

This Is As Close As Republicans Come To Being Deadheads

Cashin' in! Well, why not? David Weigel is reporting from the big Teabag Convention™, and he photographed some truly weird teabag earrings by an event sponsor called the Tea Party Emporium.

Curious, I visited their web site, and this is some pretty... uh... Café Press type stuff, I guess. Except the earrings! I don't know; I'm not wild about them.

But here's my favorite product, Freedom Coffee –yes, coffee– branded with a cup of tea and a teabag that says "tea":

Bonus points, I guess, for the probably unauthorized use of the postage stamp.

Give me my Tea Party Freedom Coffee or give me death!

Excuse Me, But Were You Aware That There Is A Demon Sheep Web Site?

It's true: Carly Fiorina's remarkable satanic ungulates have their own special site! I recommend reporting a "sighting" (see above).

Update: Mediaite Totally Owns "Retardgate" (But I'll Give Them A Run For Their Money)

Haw, I guess I'm joking a little bit, but honestly, Mediaite's posts on "retardgate," my favorite "_____gate" ever, are actually quite good. This latest one has a particularly tasty nugget of Sarah Palin's hypocrisy, about the evils of banning certain words:

Look at what’s going on in France, where that psychological abuse, where those words spoken that aren’t politically correct and accepted in that country. Won’t be allowed. Will be deemed illegal. Now some who want us to turn into a country like that scare the heck out of me. And unfortunately some of those people are leading our country today.

In the spirit of full disclosure, here are my sins:

• I referred to a character in a coloring book as "a retarded deputy."
• I declared that it was officially too easy to quote "retarded comments" from Fox Nation.
• I called Michael Steele's and Rush Limbaugh's feuding "retarded in-fighting."
• I also pointed out that Michael Steele was the "first African American mentally retarded man to run the Republican party.
• I couldn't help but notice that a selection of "defining moments" photographs of Bush included several where he was "looking his most retarded."
• I pronounced a "sexiest woman in politics" poll to be "retarded."
• I felt that only "the most retarded retards in Retardistan" would purchase a burning cross Christmas decoration.
• The Telegraph, UK "rounded up all the most retarded shots they could find" for their "tribute" to departing George Bush (see above).
• I declared that a hairdresser's opinion that Obama should wear glasses to making himself look smarter was "simply retarded."
• In my post about how to comment on this blog, I revealed that I only left trollish comments if they were "laughably retarded."
• I pointed out that I used the word "retarded" to describe Christian fundamentalists "neither lightly nor unintentionally."
• I referred to a post by Spencer Ackerman as "his most retarded yet."
• After posing the question "Is there really a difference between Sarah Silverman's and Ann Coulter's faggot jokes?" I answered, "Don't be retarded, of course there is."

Quickie: Congrats To Mediaite...

... for coining the term "retardgate."

That is all.

Sad Leif Garrett Update

We had a lot of fun recently reminiscing about Leif Garrett, but it looks as though actually being Leif isn't so hot nowadays:

Former teen idol Leif Garrett was busted on charges of possession of heroin on Monday, we can report.

The singer-actor and former Nicollette Sheridan flame was searched by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies in a subway station just before noon, after a sheriff's spokesman said Garrett was "sweating and shaking profusely."

Released on a bail bond in the wee hours on Wednesday, the star is due back in court Feb. 24 to answer for the stash of black tar heroin that authorities say was hidden in his shoe.

Poor Leif. He really was a nice guy.

Art Collection: Jimbo Intrudes On Pee Wee's Playhouse

Click for bigger.

Just in time for the big (deserved) Pee Wee revival!

Oh, I was so excited to meet cartoonist extraordinaire Gary Panter in 1995 at the San Diego Comic Con! I was also grateful to be introduced by Gary Leib, another great cartoonist, who "primed the pump" a little by telling Panter that I wrote for a magazine and loved doing long, fawning profiles of my favorite artists.

I still love Gary Panter's work. It's esoteric to the max; I imagine to some it just looks like a mess. You'd think, with my love for Bushmiller and Lichtenstein, that I wouldn't find much to like in Panter's scratchy, jumbled work, but you would be wrong. Just because his style is chaotic doesn't mean it lacks focus. Poke around his web site and be impressed. He is one of the few artists to really demolish the imagined barrier between comics and "fine" art.

Gary headed the design team which created Pee Wee's Playhouse, and he received two Emmy Awards™ for his efforts, well merited in my opinion. I brought up my love for Pee Wee while talking to him (it was at a low ebb in popularity at the time), and imagine my jaw dropping to the floor as he casually dashed off the drawing above for me while we were chatting. Pee Wee is still using his designs today! That's endurance.

The moral of this story is: get into Gary Panter.

Photoblogging: Against The Grain

Click for 1200x900.

Shown above is a detail from Roy Lichtenstein's Bedroom at Arles, his riff on Vincent Van Gogh's domestic scene. It's been hanging in the Atrium of the NGA East Building for a month or so now, as part of the great Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection exhibition. The painting is such a cheerful presence! I keep getting hypnotized by Lichtenstein's exaggerated green wood grain, so I finally had to take a picture of it for my own enjoyment.

Here's what the whole (large) painting looks like (I didn't take this shot):

I like how Roy Lichtenstein loosened up a little (if you can call it that; he was never, ever "loose.") in his later work, using secondary colors, shades and tints more and more, and patterns other than his beloved Ben Day dots and stripes. The variety of color in the painting above is extraordinary compared to the strict minimalism of his "classic" comic strip works of thirty years earlier.

It's not hard to see why I love Roy Lichtenstein after I've been going on and on about Ernie Bushmiller lately: both are precise draftsmen and brilliant minimalist composers of immaculate spaces.  So clean, and as Lichtenstein brilliantly demonstrates in The Bedroom at Arles, so timeless.

Devil Sheep FTW!

Seriously, OMG, if you haven't seen Carly Fiorina's new attack ad against her primary opponent, you haven't seen the single most ridiculous and hilarious piece of campaign filmmaking EVER.

That shit is for real. Whoah.

Family Research Council Wants To Outlaw Blowjobs

Pam's House Blend and  Pony Pal Joe My God both point out that Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council stated recently that he thinks anti-sodomy laws should be reenacted and enforced. Both frame this by saying FRC wants to basically criminalize gay sex, and this, obviously, is true. However! Both Joe and Pam's friend should realize that reviving anti-sodomy laws wouldn't just make gay sex acts illegal.  Of course, it depends on whose definition of sodomy you use.

Sarah Palin Now More Or Less Queen Of The Teabaggers

Did you read Sarah's spirited defense of herself the big Tea Party Convention™ yesterday in USA Today? No? That's OK, I read it for you.

First of all, the short piece contains conventionally structured sentences and no made-up words*, so chances are high that she didn't write it herself. But anyway, the byline and photo make it clear that these are at least Sarah Brand Thoughts.

My favorite part is when she defends the event's ludicrous ticket prices by saying that, hey, those who can't attend can watch her speech on the Facebook and the Twitters, so it's egalitarian after all. This is funny because the event organizers only conceded to allow this a couple of days ago; before, the event was totally, completely closed to non-attendees, including the evil non-Fox/non-Breitbart press.

The best news, though, is that Sarah uses the "editorial" as a way to publicize her involvement with future tea parties and rallies. Yay! This is how she'll regain some of that magic we saw during the election when Sarah dangerously whipped up crowds at McCain campaign events. Should be memorable! Due to her nearly complete lack of discipline, I'm sure there will be some... interesting pronouncements from La Palin at these confabs as she gets swept up in the excitement, so that'll keep us in chuckles well into the future.

Here's Sarah's tricky maneuver with which she'll have to contend: how is she going to reconcile her Queen of the Teabaggers status with her intent to campaign for McCain against JD Hayworth, ultra-"conservative" darling of Tea Party crowd?

My guess is that her appearances on behalf of McCain will be very, very low-key. Either way, though, it doesn't really matter, because her fans have never demanded anything even remotely resembling consistency from her.

Go Sarah!

*Note: it does, however, contain the unforgivable phrase.

Junk Drawer: More Lurid 3D Postcards

Click all for lots bigger.

More fun! I wish these things had copyright info on them. ALL MANUFACTURED GOODS SHOULD HAVE DATES STAMPED ON THEM. Anyway, the Japanese flamingos are gorgeous, aren't they? This one, featuring see-through Jesus hovering in front of a waterfall (??) is also, duh, from Japan:

Similarly hailing from the Land of the Rising Hello Kitty, these Xmas pixies:

And last but not least, a stirring remake (reboot?) of Millet's cornball classic, The Angelus:

My friend Bob, who mailed the above to me, wrote on the back, "I just broke my living room window by dropping the fan through it." Neat!

More lenticular fun to come!

Brained By Falling Masonry

The whole Ex-Gay™ thing is so totally, like, two years ago, OK? But, oops, we've gone and exported it to the UK. Sorry about that!

You have to read Patrick Strudwick's excellent undercover exposé in today's The Independent. It's brief, to-the-point, a little creepy, and unsparing, and we love that in an article about these crazy people. It's basically the same thing we've come to know here in the US, and it's all based on the "work" of the usual American Ex-Gay™ suspects

But, naturally, when something American gets exported to Great Britain, they tend to add their own little local flavours to the fun, and thus:

She moves on. "Any Freemasonry in the family?" No, I say, again asking her to elaborate. "Because that often encourages it as well. It has a spiritual effect on males and it often comes out as SSA [Same-Sex Attraction™]."

HOTT.

It's True

(Harmon Leon)

See more amusing Westboro Baptist counter-protest signs here.

Stalking Condi

Wow, how did I ever miss this? Here's a must-read from The Telegraph, UK, by documentary filmmaker Sebastian Doggart about literally stalking our Condi! His resulting film, Courting Condi, is billed as "the first musical-docu-tragi-comedy in the history of cinema," and it seems to be hilarious, a bizarre and ridiculous mixture of "reality" and fiction and an obsessiveness with Condi which rivals this site's. Best line in the trailer: "It's Condoleezza Rice! Are you fucking nuts?" It's available for download or rental from Amazon.

I am baffled and embarrassed by my lack of familiarity with Mr. Doggart's work, but better late than never!

Idiot Discovers Expensive Things For Rich People

Screenshot from eBay.

I had to roll my eyes at dependably dumb Bob Greene's latest column at CNN.com. This is one of the hackiest old warhorses of a theme in the hack columnist's cheaters' guide: OMG, look! I found this outrageously expensive boutique item! And we are supposed to share in his shock and outrage over, in this case, a really really costly Hermès bag.

Well, yes, I've heard Hermès makes expensive things! You could even say their reputation impels them to make expensive things.

Really, you have to read this stupid column, because Greene is playing dumb and acting like he's completely unaware of the existence of ludicrously pricey consumer goods, and I'm just not buying it, because he's flying back and forth between New York City and swanky Naples, Florida to do so. The faux-outrage and faux-out-of-itness is just the thing you'd expect from a faux-common man like Bob Greene.

But still, just wait until he finds out about Rolex watches.

Junk Drawer: 3D Postcards

All of these can be clicked for lots bigger!

In the mid-1980s in San Diego, Pony Pal™ Mr. Bad Trash and I got really into collecting lenticular 3D postcards. We found major stashes in some Tijuana gift shops, strange repositories of images which appeared to date to the 1960s. Others could be found at random at tackier stops across the country. And once our friends caught on, they sent what they found, thrillingly, though the mail.

The one shown up top was sent to me from Yugoslavia by my friend Sean. It's a Japanese card, though, as is this one, one of the examples we scored in Tijuana:

That's a strange postcard to end up in a Mexican convenience store, isn't it? So is this one:

This next one, despite its obvious origins in the late-1960s, was actually purchased at the Petrified Forest in 1986:

Even if you can't see the 3D-ness of these, I still love the way these scans look. I also appreciate that lenticular 3D will never die. More to come!

Photoblogging: A Poignant Moment

Click for bigger!

OMG

Book Shelf: Dukes Of Hazzard Coloring & Activity Book, Part 2 Of 2

Let's continue with our badly drawn, incoherently plotted Dukes of Hazzard coloring book! Yay! I like this spread because it looks like Daisy Duke is looking in horror at the word scramble she's incapable of solving:

Remember how I said that this coloring book was a reminder of a time before computers gave hacks the ability to make something look halfway decent? That lettering above is a great example of that. Now the story lurches forward towards the denouement:

It turns out the oil found right next to the crashed car came FROM the crashed car! Who could have guessed?

Daddy Bear Duke is relieved while the deputy's extra chromosome causes him to contort with rage:

Meanwhile, always the types to gloat, the kids plan a party:

Draw Daddy Bear Duke! This is kinda funny, because the "squared for transfer" method is an old one, used by good artists as well as coloring book hack illustrators. Here's Arshile Gorky making use of the technique, and John Singleton Copley doing the same thing.

Square dancin':

And the lonely last page (the inside front and back covers are blank), that whorish old standby, the search-a-word :

The back cover is simply a labor-saving repeat of the front. Below, since Pony Pal™ Karen chastised me in the comments earlier for not coloring in any of the pages myself, my take on the lovely Daisy:

That was fun and wholesome! What will fall out of the book shelf next?