Important Callista Gingrich Hairdo Status Update: Callista Goes Too Far To Heed Pink Pony's Advice

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with his wife Callista, bow their heads in prayer during a campaign event at the The Villages, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, in Lady Lake, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Uh oh, whoops! I only have myself to blame for this, because just the other day I admonished My Queen that OMG, she had to, had to, had to get her roots done.

So perhaps in a panic because she knew she was going to have to bow her head in public today, she got the hairdo recharged and... well, see for yourself:

Instead of just touching up the roots, some slipshod (local?) hairdresser went wayyyy overboard and redyed the Platinum Orb in its entirety, and it is FRIED. Chemical burns are clearly evident. Judging from wire photos, the coiffure vandalism happened either yesterday afternoon/evening or (more likely) this morning.

If she doesn't take better care of the Golden Helmet, she's going to have to get a real, actual helmet.

Also! She wore the same suit (but with a different top and different outlandishly expensive necklace) two days in a row. Callista!

International Business Times Offers Ode To Callista's Hairdo

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

Important Callista Gingrich Hairdo Status Report

(See below for full picture and caption)

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

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

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

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

Jennifer Rubin Newt-Panic Roundup

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

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

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

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

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

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

Figure 1:

(AP Photo, 01-24-12)

Figure 2:

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

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

Random Nancy Panel

(1971)

Callista Roundup!

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

In other words: bring on the Callistabots!

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

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

Newtmentum Is Back!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

(Click for larger)

The CD itself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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!

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)

Cookies 4 Victory!

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

(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

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

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!