jimmysnax

Sad For Norma

2010-09-10T05:42:00.001-07:00

How could I not contribute to the sublime silliness of the meme

http://saddondraper.tumblr.com/

Richard Nixon: Bad President!

2010-04-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

January 20, 1969 – August 9, 1974, almost two terms

In terms of the Worst U.S. Presidents in history, for a long time in my estimation, Nixon was the one. He was elected President when I was twelve years old. My parents were big Nixon fans, which at the time I just accepted without judgment or opinion, because Presidents were not the stuff of children. I became more and more aware of the outcry against Nixon, because I read the paper every day and watched All In The Family, but I had no reason or stimulus to have an opinion different than my parents yet. It wasn’t until I was a High School freshman, with Nixon still occupying the Oval Office, that I found myself in a U.S. History class with a young firebrand teacher who did have an opinion and wasn’t shy about sharing it. Every day Mr. Coleco would give a spirited lecture about some aspect of U.S. History, both from the distant dusty past and the confusing present. He made it clear to those of us listening exactly what was going on in Washington with the Watergate Scandal and the Hearings. I liked Mr. Coleco, because he talked to us as if we were adults, and he had a sense of humor, so suddenly I had an opinion about Nixon: he was a crook!

When Nixon resigned the White House in disgrace in August of ’74, my family was on an East Coast vacation. The day he made his farewell speech we were staying in a hotel in Erie, Pennsylvania. "Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow...” Even through the crushing shame and disappointment that my parents were feeling, as well as what felt to me like the epic historical implications of the event, inwardly I was celebrating it as a victory for Democracy, or at least what I understood of it from listening to Mr. Coleco. For years afterward I thought of Nixon as a Bad President – certainly the worst I had experienced, an opinion I clung to even during the baffling years of Reagan, and was unshaken until W. subjected us to eight years of his scabrous, lawbreaking, condescending, intellectually challenged, train wreck of a presidency. I still get slightly queasy thinking about what he and his rat fink buddies did to this country.

Nowadays, with the softening of intervening years, it’s clear to me that one can, but shouldn’t judge Nixon’s presidency solely based on the power crazed behavior of his that led to Watergate. He actually achieved a great deal, for a crook – and a Republican crook at that! There are some historians who, whether they think Nixon was a “Good” President or a “Bad” President, believe he was one of the greatest Presidents of the 2oth Century, and you can’t dispute that, unlike many of the mooks on my list, he certainly did a lot, “good” and “bad”.

The stuff you could praise: Nixon opened the giant doors of diplomacy and trade with China – a stunning feat for the period, and he worked with the Soviets to craft the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and initiate détente – even more amazing because Nixon had historically been so virulently anti-communist and all. (He once referred to Helen Gahagan Douglas, his opponent during the contentious 1950 Senate race as “Pink right down to her underwear”, apparently unaware of the inadvertent genital impression it evoked. Douglas retaliated by referring to Nixon as “Tricky Dick”, apparently intentionally utilizing the genital innuendo. Atta girl!) He eventually got us out of Vietnam and brought American troops home from Southeast Asia. He increased Social Security spending, advocated affirmative action programs for racial minorities, launched a broad environmental initiative, ended conscription (one year before I would have been eligible for the draft – Thank You Tricky Dick!), and was surprisingly progressive in his approach to handling inflation and unemployment.

Why else would Noam Chomsky himself remark that, in some respects, Nixon was "the last liberal president."? At his non-power drunk core, Nixon believed in using government wisely to benefit all and actually supported the idea of practical liberalism.

The stuff, aside from Watergate, that wasn’t so good: Nixon dealt too harshly with anti-war protesters while he approved and then expanded a covert bombing campaign in Cambodia, (some 20,000 American soldiers died while Nixon was in office, not to mention countless Southeast Asians) appointed several conservative Supreme Court judges, cut funds to NASA programs (we coulda had a base on the MOON!), and one has to say, on the uber-negative side, he could be considered one of the chief architects of the modern Republican party.

In spite of the self-rehabilitation efforts Nixon undertook in the years after his disgrace and resignation, the predominant historical image (and certainly my own) of Nixon was negative. He had made a lot of enemies during his political career, and politicians have long memories. Here are two quotes about Nixon from Democratic leaders from different generations:

"Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in." Harry S Truman

Ouch! (No disrespect intended, but when I read that quote, I try to hear it in Truman’s voice, which to me always sounded a lot like a cross between Pat Paulsen and Elmer Fudd)

"In 200 years of history, he's the most dishonest president we've ever had. I think he's disgraced the presidency." Jimmy Carter

(Now there are some who would argue that Carter was so ineffective as President that he would have no right to criticize. But Carter was above all, an honest man, a moral man – two traits he held as important attributes for a politician. While realizing that Carter was ultimately not a very good President, I like and respect him, and the added fact that he was also someone who knew history, and took it’s lessons seriously would cause me to believe his assessment of Nixon.)

So ultimately Nixon, like all “Bad” Presidents, is a bit of a mixed bag. This entire exercise has been a clear indication of the importance of embracing the Gray. Very little in the world, or indeed in history, is black or white. It’s the nuances in the vast middle Gray that make it so interesting.

Fun Facts: As a student, Nixon was known as Gloomy Gus. A great synonym for that is “Picklepuss”, which personally I think is more applicable here.

Nixon was the first president to visit all 50 states. Apropos of nothing, much like the Fun Fact that Nixon’s second Secretary of Agriculture was Earl Butz. Huh huh! “Butz”

Nixon was in Dallas on the day that John F Kennedy was shot. Conspiracy theorists: discuss.

And, most awesome of all: In 1970, Elvis Presley, more than likely fairly buzzed on painkillers, visited the White House to talk about drugs – and gave Nixon a gold revolver as a gift a gun which he somehow had managed to get past the Secret Service detail that guarded the President.

Calvin Coolidge: Bad President!

2010-03-27T06:18:00.001-07:00

August 2, 1923 – March 4, 1929 a term and a half.

“Silent Cal” – Coolidge was known as a man of few words, an image he took pains to cultivate and perpetuate. In his own words, few and far between though they were: "The words of a President have an enormous weight, and ought not to be used indiscriminately." Oddly though, he gave over 500 press conferences during his Presidency, so apparently he had a few words to string together, if not actually anything of substance to say.

When a guest (possibly Dorothy Parker) at a dinner said: "You must talk to me, Mr President. I made a bet that I could get more than two words out of you." He replied simply: "You lose." A few years later, when Parker was told Coolidge was dead, she actually did say: "How could they tell?" Perhaps in a way it was better that he didn’t speak very often: "When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results." Eat your heart out Yogi Berra!

Isolationist, champion of tax cuts, crusader against economic aid to farmers, supporter of Big Business, Calvin Coolidge pretty much believed that if the stuff of the Harding Administration wasn’t broke, why fix it? He was all about keeping the status quo – and why not? The stock market was careening along, and everyone thought The “Coolidge Prosperity” would go on forever, and in fact Coolidge Did Nothing (those are exactly the two words that sum up his Presidency) to dissuade people from believing it was all him. (Psssst! Don’t look now, but HooBoy! There’s a big cliff up ahead!) Of course, he also Did Nothing to counter the ugly reality that KKK membership was over 4 million during his administration. He made little squeaky noises about how awful lynchings were, and that Indians should have citizenship, and how maybe the U.S. oughta join the League of Nations, but never brought to bear the full weight of the Presidency to back it up. Did nothing. Also, Coolidge kept on most of Harding’s cabinet, a good many of whom were up to their nuts in corruption and scandal.

Although Coolidge was generally pretty popular with the Average Joe while he was President, historians began (like, minutes after he left office) to criticize his extreme “laissez-faire” approach to governing. The backing and forthing between Coolidge and Congress over aid to farmers is a good example – Coolidge wanted the market (which, for farmers at the time, was almost completely flat and sinking) to control itself, ("Farmers never have made much money," said Coolidge, the Vermont farmer's son, "I do not believe we can do much about it." And then went back to sleep. Atta boy!) Congress wanted to give the farmers an economic hand. In the end, what with the not passing of bills and the Presidential vetoing, Coolidge Did Nothing.

Meanwhile, those who believe that government should be hands off - providing only the most stripped-down minimal services for guys like, um, Average Joe - (like for example Ronald Reagan’s vast fan base) tried to re-cast Coolidge as a visionary leader in the crusade against “Big Government”. In the end, whether Coolidge was a good President or a Bad President may depend on what you believe the role of government, and especially the President, as the moral, emotional and political touchstone of the country he leads, should be.

Fun Facts: Vice President Coolidge became President when Warren G. Harding died while on a western goodwill tour. Coolidge, who was staying at his father’s farm in Vermont at the time, was awakened with the news, sworn into office at 2:47 AM, stood there for a minute to let the tragedy and grandeur of it all sink in, then went back to bed.

Coolidge slept for 11 hours a day - Groucho Marx once noticed Coolidge in the audience for a Marx Brothers show and shouted out: "Isn't it past your bedtime, Calvin?" Coolidge: "Four-fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still." H L Mencken: "Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but Coolidge only snores."

He had a pet raccoon called Rebecca, which was a gift from Peru. It was meant to be a culinary treat. (Contrary to popular belief, however, he did not have an Halibut named Eric.)

Warren G. Harding: Bad President!

2010-03-26T05:46:00.001-07:00

March 4, 1921 – August 2, 1923, one term

With Harding, who is widely considered the worst U.S. President of all the U.S. Presidents (well, yeah, until Bush, Jr.) it was all about a promise of “A Return to Normalcy” – (not to be confused with the Lifetime TV For Women movie with Denise Richards and Stephen Baldwin “A Return to Mediocrity”) which, after the horrors of The Great War, seemed like a dandy idea. The world came out of WWI completely changed, politically, topographically, socially – in many ways it was the actual turn of the Twentieth Century. But for Harding it was really only a campaign slogan masking his desire to open wide the doors of government to Big Business and hand them a cigar.

Here’s another Harding slogan: "Less government in business and more business in government" and as soon as he was elected he began to make good on that and other conservative Republican agendas: he approved legislation that eliminated wartime price controls and regulations, he slashed taxes, he established a Federal budget system, he restored the high protective tariff, and he imposed tight limitations upon immigration. He also pursued a rather xenophobic course when he reneged on a promise to push for America’s entry into the League of Nations, declaring against U.S. membership. (He also declared against U.S. membership in the Justice League and the Avengers)

Have I mentioned how corrupt his administration was yet? Wowee wow wow! Like most Presidents, Harding appointed his pals and cronies to positions of political power – unlike most Presidents, Harding’s pals were almost unabashedly corrupt. There were bribes, illegal no-interest personal loans in exchange for oil leases, profit-skimming, kickbacks, fraud – you name it, Harding’s “Ohio Gang” indulged in it. The results were scandal, prison terms, suicides – it was a soap opera of misconduct that defined Harding’s time in office and lasted well beyond his death. If you want to know how real government outrages were orchestrated in the Roaring 20’s, all you have to do is look up “Teapot Dome Scandal”. Whether or not Harding was in on the hijinks is up for historical debate, but he certainly knew about it. In his own pithy words, he put it this way: "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!

And O what a pithy phrase-turner he was!

Run your eyes over one of the best known examples of his waterboarding of the English tongue: "I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved."

Here’s what H. L. Mencken (the acerbic, widely admired and yikes, horribly anti-Semitic literary critic) said about Harding’s speech writing and speech making: "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." The 20’s were a wonderful time for language!

Or as E.E. Cummings put it, announcing Harding’s death: "The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead."

Aside from his struggles with English, Harding was apparently very likable – affable, gregarious, charming, especially with women, and by now women had the right to vote, nationwide – the problem was that he was out of his depth as a leader. Another compromise choice by the Republican party turns out to be a crappy President – what have we learned here? Anybody? Anybody? McCain?

Fun Facts: Harding had at least two extra-marital affairs. One of them, with the wife of his friend James Phillips, eventually resulted in the Republican National Committee making a monthly payment to Mr and Mrs Phillips in return for their silence. The other, Nan Britton, has been disputed, but still it’s wonderfully juicy and certainly sounds like our boy: a so-called "niece" 30 years younger than him, was sometimes pursued in a large cupboard near the president's White House office – and resulted in a daughter whom Harding never saw. Lifetime TV Movie For Women indeed!

Harding loved to play poker, and apparently he once gambled away, on a single hand, an entire set of White House china dating back to the presidency of Benjamin Harrison.

Harding died while in office, on a cross-country “Voyage of Understanding”, I’m guessing to explain the twisted wording of some of his speeches so that ordinary people could understand them. He was on his way back down the west coast from Alaska (first President to visit!) when he became ill, dying a few days later in San Francisco, in mid conversation with his wife. The reported cause of death was all over the map, including food poisoning, a heart attack, a “stroke of apoplexy”, respiratory illness, or maybe his wife did him in with poison. Rumors ran rampant, books were written, and people speculated endlessly. Disappointingly, it was probably simply a heart attack -Harding had been sick for a few days into the trip.

Harding and JFK – they actually had something in common other than rumors of mistresses – they were the only two Presidents to predecease their fathers.

Ulysses S. Grant: Bad President!

2010-03-26T05:43:00.001-07:00

March 4, 1869 – March 4, 1877, two terms!

Grant was actually not that horrible of a President, to his credit, he was an advocate of civil rights for African Americans and Native Americans, in a time when most people, and especially most politicians, weren’t. Grant actually worked to curb the power and violence of the Ku Klux Klan, and he pushed into law the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave freedmen the right to vote: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged... on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude." Um, unless you’re a woman, of course, in which case you’ll have to wait another few decades for that right.

He was however, just a bit of an inept Hiring Manager. He routinely installed inept and/or corrupt cronies into cabinet positions, and then allowed them to run fairly rampant. His administration was widely thought to be one of the most corrupt in history, mostly because Grant wasn’t really paying attention to what his cabinet was up to. There were lots of financial scandals involving close associates of Grant, (the 1869 Gold Ring Scandal; the 1872 Credit Mobilier Scandal; the 1874 tax collection scandal; the 1875 Whiskey Ring) though he himself was widely considered honest, the overall aroma coming from the White House during his two terms was Eau de Corruption.

Oh yeah and also, Grant was probably a flaming anti-Semite, if his General Order Number 11 of 1862 is any indication. Although issued when he was a general in Lincoln’s army, the order expelled all Jews from the Department of the Treasury because, as it stated: “The Jews, as a class, [are] violating every regulation of trade” – in other words: “Aw come on! Everybody knows the Jews control all the money!” That’s a bit “Third Reich-y”, don’t you think? (Lincoln rescinded the order after protests from Jewish leaders) Granted, Grant (ha ha, I know, right?) tried to make up for it when he ran for President, making a point of wooing Jewish voters and even offering the post of Secretary of the Treasury to a Jewish friend of his, Joseph Seligman. But the taint of anti-Semitism remained, even though Grant liked to insist that “Some of my best friends are Jewish!”

By the time his second term was winding down, Grant and his administration just couldn’t shake the popular impression that he and his people were irredeemably corrupt, and that, combined with the deteriorating conditions for blacks in the South cemented Grant’s place in history as a Bad President.

I always thought it was extremely impressive that at the end of his life, Grant, who was penniless and dying of throat cancer, threw himself into completing his autobiography, which he finished literally days before his death. The book was a massive bestseller and earned enough money for his family to live comfortably after his death. That certainly earns Grant a large measure of respect, inept Presidency or not.

Fun Facts: Apparently Grant was tone deaf (certainly when it came to the Jewish thing) and hated music. When you consider that popular songs of the period had titles like “The Dying Californian” (“now climbing the charts with a bullet – lodged in his spine!”) “The Oxen Song” (awesome video) and “The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks” (which sounds like a 19^th century euphemism for something dirty) that doesn’t seem all that strange.

As a child, Grant was nicknamed "Useless" by his father, apparently because of his ineptitude at everyday tasks. Thank Dad, for the gift that keeps on giving: Low Self Esteem!

Grant smoked 20 cigars a day, for which his throat thanked him by killing him with throat cancer.

Andrew Johnson: Bad President!

2010-03-23T21:34:00.001-07:00

April 15, 1865 – March 4, 1869, one term

National Unionist, kind of a Democrat, (Vice President under Lincoln, who was a Republican) April 15, 1865 – March 4, 1869, one term

Quote: "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men." This stuff pretty much writes itself.

The good: As a Senator from Tennessee, Johnson was the only southern senator not to quit his post upon secession, and he supported Lincoln’s military policies during the Civil War. He presided over the Reconstruction, in which he reversed his hard-line rhetoric against Southern sympathizers and put into place some of the more lenient policies Lincoln had advocated.

Not so good: His leniency towards the postwar South. He supported allowing prominent former Confederate leaders to be elected to Congress, which pissed off Congress and began a power struggle with the Radical branch of the Republican Party that undercut his power, reversed most of the legislation he supported, and largely defined his Presidency. He allowed the Southern states to replace slavery with “Black Codes”, which furthered the discrimination against the former slaves by reaffirming the notion that they were inferior and had essentially no civil rights.

Johnson was the first President to be impeached, though he was acquitted. The impeachment was essentially a pissing match between Congress and the President, each believing they were on the right side of the Constitution, each . . . oh wait, that pretty much describes everything of note that goes on in Washington, doesn’t it? At any rate, this time, Congress said Johnson had violated the Tenure of Office Act, which Johnson claimed was unconstitutional, and they were all, “Fraid not” and he was like “Yah Hanh” and they went, “No way” and he went “Fraid so”.

Even though after his presidency was over, Johnson was elected to the Senate for the state of Tennessee, so apparently there were a sizable number of good simple folks in Tennessee who thought he was aces!

Fun Facts: Johnson was one of the targets of the Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy. Lucky for him the guy who had the assignment to kill him, George Atzerodt, decided to get wasted on whiskey that night instead.

Johnson's inaugural address as Vice-President was rambling and incoherent. He had been drinking whiskey to dull the pain of typhoid fever.

When Johnson married his wife Elizabeth McArdle, he was 18. She was 16, the first child bride to become First Lady!

John Tyler: Bad President!

2010-03-23T21:32:00.001-07:00

April 4, 1841 – March 4, 1845, one term

Can you name a U.S. President who was not given a national day of mourning when he died? I couldn’t, but it turns out there was one: “His Accidency” John Tyler of the proud state of Virginia, home of the capitol of the Confederate States of America! Tyler was so loyal to the state (where he had been Governor) that when he died in Virginia in 1862, right in the middle of the Civil War, (it was considered “foreign soil” btw) and he was honored not one little bit in Washington.

Tyler was the Tyler in the oft-quoted campaign slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too”. “Tippecanoe” was William Henry Harrison, who dropped Tyler into the presidency when he died after only a month in office. Tyler hadn’t been elected President, but there he was, surprise surprise, moving on up to the White House. Now, because the Constitution was a bit fuzzy here, he caught a lot of flack from skeptics who believed he had legally assumed the duties of the Presidency, but not the office.

Tyler however, had no doubts about his hold on the Presidency, and he instantly broke from the Whigs in Congress, (who had propelled Harrison into the White House) which of course irked them no end, so the rest of his term in office was spent in pitched battle with them. They expelled him from the party, and most of his cabinet resigned. They tried to pass a resolution to impeach him, but that failed. He was just not a popular guy.

As President, Tyler did get some things done – for example, he helped solidify the agreement with the Brits firmly establishing the boundary between Canada and Maine. He also began the process of annexing Texas, which wasn’t completed during his term because his enemies in Congress blocked forward progress until after he left office.

After his Presidency he moved back to his 1200 acre estate in Virginia, unsuccessfully attempted to broker a peaceful settlement between the North and the South, and ended up serving as a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy. Hoo Dawgies! That didn’t sit well with the Yankees, as you might imagine!

Fun Facts: Tyler may have been a “shy, dignified” man, but apparently his sperm were more like drunken rugby players. Tyler was bold enough that he was able to marry twice and father a total of fifteen children during his life. Come to think of it, that’s more than enough for a rugby team right there.

The first White House security force was created for Tyler – four plainclothes officers - essentially because he was so stunningly unpopular.

Tyler was almost blown to bits by a huge gun the Navy was demonstrating aboard the U.S.S. Princeton – he escaped unscathed, six others on the ship weren’t so lucky, including two of his cabinet members (who had been appointed to replace the cabinet members who had resigned – did Tyler have bad luck with cabinets or what?) the father of Tyler’s wife-to-be Julia.

Franklin Pierce: Bad President!

2010-03-23T06:10:00.001-07:00

March 4, 1853 – March 4, 1857, one term

Almost always landing in the top five of the lists of worst US presidents, Franklin Pierce is conversationally characterized as being “timid and unable to cope with a changing America.”

To be fair it probably didn’t help that he and his wife were witnesses to their son being crushed to death in a train accident that they both survived. Mrs. Pierce apparently spent the four years as First Lady communicating via mail with their dead son, while Franklin, who had always been a bit of a drinker, increasingly sought advice and comfort from his old pal Jack Daniels.

But Pierce was a big advocate of state’s rights, and when he sponsored and signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, he basically opened up the possibility of slavery expanding into the west. The legislation overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and gave slave owners the right to take their slaves wherever they wanted (This was mostly because the boys in Washington were pushing for an east-to-west railroad through Nebraska) The Kansas Territory exploded into a violent mess (“Bleeding Kansas”) as southerners and northerners duked it out for control of the place, having essentially been given permission to figure it out for themselves.

Also it didn’t help that Pierce was anti-abolitionist, or in other words he kinda believed that there wasn’t anything really all that wrong with slavery. In letters that became public in 1863 - while the Civil War raged on - he characterized the conflict as “aimless” and “unnecessary” and that it’s true purpose “was to wipe out the states and destroy property.” Oops.

To his credit, Pierce was an advocate for strong civil liberties, chastising Abe Lincoln for suspending Habeas Corpus during the Civil War. Pierce firmly believe we should not abandon our protection of civil liberties, even in a time of war – imagine that, Bush! But this was after his presidency and few were listening any more.

Fun Facts: Pierce had no Vice President for almost his entire term, his running mate William R. King having died a month after the inauguration. Astonishingly, King was actually inaugurated in Cuba, where he had traveled for health reasons (he had been diagnosed with terminal Tuberculosis) He was the shortest serving Veep in American History.

King, btw, was rumored to be the “special companion” if-you-know-what-I-mean-and-I-think-that-you-do of the soon to be President James Buchanan, who has long been considered to be America’s first gay President.

Millard Fillmore: Bad President!

2010-03-23T06:07:00.001-07:00

July 9, 1850 – March 4, 1853, one term

Millard Fillmore, (not to be confused with the execrable right wing comic strip duck) was the last of the Whigs to become president. Just to give you an indication of why the Whigs went the whay of the dinosaur, they nominated Fillmore as Vice President because they saw him as the least controversial, or safest choice, right when the most controversial issue in U.S. history – slavery – was becoming, you should pardon the expression, white hot. Right when you’d want someone in power making a stand for morality and justice, for anything really, here’s what you got with Fillmore:

"God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil ... and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution."

Fillmore was the very definition of a Dark Horse: “a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence” - don’t let the name fool you though, he was a person, not a thing. And as it turns out, he was a person who didn’t want to alienate the Southern states.

His most significant act as President was to sign into law the Compromise Bill of 1850, which made these things law:

- Admitted California as a free state (obviously none of them ever lived here – “free” my a$$!)

- Abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia (but not slavery – psych!) - - Fixed the boundary of Texas and gave it money for making nice with

- New territory New Mexico

- And inexplicably, the bill also placed federal officers at the disposal of slaveholders seeking escapees. Ooops!

Compromise has a new name: “Fillmore!”

Fun Facts: Fillmore never actually met his Presidential running mate Zachary Taylor until after Taylor’s inauguration. Imagine that!

He was the first President to open up trade with Japan, sending a fleet there to open diplomatic and trade negotiations with the Japanese. The fleet was commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry, who as we all know went on to even greater fame as Chandler on the hit TV show “Friends”

Fillmore was not a highly educated man, so he prized books and reading as a way of making more of oneself – he started the White House library, where today you can still find brand new books left uncolored by Dan Quayle and Bush, Jr.

James Buchanan: Bad President!

2010-03-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

Democrat, March 4, 1857 – March 4, 1861, one term

Buchanan regularly makes the top five of Worst Presidents, but it has nothing to do with the rumors that he was gay. Widely considered to have been in waaay over his head, he was elected basically because he was considered untainted by the disastrous Kansas-Nebraska Bill of his predecessor Franklin Pierce. He had been abroad (not a gay innuendo) as the US ambassador to the UK for four years and was considered an ideal compromise candidate. Sorry Stephen A. Douglas!

Buchanan was the only US President to remain a bachelor. (not a gay innuendo)

A Northerner with Southern sympathies, (they called them “doughfaces”, which originally referred to “an actual mask (neither a gay, nor an S&M innuendo) made of dough, but came to be used in a disparaging context for someone, especially a politician, who is perceived to be pliable and moldable”! Isn’t history wonderful?) Buchanan mistakenly made the assumption that the slavery issue was all settled after the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott ruling. (The Court ruled that Congress had no constitutional power to exclude slavery in the territories. Yeah, that’s a great idea – “Let’s just leave it to all those law-abiding, rights-of-man-respecting crackers in the territories to do the right thing - let’s let Industry self-regulate!”)

Slavery slavery slavery!

Buchanan was a big supporter of admitting Kansas into the Union as a slave state, which pissed off almost everybody but slave owners eager to spread their scabrous custom into the west. He enthusiastically got behind (not a gay innuendo) a draft of the Kansas constitution that allowed slavery, which Congress thankfully rejected. He was so sympathetic to the slaveholders that he actually made the claim, during his 3^rd State of the Union Address that the slaves were "treated with kindness and humanity.... Both the philanthropy and the self-interest of the master have combined to produce this humane result" Ooops!

He did nothing to respond to a big financial crisis in 1857; his administration was permeated with corruption; he was the architect of “Buchanan’s Blunder” , the wacky misadventures of the U.S. troops sent to Utah to put down a nonexistent Mormon uprising; he didn’t act when South Carolina and six other states pulled out of the Union in 1860 . . . waaay over his head.

So relieved when Abe Lincoln finally replaced him in the White House, Buchanan was reported to have told Lincoln, "If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland you are a happy man."

Fun Facts: Buchanan and William Rufus King's close relationship prompted Andrew Jackson to refer to Buchanan and King as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy" (most definitely a gay innuendo)

In photos and paintings of Buchanan, his head was almost invariably cocked to the left. He was not pretending to be a dog. This was the result of an unusual sight disorder, in which one eye was short-sighted and the other long-sighted.

His nickname, almost inexplicably, was “Old Buck”. Maybe he was pretending to be a dog.

Because he never married, Harriet Lane, his niece, acted as his First Lady. Gosh, I hope she called him “Uncle Buck”.

Herbert Hoover: Bad President!

2010-03-22T06:22:00.001-07:00

This, like a good many other things, is all Bush’s fault.

And Herbert Hoover. I listen to a lot of Progressive radio, and of course a good deal of the conversation for the past 9 years has been pertaining to how abysmally awful a president W was. The general verbal drumbeat all through the last days of the Bush administration (and into the first year of the Obama presidency) was that Bush Jr. was the worst president since Herbert Hoover. The Hoover reference in particular was of course a direct historical reference to the economic policies that led to economic meltdowns – for Hoover it turned into the Great Depression – for Bush it teetered on the edge of Great Depression II, but so far, though still an economic disaster of Titanic proportions, has not yet fully sunk to that depth.

I had always had a vague historical impression that Hoover wasn’t one of the Great Presidents, but I wasn’t aware of where he would place in the standings, so to speak, of the Worst. Presidents. Ever. I Couldn’t imagine he was worse than W – but then the stench of the Bush years is still unavoidably pungent – still stuck to all of our shoes, if you will - so my historical objectivity is somewhat suspect. I thought I should educate myself at least to a cursory, Wikipedia level before I went around blithely repeating such historical besmirchment, so I did the Google and read a little bit about Hoover.

Turns out that, yeah, Hoover’s presidency wasn’t as chock full o’ greatness as your Roosevelts or your Lincolns, but in truth he was nowhere near as bad as Bush. In fact, according to a number of economic historians, Hoover came up with most of the New Deal ideas that we routinely credit FDR with - some of them jointly with Roosevelt as a result of working together to found the American Construction Council in the 20’s – in addition, Hoover supported numerous bills in Congress for public-works programs during depressions, was actually surprisingly pro-labor and collective bargaining, supported an eight hour work day instead of the twelve hours that was fairly common, and in general not at all the “do-nothing” laissez-faire loser that dominates the popular perception of him, if one still exists.

Okay, granted, he was a pretty unabashed corporatist – he believed that corporations could and would be self-regulating, and he advocated cartelizing industry (pro-American, of course) and other typically Republican pro-business-y stuff, but a “Do-Nothing”? Hardly. So I didn’t come away a fan of Hoover, but I was certainly historically chastened enough to second guess and double check, to question the (usually oversimplified and agenda-heavy) popular wisdom.

Doing all this reading of course also led me to lotsa pictures of Hoover, who had a good face for caricaturing, so I started messing around with a drawing and painting of him. Well of course I can’t do just one of anything, so when I had so much fun with Hoover’s face I decided to continue with the theme of the Worst Presidents in U.S. History, and basically just went with the picks by general historical consensus.

So herewith, over the next few days, are my humble efforts to celebrate via depictions of their odd visages, the HIstorically Agreed-Upon Weakest U.S. Presidents – the Worst Presidents Series. (with much less detailed historical notes for each)

The Mummy for Halloween

2009-10-27T05:55:00.001-07:00

Another Universal Monster for Halloween!

Boris Karloff as Ardath Bey as Imhotep the Mummy, from Universal's original 1932 version. Not a great movie as horror movies go - it's pretty slow, the plot shuffles along with the mummy, although the atmosphere is wonderfully creepy and the lighting and sets are great. Plus I just enjoy drawing Boris Karloff - he had an amazing set of facial features even without all the monster makeup.

Frankenstein For Halloween

2009-10-21T21:24:00.000-07:00

You know, as scary as Frankenstein is, he's got nothing on the scariness of an uncertain future. Last week I and about 50 co-workers were laid off from Slipgate Ironworks, where I'd been for two years, as the project was cancelled. It's the second time I've worked n a project for two years only to have it killed. I'm beginning to wonder if it's something I'm doing? Well, not this time anyway - this time it was because of "Insurmountable technical problems" early and ongoing decisions made by people who are still at the company. Ha ha - the current state of American Business - what are ya gonna do? Ha ha!

I am, in all honesty, much relieved, in spite of the scary uncertainty. The project had settled into a routine of instability and constant upheaval, and morale was beleaguered if not gravely wounded. Pulling the plug on the game, it turns out, was actually a blessing. May it rest in pieces. Once I landed from the rug having been pulled out from under me, I realized I could do any number of things, go any number of places - it was very freeing.

So anyway, Halloween is a mere ten days away, so I'm getting into the mood with the help of Frankenstein's Monster! (also, the DrawerGeeks subject this week is Frankenstein - http://www.drawergeeks.com/index.php)

Boris Karloff's monster is eternally fun to draw and paint - even more fun than Abe Lincoln - so I try to never miss an opportunity. Enjoy! And Happy Halloween!

Poison Ivy

2009-08-27T05:37:00.000-07:00

Admittedly I went a little overboard in playing around with the DrawerGeeks theme this time - I've been looking at Leyendecker a lot lately, so I made this feeble attempt to channel his amazing superpowers in portraying Poison Ivy weaving her sappy spell on The Batman.
With abject and humble apologies to Mr. L.

Mysterio's Birthday Party

2009-08-14T07:40:00.001-07:00

For DrawerGeeks - a somewhat hurried little snapshot of L'il Mysterio and his pals at his birthday party. The theme this time was "Spiderman"

Anne Hathaway paint test

2009-08-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

In attempting to broaden my meager abilities in Photoshop, I wanted to try mimicking a more classical paint style on a caricatured drawing. I started by grabbing a photo of Anne Hathaway cause I think she has a great face to draw and paint, kind of lends itself to a classical portrait look. Of course now I'm seeing all kinds of flaws in it, but . . . I gave myself a limited amount of time to work on it and needed to stop and get on to something else. I guess I'm about 75% happy with the way it turned out, and now I'm eager to try more of these exercises soon. (Hey! Meager and eager! In the same post!)

Oz Monkey

2009-07-31T07:05:00.001-07:00

Ahh, the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz - misanthropic, mindless wicked witch-minions, or sensitive, mistreated, misunderstood pawns, or perhaps just midgets in weird little suits? Whatever your opinion, they're awful fun to draw! Here's my entry for this week's DrawerGeeks. http://www.drawergeeks.com/

Betty & Veronica's Cougar Club

2009-07-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

This time around the DrawerGeeks (http://www.drawergeeks.com/) subject was Betty and Veronica, of Archie Comics fame.
I liked the idea of them being aged up a bit. I'm guessing they would age better than Archie himself, who, let's face it, was never that attractive even on his best day.

Night Angel

2009-06-24T05:54:00.001-07:00

Another entry for DrawerGeeks - (http://www.drawergeeks.com/) - this time around the meme theme was "angel". More playing with slapping a buncha textures onto a scanned and painted drawing in Photoshop.

Paramount Studios - October, 1968

2009-05-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

My first entry for Drawer Geeks! I think at first I stressed myself out juuuust a bit and was overthinking the whole thing - but in the end I'm pretty happy with the piece. Hope you like it too. Here's where you can see the rest of the awesome entries in this ongoing art meme\blog: http://www.drawergeeks.com

R.I.P. Bettie Page

2008-12-13T05:51:00.000-08:00

Here's part of her obituary from the L.A. Times:
Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85.

Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died Thursday night at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler.

A cult figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957. The photos showed her in high heels and bikinis or negligees, bondage apparel -- or nothing at all.

Decades later, those images inspired biographies, comic books, fan clubs, websites, commercial products -- Bettie Page playing cards, dress-up magnet sets, action figures, Zippo lighters, shot glasses -- and, in 2005, a film about her life and times, "The Notorious Bettie Page."

According to her agents at CMG Worldwide, Page's official website, www.BettiePage.com, has received about 600 million hits over the last five years.

A religious woman in her later life, Page was mystified by her influence on modern popular culture. "I have no idea why I'm the only model who has had so much fame so long after quitting work," she said in an interview with The Times in 2006.

She had one request for that interview: that her face not be photographed.

"I want to be remembered," she said, "as I was when I was young and in my golden times. . . . I want to be remembered as the woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form."

RIP, Forrest J Ackerman

2008-12-06T07:23:00.000-08:00

Forrest J Ackerman died on Thursday at age 92. Any kid who grew up in the 60's and loved monster movies would save their allowance to pick up the latest copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and I was no exception. Reading that magazine and drawing crude pictures from the photos therein propelled me deeper into exploring monster movies I had never seen, and inspired me to expand my interest into moviemaking in general.
Marveling at the pictures of Ackerman's astonishing collection of movie memorabilia also made clear the craft of moviemaking, from the close up photos of the stop-motion armatures from King Kong to the wonderfully lurid and endearingly cheesy posters from 50's sci-fi movies. His mansion and collection was a treasure trove of inspiration and imagination, and it satisfied (vicariously) my own urge to collect.
He was a pop culture historian, and by virtue of that became a pop culture icon in his own right.
Here's the obit from BoingBoing:
Forrest J Ackerman, the pioneering science fiction fan, editor and writer who coined the term "sci-fi," founded Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, 4e left the party on December 4, at 92, after a long illness. of heart failure at home at the legendary Ackermansion in Los Feliz in Los Angeles.
Among those who grew up reading Famous Monsters of Filmland was author Stephen King. Other childhood readers included movie directors Joe Dante, John Landis and Steven Spielberg, who once autographed a poster of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" for Ackerman, saying, "A generation of fantasy lovers thank you for raising us so well.
Ackerman was a celebrity in his own right, once signing 10,000 autographs during a three-day monster-movie convention in New York City. This, after all, was the man who created and wrote the comic book characters Vampirella and Jeanie of Questar and was the ultimate fan's fan: a man who actually had known Lugosi and Karloff and whose priceless collection of science-fiction, horror and fantasy artifacts ran to some 300,000 items.

The Barack Obama Mighty Mugg says: "Seven Days Until 'The End of an Error'!"

2008-10-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

My wee Obama Mighty Mugg encourages you all to cast your vote next Tuesday! (if you haven't already via absentee ballot or early voting)
The most important thing, regardless of who you support, is that you get out and make your vote count - although - the most intelligent, creative, evolved, articulate, caring and forward-thinking of us cool people are going to be voting for Obama & Biden, just in case for some reason you were still undecided.
If you're interested in building our economy and putting people back to work; if you're interested in exploring (and actually funding) new and innovative energy technologies that once and for all stops the stranglehold the oil industry has on us; if you're interested in providing quality affordable health care for every American; if you're interested in equality - that is, equal rights for same sex couples and pay for women in the workforce; if you're interested in rebuilding (and actually funding) an education system that not only educates but inspires kids; if you're interested in really taking care of the men and women who serve our country (both as soldiers and as veterans); if you're interested in if you're interested in halting the greed-fueled and illegal expansionist doctrine the Neo-Cons have been pursuing for the past eight years; if you're interested in beginning the process of rebuilding the U.S. into the better version of itself that we know it can be - if all that sounds like a better direction to you, Vote Obama/Biden.
The other party, led by Grampy McSame and Caribou Barbie (surely the weakest Republican't ticket since Harding/Coolidge in 1920) has certainly shown itself to be the party of More: eight More years of More fear, More help for the very wealthy and the corporate behemoths, More hypocrisy, More ignorance, More erosion of civil liberties, More religious intolerance . . . basically Bush II, only replacing Dick Vader with a beauty pageant runner-up.
You and I can make all the difference in the world by making a choice next week.
Mighty Mugg Obama sez: "DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!"

Marvel Janken

2008-03-25T06:44:00.001-07:00

Holy Crap! Two posts in the same month! Will wonders never cease?
This is a piece I did for my pal Mike, for his Hitote project on DeviantArt.
http://hitoteproject.deviantart.com/
Mike is a phenomenally talented concept artist and all around CoolGuy, constantly enveloped in a cloud of swirling awesomeness. Check out his main DeviantArt page and tell me I'm not right: http://zatransis.deviantart.com/
My contribution is what a game of "Rock/Paper/Scissors" might look like in the Marvel Universe. After doing lots of Googley research on Kanji, I am hoping against hope that I got that part right. Boy would my face be red if I had mistakenly used the symbols for something close but no cigar like "Rocket, Pay-Per-View & Scissor Sisters" or something totally random like "Dandelion, Lipstick & Mickey Mantle" or "Bacon Lettuce & Tomato" or ""Moe Larry & Curly". I worry, you know.

Captain Tomorrow!

2008-03-11T22:31:00.001-07:00

Captain Tomorrow was a character I created back in the late 80's for a project called Radio Shorts, along with my good friends Wes and Kyle. It was a half hour comedy/satire pastiche that was broadcast on San Francisco's KUSF for a while. Captain Tomorrow was a satire of a 1940's radio show featuring a time traveling adventurer from the "far flung future year of 1974!" Captain Tomorrow would journey back in time to help his little chums Tommy and Sally Miller battle Axis spies, all thanks to the magic of "Vacuum Tube Technology!"
At any rate, soon you can once again thrill to the adventures of Captain Tomorrow as well as a host of other wonderfully funny and subversive bits from Radio Shorts by virtue of the soon-to-be-completed Radio Shorts site, address soon to follow.
This is a logo illustration I did for Wes to help gussy up the website.

Not the same old jazz

2008-01-08T06:25:00.001-08:00

My buddy Shawn poked and nudged and cajoled, and now that my Fall class is done I have a bit more time to mess about again - AND SO - here's some new-ish sketchbook/Photoshop messing about. I think that's Hoagy Carmichael tickling the ivories, but I don't remember who the songbird is. Thanks for the elbow, Shawn!

Nostalgic for Nixon

2007-08-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

It seems like every day these criminal knuckleheads in the White House perpetrate some new appalling assault on the Constitution and our civil liberties.
Not to mention running up a leviathan of a budget deficit.
Not to mention carelessly presiding over these miserable adventures of futility in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemingly quite unperturbed by the daily deaths of scores of young American men and women as well as uncounted Iraqi civilians.
Not to mention continuing to reward the mostest wealthiest in our country with tax cuts while doing everything in their considerable power to demolish the middle class.
And on and on. It makes me almost nostalgic for the halcyon days of my youth when the crooks in the White House were like charming cultured amateurs compared to the current cabal. It makes me pine for the days of Nixon.
In retrospect, the antics of Nixon and his posse were like a Don Knotts/Tim Conway movie compared to the Bush, Vader-Cheney and their stormtroopers, or Morlocks, or Cylons, or (insert your evil minion symbols of choice here).
And when I get nostalgic, I go to both my Big Book of Presidents and my sketchbook and just start drawing the Nixon. It soothes me somehow, makes me think that maybe possibly there'll be some satisfactory end to what the Bush Mob is doing to our formerly great country. Because we did finally bring the power drunk Nixon and his merry crew of Constitution tramplers down, maybe we can do it again.
Who'd a thunk it: Nixon gives me hope.

It's a Major Award!

2007-07-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

My lovely and talented friend Shawn was nice enough to think of me and my blog last week and award me the THINKING BLOGGER AWARD! What a great thing it is, to be considered and remembered and honored so - very humbling and rewarding! (I realized all this only after I thought and thought and thought, of course . . . )

Thanks Shawn, you do me a great and powerful honor. Please go take a gander at Shawn's blog here: http://www.doodlegirl.com/blogger.html she's a wonderful, warm, thoughtful and playful person with whom I share a birthday and who I am ever so lucky to call a friend.

I've kind of been on a blog hiatus for a few weeks, trying to focus on other time and brain-consuming projects, (not brain-consuming like a surprise zombie attack, but brain-consuming as in "I wish I could focus on a few more things at the same time . . . Oooh look, a balloon!") so I guess I need to climb back on my blog saddle and blog something worthy of this nice award.

When someone wins this it behooves them to pay it forward to 5 other bloggers, so without further ado, here's some cool sites to peruse, some of good friends, some of people I don't even know:

http://www.jeffpidgeon.com/ - Jeff Pidgeon is one of the great story artists in the animation business, and just a hella good guy. (do people still say "hella"?) He's responsible for so many of the truly great gag sequences in the Pixar movies that I doubt if even he remembers them all. And he has a toy collection that would make your mouth and eyes water copiously.

http://www.ericjoyner.com/blog/ - Eric Joyner, painter of robots. And donuts. Say it out loud: "Robots. And Donuts!" Yes, in the same paintings! I've been fortunate enough to have known Eric for many years, and I'm crazy about his work. Plus he's an engaging and funny guy who works like a dawg.

http://www.simplestroke.com/wp/ - Dice Tsutsumi, currently of Pixar Studios, formerly of Blue Sky Studios, is a digital and traditional painter of exceptional merit. If you have seen saw the movie Robots and/or the book The Art of Robots you were treated to some of the most beautiful work currently done for animated film. You will be seeing more of his work in the upcoming Horton Hears A Who from Blue Sky. Dice is a pleasant, self-effacing guy who does much more wonderful art work than just digital paintings for film. Check out his blog and be humbled.

http://steamcrow.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 - I've only met Daniel M. Davis once, at a Comic Con, but I am constantly amazed by the scope of his creativity and artistic ability. And you can buy his quirky and brilliant concepts on shirts and stuff! Please have your credit cards ready . . .

http://woodyart.blogspot.com/ - Ryan Wood's blog of beautiful snarky and funny paintings. I don't know Ryan personally, but I am constantly inspired and entertained by his conceptually super cool and incredibly skillful work.

Thanks again Shawn!

Monkeys: Always funny

2007-06-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

Ya know what's always funny? That's right, monkeys are. Here's a random sketchbook page o' perplexed-looking monkeys. I defy you not to dissolve in helpless laughter! Or just feel ever-so-slight amusement, that'd be okay too.

Ill.Fri. - Citrus

2007-05-15T16:11:00.000-07:00

The stunning view of the Citrus-74E system, which took 12 years to reach for the crew of the Starship Luddite. Sadly, no one on board was alive to witness it, as the entire crew had long ago perished due to scurvy.

Ill. Fri. - Neighbor

2007-05-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

Two new movies - "Disturbia" and "Civic Duty" - are explorations into paranoia about who our neighbors are and, as Tom Waits sang: "What the hell is he doing in there?" They are of course modern takes on Hitchcock's "Rear Window", and I thought that might be an appropriate subject for the IllFri challenge this week.
For the most part I've always enjoyed watching "Rear Window", but there are so many aspects to it that I've always found so wierd and creepy, even for Hitchcock, that its not my favorite of his. (For what its worth, I'm partial to "North By Northwest", "Shadow Of A Doubt" and "Saboteur")
Wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart, with his big phallic telephoto lens, seems too old and entirely too cranky for the luminous, if a bit icy, Grace Kelly. His obsessive spying on his neighbors - a thoroughly recognizable human frailty though it may be - has always felt to me like it crosses a certain line of believability. It certainly makes Stewart's character less appealing, and the relentlessness of it it actually makes one a little sorry for poor, beleagured, lumbering Raymond Burr, as the killer Thorvald. He's loathsome, yes, but I can also understand his desire to just be left alone.
As for slimy character definition, I think the most successful scene in the movie is where Jimmy Stewart's character is watching his girlfriend getting strangled by Thorvald and he seems more worried about being found out as a peeping Tom than he is for her safety. Hitchcock and Stewart got that part creepily pitch perfect. It all makes you wanna close the curtains a bit tighter.

Ill. Fri. - Remember

2007-04-30T06:32:00.000-07:00

Elephants are supposed to have phenomenal memories, but you'd never know it with the recent parade of pachyderms up to testify on Capitol Hill. Is it true that an elephant never forgets? "I don't recall."

Ill Fri: Polar

2007-04-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

If global warming continues unabated, I imagine it'll be a much larger inconvenience for our little Happy Footed black and white pals down Antarctica way. What do you mean there isn't actually a big "South" pole there? I know I've seen pictures of it, and I'm pretty sure Bugs and Daffy will coroborate that.
Inspired by the art at such cool sites as http://www.pixeljoint.com/ and http://www.kennethfejer.com/isocity/ and http://www.x-panded.com/pixeldam/indexpixelmoon.html, I thought I'd try my hand at some pixel art. I used to do this back in the early 90's for Super Nintendo games, but haven't thought of it as an art form until seeing the work of artists like EBoy and Ill Fri contributor sosiukwan - http://sosiukwan.blogspot.com/. So here's my own amateurish, humble effort.
BTW: Clicking on the image won't make it all that much bigger, which is good, cuz it's meant to be viewed tiny.

Ill. Fri. - Fortune

2007-04-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Or rather, Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck and good fortune. Drifting in the cosmic currents, working her wheel to determine who gets a healthy crop, who gets the plague, and who wins "Project Runway".

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922 – 2007

2007-04-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

What sad news that Kurt Vonnegut died this week. He was truly one of the great American writers, often likened to Mark Twain - a brilliant humorist with a dark soul. He was a huge inspiration for me for a number of reasons. His easy-going, conversational style of prose came off as so relaxed, so off-handed, that it made me feel as if I could be a writer as well. Not that I am yet - obviously I’m still working on it - but his work sort of gave me permission to write things the way I felt they should be written.
Reading his novels also helped me make the transition between a steady diet of Science Fiction (almost to the exclusion of all other forms of fiction) into the world of More Serious Literature. I loved Cat’s Cradle for its sci-fi elements, but it also heightened my awareness of the absurdity of religion and the buffoonery of politics. Slapstick only further cemented my awe of his skills as a social satirist and even as a cultural surrealist, with its vivid imagery of a New York City in decay and miniaturized Chinese.
Even though his books had a deep cynicism, even fatalism at their core, they were always leavened with a hilarious absurdity. Breakfast of Champions, a tale of varying levels of failure and madness, was also wonderfully funny – it occurred to me at one point as I was rereading it a few years ago that the audio book would work well if narrated by Eeyore.
It’s a consolation of his passing that the news may spur people who’ve never read any of his great body of work to try one or two. For me, the melancholy is mixed with pleasant memories, causing me to dust off and reread the works of his I love the most, and expand to a few of the works I haven’t yet enjoyed.

Ill. Fri.: GREEN

2007-04-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

As long as I've been semi-aware, "green" has always been slang for money. Now I'm admittedly not always the brighest star in the firmament, so it took me awhile to realize that our currency, our money, our "green", is not really green any more. In an effort to foil nefarious counterfitters, (as well, I suspect, as to make sure those pesky Euros don't outshine us in the money design department) our Treasury Dept. has been tarting up our foldin' money for the past few years. As a public service, and just to help familiarize you with the particulars of the new designs, here's a diagram, with helpful callouts, of the new $10 bill. Note that the government is doing their best to keep costs down by selling ad space on the bills, (not unlike the practice of professional sports team owners selling naming rights to their stadiums) such as the trademark web border design commemorating the upcoming release of Spider Man 3. "Green" no more.

Ill. Fri. - Snap

2007-04-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

The very last sound you want to make when you're out hunting dragons.

Fun with Batman

2007-03-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

I'm a big Batman geek. I love the mythology about him and his origin; I love all his gadgets, the more outrageous the better; the brilliance of his scientific and dectective abilities; and the fact that he's a self-made man,(except for the fact that he inherited millions from his industrialist father) in terms of his physical prowess - I've been a fan since I was a kid.
It seems like every other page in my sketchbook has some goofy Batman drawing on it, so I thought I'd share a few of them.

Ill. Fri. - I Spy

2007-03-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

It just feels like someone's always out there, listening bugging tapping monitoring and yes, watching. Hello Patriot Act, Goodbye Civil liberties!

Ill. Fri. - Total

2007-03-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

Since the Britney saga seems inescapable no matter where you look or how you try to avert your eyes, I gave in. I kept thinking: Total mess . . . Total train wreck . . . Total meltdown . . . or maybe Total schadenfreude. At any rate, its total something . . . hmmm, perhaps Total cultural bankruptcy . . .?

Ill. Fri. - Wired

2007-03-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

Being sick all last week gave me the opportunity to reaquaint myself with a few favorite books, like Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy; Jon Stewart's America The Book, and the Leslie Cabarga collection of Progressive German Graphics. (I was woozy, and chose completely at random . . ) So I think I had a hankerin' to do a logo for a German coffee seller, set in 2007, either that or this is the long forgotten Dick Tracy villain Spiral Eyed Goatee Face. Twas coffee made me well again!

NEW DESIGN at SEE RED!

2007-03-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

Please, when you get a minute, go to http://www.cafepress.com/seered and check out my latest design! If, like me, you're a big time coffee drinker, this may just be the design you need. I suppose I could also call this "Even Robots Get the Jitters" - possibly too much of a good thing. I know whenever I see a robot drinking a big ol' Venti of Electro Jolt Java, I give him a wide berth . . .

Illustration Friday: Communication

2007-02-24T11:45:00.000-08:00

Even if you don't speak the same language its important to try . . .

Special Request

2007-02-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

This one's for my pal Dennis - a fellow fan of the Munster - because I know sometimes, when asked, I'm tempted to fill in my address as "1313 Mockingbird Lane". My humble attempt to pay homage to the late great Fred Gwynne.

NEW DESIGN at SEE RED!

2007-02-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce another new design over at my CafePress site - for all of us who have worked as, or with, the undead. Please go have a look and purchase things if the spirit moves you. Here:
http://www.cafepress.com/seered

Illustration Friday: Gravity

2007-02-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

The result of an unfortunate confluence of my cartoon knowledge of science history and vodka . . .

Ill Fri: CRASH

2007-02-10T07:34:00.000-08:00

With apologies to M. Duchamp

IllFri: sprout

2007-02-02T07:18:00.000-08:00

Another sketchbook robot who seemed quite sprout-like. Believe me, it was hard, but I resisted the urge to grow a leaf from his antenna.

IF: Red

2007-01-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

I was just finishing up messing with this Greedy Little Demon when the Illustration Friday topic came in, so I'll call him "Red".

Illustration Friday: Super Hero

2007-01-19T07:17:00.000-08:00

I was gonna try and be clever and conceptual, you know - a firefighter, Muhammed Ali, Rosa Parks - any of whom would have been great, but I went the sorta obvious route. This is admittedly what first comes to mind when I think of a superhero. Too many DC comics as a kid to override that set of synapses. And while we're on the subject of good ol' Superman, can I see a show of hands please: Who else out there HATED "Superman Returns"? Okay, perhaps HATED is too strong and judgemental a word . . . who else DESPISED LOATHED DETESTED (were) SICKENED (by) "Superman Returns"? Um, other than me?

Fun with Frankenstein

2007-01-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

Like my old pal Lincoln, Frankenstein's Monster is iconic. And always tons of fun to draw. I can't resist the big lug, as this sampling from various sketchbooks will attest. He just keeps popping into my brain (also admittedly abnormal). My hat will be forever tipped to Daniel Davis over at Steam Crow Press (http://steamcrow.com/) for combining the two icons to create his "Lincolnstein" graphic. Brilliant. Check out his line of fine products.

Illustration Friday: "80's"

2007-01-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

So many images to choose from . . . why Grimley? I dunno, I guess he was always just such an island of sanity for me in an otherwise unstable decade . . . I must say.

BUZZ

2007-01-05T06:58:00.000-08:00

Don't you hate it when you see two people gossiping and you just know it's about you?

Worst. Bond. Ever.

2007-01-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

After having dipped in and out of SpikeTV's latest "007 Days of Xmas" Bond-fest, and especially after being blown away (out of my seat thank you Jesus blown away) by Daniel Craig and Casino Royale, it's really finally official: Roger Moore was the worst. There's just too much evidence, from listening to him pronounce villain's names like "Scaramanger" and "Katanger", to gaping at him as James Bond wearing a goddam clown costume to seeing his puny head crushed in the gigantic hand of "Jaws" - okay that was actually pretty funny - to his parade of D list leading ladies (Britt Ecklund? Lois Chiles? Tanya Roberts?) oh there's so much more. Even his Bond-trademark through the gun barrel attempt was stiff and unconvincing! I think the most damning piece of evidence was simply the slightly terrified expression that always came over his face whenever he was called upon to perform any action sequence. And that hair . . .

Two New Designs available on SeeRed!

2006-12-21T13:56:00.001-08:00

I've just posted two new designs up on my SeeRed CafePress site - please do take a look at 'em and feel free to make many purchases. I know, they're too late for Christmas, but what a perfectly dandy place to spend some of that Christmas money Gramma gave you because she has no earthly idea what you're into these days . . .
www.cafepress.com/seered

Fun with Lincoln

2006-12-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

I never get tired of drawing Lincoln Heads in sketchbooks. Sometimes they're just your garden variety Lincoln heads. Sometimes they turn into really odd little ideas, and thankfully I have no idea where they come from.

Funny giant robots

2006-12-06T05:22:00.000-08:00

As much fun as it is to absentmindedly doodle robots in my sketchbook endeavors, when the robots are of the GIANT variety -stomping around downtown, messing with buildings and cars and hapless little citizens - well, somehow that's even cooler. Some of my favorite giant robot art for my money is that of my friend Eric Joyner. Eric has been painting robots (and donuts) for a couple of years now and just gets more adventurous with each batch. He has a new show at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City - www.coreyhelfordgallery.com - check out his homage to N.C. Wyeth "Raiders". I think my current favorite is "Desert Rider", but I'm sure that'll change. Here's Eric's own website: http://www.ericjoyner.com/

Sketchbook Flotsam

2006-12-04T07:19:00.000-08:00

Even though I've been lax in keeping up with blog posts, I've managed to continue pouring stuff into my sketchbooks, and only because I actually had a friend ASK for it, I decided to share some sketchbook work. These are mostly just weird little ideas, unrelated to anything other than the joy of drawing whatever I want.

Two New Designs at See Red!

2006-12-01T15:05:00.000-08:00

Finally. A new post. Funny, it doesn't seem like two months went by with no activity here - but alas, that's the case. So, by way of attempting to make amends - here are two new designs you can find over at my CafePress site:
http://www.cafepress.com/seered
I thought I'd try out a couple of concepts from one of my sketchbooks again, filtered through Illustrator. Please enjoy, and the spirit moves you and the wallet allows, purchase to your hearts content.
I think I like the cups best. There's just something about a dead monkey smoking on my cup of coffee first thing in the morning that lets me know it's gonna be a GREAT day!

Vizslas Are The New Black!

2006-10-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

Here's another Vizsla-inspired design (you can find it applied to all sorts of merchandise over at www.cafepress.com/seered) done in Illustrator, as well as the sketches from my sketchbook from which it comes.

I finally have a website, mainly constructed for the pupose of viewing my working portfolio.
Go here: http://web.mac.com/jimpy723 and marvel at what amazing things one can do with iWeb and loads of free time.

It's all about the nose

2006-08-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

I have been ignoring neglecting eschewing and forgetting this blog pretty much since Mr. Buckley came home back in March. Since he has happily taken over our lives I might as well post stuff about him in lieu of new artwork. So here are some pictures of him in action - swimming, hunting, and just generally voguing. He's a handsome dog, and quite elegant, even at only 7 months. He's also a complete kook. But back to the hunting - you can see in one shot he is posing with Vanessa and I after earning his first point (3 more to go) towards his Jr. Hunter title! His hunting abilities are amazing, and he has such a blast in the field. It's really quite wonderful to behold him doing his thing. He finds the hidden birds in a 5 acre field with only his nose and a breeze, then points (standing perfectly still) until I can dislodge the bird (which B-man happily chases as it fliew away) and fire off a gun loaded with blanks to simulate a shotgun going off. He was picture perfect on Sunday, and this weekend he gets 2 more chances to earn points. I'll let you know how he does.

Back after a long puppy-induced absence! Now with Product!

2006-06-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Having a puppy takes up a good deal of your time and energy - huh huh! Who knew? All of a sudden your time is not so much your own, and lower priority activities fall by the wayside, and lo and behold, 2 and a half months have gone by without a single post to your blog. I suppose I would have had some great entries had I been diligently writing about what was happening each day with Mr. Buckley, but it never seemed like I had the time OR energy - I feel like I'm exhausted all the time by the little monkey. He's an incredibly sweet little dog, smart and loyal and a real character, and it's so rewarding and energizing to have him. I'm just now starting to get back to being some kind of productive.
And the first fruits of my productivity are - suprise surprise - puppy related! I have a CafePress site - https://www.cafepress.com/seered - that offers this fine design on all kinds of typical Cafe Press merchandise, with more designs to follow soon. Please take a look and buy a mug or something, support the memory of the Magyar Hordes!

Puppy Time!

2006-03-26T14:01:00.000-08:00

We just brought Buckley home Friday - nine weeks old and oh. My. God. Is he something! He's a Vizsla, a Hungarian hunting and companion dog. He's been home for two and a half days now and I think between the two of us we've gotten about 4 hours of sleep. And yet . . . no complaints - he's a sweetie.

Just Like Norma Said . . .

2006-03-23T05:49:00.000-08:00

"We had faces then!" Or something to that effect. I think it must be the constant deluge of magazine covers with your Lindsays and your Ashlees and your Parises (Pari? Pariahs?) that gets me all nostalgic for the glamour and allure and cheekbones of old Hollywood. Your Garbos and Dietrichs and even Crawfords (before she started drawing on her own eyebrows aith a Sharpie) Your Clarence Sinclair Bulls and your George Hurrells. I mean don't get me wrong, I like looking at Scarlett Johanson as much as the next guy, but it's rare that you see glamour photography nowadays that showcases female beauty without big arrows pointing to a cavernous cleavage.
Jeez, I sound more like a codger every day - I gotta stop watching TCM.

It's the pictures that got small . . .

2006-03-06T08:05:00.000-08:00

Post Oscar hangover . . .
Norma Desmond was so right - they had FACES then. Now we get your Jessica Albas (Jeez girl, EAT something!) and your Jennifer Garners (all features except her eyes are oversized now that she has those milky mommy boobs) and your Jennifer Anistons (probably a nice woman, but even more ordinary than Julia Roberts if such a thing is possible) and dozens of other "Stars" both male and female imposed upon us.
Best Picture: Crash? I wasn't that crazy about "Brokeback Mountain" as Best Pictures go but at least it was a whole lot more memorable and discussion-generating than "Crash". I remember leaving the theater after seeing "Crash" and being more mindful of what kind of burito I was going to get for dinner. Mmmm, Carne Asada!
I am now officially a fogey - No matter how many times I pinch myself I can't believe they gave an Oscar for Best Song to "It's Hard Out There For A Pimp" - and I'm still pissed off this morning that the damn thing is stuck in my head. "It's Hard Out There For A Prostitute" maybe, but the concept of Pimp Sympathy is kinda problematic to me.
I thought Jon Stewart did well, in spite of a dead zombie audience. The Oscar-campaign commercials mimicking political campaign hit pieces (undoubtedly done by the Daily Show team) were really clever and funny. And even though it may have been slightly geeky, I thought Ben Stiller in the green suit was inspired and laugh out loud hilarious.
I was sad/glad to see Joe Ranft remembered in the memorial tribute, and annoyed they left out Don Knotts, Darrin McGavin and Dennis Weaver. And in general I thought the montages were too fast and that stupid Bill Conte and the stupid orchestra played way too loud over everything. The new ploy of playing music under the award winners to hasten them off the stage long before their time was up was tacky and annoying, even for the Oscars.

Sketchbook Superheroes

2006-03-03T05:53:00.000-08:00

Seeing other artist's sketchbook pages is always mightily inspiring, but also humbling and a bit daunting when I see the quality of thhe thoughts and images that emerge from other heads/hands. Nevertheless, in the spirit of my goal of being more of a contributor to the world than just a consumer, here are a couple of recent sniglets from my sketchbook done during a trip to Arizona to visit my friend Mike.

Ashlee Simpson Rant

2006-02-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, mine is a contrary and controversial opinion - hunh? it isn't? oh good, I'm certainly most comfortable swimming with the rest of the school - I was moved to attempt to capture her shovel-to-the-face visage after watching the indie movie "Undiscovered". Don't ask. Every so often V and I like to construct our own "So Bad It's Good" mini film festivals. (You haven't really lived until you've watched a double feature of "Showgirls" and "Glitter" in one sitting. My favorite snippet from an actual EW review of "Glitter" when it was in release: "Mariah Carey acts with all the nuance of a catatonic lemur." Nice.) So we checked out "Undiscovered" and realized what an awesome double feature it would make when coupled with "From Justin To Kelly". Gives me the shivers just picturing it.
In "Undiscovered", we are subjected to continuous jittery hand held camerawork, (for no discernible reason aside from the DP ingesting too many venti macchiatos) inconsistent character development, careless story arcs, truly juvenile acting, and the embarrassing spectacle of Ashlee Shovelface doing her best impersonation of Susanna Hoffs. Someone must have convinced her that if she constantly looks sidewise all the time when she's on camera people might mistake it for an alluring, mysterious personality. Or any kind of personality. Where have you gone, Garbo? And I just gotta say, that smarmy Britney pseudo little girl ("I'm not yet a woman, except for this massive rack I like to parade around") voice of hers is like scraping rusty metal against itself. Or a sack of dyspeptic cats.
It's easy to pick on Ashlee, I really should find better things to do with my time, but one grows weary when talentless individuals like her are constantly shoved down our collective throats everywhere we look. Can't I just be in line at Safeway buying my Hot Pockets in peace without having to see her aforementioned chestballoons and witchypoo face plastered on every other magazine cover? (mustn't neglect Lindsay and Paris and Jen and Hilary) I mean I like a bit of tasteful cleavage as much as the next red-blooded male but let's have some standards here people!

Illustration Friday Chair

2006-02-10T06:26:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Drawn! (Most. Addictive. Blog. Ever.) for pointing me to the Illustration Friday blog. Cool idea. Must participate. Here's a chair drawing I really liked, done for a free lance job a while back. Who'd a thunk a chair could be so much fun to draw?

Jackie and Hank

2006-02-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

Two of the greatest players of all time - Jackie Robinson, who officially broke baseball's color barrier, and Hank Aaron, still the most prolific home run hitter of all time. Jackie is done in acrylics, Hank is oils, both were drawn directly onto the page of the sketchbook with no workup sketch, and away I went with the paint. These are two of my favorites - I was especially happy with the way Hank turned out.
I'm gonna cease with the baseball heads for awhile, post some other stuff, some odds n' ends n' caricatures n' rants. But there'll be more in the future, rest assured.

Honus Wagner and "King" Kelly

2006-02-07T06:03:00.000-08:00

I got a bit lazy on these two. I wanted to do drawings from the early days of Major League baseball and I had all these great photos to work from, but I just didn't wanna cut any friskets. So I tried a couple of monochromatic faces, just a drawing in charcoal, a spritz of acrylic, and some highlights with colored pencil. While I like the drawing of Honus Wagner better (and he does have some color blending going on) these ultimately proved to be two of my least satisfying faces.
Mike "King" Kelly initially played for the Reds starting in 1878, apparently one of the great players of his era and perhaps of all time. The books say he played every position and was noted for his nimble baserunning. After a few stellar years with the White Sox in the 1880's, he was traded to the Boston Braves. This so riled the Chicago fans that they actually boycotted games unless Boston was in town, they loved Kelly so much. Fan loyalty back in the day.
Honus Wagner, AKA "The Flying Dutchman" was a tremendous talent and the first Hall of Famer. A legendary shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Wagner did everything well. He hit for average, ran the basepaths like a madman (he once stole Home twice in the same game) and was so loyal to Pittsburgh that he turned down big money to go play elsewhere. It's Wagner's baseball card that continues to be the Holy Grail for collectors, (fetching $1,265,000 at auction in 2000) being so rare because Wagner demanded that the card cease to be printed because he thought the card's sponsor, a tobacco company, promoted unhealthy living. Wagner didn't like smoking, although apparently he did chew tobacco.
So wait a minute, let me get this straight - a professional baseball player who turned down big money out of loyalty to fans, played for one team essentially his entire career, objected to being glorified by a tobacco company because he objected to the substance, and was known for his modesty as much as his playing prowess? Wow. It's almost like reading about another species.

Dizzy Dean and Babe Ruth

2006-02-03T06:24:00.000-08:00

A number of years ago a friend gave me a copy of the book Baseball's Golden Age, The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon, a beautiful collection of images of some of the greatest players in the game's history. Most of the photos are from the 10's & 20's, black & white,very close up and with a sense of intimacy you don't get from regular publicity shots or baseball card portraits. I was playing around with a Prismacolor blending pencil - a pencil infused with a bit of solvent to break down and blend regular Prismacolor colored pencils to give them a look as if they were charcoal or conte - and wanted to draw from some of the Conlon photos, so I just drew the faces dirctly onto the page of the sketchbook (instead of figuring the face out on tracing paper then projecting the drawing onto the sketchbook via the lucigraph, which was the method for most of these baseball faces) and started blending. I liked the strong structural, yet almost ghostly quality of these drawings a lot, in contrast to the slightly slicker finish of the airbrush/colored pencil pieces.

Cecil Fielder

2006-02-01T06:10:00.000-08:00

One of the big power hitters of the early 90's, Fielder (in 1990) was the first Major League player in almost 30 years to hit more than 50 home runs, something that has since become almost commonplace each season, what with weight training and steroids. He played for the Detroit Tigers for a few years and then helped the Yankees win a World Series in 1996.
The photo I was working from here was really dark, and I wanted to do something in a low key, limited palette. A good exercise, but not a very punchy result, although I do like his expression.

George Foster

2006-01-30T06:10:00.000-08:00

A member of the Cincinatti Reds' during their "Big Red Machine" years, along with Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion and Joe Morgan, to name a few.
Somewhere along the line I misplaced the sketches for this drawing, which is too bad, because I'd like to see what the evolution/struggle was for this drawing. I remember there was something in the photo of Foster I was working from that reminded me of a wierd combination of a cubist painting and Kabuki makeup, so I tried to combine the two and came up with this, one of my favorites from this group. It was drawn with a charcoal pencil, spray-fixed then painted with acrylics.

Bill "Moose" Skowron

2006-01-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

First baseman, power hitter and hero of the 1958 World Series for the Yankees (featuring teammates Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra) over the Braves (that's the Milwaukee Braves by the way, featuring Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn) Moose seemed to hit a lot of dramatic game-ending home runs, more than a couple of them Grand Slams. Even though I've never been a Yankees fan (with the occasional exception, when some Yankee did something just too amazing not to be impressed, like Reggie Jackson's three home runs off of three different pitchers in the '77 Series over the loathsome Dodgers) how could I resist drawing a guy nicknamed Moose with a face like this! Like a lot of the older players in this series of drawings, Moose pretty much caricatured himself, as you can see from the minimal evolution of the sketches to the finish. Sometimes getting the look of the face is a struggle for me, requiring more looking and more work, more false starts, and sometimes it just seems to emerge on its own.

Ferris Fain

2006-01-27T05:46:00.000-08:00

Another player from the 50's about whom I know next to nothing, but I liked his face a lot. Ferris Fain played 1st base for the Philadelphia A's. That's all I got, stat-wise, but isn't that a great face?

Willie McGee

2006-01-27T05:42:00.000-08:00

Since the Giants were usually long gone by October for the most part, I'd see a lot of the other teams and their players in post-season play. Seems like for a while there, (okay, still) the St. Louis Cardinals were always finding a way into the playoffs, if not the World Series then at least the League Championship. In the 80's that meant seeing lots of closeups of guys like Willie McGee, who was a consistent hitter and a rabbit on the basepaths. He was perfect for caricature, (as was Ozzie Smith, whom I have yet to do) and when I found a good shot to work from, I decided to set aside my airbrush and try straight acrylic painting, fat over lean. I also wanted to play with a different palette, just to keep the images from getting stale and predictable. I was pretty happy with the way the caricature came out on this one - I felt I pushed it as far as I had wanted.

Don Mossi

2006-01-26T06:25:00.000-08:00

Here's a player I know nothing about, except he pitched for the Cleveland Indians in the 50's and has a great face that begs to be caricatured - long thin and vertical, with big ears sticking way out and a mischievous look in his eyes. I had to reign in my first sketch, proportionally, as you can see here. I used to do all my initial workup drawings on tracing paper, then refine with another sheet over the first sketch, which would frequently be waaay off proportionally.
Personal political-incorrectness caveat: Being an unenlightened kid growing up in mid-60's suburbia, (ignorance is a thin excuse, I know) it never dawned on me until I was an adult how offensive the team name and logo for teams like the Redskins (YOW!) and the Indians was. I merely thought Chief Wahoo was a funny, vaguely 30's little cartoon face. Not that anyone's asking me, but the inherent racism behind the name of the team - while unfortunately the norm for 1914 - has no place in the 21st century, where we should be a whole hell of a lot more aware and evolved than to name a sports franchise after the ethnicity of the indigenous people of the continent. Such ignorant, insensitive, umm, let's say, corporate thinking that reduces an entire race and countless complex cultures to cartoonish negative stereotypes should be beneath us in this day and age. One would hope. Say, maybe they should go back to being called the Cleveland Spiders? Product tie-in with Marvel and Universal! Tobey McGuire could throw out the first pitch! Gotta dream the dream...

Ernie Banks

2006-01-26T05:20:00.000-08:00

"Let's play two!"
A lot of these players I chose to paint because I simply liked the way their faces looked or they had a particular expression that was fun to capture. I don't know much about Ernie Banks, but I had always heard of him as a tremendously popular player for the Cubs, mostly when I'd listen to the Giants games on the radio announced by the amazing Hank Greenwald. Hank was tremendously entertaining every single game, a treasure trove of anecdotes, stats and knowledge of the game. He not only transported you to the ballpark but he expanded your knowledge of the incredible nuances of the game itself, AND he had a terrific sense of humor. I remember him describing Ernie Banks as a wonderfully enthusiastic player, always ready to play a doubleheader.

Rob Dibble

2006-01-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

"Nasty Boy" Rob Dibble used to annoy the hell out of me when he pitched against the Giants. He was one of those slovenly, unkempt, and oh yeah, maddeningly effective pitchers who seemed to do really well against my team right when I really didn't want him to - at least in 1988. This piece is from his 1989 Donruss card, after his first season in the majors. I've always liked the way this one turned out, and it think it's largely because my emnity for Dibble helped fuel the success of the caricature. I usually find it harder to do a strong caricature of someone I admire than someone I dislike.

Andre Dawson

2006-01-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

Although I've always been a Giants fan, I have a soft spot for the Cubbies as well. I've been to Wrigley Field twice - I love the environment in the ballpark and in the neighborhood surrounding it - I do like the city of Chicago. As you can see I wasn't concerning myself with backgrounds too much when I did this image (probably 1993) aside from the minimal representation of Wrigley's brick wall (right field, the position Dawson played). I pretty much decided against backgrounds after doing this one, wanting to concentrate on just the faces, which is what I was most interested in to begin with. I really liked Andre Dawson's intensity when he played for both the Expos and the Cubs, and I thought this image from the back of his '92 Score baseball card showed it well.

Baseball Faces 1 - Frank Robinson

2006-01-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

As promised, one of the pages from my baseball faces sketchbook. This is Frank Robinson, currently the manager of the Washington Nationals, shown here as a player for the Cincinnatti Reds back in the 60's. Here I'm showing the first sketch, then the refined finshed drawing that would then be projected onto the page. These are each 5" X 7 3/4" and live in a leather bound sketchbook. This one is done in the same technique described in the Will The Thrill post. More players to follow.

Will The Thrill

2006-01-20T06:28:00.000-08:00

Way back in the 80's when I was plodding along making a meager living as an illustrator I used to work in a satisfying but torturous technique that involved airbrush and colored pencil. HATED cutting friskets. Now thanks to my good friends Photoshop and Illustrator, my airbrush is retired, my compressor long gone. I still have lots of Xacto knives but since I don't need to cut any more friskets with them I'm less inclined to have the urge to slit my wrists with them. Good times. Good times.
But I did like the result of my illustrative labors in those days, so I thought I'd give the Sidekicks a rest for a while and unearth a few older pieces for your viewing pleasure (both of you) As MAD magazine used to say, Suitable for framing - or wrapping fish!
I'm a hopeless baseball fan, and I've been keeping a painted sketchbook going on and off for years now of just baseball faces. It mostly started with this piece, Will "The Thrill" Clark, which was comissioned by the awesome illustrator/entrepeneur Murray Tinkelman for his traveling exhibit of illstrations "The Art of the Baseball Card". I was honored to be invited to participate in the show, to hang on the wall with such great illustrators as (to name just a couple) Chris Payne, Bernie Fuchs, Bob Dacey, and Murray himself.
This was from a Topps card from 1989, the year the Giants went to the World Series (the Earthquake Series - they were swept by the A's. Bummer.) I think this is from a scanned slide, so the quality is a bit flaky. I'm including a scan of the pencil drawing on tracing paper that was projected via good old Lucigraph onto the preparred illustration board surface. I'd spray fix the charcoal underdrawing, then cut friskets and do the airbrush underpainting (also creating a nice tooth for the colored pencil to follow) then blend in billions of tiny sharp strokes of colored pencil till finished. Usually I'd pop some highlights on with acrylic or goache at the very end.
I'll post a few of my baseball heads sketchbook paintings next.

Dr. Watson

2006-01-16T09:24:00.000-08:00

"Quick Watson, the needle!" In his original literary incarnation as well as the BBC/Jeremy Brett versions he was Sherlock Holmes' friend and colleague, rather than a mere sidekick. But the Watson as protrayed by Nigel Bruce in the Holmes movies of the 30's/40's was definitely more of a typical movie sidekick, providing comic relief rather than a conscience or a chronicler of the adventures. While certainly more dignified than your Barney Fife or your Ensign Parker, I think he qualifies as a slightly higher brow Hollywood sidekick.

Asta

2006-01-13T07:52:00.000-08:00

Asta, famous four-legged sidekick to Nick and Nora Charles of the Thin Man mysteries, as well as frequent crossword puzzle clue. Who says all sidekicks have to be human?

Boy, I Wonder

2006-01-11T06:25:00.000-08:00

Boy, I Wonder . . . what would Burt Ward (as in "youthful") have done with his life if it weren't for the BATMAN TV series? I'm guessing the answer is probably what he did after the show was canceled - umm - shopping mall openings and comic conventions. When it was originally broadcast on ABC, BATMAN was like religion, but so much better than church. I watched both half hour episodes every week and reveled in the costumed characters brought to life from the pages of my DC comics (or at least the highly campy, velour and sateen versions of the character's costumes. Some of the costumes were potential career killers - Frank Gorshin's Riddler costume, the skin tight green leotard - gutsy of him to say the least) in the personas of old Hollywood stalwarts like Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, Otto Preminger, Julie Newmar, Victor Buono - actors who would not have been on my radar without the show. Even though we still had merely a black and white TV (to this day I think a gritty BATMAN movie in black and white would be amazing - Sin City anyone?) and even though I knew the show was not quite the same Batman I was hooked on in the comics, I thought it was the Best. Show. Ever. while it was on (1966-1968).

"Gilligan, you f***ing Moron!"

2006-01-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

Little Buddy indeed . . .

the fact that I used to actually watch Gilligan's Island every week (glassy-eyed with a thin line of drool I'm sure) speaks volumes - about my own lack of ability as a kid to discern between "funny" and "mindless" - about the level of sophistication that was network TV comedy for a couple of decades - and about the strange power of a cute girl in tiny denim shorts and a gingham top tied at the waist. mmmmmm . . . Mary Ann . . .

Jay Silverheels RULES!

2006-01-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

SIDEKICKS II

Here's another sidekick - the Masked Man's "Faithful Indian Companion" Tonto, aka Jay Silverheels. The sketch seemed a bit on the gaunt side so I thickened hima little in Illustrator.

Sidekicks

2006-01-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

"Sidekicks" project.

In another attempt to expand my comfort with Illustrator, I wanted to mimic a more graphic, stylized style of caricature I had seen in various magazines. My goal was to start with a fairly realistic drawing, scan it, bring it into Illustrator, then boil the image down to where it was just a series of flat color shapes, almost abstract. I had been working on a page for a website devoted to TV and movie sidekicks, hence the subject matter.
While I like the following bunch of images, I don't feel I abstracted them as much as I was hoping. First up: Mr. Spock - originally done on a cocktail napkin for a friend after too much vodka - with more trusty second bananas to follow.

KING KONG RANT

2005-12-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

KING KONG RANT

“When the big monkey die, everybody cry” - Dino De Laurentiis
I was hugely anticipating Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake, however I came away from the multiplex trailing popcorn and not only feeling disappointed but actually even a bit depressed from the experience. While there are some incredible scenes and strong performances, and yes indeed some very cleverly incorporated references & homages to the original, but my take on King Kong is that it’s an ambitious, impressive, yet ultimately overdone and self-indulgent piece of filmmaking.
Peter Jackson is undeniably a gifted filmmaker with tremendous vision and phenomenal abilities. Unfortunately for us, the audience, crisp editing isn’t one of them – the movie is so much longer than it needs to be.
Interesting Kong factoid: The amount of weight that Peter Jackson lost during the making of King Kong (70 lbs.) is exactly the number of minutes he should have trimmed from this movie to make it really great!
The movie introduces far too many tertiary characters, (many of whom suffer unnecessarily gruesome demises) all of whom merely distract from and dilute the impact of the central relationships of Kong and Ann and Jack and Carl. There are repetitive themes and lines of dialog related to some of the third-level characters that serve no purpose other than to reinforce other character traits and plot points that have already been well established. (Denham is a thoughtless, self-aggrandizing chumbucket – okay, we got that . . .) There are even a few scenes where you can tell that Peter Jackson was so enamored of the success of the shot’s construction he just couldn’t help himself from showing it to us twice or even three times. The chases and fight scenes start out thrilling and harrowing but just slog ON and ON to where they attain a level of unbelievable absurdity. I kept expecting Naomi Watts to roll her eyes and mutter, “Oh fer Christ’s sake!” as her plight escalated.
Speaking of Naomi Watts, I’ll give her credit for creating a strong and appealing Ann Darrow, using her streetwise toughness and stage-honed cleverness to get herself out of more than a couple of nasty situations. (but this is SO not an Oscar caliber performance – come on people, step away form the crack pipe, take a deep breath and get some perspective here) Most of her scenes with Kong are really quite moving and emotional, once you suspend disbelief at the admittedly odd premise of the beauty taming, or seducing, or at the very least severely flummoxing the beast. But ultimately it’s a good performance in service of a not so good movie.
Adrian Brody does a fine job as Jack Driscoll, though he does actually become kind of a fifth wheel in the Ann and Kong emotional action. “Hmmm, there’s the woman I love sleeping peacefully and contentedly in the gigantic paw of a big sweaty prehistoric mutant ape. What to do? What to do?”
Jack Black on the other hand is miscast as Carl Denham. He has the right look and physical presence, (his high -waist pants add a nice historically accurate touch to his character) but he’s just not a strong enough actor to effectively, believably convey all the inner machinations of Denham. I felt especially let down by his delivery of a few of the biggest most crucial lines, (“I give you Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!” for example) his inflection literally deflated the impact for me.
Kong himself is a wonder of animation and motion capture acting. Nice job again by Andy Serkis, although him receiving the credit “And Andy Serkis as KONG” seemed a bit of a disservice to the animators. Kong’s scowl and jagged underbite show an amazing and subtle range of rage, melancholy and perplexity. His bulk and physicality have a real solidity to it, and he moves about his world with a believable ease and litheness, even for such a big guy. Kong is the character who leaves the biggest impression upon you – he’s the one you’ll be thinking of as you leave the theater.
You might also be thinking Peter Jackson needs someone in his close & trusted inner circle to tell him honestly “No Petah, turn off the camera. You don’t need that character. You’ve already got that shot. That’s enough now – 3 hours is too much.” And next film, Peter Jackson needs to listen to them or he’s in danger of pulling a George Lucas on us all.

Packing Heat

2005-12-15T06:59:00.000-08:00

"Does he just do robots?" you ask? Well, no, of course not - like for instance here's another sketchbook image brought into Photoshop. I was messing around with some "noir" ideas and this guy emerged, reaching for his gat. I was shooting for a limited palette, atmospheric scene. The theme being one of imminent betrayal . . . you can bet there's a dame involved . . .

Hyena sketches

2005-12-13T18:53:00.000-08:00

Here are the sketches that made up the poster. I just couldn't resist using the little guy with the "ha ha ha" tape dispensing ass, so I shrunk him and made the big guy hold him in the palm of his hand. I also wanted the giant robot to be laughing so I installed a Times Square-style news "zipper" in his mouth. I liked the idea that you can see him laugh, but you wouldn't be able to hear it - that seemed kind of creepily soulless, yet still funny.

2005-12-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

I didn't like the head, but I liked the way the body looked, thinner than the boxier guys I had done previously. So I found another head sketch that I liked and did some transplanting in Photoshop. I also made the hand a cleaner "thumbs up" design. I seem to be in a rut with the dial on the chest thing...

2005-12-10T07:17:00.000-08:00

This optimistic, gung-ho machine man started as an Illustrator file, then brought into Photoshop for a quick background treatment. His head was initially a different design, as you'll see in the sketch.

2005-12-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

And here's the sketch for the guy below. I flipped him and made him let go of his balloon (oh and he was reluctant to do so, believe you me) and changed a few of his details and embellishments. The startled looking guy on the left is in line for the same treatment soon.

2005-12-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

Here's another robot from the "Sketchbook Direct to Illustrator" series. As you'll see in the sketch I decided to made some alterations/revisions to him after I got into Illustrator. He was done with a birthday greeting in mind, by the way.

2005-12-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

Here's the sketch from whence the guy below came. Just a pretty quick pen drawing, scanned and placed in Illustrator. The dial on his chest will probably move towards "full" as he continues to gulp from that oil can.

2005-12-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

Join my metal pal here and raise a celebratory beverage to mark the beginning of this blog endeavor! This guy was done in Illustrator from a sketch in my sketchbook. The sketch follows shortly.

2005-12-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Keep a wary eye on this site, cuz I think I can guarantee that the quality of the content will careen wildly between self-impressed brilliance and flatlining amateurism. Wait, those sound really similar . . . Haven't you got anything better to do with your time?

Haven't I?

Well, no, actually.