SlowpokeBlog

I'll be appearing in Cambridge, MA at the Women, Action, & the Media (WAM) conference on April 1, 11a.m. along with cartoonists Mikhaela Reid and Stephanie McMillan. Lots of fun publishing types will be present. More details

I've been sort of kicking this idea around for a while, and it seemed appropriate for the time when I would actually be visiting Hollywood, just before the Oscars no less. Not that my trip had anything to do with that. I actually liked LA quite a bit -- what I saw of it, at least. I find its general wackiness refreshing. I'm sure I would grow disgusted if I spent more time there. Or maybe not. The weather was awfully nice. I wanted to weep with gratitude.

Seriously, though. Why should actors get all the credit? Why should they get to live in Malibu palaces while the poor schlub writers tap away at their keyboards in dank hovels littered with Carl's Jr. wrappers and desiccated gummy bears stuck in the carpet? (I'm sure plenty of screenwriters live better than this, but please indulge me my rhetorical flourishes.) Hell, I can't even keep up with all these new actors. Where are you, Molly Ringwald? Judge Reinhold? I'm dating myself, aren't I?

A day early, for your convenience and mine.

The Japanese snow monkey rice cooker was inspired by a ridiculously cute Zojirushi rice cooker we recently purchased, which plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" when you set the timer, and a happy little celebratory melody when the rice is ready. It looks like a giant stainless steel beetle. The only way it could be cuter is if it had fur.

I've left the charmless east coast winter behind to visit southern California. Mr. Slowpoke just wrapped up an academic conference, and we're going to explore LA and coastal points north. I have been to California a few times before, but LA only briefly, so this is my first true immersion in the fast food and blingy-car kitschfest that predominates here. I think anyone who pooh-poohs urban planning and no-growth movements needs only to spend a day in southern CA to catch a glimpse of the future of any town threatened by sprawl. The next day, they'll be zoning their ass off.

In a moment of supreme irony that made my head nearly explode, I belatedly found out that the LA Times wanted one of my cartoons, but they needed it immediately on the day I was flying to LA. Internet access has been frustratingly hard to come by, so it was too late by the time I got the email. I could've hand-delivered the thing, dammit! [UPDATE: I stand corrected. The cartoon actually ran after all, thanks to some sleuthing by coolio cartoon editor Joel Pett.]

Blogging will probably be xtra-lite (one must employ kitschy misspellings when within a 500-yard radius of a Wienerschnitzel outlet) for the next week, as I soak up the sunny, 80-degree weather. Ahhh...

Normally I don't like to give further attention to idiotic, made-for-cable-news "scandals" that serve no purpose other than to distract people from the real problems facing the country, but the mainstream media fell so hard for this ridiculous right-wing booby trap, there were very few voices out there explaining clearly what happened. It's sad when the BS gets so thick and heavy that it's up to the cartoonists to clean it up (in our limited capacity, which hardly rivals that of a cable news blowhard).

Explaining the facts isn't hard to do, as I demonstrate in the first panel of this cartoon. Were you not paying close attention, you might think Pelosi had requested a luxury jet. After all, in their piece about about the controversy, the Washington Post chose to ever-so-responsibly run a photo of a Boeing 757 with with the caption, "The House speaker may be using the military equivalent of a Boeing 757." Meanwhile, in the article, they disclose:

Republicans, led by aggressive junior lawmakers, seized on the most extreme possibility: Pelosi's flying on the military equivalent of a Boeing 757 with the latest in travel comforts.

See, this just confirms my decision to cancel my subscription to the Post a few years ago because they were getting too neocon. Pelosi never requested a 757. The House Sergeant-at-Arms simply asked for a plane that could reach California. NPR has a respectable little writeup about the planes that are available to top dignitaries.

People are suckers for plausible narratives that confirm stereotypes, no matter how divorced from reality they may be. The right is aware of this tendency and is ruthless at exploiting it. As if getting the media to report the facts on real issues isn't hard enough.

...but in his latest website posting, Larry the Cable Guy continues in the Snickers tradition of, well, snickering at homophobic violence:

Speaking of on the ball, I can't believe the guy that played "Doogie Howser M.D." came out of the closet. Doogie gay? What the hell's going on? Now I hear he has a new show on Logo called "Dookie Trousers M.D." (c'mon that's hilarious!) Evidently it's on after an all gay survivor show called, "Survivor Country Bar". (Badabing!)

Emphasis mine. You know, I can almost tolerate the awful dookie joke, but this "Survivor: Country Bar" crap is about as funny as a reality show set in 1950s Mississippi called "Survivor: KKK rally." Badabing! Haw haw!

In the future, I like to think this sort of "humor" -- which persists in being very mainstream -- will take its rightful place alongside blackface minstrelsy and racist cartoons in the annals of backwards entertainment.

Don't ask how I wound up on Larry the Cable Guy's website.

I love this quote from Ed Gillespie, former RNC chair and current head of the Virginia Republican party, on why the GOP did so badly in the last election:

Acknowledging that Iraq was a factor, Gillespie also pointed to what he termed "brand destruction" on the Republican side. "We allowed voters to perceive that we were not being serious and good stewards of the money, somewhat symbolized by the bridge to nowhere," he said, invoking the pork project of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.

Surely nothing a new marketing strategy won't fix!

I found this cartoon trickier to create than usual, partly because I was too dismayed by Molly Ivins' death to feel like coming up with anything funny, and partly because it's challenging to do an obituary cartoon without lapsing into the well-worn clichés of daily editorial cartoons (e.g., the deceased arriving at the pearly gates). I hope no one else prominent that I like dies anytime soon, so I'm not faced with the dilemma of drawing another obit.

The humorists I've portrayed here comprise only a partial list of those I would include in the Political Satirist Hall of Fame. I'm aware that I left out a lot of people. My point is merely that Molly Ivins deserves to be in the canon, yo. Also, I realize Mort Sahl is still alive, unlike everyone else in the cartoon (except for Future Mr. and Mrs. P). But he warranted a mention. While Googling for pictures of him, I came across this great Time cover from 1960.

In completely unrelated news, I had a weird dream last night that R. Crumb had opened a chain of pizzerias. They were called, appropriately, "R. CRUMB'S," with the sign lettering done in his plump, old-school comix style. I was on my way to one located in a food court. Launching a pizza chain is probably among the last things Crumb would ever do, but you know, I would go.

Every so often, something happens that reminds you viscerally of the unfair, amoral nature of the universe. For me, the passing of Molly Ivins is one of those things. A genuinely funny woman with whom I agreed more consistently than perhaps any other pundit, Molly was often a source of inspiration to me. Her columns planted the seed for more than one Slowpoke cartoon. One of her finest, "Not. Backing. Hillary." from a year ago remains the most-sent ever column on WorkingforChange.com. It articulates exactly how I feel about the Democratic party -- and how many progressive ideas, or whatever you want to call them, are held by a majority of Americans. I quoted Molly in my very first blog post, in which I pleaded with the fates not to let Kerry be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004. "He's got no Elvis," Molly said. "You can't win without Elvis." As usual, she was right. Here's to Molly and her valiant career of bringing the good ol' boys down a peg.