Justice John Roberts: What The Electoral Process Needs Is Billions From Chevron

Chances are  you already heard about what the Supreme Court did yesterday.  I offer a piece at Huffington Post about the natural consequences of corporate personhood, and I have to pat myself on the back for managing to work in a reference to prison toilet wine.

For context, below find the relevant clip from the fine documentary film The Corporation, examining the theory of corporate personhood.  If you haven’t seen the whole film, you’re missing  a great (if a bit overlong) exploration of the sociopathic behavior of the largest of these virtual persons.  (Clip swiped from Boppin’ Billy Meehan.)

The Best American Comics Criticism: Out March 3

Wow.  See, this is why you do stuff.  When you do stuff, sometimes you get to do awesome stuff, sometimes with people who are awesome.

My pal Ben Schwartz has been compiling and editing the new Fantagraphics book The Best American Comics Criticism all year long (release date: Mar 3 2010). That in itself is awesome enough.  But then I come to find that one of his blessings was to work with the incomparable illustrator Drew Friedman on the cover of said tome.

Word is Ben asked Drew – one of the most gifted conceptual realist illustrators the world has ever seen – what he thought American comics critics looked like.   And this is what he – and we – got.

Perfect.  Just perfect.

Not just objectively perfect, either.  For me, this is a rare crossing of two favorites: Drew Freidman has been blowing my mind since I first saw his stuff in the pages of Heavy Metal and National Lampoon way back in high school.  Ben Schwartz has been cracking me up since I first read him at Suck.com back in the days of dialup Internet.

Suffice it to say, I approve of this collaboration so much, I don’t have enough thumbs to raise.  Can’t wait to read it.

And that’s an important blogger telling you this.

Maximum Saturday Evening Post: The Paintings Of Dan Witz

Painted in the style of Norman Rockwell, the sentimental realist best known for a saccharine slice-of-life Americana found hanging in doctor’s office waiting rooms everywhere, we find awesome canvases of a certain punk rock subject matter by California artist Dan Witz.  Without examining Witz’s other pieces, I can only imagine what I’d find: perhaps a tableau of a punk rock band being ripped off by the promoter in a dingy nightclub basement office, or maybe a slice of touring life in a shabby van while the band desperately recoils from the sheepish drummer’s particularly noxious fart.

Art Clokey 1921-2010

Claymation giant and creator of Gumby Art Clokey passed away yesterday.  Normally, I’d get into what he did and how singularly awesome it was, but I’m in a real hurry.  So I’ll just post a clip I swiped from Underworld cartoonist Kaz Propoulenis instead.  Enjoy Clokey’s pre-Gumby 1953 surrealist masterpiece Gumbasia.

Reckless, Sanctimonious Douchebag Waggles Finger At Parents Over Safety

Kurt Greenbaum: The tag's so he doesn't forget.

Many people who follow the social themes of the Intertubes have heard the name of Kurt Greenbaum.  Columnist/blogger for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Greenbaum is known for space-filling, logrolling work that redefines the word “inessential”. His moronic typing pollutes the already deathly ill newspaper with a triteness and imbecility that surely has fellow Missourian Mark Twain not only rolling, but achieving escape velocity in his own grave.  Beyond being a terrible writer, Greenbaum is a social media social menace, having used the comments feature on his own column months ago to end the career of a St. Louis schoolteacher for the high crime of making a joke Greenbaum didn’t like. In the pantheon of unjust and pernicious media figures, Greenbaum ranks ethically somewhere between Rupert Murdoch and Julis Streicher,

Which is why he is depending that the short attention span of the public will forget about his role in the above atrocity against fair play and free speech and that he may return to business as usual:  providing the St. Louis area with puddle-deep analysis and finger-pointing.

Kurt Greenbaum: Joining pork steaks and Budwesier in the list of top reasons to move out of St. Louis.

I Can’t Laugh, And I Can’t Sing, I’m Finding It Hard To Do Anything

Let us be thankful that the nonstop cavalcade of absurdity that is life in these United States remains in full effect in the new decade, available with only a click of the remote.

Like tonight: A quick perusal of TV offerings uncovered a Barry Manilow special, wherein the 67 year old popular troubador favored Chicago’s channel 11 viewers with a medley of his hits, his face frozen in a wide-eyed expression of…glee? For song after song, Barry maintained a childlike surprise that eventually became terrifying.

That’s because, as I managed to figure out eventually, Barry can’t stop. His cosmetic surgery work has stretched his facial skin to a drum-like tension, permanently fixing his visage in a bright, cheerful mask of abject fucking horror, impervious to any eventuality.

“Barry, your gig in Dubai has been canceled.”

“Barry, your accountant has embezzled all your money. You’re penniless.”

“Barry, I’m sorry, the biopsy found cancer”

Confidential to the Los Angeles, CA elective surgery industry: Stop. Just…stop. For fuck’s sake. Please.