Should America worry about the next health care town hall?
Or crank up our Gibsons in tribute to Les Paul?
p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Daryl Cagle, Mike Keefe, Jeff Parker, John Darkow, Monte Wolverton, Jimmy Margulies, Steve Breen, and Ed Stein.
p3 Best of Show: Steve Sack.
p3 "Unplugged" Award: Nate Beeler.
p3 Award for Best Deeply-Pitched Roger Maris Reference: R. J. Matson.
p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Bob Englehart.
p3 World Toon Review: Hajo (Netherlands), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Patrick Chappatte, (Switzerland) and Cameron Cardow (Canada).
Ann Telnaes watches in horror as the truth flatlines.
Ka-ching!! :-) In the tradition of Woody Allen's If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists, Ruben Bollings asks, What if Van Gogh had been on Facebook?
The birth of irony: Last winter, p3 paid tribute to one of MAD Magazine's founding artists, Will Elder. This week, the NYTimes Sunday Book Review celebrates Elder's friend since childhood, MAD founding editor Harvey Kurtzman. The review begins, without embarrassment or exaggeration:
If not for Mad magazine, there might never have been (in no particular order) 1960s youth culture, underground comics, Wacky Packs, “Laugh-In,” “Saturday Night Live,” R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman or an age of irony, period. Mad, which began in 1952 as a comic book that parodied “serious” comics as well as American popular culture, with an emphasis on television, movies and advertising, was conceived and originally edited by Harvey Kurtzman (1924-93), a Brooklyn-born comic-strip artist, writer and editor. Kurtzman was the spiritual father of postwar American satire and the godfather of late-20th-century alternative humor.
Marginal thinking: Once again last week, Frank Rich is okay, but Barry Blitt is better.
Portland homeboy Jack Ohman urges the ex-governor to go into the light.
Liberal-spirited willingness to pitch in and help out: Last week in the Financial Times, British economist and imperialism groupie Naill Ferguson offered up the notion that Felix the Cat and Barack Obama share two characteristics: both are black, and both are very lucky. Back here on our side of the great pond, Vanity Fair's James Wolcott takes Ferguson downtown, not so much because of his casual racism, but because he does a disservice to Felix.
All gummed up: With due respect to James Wolcott, when he associates Felix the Cat with a "bag of tricks," he's thinking of the chatty, limited-animation, made-for-TV cartoons that began in 1958; Felix himself goes all the way back to 1919. Like Popeye, Mickey Mouse, and other characters who've survived that long (although Felix is older than almost all of them), Felix has gone through some changes in character and style as he passed from one studio to another--in fact, over the years, about the only thing that has gone unchanged is Felix's trademark pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. Here's a better example, mentioned in Wolcott's post: "Felix in Hollywood," from 1923, directed by Pat Sullivan. This copy of the silent film doesn't have a musical track dubbed in, so if you want something to fill in for the old movie palace Wurlitzer, feel free to cue up the music of your choice as you listen. I recommend some Fats Waller but, again, it's totally your call.
The caricatured silent film stars Felix meets in Hollywood include Ben Turpin, Will Hays, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and William S. Hart.
p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer gives us fair warning: Once government get between small-nostrilled left-handed babies and their doctors, then the next thing you know, we'll all be . . . uhm . . . er . . . huh? (Click to enlarge.)
And remember to check out Slate's political cartoon for today.
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