Saturday tunes: "Freddie the Freeloader"

(Update: The anniversary release comes out on Tuesday. See below.)

This is from the magnificent "Kind of Blue" album, which Miles Davis--and saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb--recorded 50 years ago.

An anniversary re-issue, with goodies, will be released on Tuesday, February 3rd. Of all those musicians, only Jimmy Cobb is alive today (he's 80).

(Shout out to Michael, thanks to whom I first heard this album better late than never.)

Don't go down in the basement, you morons!

With the benefit of hindsight, knowing what the Internet would eventually do to print news, this 1981 clip feels like the moment in the teen slasher movie where the kids decide that, since everyone who goes over there seems to be dying horribly, they should go investigate.

(Hat tip to Oregon Media Insiders.)

The "Mad Magazine Exception"

[Further update (Shameless Plug Department), July 2009: If you're a fan of Frank Jacobs' work, here's an homage to the man I did a couple of years ago. "Maria" is one of the tunes Jacobs repurposed most often.]

[Update, Saturday 1/31: Since I posted this I've gotten a lot of traffic from Google searches specifically about Frank Jacob's "Blue Cross" song. I'd be really grateful if visitors could leave a comment telling me what it was about the song, or the surrounding story, that piqued your curiosity. I know why I think it's worth noting--why do you think so? I'd like to hear your story. Thanks. -bn]


Oregon Public Broadcasting is airing a series called "Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America." It's hosted by Billy Crystal, and underwritten in part by the Seinfeld Family Foundation, so you have to get used to Crystal's tuberous face in close-up and an apparent contractual obligation to remind viewers once per episode that "Seinfeld" was the funniest show in the history of television, possibly the universe. Such is often the way of these things.

It's mainly a collection of archival clips from film and television, each episode loosely wrapped around a theme, with narration by Amy Sedaris. Anyone whose performances simply never made it onto film very much, like Lord Buckley, is out of luck. As for the rest, there won't be enough of the figures you consider comedy gods, and there'll be far too much of the figures you think are already annoyingly overrated. Such is often the way of these things.

And you'll be reminded that there's nothing like commentary by an academic expert on pop culture or the biographer of a great comedian to bring the fun to a grinding, painful halt. Such is definitely the way of these things.

Last night's episode featured several minutes of footage of two of my own heroes: satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer and Mad Magazine song parodist (and obituary writer) Frank Jacobs. Lehrer is becoming increasingly available on YouTube, but seeing Jacobs in the flesh, rather than simply in print, was an unusual treat.

Especially since he told the story of Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc. The short version is this: The 1961 "Fourth Annual Edition of More Trash Mad" (click on cover image to enlarge) included a 20-page "Sing Along With Mad" book of parody song lyrics, including this one, which--to my delight--Jacobs sang on the show last night:

BLUE CROSS
A bad experience with a medical coverage program.

Sung to the tune of: "Blue Skies"

Blue Cross
Had me agree
To a new Blue Cross
Policy!

Blue Cross
Said I would be
Happy that Blue Cross
Covered me!

Then I took a fall,
Leg in a splint;
They said that I
Should read the fine print!

When a very high
Fever I ran,
They told me I
Took out the wrong plan!

That's Blue Cross!
There seems to be
Plenty for Blue Cross!
None for me!

(Silly, yes, but on the other hand it expresses a fundamental truth about American health care that a lot of people haven't caught up with almost half a century later. Back off.)

Irving Berlin, who wrote "Blue Skies," took exception and, with several other songwriters who'd gotten "the treatment," sued Mad's parent company for copyright infringement. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear it (who could blame them!), letting the Circuit Court ruling stand. The result was a principle carved out of intellectual property law, known as "The Mad Magazine exception," establishing parody as protected speech.

From the opinion by 2nd Circuit Court Judge Charles Metzner:

The validity of plaintiffs' copyrights has never been challenged, and we need concern ourselves here only with the nature, purpose and effect of the alleged infringements. The parodies were published as a 'special bonus' to the Fourth Annual Edition of Mad, whose cover characterized its contents as 'More Trash From Mad -- A Sickening Collection of Humor and Satire From Past Issues,' and almost prophetically carried this admonition for its readers: 'For Solo or Group Participation (Followed by Arrest).' Defendants' efforts were billed as 'a collection of parody lyrics to 57 old standards which reflect the idiotic world we live in today.' Divided into nine categories, ranging from 'Songs of Space & The Atom' to 'Songs of Sports,' they were accompanied by the notation that they were to be 'Sung to' or 'Sung to the tune of' a well-known popular song -- in twenty-five cases, the plaintiffs' copyrighted compositions. So that this musical direction might feasibly be obeyed, the parodies were written in the same meter as the original lyrics. [...]

While brief phrases of the original lyrics were occasionally injected into the parodies, this practice would seem necessary if the defendants' efforts were to 'recall or conjure up' the originals; the humorous effect achieved when a familiar line is interposed in a totally incongruous setting, traditionally a tool of parodists, scarcely amounts to a 'substantial' taking, if that standard is not to be woodenly applied. Similarly, the fact that defendants' parodies were written in the same meter as plaintiffs' compositions would seem inevitable if the original was to be recognized, but such a justification is not even necessary; we doubt that even so eminent a composer as plaintiff Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter.

(Also featured in the complaint, and the appeals court opinion, is a parody of "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" that must be read aloud to be appreciated properly. I like to imagine Judge Metzner's puzzled clerks listening outside the door of his chambers while he wrote this opinion--the clackety-clack of the typewriter, then some very unjurisprudential giggling, then more clatter of the typewriter . . . .)

Activists for the left from Alinski to Ivins have long insisted that, if you're going to fight for your rights, you might as well have fun doing it. Such is often the way of these things, too.

Message to Senate Republicans: Welcome to our world

I've spent a lot of time here over the last four years waling on Senator Arlen "Don Altobelo" Specter for his determination to be both utterly spineless and a complete media whore at the same time.

Sadly, he's still around.

Happily, he's now the Senate Republicans' problem.

Hey, Senate Repubs--don't like being stabbed in the back in the most public yet pointless way imaginable?

Welcome to our world. You can deal with him for a while.

Oppositional television in the age of Obama

After the defeat of McCain and Palin in November, a lot of folks wondered aloud if "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" could survive without a Republican in the White House.

I was never worried: The point of satire is to ridicule the excesses, vanities, hypocrisy, and dishonesty of those in power. It's true that Second Age of Bush provided an embarrassment of riches for the two shows' writers to work with. But to imagine that the Obama administration, or any administration, will give them nothing to work with--would be so transparent, modest, self-consistent, unerring, and uniformly benificent that there'll be nothing for satirists to sink their teeth into--is to have a fundamentalist's faith and trust in our government that is almost un-American.

And, of course, the armory of the contemporary American satirist is by no means limited to barbs about the executive branch of the government: There are the antedeluvian minds of the Senate Republicans. There is the endless jockeying of interests and agendas in the House. There's the Supreme Court--why, the continued existence on this earth of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas alone amounts to a Full Employment Program for Comedy Writers. There's Big Banking. Big Media. Big Pharma. And so on.

Anyone who sits at the far end of the gap of mystery and miracle that separates the power elite from the rest of us will always be fair game for satirists. Don't worry for them. If there's enough material out there to keep even Leno going in prime time five nights a week, certainly there's plenty of work for good purveyors of topical humor, too.

If you want to know the fellow whose future I'm more concerned about, it's Keith Olbermann.

He's not really a satirist, of course, although he gets in his share of snark and ridicule in. But when his "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" took off following the first of his "Special Reports" in August of 2006--Rumsfeld had compared opponents of the Iraq war with the "appeasers" of Hitler in the 1930s, and Olbermann went ballistic--he became one of the more highly-positioned voices of opposition in the mainstream media.

A lot of that clout got squandered over the next couple of years, I think. He's often mentioned his worry that airing his first Special Report might cost him his job; as time went on I think that worry was replaced by the worry that not airing Special Reports might cost him his ratings bump. By last spring his Special Reports were too often about ephemera like his objections to how Hillary was campaigning that week.

In part that's because the "Countdown" format and formula call for the rapid descent each night from the important (usually Story #5, presented first) to the silly (the remaining four stories of the evening). As Doctor Beyond pointed out to me last week, by the night before the Obama inauguration, KO was directing his trademark bombast toward the fact that . . . wait for it . . . Obama was going to leave the carpet (famously designed by Laura Bush) in the Oval Office. (In fairness, the Special Report that night was about prosecuting the Bush administration personnel involved in the practice of torture.)

That's why I was especially pleased last week to see "Countdown" break the two-part story of government whistleblower Russell Tice, who revealed that the NSA had been spying on American journalists and news agencies, plus "tens of thousands" of other Americans. (Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here.)

While I'm not worried about the satirists on Comedy Central, I'm waiting to see what happens to Olbermann under a non-Bush administration. "Countdown" format notwithstanding, he's not as liberal (certainly not progressive) as suggested by those "Special Comment" segments; he was, like a lot of Americans, disgusted by the incompetence and dishonesty of Bush and his administration, and unlike the rest of us he had a platform. He was right, of course, but what now? On MSNBC, Maddow will lead the charge to keep Obama pushed to the left as much as possible--but will Olbermann do much more than kibbitz? Will the left be as fond of him when he doesn't have Bush to kick around anymore?

Time will tell. I'd like to see him continue to thrive, if only to keep pushing O'Reilly into gratifyingly foolish outbursts, but time will tell.

The unforgiving minute

Scenario #1: You open the newspaper over your morning coffee and discover that, although no was aware of it at the time, an asteroid several times larger than the one that triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs 70 million years ago narrowly missed colliding with the Earth last month.

Or, Scenario #2: You turn on ABC's "Good Morning America" and hear this:

Illinois' beleaguered Gov. Rod Blagojevich said today that when he was deciding who would take President Obama's Senate seat he considered appointing talk show queen Oprah Winfrey.

It's not a very appetizing choice, is it?

Minute's up.

43 for ol' Number 43

It would be wrong to underestimate the extent to which George W. Bush is--and has been for his whole life--a self-made failure. To be given the opportunities he's been handed throughout his whole life, and run them straight into the ground every single time, without exception--that takes some kind of native talent.

Still, a team is a team, and the Center for American Progress has collected the 43 people who helped make Bush the Worst. President. Ever.

Number 1 is easy, of course:

1 . Dick Cheney -- The worst Dick since Nixon. The man who shot his friend while in office. The "most powerful and controversial vice president." Until he got the job, people used to actually think it was a bad thing that the vice presidency has historically been a do-nothing position. Asked by PBS's Jim Lehrer about why people hate him, Cheney rejected the premise, saying, "I don't buy that." His top placement in our survey says otherwise.

But have you forgotten Number 9? How about Number 16? Or Numbers 20 through 24? How about Numbers 25 and 38, each of whom deserves his own special ring in Hell?

And the thing to remember is this: One or two of them may have slipped off to extradition-free countries, and a fair number are still in the US but dare not travel abroad. But as far as I could tell from first reading, they're all still out there, doing fine. Some are living it up on the five-figure lecture circuit. Others are kicked back in the cushy think-tank positions where they lived out the Clinton years. None of them, as far as I can tell, has paid in any proportion for the harm they've helped bring down upon the country.

Royal blood

Amid the Shakespearean struggles of the Houses of Bush, Clinton, and Kennedy currently being performed on the American political stage, Jane Hamscher at Firedoglake reminds us that there's a dynastic aspect to Gordon Smith's defeat by Jeff Merkley.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

Sunday afternoon toons: Special "Shamelessly Commercializing the Inauguration" edition

Bob Geiger's still taking time off until next month.

But Daryl Cagle's stompin' it with both feet--whatever that means. His weekly toon round-up asks the question: Where were you at 9am Pacific on Tuesday? And some trickle-down hope on things like the economy, GITMO, and the Middle East.

p3 Picks of the Week: Pat Bagley, Mike Keefe, John Trever, Steve Sack, Rob Rogers, and Etta Hulme.

The p3 Exclusive Obama Inauguration Keepsake Links--Three easy payments! Order in the next five minutes! This offer will not be repeated! Gary Brookins, Jeff Parker, Ken Catalino, John Deering, Vic Harville, Jeff Koterba, Drew Sheneman, and Kirk Walters.


p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), (Wallongong, Australia), Olle Johanssen (Sweden), and Martyn Turner.


The Oregonian presents "Great Expectations," their round of inauguration toons.


Ann Telnaes exposes the face under the mask.


Guest toon: Mike Luckovich discovers that even super-heroes get nervous at times like these.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman celebrates the release of GITMO'S original detainee.


Before the "Transformers," there were the lumbering "Mechanical Monsters" in this 1941 Superman, directed by Dave Fleischer. Later in the series of 17 films, the Fleischers lost some artistic control over the stories, and they became much more caught up in World War II stories--and in many cases, much more racist. Visually, they changed, too: The early Fleischer toons like this one were usually set at night, or under a mountain, or someplace dark, where their rich, deep palate of colors would show to greatest effect. My favorite moment from this story: Inside the evil-but-dapper inventor's lair (within a hollowed-out volcano, naturally), he suspends Lois Lane over a cauldron of molten metal in an attempt to find out what happened to his loot. She's gagged, so she can't speak, but the villain snarls, "So--you won't tell me!" They just don't make bad guys like that anymore.

p3 Bonus Toon: Ever the optimist, Jesse Springer discovers a way to combine Oregonians' traditional favorite pastime--enjoying the outdoors--with their newest pastime: looking for work.

There's a new sheriff in town

While we're all waiting for the Sunday Toons to magically post themselves:

The Boston Globe's web site has some great inaugural pictures. There are some amazing ones: US Troops in Baghdad watching the ceremonies; people in a hut in Afghanistan watching, folks in a Kenyan village watching, and more--a good reminder that people in some of the most unlikely places around the world have managed to wire themselves into the information grid.

Of all the photos, #27 is probably my favorite (scroll down on their page--you'll see), but it's pretty hard not to be impressed by this one:



Also, I was struck by several of the photos of Obama and Michelle. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from it, if any, but it's surprising to see a President and First Lady who so obviously enjoy one another's presence. Before that, you'd have to go back to who? Ronnie and Nancy? And before that, maybe Harry and Bess for all I know.

Saturday tunes: In Mr. Perkins' homeroom

Here's Carl, sometime in the late 1980s, with a stage full of kids who went to school on his rockabilly music.

Part 1:

Part 2:

And because it's been a good week, here's a Part 3, just for good measure:

Amazing what you can do with 12-bar blues in A and the right pair of shoes, isn't it?

The right that dare not speak its name

Digby's absolutely correct: It's good to have a president who supports a woman's right to control her own body, but a right that you have no practical way to exercise isn't much of a right.

No quarter.

Finally, greeted as liberators

Career diplomats cheer at the arrival of Secretary of State Clinton for her first day on the job:

We get mail

Forwarded by long-time p3 correspondent James the Elder, and currently making the rounds on the web:

Dear World:

We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4. Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding,


Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

It took us 28 years to get this far:

President Ronald Reagan, January 20, 1981:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

President Bill Clinton, January 27, 1996:

The era of big government is over.

President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

HBO gets on the other side of the sign

For those who like their irony applied with a fire hose:

HBO has claimed copyright control over all of its broadcast of inaugural festivities over the weekend, including the performance of "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That means all those internet sites that had put up clips from that programming (including p3) now have a black hole that looks like this:




Simply as a matter of mere dollars and cents, I find the logic of this to be pretty odd: Does HBO expect a lot of people to re-watch their entire weekend of pre-inaugural programming, either on cable/satellite or by DVD purchase, again? Maybe a highlight here and there, sure; but otherwise, anyone who wanted the whole thing for a keeper has probably long since recorded it and filed the disk away. All those clips were promoting HBO while costing them almost nothing.

But of course, it's not about--it was never about--the dribble of money HBO might bring in from a few people re-watching licensed copies of the pre-inaugural celebration. It's about the corporate hunger to extend intellectual property rights in all directions, to infinity. As an author who gets royalty money myself, I'm obviously fine with the idea that creators of intellectual property have the right to make a reasonable return for its publication. But this is just nuts.

I doubt if anyone's going to say it any better than Oliver Willis has:

I’m no copyright expert, but I really wish someone would go ahead and post clips on their blog or other website, then get HBO to defend the idea that they own a public concert given on federal property in the middle of the inauguration of America’s next president.

Exactly. This is simply the same corporate logic that has led to patenting human genes. As some of his commenters argue, there's certainly the case that can be made that HBO's position squares with our warped copyright law as it now stands. But I'd enjoy watching them make the argument publicly.

And the killer part of the story is that this now-banned clip features Woody, and a crowd of thousands stretching the length of the Mall in DC, singing:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tresspassin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Come to think of it, maybe HBO is primarily interested in suppressing proto-hippie thinking like that.

12:01pm Eastern, January 20, 2009

What a difference two minutes can make.

11:59am Eastern, January 20, 2009

The unforgiving minute

Reflection on Bush's final TV address:

George Bush is fond of telling interviewers that history will be the final judge of his administration.

Here's what I think:

If the world survives long enough, a day will come when everyone will remember there were two George Bushes who were president, in an asterisk-in-the-index, Trivial Pursuits kind of way--two Adamses, two Harrisons, two Bushes. But almost nobody will remember which one was which--one had two middle initials and the other had one, but which was the doofy one-termer who doesn't seem as bad now as people thought at the time, and which was the idiot who drove the country into the ground?

Like Dick York and Dick Sargent, or Tom Bosley and David Doyle. Or Jackie Cooper and Barry Nelson.

There's a legacy, for the father who hoped to found a dynasty and the son who thought he could finally outdo the father.

Minute's up.

"Spiritual:" Dedicated to MLK

Charlie Haden on the string bass, with the Music Liberation Orchestra:

Sorry about the credits roll and the abrupt ending, but what are you gonna do? It's television.

Also note that this "Spiritual" by Haden isn't the same as this one, off his "Beyond the Missouri Sky" album with Pat Metheny, although they have the same name:

Catch the inaugural online from anywhere

FYI:

Lifehacker.com has assembled the definitive guide to online inaugural viewing--from the official sites, the TV networks, and the social networking sites--at your desk or on your phone.

Some are grumblin' and some are wondrin'

[Updated 1/20/09: Sorry folks, the video clip was taken down by YouTube, for reasons of unself-aware corporate irony, as explained here.]

I have several friends who are present for the inaugural events this week. (Probably, next week when everyone gets home and updates their Facebook walls, I'll find out I had even more friends there.) Tonight, while chatting with long-time p3 correspondent Doctor TV, I said that I didn't really mind watching it on TV from here--it's cold in DC, there are 4 million extra people in town, "oh look--I think that tiny speck at the other end of the Mall might be Obama," etc.

I'm prepared to take that back now, at least partly. I’m happy to pick and choose from the rest on C-SPAN and YouTube, but I would have dearly, dearly loved to be there on the Mall for this:

The best part, of course, is that Pete included the rarely-heard "naughty" verses:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tresspassin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Looking at that big ol' grin on Seeger's face, I'd say he had a pretty good time too. Good for him.

Sunday morning toons: Special "48 Hours and Counting" edition

It's something of a toss-up this week: A lot of the political toons are devoted to the end of the Bush Reign of Error and the beginning (one is tempted to say "dawn") of the Obama Administration. Others are picking up on the alignment of stars that has Obama taking the oath of office on the day after Martin Luthor King Day (a holiday that Senator John McCain opposed in his home state of Arizona, it's worth remembering). Israel's on-again-off-again war on the Gaza strip is in the mix too, but US toonists can be forgiven for being a little nearsighted this week.

Let's get to it:

Well, except that Bob Geiger is still taking January off. Jeez--you'd think he was doing this for free or something.

So let's pick up with Daryl Cagle's round-up.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Keefe, Bob Henglehart, Jeff Parker, David Fitzsimmons, Monte Wolverton, and Henry Payne.

The p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium is shared by Jerry Holbert and Steve Sack.

The p3 Bridge to Somewhere Award goes to Eric Allie.


p3 World Toon Review: Most of the world is at least as happy as we are that there's going to be a new Current Occupant: Cameron Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), and--my personal favorite this week--Stephane Peray (Thailand).

"It couldn't fit more perfectly/Than to have a world party on the day you came to be:" Joe Heller, Milt Priggee, Sandy Huffaker, Bruce Plante, and Marshall Ramsey get the jump on the world party tomorrow.

The joy of small things: I think my favorite toon for this week isn't one of the syndicated big boys; it's this little drawing by Barry Blitt that quietly upstages Frank Rich's NYTimes online piece today. (We've featured Blitt's small, clean, pieces before here at p3 although, as befits his medium, you have to look for it a little.)


Ann Telnaes notes a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall (and the bells in the steeple, too).


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman points out Bush's most memorable line.


The Peanuts Code: Looks like DaVinci (and Lennon & McCartney) weren't the only ones slipping secret messages into their art: If you'd only seen the unending river of TV spinoffs of Charles Shulz's "Peanuts," you would be forgiven for thinking that Shroeder's musical hero was Vince Guaraldi, who wrote and performed all that great piano jazz from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and later programs that's still burrowed into your brain all these years later. But loyalists of the strip know that it was Beethoven that Schroeder worshiped, a running bit stretching back to the strip's beginnings in the early 1950s. Panels would depict him pounding away on his little toy piano (how did he crank that music out with painted-on black keys?) while the notes wafted rapturously over his head.

And it turns out that those floating notes weren't randomly drawn on the page; far from it:

[M]usicologists and art curators have learned that there was much more than a punch line to Charles Schulz’s invocation of Beethoven’s music.

"If you don’t read music and you can’t identify the music in the strips, then you lose out on some of the meaning," said William Meredith, the director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University, who has studied hundreds of Beethoven-themed "Peanuts" strips.

When Schroeder pounded on his piano, his eyes clenched in a trance, the notes floating above his head were no random ink spots dropped into the key of G. Schulz carefully chose each snatch of music he drew and transcribed the notes from the score. More than an illustration, the music was a soundtrack to the strip, introducing the characters’ state of emotion, prompting one of them to ask a question or punctuating an interaction.

"The music is a character in the strip as much as the people are, because the music sets the tone," Mr. Meredith said. […]

In a strip from 1953 Schroeder embarks on an intensive workout. He does push-ups, jumps rope, lifts weights, touches his toes, does sit-ups ("Puff, Puff"), boxes, runs ("Pant, Pant") and finally eats ("Chomp! Chomp!"). In the last two panels he walks to his piano with determination and begins playing furiously, sweat springing from his brow.

The eighth notes above Schroeder’s head are from the opening bars of Beethoven’s "Hammerklavier" Sonata (Op. 106), a piece so long, artistically complex and technically difficult that it is referred to as the "Giant" Sonata. When Beethoven delivered it to the publisher in 1819, he is believed to have said, "Now you will have a sonata that will keep the pianists busy when it is played 50 years from now."

(That 1953 strip is reproduced here. And if the Hammerklavier Sonata sounds easy to you, watch this and see if your opinion changes.)



Rule Number One: Never put on a glowing hat if it isn't your own! From Disney's 1940 "Fantasia," here's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

Back in my academic days, I once witnessed a discussion, at which no alcohol was present, as to whether this piece represents the Frankenstein Myth in contemporary culture, or illustrated Clarke's third law of prediction, or was in fact an example of Nietzsche's principle of the Master-Slave dialectic. This goes to show how a good graduate education can ruin a harmless and enjoyable experience.


p3 Bonus Toon: As the new legislative session in Salem kicks off, Jesse Springer places the inevitable debate in its proper perspective. (Click to enlarge.)

Picture, if you will, an enormous block of cheese

Item:

Barack Obama plans to open his White House doors to the public on his first full day of his presidency, Jan. 21.

Obama aides on Friday announced plans to have an open house at his new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The idea is to keep Obama's administration the "most open and accessible" in history by inviting hundreds of supporters inside and encouraging them to stay involved.

(The linked-to AP story also includes a link to the application page if you're interested in attending the Open House.)

One imagines an insider's view of the event looking something like this:

I'm not satisfied with Obama on the all of the large things, but as small things go, I like moves like this, in part because (like Leo) I don't think that they're that small after all.

After 8 years of it being The Energy Industry's House, it's an important thing to be able to think of it As The People's House again.

Tho' much is taken, much abides: Rumpole's creator falls off the twig

'Members of the Jury, this case has only occupied a short part of your lives. Perhaps an hour of late-night entertainment to take the place of the telly or the headphones. You will soon forget all about Badgershide Wood, and Snippers hair-dresser's, and the conversation at the Pizza Palace. But for David Stoker, whom I represent, this case represents the whole of his life. Is he to go free, or is he to be forced, by the devilish plot of a mad old man, back to his misspent younger life of prison and crime? It is his life I now leave, Members of the Jury, in your hands, confident that he will hear from you, in the fullness of time, those blessed words "Not Guilty," which, more effectively than any surgery, will give life back to David Stoker.'

Then with a great flood of relief, I lay back on the pillows and closed my eyes. My final speech was over and I could do no more. The decision now had to be taken by other beds. It was the best moment of an anxious trial. As I lay resting, I heard the sound of distant voices. Verdicts came from the snorer, the tooth-grinder and many others. 'Not guilty,' they said, and 'Not guilty' they all voted. Even Ted the screw at the end of the chain piped up with 'I don't reckon David did it.' So the trial in the Princess Margaret ward was over.

Would I ever do the case down the Bailey? Would I ever repeat that closing speech to a real jury, up and dressed, in a real Jury box? I felt sleep drifting over me, dulling my senses and darkening my world. Should I ever . . . Who knows? For the moment, all I can say is, 'The defence rests.'

John Mortimer,
Rumpole Rests His Case

With a speech very much like this, Rumpole of the Bailey, that old flatterer of juries, tweaker of judges, sampler of Chateau Thames Embankment, husband to She Who Must Be Obeyed--an aged wife, match'd with whom he metes and doles out justice unto a savage race--won over more than a few juries in his career.

John Mortimer QC, creator of Rumpole--and himself a barrister with a record of civil rights cases to his credit--has passed away at 85.

Rumpole's first article of faith, a principle he insisted should be inscribed on the walls of chambers in letters a foot high: Never Plead Guilty.

(Thanks to Lance.)

Saturday tunes: "They don't care what goes on around"

Today's tune is dedicated to all the banking execs who ran their companies into the ground, took a government bailout without accounting for how it was spent, and still managed to walk away with fat bonuses. The "bigger piggies," if you will.

What they need's a damned good whacking.

And as a bonus, you get Eric Clapton on the track, plus the killer backbeat of "I Got My Mind Set On You."

Reading: Krugman: Defending the Constitution is not an oath to be honored only when it's convenient

Paul Krugman takes time off from trying to head off global economic collapse to talk about something even more important: The consequences--if any--of abuse of power at the highest levels of our government.

The two are connected, after all.

[I]f we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies. […]

By my count, at least six important government agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years — in most cases, scandals that were never properly investigated. And then there was the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?

Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?

Indeed. And it's an old rule of logic that the simplest proof that something is possible is to show that it's already happened:

In fact, we’ve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

(Emphasis added.)

If "post-partisan" means forging consensus not only with one's political adversaries but with criminals and their abettors, as much for the sake of social delicacy as for political progress, you can count me out.

"Next week," writes Krugman, "[Obama's] going to swear to 'preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.' That’s not a conditional oath to be honored only when it’s convenient. And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable."

Ironically, after eight years of watching as one president picks and chooses when the Constitution will be honored is precisely, will we watch as the new president does the same, albeit with loftier motives?

Krugman's piece is going on the Readings list in the sidebar.

Rebranding the GOP

With Karl Rove's fantasies of a Thousand Year Republican Reich in tatters, The Daily Show's Samantha Bee asks: What can the GOP learn from this experience?

Or, as la Bee phrases the problem to a blithely smiling GOP strategist:

"It's like the Republican Party is a shit sandwich--how do you get Americans to eat the sandwich?"

Turns out the answer is surprisingly simple, but be warned: Watch this clip and you've eaten your last Klondike Bar:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Reagraham Lincool

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

By the way, that Republican strategist, Kellyanne Conway? Here's her idea of "strategy." And here. And here. Amazing to think you can earn a living doing that. Wonder if this will go on her clip reel?

The unforgiving minute

The Bush presidency, placed in historical context:

Bush had all the luck of Jimmy Carter, the attention to detail of Ronald Reagan, the adaptability of Lyndon Johnson, the abiding respect for the Constitution of Richard Nixon, the humility of Teddy Roosevelt, the rhetorical skills of Calvin Coolidge, the fiscal restraint of Franklin Roosevelt, the cronyism of Warren Harding, and the overreaching idealism of Woodrow Wilson.

And his election had all the legitimacy of Rutherford Hayes'.

. . . and then it gets nasty.

As an added note: When a Republican president loses MarketWatch, there's not much left for him to lose.

Minute's up.

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered:" Number 6 leaves The Village

R.I.P. Patrick McGoohan--if, indeed, he is dead; all we know for sure is that a tall, sepulcural-looking fellow hustled a body into a vintage hearse outside a London flat. (I always wondered--did he leave the keys in that vintage Lotus?)

The week that Jack Bauer, the impresario of state-sanctioned ultraviolence, returns to network television is also the week we lost the actor who created the cerebral agent who disdained guns and violence. For John Drake (known to the early-1960s US television market as "Secret Agent Man") and for the abductee known only as Number 6, as for McGoohan throughout his professional life, it was a battle of wits. A contest of wills. A relentless battle where one's individuality was at stake every moment, waking or sleeping. Well, you get the picture.

Danger Man's John Drake was the ultimate cool customer, a globe-hopping fixer for NATO who nearly always solved major geopolitical tangles with brainy stratagems rather than sex or violence. McGoohan's resolute morality would eventually pave the way for others to become stars: He passed up both the roles of James Bond and The Saint's Simon Templar, opening doors for Roger Moore.

When Danger Man was resuscitated as an hour-long thriller in 1964, McGoohan flexed his muscle further, demanding more room to act, sharper plots and more friction with his superiors, which set the stage for the intelligence showdowns that would serve as the thematic center of every Prisoner episode.

He also became one of the highest-paid actors in England, which he parlayed into roles in spooky Disney films like Dr. Syn, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh and The Three Lives of Thomasina. Along the way, he impressed nearly without fail. Welles called his acting "intimidating;" billionaire Howard Hughes obsessively watched Ice Station Zebra, a nuclear thriller in which McGoohan appeared alongside Rock Hudson, Jim Brown and more; Secret Agent Man's eponymous musical theme, performed by Johnny Rivers, became a pop hit. He could do no wrong.

That is, until the controversial 1968 finale of The Prisoner, which — like the later cliffhangers of similar envelope-pushing programs like David Lynch's Twin Peaks or J.J. Abrams Lost — confounded conventional expectation and stoked a viewer outrage that McGoohan admits led him to leave London for Los Angeles for good. (For an extended analysis of Danger Man and The Prisoner's cultural influence, read Wired.com's feature, eerily published hours before McGoohan passed.)

As McGoohan would later explain of the destabilizing conclusion of The Prisoner in a 1984 retrospective: "If I could do it again, I would. As long as people feel something, that's the great thing. It's when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that's tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had."

Unfortunately, failing health prevented McGoohan from being involved in the 2009 reboot of "The Prisoner."

The net will be awash with clips of "The Prisoner" today, and rightly so. But just to be properly contrary, here's "The Island," a 1960 episode of "Danger Man:"

A Drinking Liberally-intensive week

Tonight was the first meeting of the newly-launched Portland Westside/Washington County chapter of Drinking Liberally. Fifteen or sixteen fun, interesting people (plus me) showed up for the launch at Pepita's in Beaverton (the Westside chapter will meet on the second Tuesday of the month). The chapter isn't set up to send regular emails yet, but for now you can get in the loop by joining their Facebook group.

And tomorrow night, Drinking Liberally/Portland has its regular meeting at Madison's at SE 9th and Madison.

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

The unforgiving minute

What if they gave a final press conference and nobody came?

The White House had high expectations for yesterday's final, historic news conference. "ONE CORRESPONDENT PER ORGANIZATION," proclaimed the bulletin sent to reporters. "STANDING ROOM ONLY FOR NON-SEAT HOLDERS." But when the appointed hour of 9:15 a.m. arrived, the last two rows in the seven-row briefing room were empty, and a press aide told White House interns to fill those seats.

Bush has long insisted history will be his judge. I'm guessing history won't even be interested in hearing the case.

Minute's up.

The fitting emotional response

Apparently there is concern this week that the occasion of Bush's 15-minute TV farewell address (to dignify it more than it deserves by placing it in the same category with this) will stir up strong emotions.

It's not clear what emotions we're talking about here, or on whose behalf this concern operates: For Bush, who seems to have only two emotional settings: "smug self-righteousness" and "snide resentment?"

Or the American people, seventy-five or eighty percent of whom wonder how they can miss him when he won't leave?

I suppose "pissing ourselves with gratitude that he'll be gone in less than a week" counts as getting emotional.

Of course, Bush has promised that he'll use his air time for higher purposes than simply stirring up feelings: "If I give it," he said last month on C-SPAN, "it’s going to be trying to leave behind some lessons learned."

If, in 2009, Bush can mention himself and "lessons learned" in the same sentence, it must mean that "sniggering derision" is on the list of likely emotional responses, too.

Advice to internet shoppers: Declare the pennies on your eyes?

One of the problems with handling a recession, teetering on the brink of something worse, like we face now, is getting state-level actions to sync up with what's being done at the federal level. A big reason is that most states have to keep a balanced budget; while the feds can use deficit spending as a tool to start rebuilding an economy where unemployment and consumer confidence are in the tank, states generally don't have that option.

That fact, combined with the continued influence of anti-government/ anti-tax fetishists at the state level often means that states respond to economic crisis by killing projects that would put people to work, as well as benefits and services that are most needed: health care, unemployment benefits, education, etc. It amounts to taking away the umbrella once the rain starts.

Here's another case in point:

Shopping online can be a way to find bargains while steering clear of crowds -- and sales taxes.

But those tax breaks are starting to erode. With the recession pummeling states' budgets, their governments increasingly want to fill the gaps by collecting taxes on Internet sales, which are growing even as the economy shudders.

And that is sparking conflict with companies that do business online only and have enjoyed being able to offer sales-tax free shopping.

One of the most aggressive states, New York, is being sued by Amazon.com Inc. over a new requirement that online companies must collect taxes on shipments to New York residents, even if the companies are located elsewhere. New York's governor also wants to tax "Taxman" covers and other songs downloaded from Internet services like iTunes.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! What was that last part again? Taxing "Taxman?"

Is nothing sacred? Does no one in New York have any sense of irony left?

Okay, say it with me: One, two, three, four, one, two . . . .

Sunday afternoon toons: Special "Mythical Beast" edition

Yes, the weather's been drizzly and not-fun lately, but think of it this way: Today, Oregonians will get about a minute and a half more daylight than we did yesterday. And the increase in daylight will continue to accelerate until the first day of spring, at which point we'll still keep getting more daylight until the first day of summer, although the rate of increase will slow down. Daylight. Let's all keep cheering for more daylight.

That doesn't segue very smoothly into today's toon review, but it was in me and just had to come out.

Bob Geiger will be back in February, bringing his weekly toon review along with him. Or at least one hopes.

Daryl Cagle, on the other hand, apparently gets no time off. His toon round-up has a full plate: Hamas and Israel, the ever-tanking economy back home, Bernie Madoff, Roland Burris, and the long-awaited but too-slow ride of George Bush into the sunset.

p3 Picks of the Week: John Trevor, Jerry Holbert, Steve Sack, Gary McCoy, John Cole, David Horsey, and Jeff Stahler.

The p3 "Some Days You Eat the Bear/Some Days the Bear Eats You" Certificate goes to Daryl Cagle. (Refresh my memory: Didn't the current Governor of California originally win his booby-prize governorship by arguing that his predecessor had ruined the state's economy?)


p3 World Toon Review: Cameron Cardow (Canada), Peter Bromhead (New Zealand), Patrick Chapatte (Switzerland), and Ali Delim (Algeria).


Ann Telnaes celebrates a rare moment of clarity for the Bush family.


The Left-Wing/Super-Hero Industrial Complex: It's amazing to think this will fuel the sputtering fire of conservative complaints about the "liberal media" (you'd think they had bigger problems at the moment) but such is the world we live in:

Next week, Marvel Comics will hit the stands with Amazing Spider-Man #538, featuring a story in which Spidey foils a terrorist plot to disrupt Obama's inauguration. Indignant right-wing bloggers are citing this as proof of left-wing media bias, thus confirming the widely held opinion that they need to move out of their parents' basement.

And before we completely rein in our inner comic geeks on this one, we should note this observation, regarding the charge of left-wing sympathizing on Marvel's part:

[Right-wing blogger Ken] Sheperd is just wrong. In a recent comic, Obama appears only to fire Iron Man Tony Stark from national security agency S.H.I.E.L.D, only to hand authority over to Norman Osborn, otherwise known as the Green Goblin, Spider-Man’s greatest foe. Which, if I were like Ken Shepherd, would have me whining about how Marvel obviously supports torture and believes that Obama is destroying our intelligence apparatus. One could interpret the death of Captain America during Civil War as symbolic of the Bush Administration’s disregard for civil liberties, but then you’d also have to take Secret Invasion as endorsing the idea that Muslim extremists are hiding among us, waiting to strike at any moment.

Got all that?

(Image via USA Today. By the way, note to the Marvel artists: I don't particularly care that your Obama doesn't look much like the man--both the grin and the ears seem to have been somewhat, uhm, idealized. But for the love of Pete, who's that supposed to be under that Spider-Man mask? Popeye? Steve Ditko must be snapping the lead off his pencils.)


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman offers an appropriately revised take on George Bush's reputation as a guy you'd like to have a burger with.


From the #48 spot on the Top 50 Cartoons of All Time comes an animated retelling of James Thurber's "The Unicorn in the Garden:"

(For other Thurber "Fables for our Time," go here.)


p3 Bonus Toon: When one part of our economy goes wobbly, the effects are soon felt in other parts. (I think "wobbly" theory was covered in my first semester of econ.) For example, when the price of gas gets high enough to discourage driving, it means the state gasoline tax brings in less money for highway maintenance. And when the state-wide smoking ban in Oregon bars limits the public health costs of smoking, it also cuts into state profits from video poker. Can we find a way out? Jesse Springer says yes, we can (click to enlarge):

Saturday tunes (with a swing)

I'm not sure any other pop music genre has one song that defines it quite the way that "Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing)" symbolizes Swing/Big Band music.

Clocking in at around 8 minutes, "Sing" took up both sides of a standard 78rpm record.

Written by Louis Prima, but basically owned by Benny Goodman (clarinet), Henry James (trumpet), and Gene Krupa (drums). Love it.

The unforgiving minute

When unemployment numbers rise, and the Dow Jones reacts by going down, not up, you know it's no longer business as usual. Even Wall Street is rattled.

If you weren't worried before, you should probably consider worrying now.

Minute's up.

Looks like you're writing a blog post!

It's hardly the best-kept secret of the information age that Microsoft has never been a particularly creative or innovative company. I'm not sure I could name an application area they've ever dominated where someone else didn't originally produce the better product. But they were ingenious--piratical, even--about marketing their mediocre wares, and the results speak for themselves.

Did I say I couldn't name an application area that Microsoft didn't originally pioneer? I'm wrong. Microsoft is the Christopher Columbus of the annoying interactive animated application interface.

The folks at Technologizer have done the hard work, tracing the history of Microsoft patent applications for character-based animated interfaces. (Remember Bob? and Rover? Shakespeare and Einstein? How about Earl the surfer dude? )

Read the whole patent, and you’ll see that Microsoft put immense effort into the technical logistics of implementing Clippy. He wasn’t the spawn of a moment of temporary insanity; he was the result of a vast amount of cold, calculating effort.

True, users have generally hated these digital pests, but remember, this is Microsoft: They wear your scorn as a badge of honor.

An article on Microsoft’s own site published when Windows XP was released says that some people "loathe" Rover–can you name another instance of any company anywhere using that word in conjunction with customer response to a new product?

Tour one of the darker side streets in the world of intellectual property rights.

(Hat tip to Doctor Beyond.)

Birthday suit

Forgot to mention at the time that somewhere in the first week of December was p3's fourth birthday. (No cards or presents, please; we don't want to make a fuss.)

I'd been meaning to mark the occasion with a formatting makeover--starting with an extra sidebar column--and tonight I finally got it done. Sort of. As you can see, there's still some fiddling and fixing I have to do, like tweaking the p3 Reading List. And the whole font-and-color thing needs work, 'cause . . . damn.

The anniversary is also the time when I take stock and decide if I want to do this for another year.

Yeah, sure. Why not.

Yike! I almost forgot:

The 111th Congress was sworn in today. And former Senator Gordon H. Smith--did you think we'd forgotten you here at p3?

Nonsense! In fact, we've got something for you: Your very own p3 bumper sticker:

Congratulations to Oregon's spankin'-new junior Senator Jeff Merkley.

The unforgiving minute

Good news and bad news:

The good news: In a turn of events once thought impossible, George Bush will find himself behind bars shortly after leaving the presidency, at taxpayer expense.

The bad news: It's a security gate, paid for by federal money, closing off the street of his new Dallas mansion.

Any chance we could change the lock (or weld it shut) and just leave him in there, and call it "house arrest?" At least it would be a start.

Minute's up.

Reminder: The first Al Franken Decade

Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update," December 1979:

Jane Curtin: Well, the 1970's are in their final month, and with some thoughts on this decade and the one we're about to enter, here's Weekend Update's Social Sciences Editor Al Franken.

Al Franken: Thank you, Jane.

Well, the "me" decade is almost over, and good riddance, as far as I'm concerned. The 70's were simply 10 years of people thinking of nothing but themselves. No wonder we were unable to get together and solve any of the many serious problems facing our nation. Oh sure, some people did do some positive things in the 70's - like jogging - but always for the wrong reasons, for their own selfish, personal benefit.

Well, I believe the 80's are gonna have to be different. I think that people are going to stop thinking about themselves, and start thinking about me, Al Franken. That's right. I believe we're entering what I like to call the Al Franken Decade.

Oh, for me, Al Franken, the 80's will be pretty much the same as the 70's. I'll still be thinking of me, Al Franken. But for you, you'll be thinking more about how things affect me, Al Franken. When you see a news report, you'll be thinking, "I wonder what Al Franken thinks about this thing?", "I wonder how this inflation thing is hurting Al Franken?" And you women will be thinking, "What can I wear that will please Al Franken?", or "What can I not wear?"

You know, I know a lot of you out there are thinking, "Why Al Franken?" Well, because I thought of it, and I'm on TV, so I've already gotten the jump on you. So, I say let's leave behind the fragmented, selfish 70's, and go into the 80's with a unity and purpose.

That's what I think. I'm Al Franken. Jane?

Jane Curtin: Thank you, Al. That's the news. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Franken declares the beginning of the second Al Franken Decade

Congratulations to Senator-elect Franken.

Of course there is that niggling detail that Harry Reid, worried by threats by the Civil War Re-Enactment Guild Senate Republican minority, isn't going to seat him . . . just yet. And Burris can wait outside, too.

Digby's right: The conservative movement functions just as well as a minority; if only the Democrats could get their act together half as well as the majority party.

Waiting on the Coleman/Franken recount: The penultimate chapter?

Here we go:

The Minnesota Supreme Court today rejected a bid by Norm Coleman in the disputed U.S. Senate election to consider counting hundreds of rejected absentee ballots from mostly Republican-leaning areas.

The court did not issue an opinion on Republican Coleman's claim that the ballots may have been wrongly rejected, saying he can press a court contest if he wants to prove his point.

The ruling this morning appears to clear the way for the State Canvassing Board this afternoon to certify results of the Senate election recount, presumably with Democrat Al Franken on top. Franken holds an unofficial 225-vote lead.

So now it's official.

Well, except for Coleman's anticipated strategy of can't-work sore-loser lawsuits. (Atrios is right.)

And except the filibuster to keep Franken from being seated, as promised by the partners in the New Bipartisanship [oops!]--by the Civil War Re-Enactment Guild [ahem; let's try it one more time]--by the Senate Republicans.

Yeah, other than fiddly details like that, it's pretty clear sailing ahead for ol' Smilin' Al. Good luck to him.

I don't have any more of those old Franken/SNL vignettes to share, so I'll just direct you to this. (It's got to be driving the TPM folks nuts--you spend day after day, month after month, providing all that muckraking and political analysis, and then your traffic numbers skyrocket because of a 25-year old clip of someone in tight pants.)


(Hat tip to Nick, one of the 83 gazillion email correspondents who forwarded the link to that clip to me in the last 24 hours.)

Sunday afternoon toons: Special New Year's Edition

Welcome to the first p3 toonfest of 2009. If you were expecting the holidays to be a quiet stretch for the political toonists, you'll be pleasantly surprised. (Although not every cartoonist was at his drafting table for the full week. Still, we'll manage.)

Bob Geiger's still on vacation. Watch for his toon review next week.

Daryl Cagle's round-up features several 2008-in-review pieces.

p3 Picks of the Week: John Darkow, Jimmy Margulies, John Cole, Gary Brookins, and Steve Breen.

And as for the dominant theme in Cagle's Best of the Year in Review collection, I'll give you a hint: ears and teeth.

The p3 Harmonic Toon Convergence Certificate--plus the p3 Buyer's Remorse Notification--has been mailed out to Dick Locher and Rob Rogers.

The p3 Too Much Information Award goes to Daryl Cagle, on the condition that he won't tell us where he got the details.


p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Arcadio Esquivel (Panama), Pavel Constantin (Romania), and Angel Boligan (Mexico).


Ann Telnaes kisses 2008 goodbye.


Guest toon: Carol Lay performs a fiery Feifferesque dance of farewell.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman considers the transition in the Office of the Vice President.


The NYTimes notes the passing of Will Elder, an artist whose name you might not recognize today, but whose work you've undoubtedly seen. Elder was one of the earliest of the artists for MAD Magazine. His credentials were already impeccable: In 1953 he did a parody of "A Visit From St. Nicholas" that was banned in Massachusetts and the focus of a dubious sting operation by the NYPD. Apparently not everyone imagined "half-butchered carcasses of hogs, a goat, a baby elephant, a lion and the requisite mouse, all dangling from meat hooks, gushing blood" when they read the words "not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." Who knew?

"Will was the one who gave Mad magazine its look and style, which were different from any comic book that had been created before," [MAD founding editor and Elder's childhood friend Harvey] Kurtzman wrote in his memoir, "My Life as a Cartoonist." "He was the one who started filling the margins of every page with hundreds of tiny cartoons. They had nothing to do with the story on the page."

Connoisseurs of Elder’s style call it "chicken fat," so named by its inventor for "the part of the soup that is bad for you yet gives the soup its delicious flavor." Elder’s art was one of perilous excess. Elder was the funny pages’ answer to Charlie Parker and Allen Ginsberg and Lord Buckley, and he served as inspiration not only to the comix artists of the underground movement, like Robert Crumb, but also to rock musicians in their aesthetic neighborhood, like Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Indeed, Garcia, who idolized Elder, once sought him out and invited him to a concert (at which Elder wore earplugs) and commissioned his idol to paint his portrait in oils. "I always liked that thing of overdoing it," Garcia explained in an interview about Elder, "and here’s a guy who really understands what overdoing it is all about."

You can see Elder's trademark marginalia on this December 1956 MAD cover (click to enlarge--it's all about the details). Also, note that this cover arguably beats both The Nation and Tom Tomorrow to the punch by 44 years.


A favorite bit that Warner Bros. animators liked to return to was the bookstore at night, when the titles and covers come to life--usually involving shameless puns and quick pop culture references. (So popular was the shtick that "Animaniacs" lifted it four decades later, this time in a movie rental shop: When a tyrannosaurus from "Jurassic Park" menaces the three heroes, Yakko says, "Let's drop a bomb!"--whereupon they shove several box-office stinkers, including"1941" [by "Animaniacs" executive producer Steven Spielberg], off the shelf and watch them explode below.) "Book Review," directed by Robert Clampett in 1946, is worth watching twice: Once for the action in the foreground, and once for the puns, the rapid-fire cameos (Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, W. C. Fields, Jimmy Durante, and more), and the lush backgrounds (look at the moving typeface scenery behind Sinatra's first appearance--it reappears later, too; you won't find that in an "Animaniacs").

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer is taking the week off.