Sunday morning toons: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

(Update: Almost forgot Barry Blitt.  He's down there now.)

Mike Doonesbury, B.D., Boopsie, Zonker, Joanie, Mark, and the rest turn a respectable 40 this month. More below, plus scary Halloween costume suggestions.

Today's selections have been lovingly hand-selected from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, About.com, and -- as always -- Daryl Cagle's political cartoon index at MSNBC.com:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, David Fitzsimmons, Signe Wilkinson, Marshall Ramsey, John Sherffius, Tom Toles,Nick Anderson, and Monte Wolverton.

(Combined) p3 Best of Show and Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Pat Bagley.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes asks a pretty fair question.


Scary Halloween costume ideas, part 1: This week, Mark Fiore brings us the ultimate trick and/or treat: Little Suzie Newsykins, the Candidate of Rage.


Was this the first graphic novel? Slate's review of God's Man, a 1929 story cycle told entirely in 139 beautiful wordless woodcuts, tells you way more about the reviewer than you'll want to know, but the images are simply amazing.


By the company he keeps: I have never been a Juan Williams fan. I think he's coasted way, way too long off of "Eyes on the Prize," I think he almost ran "Talk of the Nation" into the ground after Ray Suarez left. I think his long-standing Fox gig has been the worst kind of cynical tokenism on Fox's part, with his willing acquiescence. And I think that him losing his NPR job over his comment on Bill O'Reilly's show a couple of weeks ago is like Al Capone going up the river for tax evasion. Still, if this Mike Thompson cartoon makes O'Reilly angry, then there may yet be some good to come out of all this.


"I yam what I yam" meets "Trust me:" Well, what would it be like if
Raiders of the Lost Ark had been a Popeye cartoon?


Proving that there can be too much of a good thing: IDW Publishing unleashes a crossover story involving four of its big titles: Ghostbusters, Transformers, Star Trek, and G.I. Joe.  Oh yeah, and zombies -- because, you know, what's a Spock-Cobra-Venkman-Optimus Prime story without zombies?


Almost forgot: Here's Barry Blitt's illustration for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column, on the likelihood that the GOP establishment will pull the rug out from under any Tea Party candidates who manage to get elected.


My favorite was, is, and always will be "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Celebrating Doonesbury's 40th anniversary, Slate lists the top 200 Doonesbury panels in the history of the strip.


Tom Tomorrow two-fer: (1) Scary Halloween costume ideas, part 2, and (2) a festschrift (look it up!) for fellow Eli Garry Trudeau on the 40th birthday of Doonesbury.


The K Chronicles wonders if it's time to change banks.


At Red Meat, Bug-Eyed Earl muses over the fine print.


The Comic Curmudgeon invites you to play a new game: Who's the sociopath?


And speaking of Doonesbury, which we were, Zonker is reclaiming and redeeming his past and future. Heh.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman notes that with friends like these, the Constitution doesn't need enemies.


Nobody'll vote for a flattened-out rabbit skin, I always say! [I have no idea why blogger.com insists on throwing in that junk html code below, even after I've edited it out and republished the page, but at least now the video appears to be working again. If the embedded video still won't show in your browser, the link below should take you to the page.] Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam run against each other for mayor in "Ballot Box Bunny," directed by Friz Freleng in 1951. As copyright enforcers make online toons from the golden age harder to find online (this one's hosted, I believe, in Romania), it's also harder to be certain which version of some toons you're getting. In the case of "Ballot Box Bunny," some of Sam's gunplay has always been edited out on television, and I'm not entirely sure if the final "Russian Roulette" bit shown here is original or softened by the addition of those irises. Musical cues: The tune behind the opening credits is called "What's Up, Doc?," has a full set of lyrics, and is the subject of a whole 'nother post some Sunday. There's a non-musical reference to "Annie Get Your Guns," if you know what to listen for. And the tune Bugs plays on the exploding-piano gag is "Those Endearing Young Charms."

p3 Bonus Toon: One more reason to vote for Kitzhaber: the alternative is four years of "tall" jokes. Jesse Springer has a fair question: When record-breaking amounts are spent on a gubernatorial race, who owns the candidates when its over?

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday tunes: Vahtever happened to my Transylvania tvist?

Here it is: The "Citizen Kane" of novelty records:

Happy Halloween everyone.

Halloween at the office: Are you my mummy?

So there I was this morning, deep in the zone, when Angela (who used to work nearby but has now been relocated to lord-knows-where) peered over my shoulder and said, in an understandably muffled voice, "Are you my mummy?"

(Doctor Who fans will smile appreciatively, while the rest will wonder what the question could possibly mean, even on Halloween, since neither of us is wrapped in bandages.)

I have to say, ordering an authentic WWII-era gas mask (Angela's was German, rather than British, but I think dwelling on that would be quibbling in the larger context) to complete the effect clearly identifies her as having transcended fandom for connoisseurship. You can't quite tell from the dodgy camera-phone image, but that's a (disturbingly convincing) bleeding wound on the back of her hand, which is nice added hat-tip toward the story.

I went completely the other direction, toward elegant simplicity.

I like to think of Groucho glasses as the Halloween equivalent of the navy blazer, gray slacks, oxford shirt and regimental tie -- or, if you prefer, the basic black cocktail dress: Simple, timeless, transcending the ebb and flow of fashion so it never goes out of style.

I secretly hoped someone would compliment me on my Groucho nose so I could give them a withering stare and say, What Groucho nose?, but no takers.

Happy Halloween.

(Postscript: I had forgotten how good Christopher Eccleston was as the Ninth Doctor. He was overshadowed by David Tennant's Tenth Doctor, but Eccleston had the more difficult job: Jump-starting a jealously guarded quarter-century cultural tradition after a long hiatus.)

Egad! BBC Radio 7 is now broadcasting banned books!

Good on 'em. From long-time p3 correspondent and angloradiophile Doctor Beyond came this good news today:

Starting last Saturday BBC radio 7 has begun their series broadcasting banned books, starting with Lady Chatterley's Lover--with the naughty bits left in. I know that you have promote banned book month so thought you'd be interested in this.

I haven't seen what other works they will be doing but LCL will probably take three or four weeks, with a new episode each week. Chapter 1 will be up until 12:02am GMT next Sunday the 31st.

You can catch the webcast here.

And just to get you going:

Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind.

D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

Thanks, Doctor B.

Reminder: "A Face in the Crowd" at Screening Liberally tonight, 7pm at Ringo's

(Map from MAX line to Ringo's.)

Sunday morning toons: Everyday Italian

Today's selections have been lovingly hand-picked from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, About.com, and -- as always -- Daryl Cagle's political cartoon index at MSNBC.com.

Diverti!

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Jimmy Margulies, Jerry Holbert, Steve Sack, Stewart Carlson, Rob Rogers, Chan Lowe, Bob Englehart, Tom Toles, and R. J. Matson.

p3 Best in Show" Pat Bagley.

p3 James Montgomery (Defend Your) Flagg Award: Bob Englehart.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Bleilbel (Lebanon), and Cam Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes reviews the fundamentals of speech.


Mark Fiore puzzles out the trappings of gayness -- featuring a fabulous tank!


Hey, Rocky -- watch me pull an obituary out of my hat! The creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle -- and not who you're thinking of -- died last week at age 90. The story of why Alexander Anderson didn't get credit at the time (and rarely does today, even among toonophiles) and Jay Ward and Bill Scott did isn't pretty, but it's a sadly familiar. (Also, there's a quick mention in the article of a dark secret behind Mr. Peabody and Sherman). Loyal R&B fans will spot a howler committed by the author -- the traditional rival of Bullwinkle's alma mater Wassamatta U. is not "Heckwith U," which was a two-second sight gag from Season 1; it's the watchmakers' school known as Tick Tock Tech. Does Time Magazine simply not bother with fact-checking anymore?


Tom Tomorrow revisits one of the sad truths of our age: If you believe in the Easter Bunny, you're a child, but if you believe in an invisible hand that guides our economy for the best, you're a Chicago economist.


Keith Knight wishes you a scary Halloween.


At Red Meat, it's a Karen and Milkman Dan smackdown.


The fine line between "homage" and "theft:" Occasionally the Sunday Morning Toons awards the p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence to artists who produced very similar cartoons that week. Nothing nefarious there; it's usually the result of some combination of deadline pressures, the occasional tendency to go a little too quickly for the obvious joke (e.g., the rescue of the Chilean miners suggesting others who need rescuing), and bad freakin' luck. But sometimes something more severe happens, and people start brandishing the P-word. Comic Riffs talks about what happens when things escalate beyond the claim of Eerie Coincidence -- in this case, with South Park.


Everyday Italian, Part 1: And here's a Comics Riff two-fer: In a move reminiscent of Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign unwisely thinking "Born in the USA" would be a pretty keen theme song, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has opined that Homer Simpson is Catholic. Unfortunately, I quit reading L'Osservatore years ago, when they dropped Fr. Guido Sarducci's gossip column, and my Italian fluency has suffered.


You saw it here before it (completely) went viral: Here's Virginia Thomas' 7.30am phone message to Anita Hill from last week, as imagined by Taiwan's Next Media.


And here's Barry Blitt's illustration for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column, "What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?"


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman identifies the subtext of last week's Oregon political high-level meet-up.


Everyday Italian, Part 2: "Coniglio" means "Wabbit." Somehow, having "Rabbitson Crusoe" (directed by Friz Freleng in 1956) dubbed into Italian loses nothing, and in fact makes the match routine even funnier.

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer included this tee-up for this week's cartoon:

In 1990, former basketball player and gubernatorial hopeful Chris Dudley missed 13 consecutive free throws, setting an NBA record. In 1989, he set the record for most free throws missed in a single trip to the foul line, missing five consecutive free throws after the opposing team committed three lane violations.

News Item: Oregon Republicans are excited about their chances of electing their first republican governor since 1978.

Test your toon-captioning chops at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday tunes: Try thinking more than just for your own sake

Four reasons to bring this song up now, with less than two weeks before the midterm elections:

First, it's a classic case of a George Harrison song for the Beatles that features "naughty chords" -- sharped, diminished, and half-stepped moves departing from the standard I - IV - V structure of 12-bar blues. There were those, sometimes close to home, who faulted George for this R&B apostasy. Not me.

Second, Rubber Soul never, ever gets played enough.

Third, this album put me through a phase where I thought that every song could be improved with a fuzz bass. My bandmates of those days gently but firmly set me straight in time.

And finally, "Think for Yourself" sounds like a relationship break-up song, but it ain't:

Written and sung by George Harrison, it is a warning against listening to lies. In his book I Me Mine he writes, "But all this time later, I don't quite recall who inspired that tune. Probably the government."

Postscript:

10/21/10 3:19pm PT

[Updated below.]

If I didn't have thumbs, the equivalent to this event would have occurred in early November 2009, when I hit 7999.9, but no one would have known because I couldn't have taken the picture with my phone. [Think about it.]


[Update: Earlier stories about my bike computer are here and here.]

Quote of the day: living and breathing

(Update: Inexplicably broken Slate link fixed.)

Dahlia Lathwick on the possible motives behind Ginni Thomas’s phone call to Anita Hill, asking for an apology 19 years after the event:

My Grandfather's Son is ample proof that Clarence Thomas lives and breathes umbrage.

As a side note: Only in a world where conservatives have completely worked the refs in the political media for a generation could demanding an apology be referred to with a straight face as "seeking reconciliation."

Quote of the day: Vietnam fantasy camp

Somerby:

Chris [Matthews] comes from that group of Vietnam avoiders -- he avoided the draft through the Peace Corps -- who have spent the past twenty years atoning on cable for their misconduct. The first such atonement was earned in 1999 and 2000, as these childish, under-grown ninnies received absolution from Saint John McCain in exchange for their fawning endorsements. In effect, the Straight Talk Express was a Vietnam Fantasy Camp -- and a confessional -- for these still-immature draft-avoiders.

I'm not with him on his tone of voice about the Peace Corps -- there was/is more than just avoiding Vietnam going on there -- but he couldn't be righter about McCain and the STE as the place where adolescent fantasies got redeemed by middle-aged warrior-wannabe media stars.

"Jive ass dude don't got no brains anyhow! Hmmph!"

Three generations raised on TV mourn the passing of Barbara Billingsley at 94.

Sunday morning toons: Playing "doctor"

It was a good week to be a formerly-trapped Chilean miner; but the rest of us are having to muddle along as best we can.

Let's kick things off with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, John Trever, John Darkow, Patrick Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Margulies, Steve Sack, Adam Zyglis, Steve Breen, Bill Day, Cal Grondahl, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Mike Lester.

p3 Medal of Honor: Daryl Cagle.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Ed Stein and Rob Rogers (and many others).

p3 World Toon Review: Cameron Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Ingrid Rice (Canada), and Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands).


Ann Telnaes wonders, how can it be "free speech" if you can't hear it above the sound of the cash register?


Mark Fiore outlines the Meg Whitman jobs plan for California. Don't miss the disclaimer at the end.


Comic Riffs sets some fair-minded boundaries on an otherwise-irredeemable idea: The (live-action) Family Circus movie. Where was Mr. Not Me when we needed him?


Don't want to spend the money on this myself, but if you buy one, bring it along to coffee so I can see it: The DC Superheroes Ultimate Pop-Up Book. And yes, the guy behind this calls himself an "engineer." I still love America.


Barry Deutsch lists the top 10 excuses for ignoring unemployment.


Here's Barry Blitt's illustration (the first to depart from black and white, I believe) accompanying this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column, on the future of right-wing anger in America.


Ruh-Roh! This week, Tom Tomorrow presents another edition of News from a Parallel Universe. You'll never think of the phrase "cold, dead fingers" the same way again!


The K Chronicles presents a special wedding-day edition of Life's Little Victories. Yes!


Red Meat features Bug-Eyed Earl in the child-hood BB-gun story you never wanted to hear. It'll make you want to shoot your own eyes out!


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman predicts the future of political advertising in America.


Huh -- sounds like "Inner Sanctum!" "Racketeer Rabbit," directed in 1946 by Fritz Freling, features Mel Blanc voicing both the Edward G. Robertson character and the Peter Lorre character (the latter simply disappears from the story about half-way through for no adequately explored reason.) The song launched by the "going for a ride" scene is the 1905 hit "(Come Away with Me, Lucille) In My Merry Oldsmobile."

Video extra: The NYTimes review of the DVD release "The Essential Bugs Bunny Collection" can be reduced to 8 words: the first disc is; the second disc isn't. Also, I note that, of the 4 BB images accompanying the article, one dates to 1950 ("The Rabbit of Seville," a Chuck Jones classic from the beginning of the Silver Age) and the rest, if they were ever part of actual animated releases, are from soulless post-Silver Age dreck you aren't apt to see featured on p3 Sunday Morning Toons any time soon.)


p3 Bonus Toon: With the election a little over two weeks away, Jesse Springer wonders if this is the time for Oregon to play "doctor."

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

Saturday morning tunes: They said it was a weather balloon

Soul Coughing's "Unmarked Helicopters" made the soundtrack of the first season of "The X-Files," in one of its most memorable episodes: Fallen Angel, featuring comic and sad UFO-obsessive Max Fennig, who's been following Mulder and Scully's investigations from a distance (turns out their department travel vouchers were subject to the FOIA). In the first season, Scully's role in the partnership was still ambiguous at best -- keeping a scientific-respectability leash on Mulder's extreme-possibility ideas? or spying on him for the Cigarette Smoking Man, and possibly AD Skinner?

"So this is the enigmatic Dr. Scully . . . ?" Max grins shyly and slyly when she confronts Fennig and Mulder in a military detention facility, hundreds of miles from where Mulder is supposed to be at that particular moment. He extends a hand in greeting, and she freezes him with a stare. Those were the days.

Some questions for Chris Dudley, defender of our freedom

Oregon's GOP gubernatorial candidate has new friends, although they're being kept at a safe distance.

There's a flash ad out there on the web now -- I saw it today in a geo-targeted banner on whitepages.com, although with the money involved it must surely be other places too -- trumpeting CD for . . . well, see for yourself (you'll need to set your browser's cookie-enabling at its most generous and probably refresh a few times, and of course, your computer needs to believe it's in Oregon):

Government is chipping away at our rights

Debt
Out of Control Spending
Government Intervention

Now they’re chipping away at our freedom

[Animation: The words "2nd Amendment," apparently carved from stone, begin to crumble and slide]

You can stop them!

Vote Freedom First! Vote Chris Dudley for Oregon Governor

And the final image (click to enlarge) includes The Fine Print:

THE NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT OF THIS ADVERTISING. PAID FOR BY THE NRA POLITICAL VICTORY FUND (WWW.NARAPVF.ORG) AND NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE'S COMMITTEE.

Okay, fine -- given the way that heavy political money is being spent anonymously in this state, I suppose something like an openly-signed NRA third-party ad seems comparatively innocuous. At least you know which way the bullets are coming from, so to speak.

Dudley's campaign website doesn't appear to be searchable, and I’m afraid I wasn't willing to perform a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse on that URL to find a mention of his Second Amendment position. Although he's trailed his skirts for the NRA during this cycle, I seriously doubt if he'll think about the right to bear arms again in the next four years, win or lose. He's got bigger fiscal fish to fry.

But still, here's something that someone should ask the wealth management advisor and former Blazer center (as Wikipedia fortuitously describes him, known primarily for his defensive skill as a rebounder and shot blocker, something to think about in the context of the next four years):

1. Does he agree with the NRA that our 2nd Amendment freedoms are in danger?

2. How? By whom? (Blaming "Government” doesn't quite nail it down, I’m afraid.)

3. If he's elected governor of Oregon, what would he do about that?

Now, if only he'd appear in a public venue where he could face questions.

Sometimes it's hanging right in front of your nose...

And it still takes almost 20 years to get it.

It says "1992" in my handwriting in the flyleaf of my Rumpole Ominbus (both volumes), the short story collection I've re-read several times (and that's not counting the ITV episodes, many but not all of the novels, and the audiobooks -- thanks to Doctor Beyond for the latter).

And yet only this week did I realize, with wild surmise, that his beloved but estranged son is named after the one place Rumpole always secretly feared he'd wind up.

Quote of the day: a loose definition of the Tea Party

Matt Taibbi:

A loose definition of the Tea Party might be millions of pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the handful of banks and investment firms who advertise on Fox and CNBC.

(H/t Randy Stapilus via FB)

Sunday morning toons: Is that a webcam in your pocket, or are you just happy to see a CNN reporter?

Today is 10/10/10.  That must mean something.

But no dilly-dallying this morning; let's cut straight to Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for this week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, R. J. Matson, Jimmy Margulies, Henry Payne, Adam Zyglis, Larry Wright, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: John Trevor.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence: Mike Lester, John Cole, and Nate Beeler.

p3 Legion of Painful Irony Award: John Darkow.

p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium: Jeff Stahler.

p3 "This Ain't the 'Funnies' Award: Bill Day.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Tjeerd Royaards (Netherlands), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes urges everyone -- and she means everyone -- to exercise their right to free expression.


Mark Fiore traces the history of the snuggly White House.


Tom Tomorrow updates the age-old pick-up line: Is that a web-cam in your pants, or are you just happy to see a CNN reporter?


The Comics Curmudgeon reveals the chthulu-like nature of Marmaduke (although being an unstoppable force of pure energy didn't help him much at the box office last summer, did it?).


At The K Chronicles, it's all about livin' the dream. Sort of. Refill that coffee?


At Red Meat, Milkman Dan has his own special kind of don't ask, don't tell.


Here's Barry Blitt's illustration for this week's Frank Rich NYTimes column about the intersection of politics and social media.


Comic Riffs muses on 6 things we know now that the director's been hired for the next movie in the Superman franchise. Some are awfully inside-baseball (e.g., 2. The box office for "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole" just got more interesting. Is such a thing possible?) Some are a little depressing (e.g., 5. The pressure for Snyder to shoot in 3-D is ginormous.) But some are comforting (e.g., 6. Hollywood hype machines can now crank into full gear as Nolan/Snyder turn to casting their Man of Steel -- suggesting that the utterly-forgettable star of "Superman Returns" isn't in the running.) My advice: "Stylish" only gets you so far in this world if you don't have much of a story to tell.


Mario Piperni has released the latest in his series of fabulous political illustrations (and I use the world "fabulous" with some care).


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman bets his bottom dollar you'll lose the blues in Chicago.


In which the duck gets the boot: In case you're one of the seven people on the planet who hasn't already seen this since it went mega-viral last week, here's rebelliouspixels.com's killer Donald Duck/Glenn Beck mashup. Says creator Jonathan McIntosh:

I wanted to have Donald Duck act as a stand-in for the very real anger many people in the country are feeling about the economic crises, skyrocketing foreclosures, unemployment epidemic and the huge corporate bailouts under both Bush and Obama. Using Donald for this remix seemed like a perfect choice because originally he was created as a down-on-his-luck working-class ’everyman’ character for the classic Disney cartoons.

And who better than Donald to deliver the kind of sputtering anger that has made Beck's audience the force it is today?

p3 Bonus Toon:  Current laws (federal and state) seem almost to beg candidates to buy elections.  Here in Oregon, where it has its own special subtext, Jesse Springer cashes in on the joke by not making a joke about the joke. (Click to . . . uhm, enlarge.)

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)

October Living Liberally calendar for Oregon and SW Washington

Have you been out canvassing? Phone-banking? Applying adhesive address labels to mailers? Reading up on the issues? Then Drinking Liberally is the place to kick back afterward!

Once again, the first of the month snuck up on me. So this is a little late, but there's big doin's out there, including the second meeting of Screening Liberally in Beaverton.

Here's the run-down for Drinking (and Screening) Liberally chapters in Oregon and SW Washington this month. (Click on the chapter's link to join their email list.)

Technically, I promoted the October meeting of the Corvallis chapter of Drinking Liberally in last month's calendar entry, but they met last Thursday niht at 5pm - 7pm at Squirrels, 100 SW 2nd St..


Vancouver: Next meeting: Tuesday, October 12th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Tuesdays, 7pm, at the Back Alley Bar and Grill, 6503 E. Mill Plain Blvd. (West of Andersen, in a strip mall 1/2 block west of Safeway on the south side of Mill Plain. It's deep in the lot.)

Portland Left Side (aka: Portland Metro West): Next meeting: Wednesday, October 13th.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of every month, 7:00pm at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway St, (just east of Hall Blvd).

Portland: Next meeting: Thursday, October 14th.
Meetings: Second and fourth Thursdays of the month, at the Lucky Lab Brew Hall at 19th and NW Quimby, Thursday at 7pm.

Salem: Next meeting: Thursday, October 14th.
Meetings: Third Thursday of the month at Browns Towne Lounge, 189 Liberty St NE # 112 (Old Sportstop next to Read Opera House)

And Portland West Side Screening Liberally is having its next meeting Sunday night, October 24th at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway St, (just east of Hall Blvd). Vote at the Facebook page or drop me a comment, below, for your choice: either A Face in the Crowd or The Fog of War.

There are over 300 DL chapters around the country; to find the one near you -- or to start one in your neighborhood--go here.)

And if you appreciate Living Liberally promoting progressive action through social interaction -- including keeping the whole Living Liberally network up and running -- consider sending them a little love via Tipping Liberally. Or check out becoming a regular pledge donor.

So wherever you are, join the Living Liberally gang for drinks and political conversation.

And remember: DL encourages everyone to drink, and vote, responsibly.

Don't forget there's still time to purchase your copy of 538 Ways to Live, Work, and Play Like a Liberal.

Saturday afternoon toons (70 years ago today)

Happy birthday to John, the Clever Beatle.

Saturday afternoon toons (40 years ago today)

Betcha didn't know that Roger Ebert wrote the first published review of John Prine's music, 'way back in 1970.

Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore.

Saturday morning tunes: The drunken kung fu jazz master

I came to Thelonious Monk late in the game, comparatively speaking. I love his stuff in part because of his great gift for tunes you can whistle. That's probably why, according to Wikipedia:

Monk is the second most recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed over 1,000 songs while Monk wrote about 70.

But the thing that kills me about Monk is his piano style. He was to the jazz piano what the drunken master is to kung fu: You think he's syncopating, but he's not; he's staggering all over the time signature. You think those are grace notes, but they're not; he's landing somewhere in the cracks between the keys on the piano. There's a crazy but precise fluidity to it that takes a lot of work and skill to make happen. And yet he's unstoppable. If you sat me down at a piano and put a gun to my head, I doubt if I could reproduce the first twenty-four bars of "Well You Needn't" in true Monk style to save my soul. But it's an amazing thing to listen to.

"I am Spartacus!"

He's probably unfairly remembered for "Yondah is the castle of my foddah." Not enough people remember his Boston Strangler. Me being me, I remember The Persuaders with fondness.

But who's kidding who? Curtis. Lemmon. Monroe. Wilder. This is, always was, and always will be, da bomb.

Although Dennis Hartley at Hullabaloo makes a good case for"The Sweet Smell of Success."

Rest in peace, Tony Curtis (1925-2010).

RIP Steven J. Cannell

When it came to stories about affable misanthropes driving distinctive rides, Cannell owned the business.

From the NYTimes obituary:

For 30 years, beginning in the early 1970s and extending through the 1990s, television viewers could hardly go a week without running into a show written by Mr. Cannell. His writing credits include more than 1,000 episodes of various series, primarily crime dramas, and he is listed as the creator of almost 20 series — some long-running hits like “The Rockford Files,” and “The Commish,” others quick flame-outs like “Booker. ” At one point in 1989, Mr. Cannell’s company was producing five series on three networks. One of them, “21 Jump Street,” introduced a future Oscar nominee to public acclaim: Johnny Depp.

But that was not unusual. Mr. Cannell’s shows often opened doors for emerging actors. Jeff Goldblum gained his first wide notice in a short-lived but well-remembered Cannell series, “Tenspeed and Brown Shoe.” And “Wiseguy” gave another future Oscar winner, Kevin Spacey, a chance to stand out in a memorable extended turn as a villain.

"The Rockford Files" was certainly my favorite of Cannell's work, although that owes at least as much to my lifelong admiration for the wry and unflappable James Garner (who I almost but not quite got to meet at the catfish diner in my home town before bypass surgery made him clean up his dietary act). "The A-Team" might be one of Cannell's most commercially successful series, but I always had a special fondness for the canceled-too-soon Stingray, which was into inexplicable music videos replacing plot movement a couple of years before Miami Vice:

Oregon angle:

Mr. Cannell suffered from extreme dyslexia, which went undiagnosed and all but ruined his school years. Despite inheriting his family’s intense work ethic, he failed three grades and was unable to retain a football scholarship to the University of Oregon because of his academic record.

But a professor there recognized his writing gifts and encouraged him.

Sunday morning toons: This is not ironic

Irony, it has been said, will be the death of us all. If by irony we mean the about-face between what you expect and what you get, then perhaps.

This week:

• Stealth donors are money-bombing midterm races (including OR 4th) under the New And Improved First Amendment^TM.
• The GOP, once the party of voodoo economics, is cutting straight to the chase.
• Rahm Emmanuel is pulling the orange ring.
• The way is being prepared for a third generation to run what's left of North Korea into what's left of the ground.
• Business and consumers continue to play chicken, while the recovery waits.
• And "Don't ask, don't tell" don't fly. Still.

Let's kick things off with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up for the week.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Mike Lester, R. J. Matson, Mike Keefe, Jeff Parker, John Darkow, David Fitzsimmons, Michael Ramirez, Adam Zyglis, John Cole, Jimmy Margulies, Nate Beeler, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Pat Bagley.

p3 World Toon Review: Cameron Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Teejerd Royaards (Netherlands), and Ingrid Rice (Canada).


Ann Telnaes gives us the latest DC weather report.


Mark Fiore says, if it was good enough for us then, it's better for us now!



Gasp! Moonbat, did I hear you correctly? This week, Tom Tomorrow brings us the continuing adventures of Conservative Jones, Boy Detective.


Keith Knight exposes the new (bio)terrorism.


Doonesbury investigates the continuing struggle to bring empathy to the cerebral White House.


The Comics Curmudgeon takes a moment out to praise one of my favorite strips when I was a kid (seriously): Mandrake the Magician, created by the artist who also created The Phantom. I had no idea it was still in business. I used to read it in the Lebanon (IN) Reporter, which I'm also pleasantly surprised to find is still around. The tag line, like "Popeye reaches for his spinach," or "Clark ducks into a phonebooth," was always "Mandrake gestures hypnotically." That's all he had to do. It used to crack me up.  Later the same gag became more widely known as the Jedi Mind Trick.


Memo to Slate.com's culture blogger: References to Superman as if he were a real person are not per se ironic. Please step away from your Alanis Morissette CDs at once.



Who speaks for the laid-off workers at the giant-typewriter factory?  Here's a helpful break down from Graph Jam of Gotham City employment by occupation.


The Trojan Tea Partier? Beware of Witches Bearing Gifts? Here's Barry Blitt's illustration of Christine O'Donnell, useful idiot, for Frank Rich's weekly NYTimes column.  If O'Donnell did not exist, would it be necessary for the fat-cats and string-pullers who are behind the Tea Party to invent her?


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman follows the trend of declining marriage: The groom wore black and the bride wore a look of gradually-increasing horror.


This cartoon is not ironic: It's "She-Sick Sailors," the 1945 Seymour Kneitel-directed semi-crossover between Paramount's two top animation properties, Popeye and Superman, although the latter doesn't actually appear in person.* The musical score by Sammy Timberg quotes the theme from the Superman animated theatrical series. I remember being vaguely freaked out by the machine-gun sequence when I was little, which struck me a little bit harsh even for Bluto (although the mayhem committed upon Olive's person must have seemed par for the course). (And while we're at it, why does Timberg go from Chopin's Funeral March to -- of all things -- "Love in Bloom" after Popeye falls?)

Continuity purists take note: After Bluto dives out of Olive's window, the S-insignia on his costume disappears and never returns.


p3 Bonus Toon: And Popeye's not the only one out there dodging bullets in the forest. Jesse Springer notes that it's open season.

Remember to bookmark the daily political toon features at Slate's Slate, Time, and About.com.

Test your toon-captioning skills at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.)
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*Nope. Still not ironic. Sorry, Slate.

Saturday morning tunes: Take that, Pixar!

In 1961, Ernie Kovacs produced a series of strange short films set to the magnificent, hi-fi envelope-pushing music of Juan Garcia Esquivel, whose albums enjoyed a well-deserved revival as "space-age bachelor pad music" as part of the lounge music vogue of the early 1990s. This one, modestly called "Musical Office," features Esquivel's versions of "Jalousie" and "Sentimental Journey."

And here's Kitchen Symphony from the same series.

The minimalist vocals on "Sentimental Journey" are performed by the Van Horne Singers, the most famous studio singing group you never heard of, instantly recognizable to a generation of kids as the voices singing almost every Hanna-Barbera theme song ever, including "The Flintstones," "Wally Gator," and "Magilla Gorilla."