The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered by Carl, Christine, and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM's Carl + Christine show, are posted at LO.

And I could be wrong about this--time was short, so things went by pretty quickly--but I think TJ and I snuck a bawdy one in on Carl after the first limerick that caught even him by surprise.

Meanwhile, due to the sort of over-budgeting that one normally expect to see on a Pentagon arms program, the Poetry R & D division of p3 once again manufactured 33% more limericks than the contract called for, leaving an extra one for this week's Lost Limerick Challenge. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

How will salmon runs manage to flow?
How will farmers be able to grow?
Those are scientists' fears:
For the past seventy years
Saw the Cascades lose half of their __________.

(The answer can be found in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State at Loaded Orygun.)

This week's StS is up

The weekly round of up All the Oregon News That Fits ^TM is posted at Loaded Orygun.

Where were you when the E.coli news broke last night?

• In the zone?


• Across the river from the zone?


• Nowhere near the zone and wondering what the BFD is about?

And where did you get your news?

Sunday morning toons: Special "Edward Everett Horton-est" edition

What are you thankful for this week? For some suggestions, let's jump into Daryl Cagle's toon round-up.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, R. J. Matson, John Darkow, Michael Ramierz, Steve Sack, Henry Payne, Adam Zyglis, Milt Priggee, Jeff Stahler, Ed Stein, Bill Schorr, J. D. Crowe, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Jeff Darcy.

p3 World Toon Review: Dario Castillejos (Mexico), Pavel Constantin (Romania), Alex Falco, (Cuba) and Manny Aenlle Francisco (Philippines).


Hot damn! He's back--and Ann Telnaes has him!


Everything happens twice. As Keith Knight points out, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to have excrement flung at them.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman looks at the future of entertainment.


"The meanest, toughest, rip-roarin'-est, Edward Everett Horton-est hombre what ever packed a six-shooter!" I'm not exactly sure how--or why--Edward Everett Horton got in there, but that was theater-goers' first introduction to Yosemite Sam, in this 1945 toon directed by I. ("Fritz") Freling.

(If Horton's name rings a bell, it's probably because he was known to kids a generation later as the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales" on "Rocky and Bullwinkle." Or--maybe--you're thinking of Edward Everett, the 19th Century orator and statesman who spoke immediately (and at considerable length) before Lincoln at the 1863 dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg. Probably, though, it's the "Fractured Fairly Tale" thing.)


p3 Bonus Toon: Q: What's the difference between the 1998 Oregon gubernatorial campaign and turkey with dressing? Jesse Springer has the answer: One's a lot more interesting when you warm it up again:





Have you bookmarked Slate's political cartoon for the day?

The unforgiving minute

Overheard last night:

If you could get a translator to follow Brandon around, and translate what Brandon says into what Brandon is trying to say . . . it'd blow Shakespeare out of the water!

Minute's up.

Saturday tunes: "Here's how to be an agreeable chap"

From 1967, Dusty Springfield sings the original High Maintenance Woman's Anthem:

Happy birthday to one of the most trusted journalists in America

For many people, simply replacing laddie-boy wannabe Craig Kilbourn as host of "The Daily Show" would have been service enough. But not Jon Stewart. That's not an achievement to rest on--it's an achievement to build on.

The moment when all doubt was removed regarding Stewart's value to America:

Ah, me. I just can't get enough of that one.

Here's a Jon Stewart Fun Fact to know 'n' trade: Jon proposed to his wife via a special crossword in the New York Times with the help of Times crossword editor Will Shortz.

Many happy returns.

(Hat tip to Wendy.)

If you're reading this on your personal device while standing in line somewhere for Black Friday

. . . then this advice is reaching you too late. Sorry.

"It was almost as if they were . . . organized!

"Alice's Restaurant" is still a tradition around here for today, but on the p3 Thanksgiving dinner table of media, this remains the free-range turkey and home-made dressing.

Oceania has never been at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Ladies and gentlemen, former Bush press secretary--and, as of this week, Obama appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is responsible for all non-military US government's international broadcasting, such as Voice of America, TV Marti, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia--Dana Perino, explaining to the world that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term:"

I'm proud.

Adjust your metaphors accordingly

When Lou Dobbs began hinting he might run for president, my friend, colleague, and longtime p3 correspondent Doctor TV invoked the "First Turn at the Indy 500" principle (first developed for the prospect of a Rick Santorum presidential run) as a reason for throwing five bucks to his campaign--the first turn seats are the ones to get because that's where all the cool wrecks happen.

Still, it's easy to understand why Dobbs was thinking about a White House bid. Because, you know, if there's one thing the Republican Party doesn't have enough of, it's guys like Lou who want to be president.

But now Dobbs is hinting that his ambitions might be more modest--merely the United States Senate. In the terms of our "Indy 500" metaphor, donating to this campaign would be like buying seats on the short chute after the third turn: the wrecks there are never quite as spectacular, so they're seen by fewer people.

Packing a lot of chewy conservative goodness into 16 words

This morning, the Crooks and Liars blog page has an ad for a front group called Generation Hope:


Two things struck me about this ad. First, it describes the USPS as run by "Government Bureaucrats;" second, by implication it invites the reader to agree that anything run by "Government Bureaucrats" is by definition a bad thing.

Taking those in reverse order, are Americans really unhappy with the USPS? There's the civic ritual of bitching about postage price bumps every couple of years, but other than that, I think the worst you could say is that most Americans enjoy the luxury of taking it for granted.

(If Americans really cared that much about the price of a stamp, first class rates could come way down if by instituting a small number of standard dimensions for envelopes, rather than insisting on our god-given right to put a stamp on a coconut if we damn well feel like it. Standardized dimensions for first class mail is one of the reasons that mail costs less to send in Japan. But if someone tried to tell Americans that they can't wrap a claw-hammer with a cut-up grocery bag and drop it in the corner mailbox, you'd have FOX's weeping madman calling it a Stalinist takeover plot by that evening.)

The second striking thing about the ad, though, is that the USPS isn't run by "Government Bureaucrats." Hasn't been for almost four decades.

The USPS created during Nixon's first term, in 1970, as an independent agency. It hasn't been funded by tax dollars since the early 1980s. The law creating the USPS specifically declares it to be an "independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States,"

So, comes the question: Who are these Generation Hope people, anyway, who manage to work a doubtful assumption and a large error of fact into a single 16-word ad?

Hm. "Doubtful assumptions?" "Large errors of fact?" The question almost answers itself, doesn't it?

I followed the links, so you don't have to. According to its home page, Generation Hope "engages, informs and empowers young Americans with facts on the hot topics and political issues impacting 'Generation Y'." It's an offshoot of the League of American Voters, a conservative advocacy group describing itself as "Leading the Fight to Stop Obama Care."

(The ad was placed at C&L by Google Ads, which places ads according to keywords found at the site. Google Ads can be comically indifferent to what's being said about the content, leading to oddities like this.)

Generation Y is the loosey-goosey demographic category including those Americans born between the late 1970s and late 1990s.

This ad's target--Generation Y'ers--is a cohort that never knew the US Post Office when it was a cabinet-level part of the government. For them, it's always been an independent entity (albeit one with a state-granted monopoly on delivering first-class mail). So the Operation Hope attempt to use the USPS as the boogie man isn't likely to spook them much. In truth, Americans of all ages have probably long-since forgotten whether the USPS is independent or government-run.

In fact, if you really put the question to them that way--do you want your health care run like the post office?--I imagine a lot of people would like to see health care work like the mail: You buy stamps for a fixed price and use them when you want, you leave your mail outside your door or at any of several drop points in your neighborhood, and it magically disappears and winds up at its destination a few days later. You don't need an appointment. You won't get billed later. You won't have to call customer service to find out why it never arrived or was mis-routed. It all works seamlessly, and almost invisibly. And you can never lose your right to use the mail.

Hell, I'd love to have my health care work like the mail. Where do I sign up?

I've written before about the inability of modern conservatives to understand how the world looks to anyone but themselves. This ad's another example, I think. It's a half-expressed assumption that all conservatives currently agree with, wrapped in a falsehood that only a conservative would care enough to concoct, sent out to motivate an audience that is unlikely to get it.

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered by Carl, Christine, and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM's Carl + Christine show, are posted at LO.

And here's an extra one, for p3 readers. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

The temperature never did sink
Not enough , you might think.
But in Ashland, no struggle--
Since a guest came to juggle
On the opening day at the ___________ .

(The answer can be found in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State at Loaded Orygun.)

The unforgiving minute

Seriously. I ask you.

Where could Rupert Murdoch find someone whose notions about innovation and the internet are sufficiently retrograde to make them worthy of partnering with him and the News Corp?

Oh yeah. Here.

Minute's up.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Cold War revisited" edition.

[Updated: See "Have a nice day, okay then!" below.]

Today is the 46th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Tomorrow will be the 46th anniversary of the broadcast of "An Unearthly Child," the first episode of "Doctor Who." (It was four episodes long, the story was about cavemen, and it was excruciatingly dull. The second story, happily for the franchise, was the first Dalek story.)

And fifty years ago last Thursday, the world (well, some of us more than others) celebrated the first broadcast episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

If you learned about the world from JFK, you learned about citizenship and sacrifice, and the importance of rhythm and structure in public address. If you learned about the world from Doctor Who, you learned that some objects can be larger on the inside than on the outside, and the importance of meddling (the Doctor didn't show up on American television until about a decade later, so whatever Cold War lessons he had to teach were lost in the miasma of détente).

If you learned about the world from Rocky and Bullwinkle here's what you learned:

Economics: The basis of the global economy is the value of cereal boxtops.

Climate change: If the North Pole accumulates too much snow, the earth will tip sideways and the new North Pole will be located somewhere in the Pacific.

Media: If television were to go away, most people could watch clothes spinning at the laundromat without noticing the difference.

American history: The League of Confederate Correctors is dedicated to replacing all reference to "the Civil War" with "the War Between the States."

Geopolitics: The Cold War is based on the battle to control strategic minerals, including Upsidasium.

European history: The nation of Applesauce-Lorraine is protected by the stench-producing Limburger Lilies planted at its borders.

Art: The art world is incapable of distinguishing an Old Master from a white-washed wall in a chicken coop.

Unconventional warfare: Our enemies have access to such unconventional weapons as goof gas, the Kerwood Derby, the Pottsylvania creeper, and Hushaboom, the silent explosive.

Education reform: Fire the English Department faculty; hire more coaches.

And that's just what we learned from Rocky and Bullwinkle--there's also world history and quantum engineering (Peabody's Improbable History), folk literature (Fractured Fairy Tales) and philosophy and ethics (Aesop and Son).

Let's put it bluntly: Anyone who grew up on Rocky and Bullwinkle (and that's not an oxymoron) learned to distrust authority--which means they learned as much about the world as any child in a Texas public school classroom being taught that Adam and Eve rode to church every Sunday on a dinosaur.

Seriously now: Is someone who believes that, say, Mooselvania is the fifty-first state any less informed than someone believes they know foreign policy because they can see Russia from their kitchen window? Is someone who believes that moon men should be deported back to the Moon if they flunk their US Citizenship test any more empty-headed than Lou Dobbs? Is someone who thinks that The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the jewel-encrusted model ship at the bottom of Veronica Lake any more clueless than someone who believes that Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Chicagoan from Hawaii who is secretly a Socialist Fascist?

And don't even get me started on the people who bought Sarah Palin's book, the people who think we can "win" in Afghanistan by sending more troops there, the people who think that a revival on Wall Street solves the problem of the unemployed, or the people who think that trying 9-11 planners in New York City makes us weaker rather than stronger.

Actually, there's no need to get me started, since those all got a whumpin' from the artists in Daryl Cagle's toon round-up, so let's start our weekly review there.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Daryl Cagle, Pat Bagley, R. J. Matson, Mike Keefe, Larry Wright, Bob Englehart, John Darkow, , and Monte Wolverton,

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Peresh Nath (India), Petar Pismestrovic (Austria), and Cameron Cardow (Canada).


Ann Telnaes offers a prediction.


Ruben Bolling explains the Tao of the Dow.


In Doonesbury, Zipper Harris learns the high price of a clear conscience.


Have a nice day, okay then! Illustrator Barry Blitt is a p3 favorite, and his NYTimes piece accompanying (topping, really) Frank Rich this morning is priceless.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman asks, "Hey, Sarah--what's for dinner?


You will be surrounded soon by friends and cranberries. This odd little Daffy Duck story (directed by Arthur Davis in 1951) tells how Daffy saved Thanksgiving . . . for himself. Wacky complications ensue. The "you gotta hide me!" gimmick is recycled from several earlier turkey-themed Merrie Melodies. And in the montage of calendar days as Thanksgiving approaches and Tom the Turkey becomes more and more fit, the Carl Stalling musical score quotes a few bars of "Freddie the Freshman."

p3 Bonus Toon: In the Edward R. Murrow tradition, Jesse Springer uses the arrival of Thanksgiving to point out the unpleasant truth: Oregon ranks second only to Mississippi in the rate of its population that went hungry in the past year.




And remember to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day.

Saturday tunes: I want to be the one to walk in the sun

26 years later, this song still cracks me up.

Hope and despair

Saturday, 10:10am: Coming home from Farmer's Market, I realized my front tire was low. This is the tube I bought in a vulnerable moment from The Bike Shop We Do Not Name. First time I'd been in there since a bad experience about 6 years ago. The presta valve has never seated properly on either of my pumps. (Not my fault--the back tire tube seats fine. I consider this evidence that TBSWDNN still has it in for me. It's mutual, guys.)

I fiddled with getting the pump on the damned thing, and the wholly predictable happened: The valve lock nut broke off. As Douglas Adams once wrote of manuscript deadlines, the remaining air in the tire made a pleasant whooshing noise as it went by.


Saturday, 11:00am: After digging around and realizing that it had been so long since I had had a puncture that I couldn't find a spare tube around the place, I walked the bike down to my regular guys, and got a new tube.

There are few things sadder than the sight of a bike with a flat tire. There are few things more encouraging than the faint, resonant hum of newly repressurized tires the moment they first hit the pavement again.

The unforgiving minute

What Katha Pollitt said:

Hey, Peter [Beinart], Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?

For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.

Minute's up.

Quote of the day

Tim Fernholz at TAPPED, on conservatives' complaint that everything they don't like is "socialism:"

When unemployment eventually does lead to revolutionaries actually seizing the means of production, will the GOP be at a loss for words?

A sudden roar in the open sky--

A streak of gray and a cheerful "Hi!"
A loop! A whirl! A vertical climb!
And once again you know it's time--
For Rocky and his friends!

This is a true story:

Back around 1989-1990, a friend and I found out that six VHS tapes of Rocky and Bullwinkle were going to be released later in the year. There was no such thing as Google--or even the World Wide Web--back then, but we were determined. In a few days we'd tracked down the number for the Bullwinkle Emporium (also known as the Dudley Do-Right Emporium on Sunset Strip in Hollywood).

In the sort of six-degrees moment someone from my generation could only dream of, we soon found ourselves on the phone with the wife of Jay Ward, creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, with Jay Ward himself listening in the background. We made our pitch: Any video release of a cult classic like R & B had to have a video companion book. And we--this was no time for modesty--we were the ones to write it.

We talked, we pitched, we wheedled, we pled--back and forth through his wife--but to no avail. The videos were coming out because Ward had sold the rights--all the rights--to Buena Vista, a part of Disney. We could make our pitch to Disney, said Ward--through his wife--but he couldn't help us.

Disney being Disney, they never returned our calls and never produced a video guide.

I bring this up because tomorrow (Thursday the 19th) is the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast, on ABC, of "Rocky and his Friends," which later evolved into "The Bullwinkle Show."

Today it's remembered mostly for two reasons: First is that it's the exemplar (even for some who've never seen it) of kids' programming that adults would get. At the time, though, that wasn't a marketing gimmick--it was because the writers were given freedom to write whatever struck them as funny. And that's the second reason: R&B produced a several TV writers who later excelled because they were given such ridiculous latitude in their early days.

I had hoped to track down an installment from my favorite Rocky and Bullwinkle story--about Wassamatta U. It was a merciless parody of campus romance, university politics, and the Civil War the War Between the States. (If you see it, you'll get it.) But it's nowhere to be found online. (Know a link? Please drop it in the comments.)

So instead, I've included this episode from the adventure of The Kerwood Derby. The premise: It's a race between the good guys and the bad guys to find the Derby which will make the wearer the smartest person in the world--but only if he was the dumbest person in the world. (You can probably see where that's headed.) Enjoy.

Like a surprising number of gags and references in Rocky & Bullwinkle which created a political or legal kerfluffle, "Kerwood Derby" was nearly the center of a lawsuit.

My pal Keith, who hosts "Strictly the Sixties," streaming from WCCR FM (and is in fact the friend with whom I made the unsuccessful pitch to Ward 'way back when) dropped some broad hints that he'll probably do something to celebrate the golden anniversary of the moose and squirrel. It's how he rolls. I encourage you to tune in between 10am and noon Eastern time tomorrow (Thursday) to see what he offers up in tribute.

On gibberish

Laugh if you want, but this is something I've actually wondered about.

Pretty much all English-speaking Americans know how to make gibberish in other languages--not to be understood, but simply to indicate to the other person that we're pretending to speak a specific foreign language rather than, say, undergoing some neurological or religious experience. For example, here's how Americans do:

Swedish gibberish [think: the Muppets' Swedish chef]: "Ufda-buffda, hunga-bjorna."

Japanese gibberish [growl brand names in a deep Toshiro Mufune voice]: "Oh-SA! Toyota! Mitsubishi!"

Italian gibberish [simply standard English with "-a" added at the end of most words, while gently shaking your hand, thumb touching index and middle fingertips, in front of your face]: "I'm-a goin' home-a now."

French gibberish [actual words unnecessary; just purse your lips and make rapid-fire sounds from your soft palate while holding your cigarette from underneath].

And so on. I could have included Chinese gibberish, Spanish gibberish, and German gibberish, which most Americans know how to produce and all Americans recognize. We've learned it from Jerry Lewis movies, Peter Sellers movies, John Belushi skits, "I Love Lucy" reruns, and the like.^*

Whether that's somehow offensive is a question another time. (Although, if you're impatient, I can tell you now that the answer is no. It's a human impulse to render everything around us onomotopoetically--even things which by their nature shouldn't have sounds at all. Otherwise, cats all over the world would simply say "meow." But I digress.)

My question has always been, what do speakers of other languages do about English? What does their American gibberish sound like?

Now we know:

It's kind of startling at first, but I can't deny there's linguistic justice to it. No wonder they look at some of us so oddly when we order from the menu.

^*And that's not even counting authentic frontier gibberish.

(h/t to Ali via FB)

Clemens to Puzo to Blount: A triple-play of American letters

Who knew that one of the classic lines in "The Godfather" was cribbed from Mark Twain?

In an essay from the early 1980s, Roy Blount, Jr., describes touring Mark Twain's "High Victorian Gothic dream house" at 351 Farmington Avenue, in Hartford, Connecticut:

Nineteen mostly crepuscular but spirited rooms, kaleidoscopically decorated by Louis Tiffany. And a ground floor gallery where I viewed, among other mementos, a slate on which Twain would jot notes to himself. The slate, I am pleased to report, was not left clean. Few of the overlapping scribbles are decipherable, but I did make out two sensible reminders:

Leave the cat here.
Take the whiskey along.

Roy Blount, Jr.
Not Exactly What
I Had in Mind

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered by Carl, Christine, and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM's Carl + Christine show, are posted at LO.

And we wound up once again with extra limerick, so you can play along at home. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

The learning they hope to amass
Takes a back seat to job woes, alas.
With no work to be found,
Record numbers are bound
To ride out the recession in _____________.

(The answer can be found in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State at Loaded Orygun.)

Sunday afternoon toons: Special "Jedi mind trick" edition

(Updated below.)

What I told you was true... from a certain point of view.

(Obi-Wan Kenobe, explaining to
Luke Skywalker why he had lied
to him about his father's death)

In the Jedi spirit, the following statements about this week's p3 toon review are also true:

America honors its veterans.
Sarah Palin launches a nation-wide book tour.
The GOP scores a key off-year electoral victory.
Reform comes to Afghanistan.
Congress tackles unemployment.
Flu vaccine is available.
Wall Street finally faces stronger oversight.
The Senate moves ahead on health care reform.
And UO running back LeGarrette Blount was suspended.

, , , from a certain point of view. Let's start this week's Padawan training with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, Pat Bagley, John Darkow, Jimmy Margulies, John Cole, Joe Heller, Jeff Stahler, Scott Stantis, and Monte Wolverton,

p3 Best of Show: Steve Sack.

p3 Legion of Honor: Adam Zyglis.

p3 World Toon Review: Does anyone get the joke--I think it's a joke--in this week's toon by Cam Cardow (Canada)? If so, you're ahead of me. In fact, let that be the theme of this week's WTR: Visually interesting toons that I'm pretty sure I don't get: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Effat Mohamed (Egypt), and Alex Falco (Cuba).


Ann Telnaes runs the numbers, and they're nothing to brag about.


The Onion took a moment this week to gently mock a cartoon character who first made me aware of some of the possibilities that life offered, even if her head did resemble an enormous apple with spit curls. (You can read more about that here.) And did you know, by the way, that all Onion items begin with the creation of the headline, after which the story and/or photo are reverse-engineered?


No one to root for here: I'm including this bit because, if it's happening in the toon world, you count on p3 to be there. But honestly, if you want to give it a miss and scroll on down to "Schroedinger's Reagan," I'll understand. Amanda Marcotte framed the issue rather elegantly (certainly more elegantly than any of the participants deserve): "Misogynist murderer versus misogynist cartoonist."


Schroedinger's Reagan: Think your conservative credentials are all in order because you believe the earth is only 6000 years old? Hah! Tom Tomorrow says that cutting-edge conservatism now knows it's even younger than that--much younger. And like all new theories, there are a few kinks still to be worked out.


The Man in Black (and White): Johnny Cash's biography is out in graphic novel format.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman updates an American classic,


Prithee? Hm? Hm? This week's animation, "Robin Hood Daffy," was directed by Chuck Jones in 1957. By then the drop in production values for Warner Bros cartoons was beginning to show, and you can see it in this short, most noticeably in the more limited, less expressive animation style. (Also, Carl Stalling had by then handed over the musical direction to his former assistant, Milt Franklyn.) Still, "Robin Hood Daffy" remains pretty funny, in part because Jones was already working on turning a problem (seriously reduced production budgets beginning in the mid-1950s) into a virtue: The necessarily simpler, less-detailed style let Jones move character expression from the Tex Avery style of extremes--eyeballs popping out, jaws dropping, etc.--to the Jack Benny-esque studied stare (which he absolutely perfected a few years later in his characterization of the Grinch). (Update: Watch "Robin Hood Daffy" on B99.tv.)  Yoiks! And away!


p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer notes notes that there's permanent, and then there's "permanent:"



Don't forget to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day.

Saturday tunes: "A worrisome thing"

I've heard her nephew is somewhat talented too.

If only he'd been Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo that day, or Billy Banana or Aunt Yoohoo instead of Peter Peanut

(Update: As foreseen, the video link is gone. I wasn't able to find another one, but you know which one I'm talking about.)

Last week saw the death of TV writer David Lloyd who, during the 70s, 80s, and 90s, Lloyd wrote award-winning episodes for . . . well, hell, damned near everybody

Mr. Lloyd was an astonishingly productive writer by series television standards, not only generating scripts on his own but also working with other writers to doctor scripts in trouble. In addition to “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” for which he had credits on more than 30 episodes between 1973 and 1977, Mr. Lloyd wrote for, among other shows, “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Lou Grant,” “Rhoda,” “Phyllis,” “The Tony Randall Show,” “The Associates,” “Taxi,” “Dear John,” “Amen,” “Wings,” “Cheers” and “Frasier.”

And yet, with a résumé like that, here's how the Newspaper of Record titled his obituary, as if he'd only accomplished two things in his life (one of which was dying):

David Lloyd, 75, Dies; Wrote ‘Chuckles’ Episode

Oh, don't be coy--of course you remember it:

"Chuckles Bites the Dust" (October 25, 1975) - The ludicrous death of WJM's Chuckles the Clown, crushed by an elephant while dressed as Peter Peanut, provokes a torrent of black humor which has everyone in the newsroom but Mary convulsed in laughter. Mary's suppressed laughter comes out at an inopportune moment: at Chuckles' funeral. This episode was ranked #1 on TV Guides The Greatest Episodes of All Time.

It keeps getting taken down on YouTube, but at the moment you can see the magnificent funeral scene here.

So, assuming the rights owner will manage to find this clip and get it pulled too, let this then be his epitaph:

Requiscat in Pacem

David Lloyd

Minutus cantorum,
Minutus balorum,
Minutus carborata descendum pantorum.

(H/t to Stephanie via FB)

The unforgiving minute

A brief history of the wall of separation:

John F. Kennedy, 1960: The separation of church and state is absolute. My church will not dictate my policy decisions.

Mitt Romney 2008: The separation of church and state is relative. My church will dictate my policy decisions, but only to the extent that I will discriminate against the same people Christian conservatives would already be discriminating against anyway.

Rep. Bart Stupack 2009; The separation of church and state is a fairy tale. My church will show up at the Capitol steps in a limo to dictate policy.

Minute's up.

After all the harm he's done, why draw the line there?

I'm not going to become a Fan of the Facebook page called "If Joe Lieberman filibusters health care, I will donate to his opponent." (It was started on the 9th of November and this morning it says it has 13,000 pledgers, and an estimated $650,000 in pledges.)

I'm waiting for a Facebook page called "I will donate to Joe Lieberman's opponent regardless of whether he filibusters health care." That one I'll join right now.

It's way past the point where anyone should consider cutting that poisonous little narcissist any slack simply because he passed up one opportunity to sell out the caucus.

A year later, and "push" predictions were pretty much spot-on

Here's a bit from a p3 post from a year ago this week:

How far to the left or the right will Obama govern?

The answer, which I consider especially smart even by Digby standards, since I've been saying much the same thing since last spring: Obama will govern just as far to the left as he's pushed into doing by the left itself, and probably not much farther.

I still think that, even at the time, that was pretty much a tap-in, so this isn't about a victory dance--especially in light of the status of DADT and the wobbly history to date of health care reform. Instead, the post is looking over again partly because it quotes lavishly from Digby's take on the subject, and partly because it features the ACLU's proposed "to-do" list for Obama's first day in office, first 100 days, and first year.

The ACLU's lens being what it is, their list tends noticeably toward domestic policy issues, although defending civil liberties is also at the heart of such foreign policy issues as rescinding the abortion gag rule on foreign aid restoring the rule of law for Gitmo detainees (as well as closing Gitmo down).

Check out Digby's analysis and the ACLU's wish list and see how they stand up as a yardstick, a year later.

Portland and Portland Metro-West Drinking Liberally meet this week

(Update: The Corvallis chapter meets Wednesday night, 11/11--see below for details.)

(I still mainly associate with the Portland and Portland Metro-West chapters, but since I moved upstairs last winter, from Portland chapter host to field organizer for OR, WA, AK, and HI, I'm trying to work out how to promote all five Oregon chapters plus Vancouver WA's chapter, all with their different monthly schedules and agendas.

It's not perfected yet--for example, it almost got past me that Vancouver's meeting is tonight--but I'm working on it.)

Two Oregon Drinking Liberally chapters have guests or other events coming up this month (click on their link to join their email list):

Portland Metro-West next meeting: Wednesday, Nov. 11
Guests: Defend Oregon and Yes For Oregon organizer Mike Grigsby will be coming out to discuss the ballot measures 66 and 67.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of every month, 7:00pm at Ringo's, 12300 SW Broadway St, (just east of Hall Blvd).

St. Helens next meeting: Wednesday, November 11th
New location: Village Inn (the bar, not the motel), 535 S Columbia River Hwy, in St. Helens.
Guest: David Robinson, Democratic Candidate for US House (OR-1).
Meetings: Second Wednesday of each month, 6:30 pm.

And here's the November schedule for the other DL chapters in Oregon and southwest WA (click their link to join their email list):

Portland next meeting: Thursday, November 12th
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, November 19th
Meetings: Third Thursday of each month, 7:00 pm, at Browns Towne Lounge, 189 Liberty St NE # 112 (Old Sportstop next to Read Opera House)


Vancouver next meeting: Tuesday, November 10th
Meetings: Second and fourth Tuesdays, 7pm, at the Back Alley Bar and Grill, 6503 E. Mill Plain Blvd. (West of Andresen, in a strip mall 1/2 block west of Safeway on the south side of Mill Plain. It's deep in the lot.)

Corvallis next meeting: Wednesday, November 11th Currently on hiatus.
Meetings: Second Wednesday of each Month, 5pm - 7pm at Squirrels, 100 SW 2nd St.



(To find the DL chapter near you--there are over 300 hundred of them--go here.)

And if you appreciate Living Liberally promoting progressive action through social interaction--including keeping the whole Drinking Liberally network up and running--consider sending them a little love via Tipping Liberally.

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

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

(Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

"If the allies weren't here the Wall would be gone by now."

Circa 1963:

"We can't give covering fire. That's the truth. They tell us there'd be war if we did."

"It's nonsense," said the younger policeman, emboldened by the whiskey. "If the allies weren't here the Wall would be gone by now."

"So would Berlin," muttered the elder man.

"I've got a man coming over tonight," said Leamas abruptly.

"Here? At this crossing point?"

"It's worth a lot to get him out. Mundt's men are looking for him."

"There are still places where you can climb," said the younger policeman.

"He's not that kind. He'll bluff his way through; he's got papers, if the papers are still good. He's got a bicycle."

There was only one light in the checkpoint, a reading lamp with a green shade, but the glow of the arclights, like artificial moonlight, filled the cabin. Darkness had fallen, and with it silence. They spoke as if they were afraid of being overheard. Leamas went to the window and waited, in front of him the road and to either side the Wall, a dirty, ugly thing of breeze blocks and strands of barbed wire, lit with cheap yellow light, like the backdrop for a concentration camp. East and west of the Wall lay the unrestored part of Berlin, a half-world of ruin, drawn in two dimensions, crags of war. […]

"Herr Thomas! Quick!" Leamas stepped to the observation.

"A man, Herr Thomas,'' the younger policeman whispered, "with a bicycle." Leamas picked up the binoculars.

It was Karl, the figure was unmistakable even at that distance, shrouded in an old Wehrmacht mackintosh, pushing his bicycle. He's made it, thought Leamas, he must have made it, he's through the document check, only currency and customs to go. Leamas watched Karl lean his bicycle against the railing, walk casually to the customs hut. Don't overdo it, he thought. At last Karl came out, waved cheerfully to the man on the barrier, and the red and white pole swung slowly upwards. He was through, he was coming toward them, he had made it. Only the Vopo in the middle of the road, the line and safety.

At that moment Karl seemed to hear some sound, sense some danger; he glanced over his shoulder, began to pedal furiously, bending low over the handlebars. There was still the lonely sentry on the bridge, and he had turned and was watching Karl. Then, totally unexpected, the searchlights went on, white and brilliant, catching Karl and holding him in their beam like a rabbit in the headlights of a car. There came the seesaw wail of a siren, the sound of orders wildly shouted. In fron tof Leamas the two policemen dropped to their knees, peering through the sandbagged slits, deftly flicking the rapid load on their automatic rifles.

The East German sentry fired, quite carefully, away from them, into his own sector. The first shot seemed to thrust Karl forward, the second to pull him back. Somehow he was still moving, still on the bicycle, passing the sentry, and the sentry was still shooting at him. Then he sagged, rolled to the ground, and they heard quite clearly the clatter of the bike as it fell. Leamas hoped to God he was dead.

John LeCarré,
The Spy Who Came
In From the Cold.

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered by Carl, Christine,and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM Morning Show, are posted at LO.

Fill in the blank in this law-and-order limerick with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

He's one hero who doesn't need coaching,
And the bad guys won't hear him approaching.
State Police play their ace--
RoboElk's on the case!
His mission? To help combat ___________ .

(The answer can be found in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State at Loaded Orygun.)

Sunday morning toons: Special "Re-Imagining Mickey" edition

This week's toon review covers a wide range: Remembering those who died at Fort Hood, the endgame for health care reform, Iran, Afghanistan, and some sort of week-long athletic competition that ended a couple of days ago. Plus another dose of classic animation history.

As (almost) always, let's start with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up:

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, Monte Wolverton, Jerry Holbert, Adam Zyglis, Steve Sack, and Ed Stein.

p3 Medal of Honor: Cameron Cardow (Canada).

p3 Best in Show: Scott Stantis.

p3 Award for Fastest-Off-The-Line Movie Reference:Joe Heller.

p3 Certificate of High Fidelity: Bill Day.

Feeling like the fall and winter holidays are running into each other more and more? You're not alone: Chip Bok and John Cole.are right there with you. (Notice how, no matter which way you slice it, it's bad news to be the turkey?)

Fort Hood: Mike Keefe. Nate Beeler, Jimmy Margulies. Steve Breen. and Randy Bish.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Rainer Hachfeld, (Germany) and Nirilicon (Mexico).


Rubber, meet glue: From Ann Telnaes comes this refreshing bit of perspective,


Objectivism Illustrated: Steve Ditko, the Marvel artist who co-created Spider-Man with Stan Lee in 1962 and gave the character the strange and ungraceful look that made the early issues of that comic immediately recognizable, has gotten only the merest passing mention over the years on the p3Sunday Toon review. The three "Spiderman" movies that owe much to Ditko's original style did quite a lot to boost appreciation the reclusive artist's work. Perhaps ironically, there's another body of heroic, if fantastic fiction that many readers were swept up by in high school, often never to return to it again. I refer to the works--or at least the brand--of author Ayn Rand. In the last eight decades, it's become a truism that Rand's writings tend to enjoy a revival in popularity whenever Democrats return to power in Washington DC, such as they have this year. But fans of either artist aren't always aware that there's a connection between the two going back several decades. You can read about it here. (Image via Comic Book Resources.)


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman looks on the bright side,

"Re-imagining Mickey: Writer Harlan Ellison has said that there are five literary creations that are immediately recognizable by any culture on earth: Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Superman, . . . and Mickey Mouse. Recently, the notoriously risk-aversive Disney Corporation surprised observers by announcing its intention to tamper with #5 on Ellison's list.

[C]oncerned that Mickey has become more of a corporate symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young people, Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining him for the future.

The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a forbidding wasteland.

Yes, video game merchandising is one of the reasons for "re-imagining" the rodent of reknown, but there's another reason, as illustrated by John Cole, that has to do with cracking a market every bit as large:

The project was given new impetus this week with the announcement that, after 20 years of negotiations, the company has finally received the blessing of the Chinese government to open a theme park in Shanghai, potentially unlocking a new giant market for all things Mickey.

Ironically--although, for some Disney critics, wholly predictable--the "re-imagination" is less a departure from Mickey of the past than a return to him. The Mickey Mouse who starred in the 1928 "Steamboat Willie," the first Disney cartoon to feature synchronized sound (a soundtrack as we know it today, not accompaniment in the theatre house by an organ, piano, etc.). As Steamboat Willie, Mickey was a selfish and unruly, a trickster and a trouble-maker.

But don't take my word for it:

p3 Bonus Toon: This year the state legislature scaled back some of the tax incentives targeting Oregon's dawning solar energy industry, on the grounds that they already had a generous tax break package, and would have to get by with a little less--but still quite a bit--during the economic downturn. Jesse Springer asks: Did the solar industry fly too close to the sun?




Don't forget to bookmark Slate's political cartoon for the day.

The unforgiving minute

Good news! Health care reform won't prevent women from access to legal abortions<sup>*

*</sup>If you happen to be Meghan McCain or one of the Bush twins.

Otherwise, barring a miracle, no, not really.

Minute's up.

Saturday tunes: Want to give a concert pianist the willies?

Sneak up behind them and whisper, "Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto."

This is the first part of the first movement, marked allegro ma non friggin' troppo." After this it gets a lot nastier.

This is a 1978 performance by Vladimir Horowitz, who first recorded the Third in 1930 and pretty much owned it ever after, with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic.

Remember, remember:

The LO/KPOJ "Lost Limerick Challenge"

We have a double challenge today, but that has to wait for some important business:

First of all, we're proud to induct Congressman Earl Blumenauer into the Hall of Mighty Oregon Political Poets. Congratulations and welcome, Congressman--coffee and sandwiches on the side table.

This morning's Oregon news limericks, as written by me, read by quizmaster TJ of Loaded Orygun, and answered (usually) by Carl, Christine,and Paul on the KPOJ 620AM Morning Show, are posted at LO.

This morning, talk about the World Series ran long, so they used fewer limericks on the air--feels like high school all over again, doesn't it, with sports sucking the resources away from the arts? Well, less for them, more for us. Fill in the blank with the word or phrase from this week's Oregon news:

Bar owners are nobody's fools.
"Not a chance!" they averred, "Rules are rules!"
"That's our cut of the lottery--
Not for band class, or pottery."
So it's tough luck for Oregon ___________ .

His techniques are hardly endearing,
Which is why his opponents are cheering.
The initiative czar
Has been hauled to the bar--
The charge? Once again, ______________ .

(The answer can be found in the Comments below, or in this week's Spanning the State at Loaded Orygun.)

Eggheads of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks!*

When I interviewed for a faculty position at the U of O, 'way back in the day, I pointed out that the salary was noticeably less than what I was making at the university where I was working (another public university of similar size), and noticeably less than the national average for the same rank at an equivalent institution. The fellow on the other side of the table just chuckled and said, Yeah, out here we call that the "Oregon Lifestyle Surcharge."

I took the job anyway, for other reasons, and two months later Measure 5, which slashed and capped property taxes upon which Oregon public education depended, narrowly passed. Years before Naomi Klein eventually wrote The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, the UO administration intuitively understood that the panic immediately following on Measure 5 was the perfect opportunity to steamroll through changes that probably could never have happened where the faculty was unionized. In their defense, I suppose, at least the administrators were pretty candid about the fact that they were indeed running roughshod over the idea of faculty self-governance.

I left U of O not long after, and I was happy to read this week that the U of O faculty may finally have had enough. Talks are in process for the faculty to seek union representation, joining their counterparts at Portland State, Western Oregon, Eastern Oregon, and Southern Oregon.

According to the Register-Guard, faculty dissatisfaction has increased in the last couple of years, and low pay and the perception of administration high-handedness are the reasons most often pointed to.

The UO ranks last in average salary and in average total compensation — pay plus benefits — on a list of nine large public universities the state uses for comparing budgets. The average faculty salary is 80 percent of the average for the other eight universities, and total compensation is 84 percent of the average.

Also, the UO ranks last in pay among the 60 members of the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only group made up of many of the top public and private universities around the nation. In that comparison, the UO’s average faculty salary of $73,300 is 11.5 percent below that of the second-to-last school, the University of Missouri, which has an average faculty salary of $82,600.

(^*H/t to Adlai Stevenson. Cross-posted at Loaded Orygun.)

Sunday morning toons: Special "What will you do with your extra hour?" edition

Last night (or this morning, or perhaps after you read this and remember), most of us set our clocks back, giving us an extra hour. We asked several of the people in this week's toon news round-up how they'd use that extra hour:

• Joe Lieberman will use it to be even less loyal to the Senate Democratic caucus.


• American workers will use it to look for work.


• American children will get in line an hour earlier for flu vaccine.


• President Obama will use his to keep the U.S. stuck in Afghanistan a little longer.


• Former VP Dick Cheney will use his to act like he had nothing to do with us being stuck in Afghanistan.

Yes, there are many ways you could spend those extra 60 minutes--and we appreciate that you've chosen to spend them here at the p3 Sunday Morning Toon review. So let's get started, beginning with Daryl Cagle's toon round-up of this week's news.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, Bob Englehart, David Fitsimmons, Jerry Holbert, Steve Sack, Henry Payne, Adam Zyglis, Gary McCoy, Joe Heller, Bill Day, Ed Stein, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: John Darkow.

"Shouldn't we be landing?" Dave Fitzsimmons, Mike Keefe, Jimmy Margulies, Steve Sack, and Dwayne Powell pay tribute to those Northwest Airline pilots who spent their extra hour explaining how they managed to overshoot the entire city of Minneapolis.

p3 World Toon Review: Patrick Chappatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Michael Kountouris, (Greece), Laz (Cuba), Victor Ndula (Kenya), and Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria).


Ann Telnaes tells us how Republicans celebrate Halloween.


Not exactly a Rumsfeld metric: But it's how Doonesbury's Ray Hightower and company get 'r done in Afghanistan.


p3 Special Mention and congratulations to Salon.com, where last month's site redesign has now made it easier to find Camille Paglia's monthly attempt to remain relevant than to find the regular toons by Tom Tomorrow, Reuben Bolling, and Keith Knight. Nicely done, Salon.


The Usual Gang of Idiots: We have a well-known soft spot around here for Mad Magazine although--as with Top 40 music--we sometimes grouse that its best days are behind it in some "golden age" (when in truth we probably are just complaining that we got older and it didn't). Still, we're happy to point out that two artists who regularly turn up in the p3 Sunday morning toon review also have Mad on their résumés: Monte Wolverton (who grew up in Portland and whose father Basil was also a Mad artist) and Keith Knight. Respect is due.


R. Crumb, 60's underground cartoonist and creator of Mr. Natural, Flaky Foont, Fritz the Cat, and this iconic album cover, among many other indelible images, has taken on the Book of Genesis. Not much needs to be added to that, really.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman is thankful--and with good reason--that the people working on health care reform today weren't present at the nation's founding,


And thus was Daylight Savings Time invented: Here's something to think about as you go around the house resetting your clocks this morning: "The Sunshine Makers" is a little 1935 oddity directed by Ted Eshbaugh, who created a handful other animated theatrical shorts in the early 1930s, including "The Wizard of Oz" in 1933. Although not everyone seems to get the point today, this story of little gnomes delivering sunshine to our doorsteps in milk bottles each morning was underwritten by Borden's, the dairy and chemical product company. This was before Elsie the Cow had become recognizable world-round as their advertising spokes-bovine. Elsie's husband Elmer the Bull continues to be associated with another of Borden's famous products: the eponymous Elmer's Glue. (Yes, Borden believed in using the whole cow.)

(Hat tip to James the Elder.)


p3 Bonus Toon: Remember when people just said, "gesundheit?" Wanna see something really scary? Jesse Springer has it:



Have you bookmarked Slate's political cartoon for the day yet?

No!

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--
No road--no street--no "t'other side this way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--
No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!
No traveling at all--no locomotion--
No inkling of the way--no notion--
"No go" by land or ocean--
No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No Park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds--
November!

-- Thomas Hood (1844)
(sometimes quoted by the
Old Bailey Hack, even though
it doesn't appear in the
Oxford Book of English Verse
[Quiller-Couch Ed.])