Year End Round-Up!

This is the blog post where I publicly acknowledge that I am quite terrible at blogging, and that I missed a bunch of art and publications that I did.

First up, my work on the Honestly, Dara column for Experience Life, by way of fantastic AD Lydia Anderson, which I've not posted the last 5 times I've been published there. 

The Cure is in the Kitchen, September.

Tapas Party!, October

A Caloric Evolution, November

Consider the Raisin, December

I also am the proud creator of an emoji.  If you buy the Game of Thrones emoji pack from ...somewhere, you can be the proud user of the George R. R. Martin emoji, to pep up any sort of text or online conversation where such a thing would be applicable.  While I myself never use emojis, preferring to write out me emotional states longhand, this is available via the proud folks at Random House, AD David Stevenson.

And I can't forget the funnest job I've had all year, illustrating the poetry section of WHURK! magazine.  Since the magazine is free to read online, I can include the entire print page on my blog!  Ha ha, the future is great!

I even did the cover for the November issue, highlighting the Khan family a la American Gothic.

Inktober Day 17

So, I was listening to "This American Life" earlier today, and they had a story about a troubled black teen who was slowly reforming himself with the immense help of charter school teachers.  Then, during a field trip, a guy on the subway bumps him and he says, "Say excuse me."  The guy starts yelling expletives and picks a fight, and only after two teachers intervene does he whip out a badge and say he's a plainclothes cop.  He arrests a couple of students who have to spend the night in jail.  Fortunately, the teen's classmates had been through this sort of scenario before and took video with their smartphones and discreetly slipped his electronics out of his pockets so the cop wouldn't confiscate them.

This coincided nicely with the segment I had seen the night before on the Daily Show where Jon Stewart tries to convince Bill O'Reilly that white privilege is a thing that exists.

With those two things buzzing around my head all day, I thought it would be helpful to Mr. O'Reilly if I made him a visual aid of how prejudice in America still affects black people.

Incidentally, like last time, I did this drawing straight.  No pencils.

The Line: It Wants to Be Anarchy

BigMike20X6 suggested:

V – ‘Cause I wanna be anarchy…

Never let it be said that  tools don’t matter.  They really do.  I use The Line: It Is Drawn as sort of an experimental leap pad for new techniques and general practice, and I have to say, no brush in my collection besides the Windsor Newton Kolinsky Sable Series 7 #4 could have done the hatching in this piece half as well as it turned out.

A little on the topic: it started out as illustrating a comics character with a song lyric, in this case, from the Sex Pistols.  I thought it was a brilliant match, and decided to add a few more elements to the mix: namely, a political angle and a playing card theme.  They seemed to fit together on paper, so I went with it.  Incidentally, given that the “A” is not the same as an upside-down “V” this does not work as an actual playing card.  Even without the lyrics running down the side, which I almost forgot to put in.  I don’t apologize for the stock art background.  I didn’t think I’d be able to do my planned composition justice in the time before it was due.

It worked with Nixon

Marvin K. Mubarak Would You Please Go Now!
Just Go. I don't care how.

Raising Arizona: starring Danny Trejo

This is what happens when Danny Trejo is pulled over and asked for his papers. Because Chuck Norris dresses up like Danny Trejo for Halloween.

Earth Daze

Earth Day is here, and I'm proud to say that it's the first holiday since Christmas that contrasts the popular Who-ville morel of "Stop being such greedy little wenches!" with the unrestrained capitalism of "Hey! buy our product! It's green now!"

I should point out that all the numbers in this comic are as accurate and up-to-date as I could find. Most of them came from 2003 to around 2006. There are no statistics on how much trash the entire world throws away each year, so I used estimates based on America's output. What staggered me was that we produce more air pollution than we do physical waste--by weight! Do you have any idea how much a ton of CO2 is? Holy crap!

Bloody Frenzy

It is a known fact that if a Republican smells blood, it will instinctively start biting. A number of Republicans in place will start a feeding frenzy, in which they will bite anything to their left, including themselves.

Those not in the water have little to worry about.

Fired up! Ready to Go!

I went to the College Park Obama rally on Thursday. The part that really got me was not the fact that, yes, young healthy people like me will be required to buy health care, and it wasn't the solitary jerk who tried to shout the President down and was hauled off by a 300-pound security guard, it was his "fired up! ready to go!" anecdote. When you're in a stadium full of people shouting "Fired up!" you can't help but join in, and you definitely can't help but feel fired up yourself.

Of course, 30,000 people fired up about a health care reform isn't necessarily all that useful after they leave the arena and haven't miraculously become members of congress.

New: live sketch from the rally, before Obama came on. You could tell the marching band was running out of songs when they started playing "Copacabana".

A Hysteria of American Health

Bottom line being, America (the country I know best) has always been a little loopy on the subject of health care. We could be doing worse, but why bother, when it's so easy to do better.

Rules of Engagement

Really, when someone calls out a gay Jew and America's first mixed race President for being Nazis, you have to imagine they're playing by a completely different set of rules.

Anagrams of the Wretched Famous: 1

Did you know you can rearrange the letters in "Sarah Palin" to spell "A Plain Rash"?

The more we pay attention to this admittedly interesting but now fairly useless woman, the bigger and more annoying she will get.

Split Personalities

So, watching the news, and thinking about all the different points of view all these pundits have, I realized that Cable News would be an excellent metaphor for tetrology, the study of four. Here are four different personalties, each one assigned a classical Greek element, one of the four-color printing hues, and all of them, apparently on channel 4.

In case you didn't catch it, clockwise from top left are Rachel Maddow (MSNBC), Lou Dobbs (CNN), Bill O'Reilly (Fox News), and John Stewart (Comedy Central).

Obama's Coolest Inauguration EVER

I can't believe they let Dick Cheney come to the Inauguration. What if he sheds his human skin and reveals his true form? That would be the coolest thing ever.

Severence

January 20th can't come soon enough.

Fun With Impeachment

How's this for a fun coincidence: Rod Bagojevich gets impeached by the Illinois Senate for massive corruption on...Corrupter in Chief Richard Nixon's 95th Birthday!

AND, as a young man, Blago' was a Nixon groupie, who parked on the old man's lawn one day and refused to leave until he got an autograph. Ballsy.

But honestly, to me, there's no comparison between the two. If you see Frost Vs. Nixon, it becomes clear that Nixon sort of regrets his behavior, while Blago' seems to be an out and out sociopath about the whole matter.

Rarely does a moment come along in which a President's entire stay in office, and history's subsequent portrayal of that time, is encapsulated in a single act.

When that angry arab journalist threw a shoe at Bush, I felt a mixture of emotions. Happiness, that someone had finally tried to bruise the President, and sadness that it wasn't me.

History will vindicate that Arab journalist.

Christmas Comes Early to DC

For some of us, Christmas came on November 4th, and we got to open presents a little before 11 PM. We had parties and got giddy over the proverbial eggnog.

For others, Christmas comes when Obama Claus comes riding into town on his eight cable news networks and announces that they all get Cabinet positions.

And of course, it's almost like another Christmas comes around on January 20th, when we get the present that we all really wanted.

Eggnog sales are expected to rise exponentially in the coming weeks.

Barack gets his daughters a puppy

This is how his daughters heard his acceptance speech.

O For Victory!

Obama wins! For a printable copy of this to hang in your window or car, or to staple all over town in celebration, just e-mail me.

Steamroller!

As a psychic, I hereby call the race for Barack Obama. He will flatten McCain with the sheer pressure of his votes.