Cartoonists With Attitude

Today's cartoon from Rob Rogers is great.

(click here to view)

Rob Rogers Pittsburgh Post-Gazette May 20, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

This comic by Glenn Foden is not great. It is crap.

(click here to view)

Glenn Foden BusinessandMedia.Org May 17, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

Also, The Washington Post has a time lapse video of Tom Toles drawing a comic if you're interested.

Whenever Brockton makes the national news, it’s never good. But Atrios is right, that story is anecdotal and doesn’t really illustrate the city as a whole. Most of it is just boring suburbs, filled with people who spend too much time on their lawns. But for one week, Brockton becomes a magical place where cars crash into each other for sport. I can’t wait.

You know, I keep saying this, and it keeps falling on deaf ears. Members of my family work at the New York Times. I know they have fact-checkers. I have met them personally.

The best I can imagine here is that Kristol literally turns in his pieces at the exact moment the fact-checkers all have to go to the bathroom. If I get any direct response to this theory from my contacts on the inside I'll be sure to let you all know.

You know, I keep saying this, and it keeps falling on deaf ears. Members of my family work at the New York Times. I know they have fact-checkers. I have met them personally.

The best I can imagine here is that Kristol literally turns in his pieces at the exact moment the fact-checkers all have to go to the bathroom. If I get any direct response to this theory from my contacts on the inside I'll be sure to let you all know.

I was just directed to Rule Forty Two, a very entertaining blog, by a friend and great writer Gavin Edwards.  Something to check out.

Reading his observations on that dead-or-dying artform, the music video, I'm reminded of the most mind-blowingly, brain-explodingly bad music video I've ever seen:  Sting's "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying."

I've always like the song.  It's a nice little song about dealing with divorce, set to a country sound, and I think it achieves some measure of poignancy.

But I recently had the misfortune, somehow, of seeing this monstrosity of a video.  How can they go from a song with a small scale, with lyrics about babysitting, joint custody and melted ice cream, to an outlandishly mega-mohawked, leather-clad Sting emerging from blinding white light on a white horse, to cavort with liquid metal terminator-style cows, flying cowboys and aliens (funny!) in a Western town?

And while it is meant to be humorous at times, no, it's not ironic.  Can Sting even BE ironic?

Seriously... just... just shoot me now.

There's going to be five more months of this. I hope you all understand that.

Seriously... just... just shoot me now.

There's going to be five more months of this. I hope you all understand that.

Click to enlarge

I don't actually know if anyone really knits from human back hair, though there are books available about how to knit from spun dog and cat hair. I'm not hating on crafts or DIY culture, by the way--quite the opposite. I'm obsessed with making things--I love to knit and sew, and I obsessively read Craft and Readymade and a whole host of sewing, knitting and crafting blogs. I love that there is a resurgence of interest among youngerish people (i.e. 20s, 30s and younger) in knitting and sewing stylish and modern garments and accessories. I love browsing on Etsy and going to the Renegade Craft Fair and the Bust Craftacular and I love the Stitch & Bitch knitting books. What I AM poking gentle fun at is how many weird hoops some craftsters jump through to give crafts with a fuddy-duddy reputation an "edgy" or "subversive" makeover. Like knitting skulls onto things or making fauxhawk hats. This often results in a sea of lookalike "subversive" projects all made from the same exact pattern. But whatever. That's still better than purchasing a mass-produced skull-adorned product at the mall. And if a knitted skull is what it takes to get someone to pick up some yarn, then more power to them. The real point here is that I just wanted to do a cartoon about crafting because I'm sick of the elections.

When I began looking into that Orphan Works Act, I searched the web to see if the copyright expert Lawrence Lessig had weighed in.  He's something of an activist for getting more works into the public domain, particularly older and unused works (he actually favors a form of registration of copyright), so one might think he'd favor this legislation.  But if this bill is as poorly conceived and drafted as I believe it is, someone with good legal judgment like Lessig, even though very sympathetic to its stated goals, would oppose it.

But I could find nothing by him about it on the web, so I couldn't piggyback off his judgment, and had to decide it was bad legislation on my own, writing about it here.

Today's New York Times has an Op-Ed piece by Lessig on the Orphan Works Act, and he comes out squarely against it:

Congress is considering a major reform of copyright law intended to solve the problem of “orphan works” — those works whose owner cannot be found. This “reform” would be an amazingly onerous and inefficient change, which would unfairly and unnecessarily burden copyright holders with little return to the public.

Whew.  Now I'm sure.  Once again, if you oppose this, please contact your congressperson.

But this opens up a new problem:  How do I sue a copyright expert when he STEALS MY HEADLINE?!!
Ruben Bolling 5/13/08:  "Little Orphan Act"
Lawrence Lessig 5/20/08:  "Little Orphan Artworks"

By the way, all this thinking about copyright inspired my next comic, to be published this week.