CSotD: Ivy Day in the Cartooning Room
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So Barack Obama went to the mall to get his picture taken and he chose the pull-down ivy backdrop instead of the country one with the section of rail fence to lean on or the wall fulla books one. Then, on the way out, he stopped at the art shop and got this dry-mounted poster of a generic fashion model.
Look, the only previous occupant of the Oval Office I like more than Barack Obama is Michelle, but encouraging new artists requires that you encourage them to step up to the job, and these are nice paintings but they aren't official portraits. They just aren't.
When eldest son invited an iconoclastic, creative pal to prom, their classmates braced for what would surely be a mindblowing deviation from the norm.
Instead, they went totally in fashion, though all black, including the shirt he wore with his tux. And it did blow their classmates' minds, because nobody expected them to step up and ace the traditional thing and also nobody knew that the pair of them could clean up so good and look so sharp.
And I wish Barack and Michelle had taken that approach, but they didn't, and, while they were inspirational in the White House, the inspiration from these paintings was probably not what they intended.
A mere sampling of the comical fallout, in alphabetical order because it doesn't much matter:
Ann Telnaes, who wraps up her book tour Saturday in Seattle
Somebody on Twitter, who made me laff hardest by explaining the ivy
I don't think this is what Official Presidential Portraits are supposed to inspire but at least they didn't have Christo come wrap the White House.
Juxtaposition of the Day
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(Speaking of things I don't get and that have inspired unintended responses, the President's budget proposal, delivered shortly after Congress came up with a budget, digs the hole even deeper, which is a surprise at least in terms of …
Okay, it's not a surprise. He doesn't understand how the government or the economy work, he has never cared much about keeping promises and the only thing he ever accomplished in his much-vaunted business career was stiffing his subcontractors, buddying up to unsavory types and going bankrupt.
I found more "pissed off about the budget" cartoons than I did "laughing at the portrait" cartoons, but figure if I can put up Mike Lester and Matt Wuerker as book ends, you can simply imagine all the ones that fall in between right and left.
The actual, official, most likely to happen budget already had plenty of detractors on both sides. Trump's fantasy budget is even more unacceptable, which makes it even more inexplicable: Why piss off your base with something that only exists in your mind?
Thus I get sucked into the mugs' game of trying to find rational explanations for an irrational president.
Tulips are better than one lip
Arlo makes a commentary on cryptocurrency and cryptoeconomics and how much we've got tied up in mutual acceptance of dubious concepts, a favorite rant of mine, too.
As it happens, I just came across an article that answers a nagging question which I posed here back almost exactly six years ago, about the famous tulipomania story in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," in which I said:
I don't know the extent to which the tulip bubble actually crashed the Dutch economy. When I've tried to look it up, I've only found reports based on Mackay, and some of the things in his highly entertaining account … are clearly apocryphal.
So here's the article and apparently I was right to be doubtful, though his flip little conclusion at the end seems unearned: The fact that tulipomania is largely a myth has no bearing on the stature of bitcoins.
That sectional subheadline has a comics tie-in, since Frankie — no, other Frankie — sang a line sort of like it in this song on "Shirley Temple's Storybook" in a November 6, 1960, adaptation of Marty Links' strip, "Emmy Lou."
Sorry. The ADD is very helpful for a writer most of the time, and other times it just pulls up weird associations you probably should keep to yourself.
For Instance
I really like Monty's follow to the Anti-Valentine's Day unromantic dinner featured here yesterday. Meddick is on a roll.
But, yeah, the ADD kicked in again. The ADD always kicks in.
So here's a Tom the Dancing Bug from 18 years ago. Made me laff then, made me laff today.
Hey! That's what they're about!
I'm gonna disagree with BC on this one. The last time I watched the Winter Olympics was back when I lived within range of Canadian coverage, which does this bizarre thing where they show you the actual sporting events instead of alternating between sentimental featurettes about the athletes and cutaways of their reporters eating local food.
The star of the games for Canada was Miriam Bedard, who took gold in biathlon, and had the grace not to screw it all up and break Canadian hearts as quickly as Ben Johnson had.
I watched with interest because I was on the rifle team at summer camp (and in 1964 was ranked #146 in the nation or possibly #164, but right up there in the middle) and I knew how to ski and this looked like a total blast.
Shooting is like golf, in that the concentration is such that everyone has to shut up while you do it, and the idea of trying to hold steady just after racing on skis fascinated me.
Plus I've lived near the 10th Mountain Division, and the Olympics were originally based on combat sports, after all.
Biathlon is the only sport in the Winter Olympics based on that original concept, while, over in the Summer Games, modern organizers continue trying to get rid of the pentathlon in favor of little girls twirling ribbons, to which I say
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