Rockwell Rolls Over In His Grave:"Freedom From Want" Parodies

Thanksgiving is around the corner, and since you, the Toner Mishap audience, have enjoyed my Edward Hopper posts so much, I've decided to share with you a collection of parodies based on Norman Rockwell's painting, "Freedom From Want," from his "Four Freedoms" series. It's that famous Thanksgiving painting -- you know the one:



Here it is in its original poster form:

And here are a bunch I've been collecting for your viewing pleasure (feel free to click on any of them for a larger view).

MAD Magazine


Zombies


Muppets


The Simpsons #1


The Simpsons #2: Sideshow Bob


The Simpsons #3: Flanders


Sausage Party


Redneck Thanksgiving (with all due respect to rednecks)


Raw Bar


Pizza


The Bush White House


A Sketch from Tiny Toons


Lilo and Stitch


Justice Society of America


Skrulls! Flee! (Once DC did it, Marvel had to, right?)


More Jellyfish, Please


CNN


At An Airport


Island Feast


Hollywood


Family Photo #1


Family Photo #2


Dessert!

Feeling inadequate as a parent enough?No? Check this out.

Every so often when I make my kids' lunch to take to school, I cut their sandwiches into the shapes of their initials. I felt pretty good about that extra effort, and then I saw Cooking for Monkeys. Below you'll see three examples (pirates, goodnight moon, and Scooby Doo), but you should check out the site to see more.

Marvel's Secret Wars

When I was a kid, Marvel's "Secret Wars" limited series was big news -- it was the reason behind Spidey's black costume, to name only one earth-shattering development. The original cover was drawn by Mike Zeck (above; click it to see it bigger), and "they" apparently keep coming back to the original design, revising it or parodying it a couple of times over the years. Cool.

Here they are as separate images:

The original:


The redrawn reprint:


The fancy version:

Reimagined for kids:


Marvel Zombies:

Garfield Minus Garfield

We've blogged before about Garfield comics with Garfield's caption bubbles excised, but removing Garfield entirely works even better. Click here for more. [Thanks to Mt. Holly Mayor's Office for pointing it out.]

Songs for the Working Class

“The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), writer

Times are bad, people need to hold onto their jobs for dear life, but when high profits start heading for the exit management sends workers out the door too. If one is fortunate enough to keep their 9-5 positions can look forward to those on the higher rungs of the corporate ladder urinating on those below. To start of the work week I have complied a list of working songs from my collection, please list titles I may have overlooked or do not own.

• Blue Monday -- Randy Newman (this really sums up the work week)

• Nine to Five -- The Kinks (Ray Davies once again captures most of our lives Monday through Friday)

• Working Poor -- Horse Feathers (I just discovered them this weekend from a Paste Magazine CD sampler, I haven’t figured out the lyrics yet, but the sound is perfect for the title)

• Work Song -- Nellie McKay (Every day's another loss/Need the pay so please the boss/Through the sludge they mingle by the mile/Every worker looks ahead/Ah the kiddies must be fed/So they trudge along in single file –the lyrics say it all)

• Working Class Hero [#] -- John Lennon (Lennon didn’t pull any punches and tells us what we really are)

• Welcome to the Working Week -- Elvis Costello (A punchy tune that is apropos to a Monday)

• Rush Hour Blues --The Kinks (What life would be like for a celebrity to if they had to work nine to five)

• Just Us Kids -- James McMurtry (Reminded me of conversations when I was a teenager)

• It’s Just Work for Me -- Ry Cooder (Captures the hopelessness of making a buck doing things you really don’t want to do)

• We Can't Make It Here -- James McMurtry (What outsourcing has done for all of us)

• I Can't Wait to Get off Work -- Tom Waits (A working palooka who is looking forward to punching out)

• When Work Is Over -- The Kinks (Drinking helps us to forget/a double scotch helps us to forget who we are)

• Tired -- Willie Nelson (What we have to look forward to)

• Salt Of The Earth -- The Rolling Stones (Raise a glass and feel proud you are enriching backstabbers, political pigs who are all nicely dressed and who disguise their contempt for you)

• God's Away on Business -- Tom Waits (The only explanation why the world is the way it is)

• Hard Work -- John Handy (A classic jazz song)

• Mr. Pinstripe Suit -- Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (I like the title)

Incredible ad for HSBC

Who cares what HSBC does? This ad is awesome, touching, powerful, and quirky.

(Thank you again, BoingBoing.)

Make Yourself a Superhero

Make your own superheroes at this awesome Portuguese site (it takes a little while to get used to the Portugese, but it's a WYSIWYG editor, so you'll figure it out). You can customize EVERYTHING; I made a Green Lantern avatar for myself.

Hit the site here, and click on "criar" to start creating.

Jews on Babylon 5?

Does anyone out there know if there are Jews on the show "Babylon 5"? This is a screen shot from a trailer showing what appears to be an old man in a derby, beard, and tallit... WTF?

Simpsons and Fine Art:A Compendium

Poorly structured, but incredibly thorough -- a must-see for all fans of The Simpsons and/or art history. It shows SO MANY references in The Simpsons to fine art -- with little JPEGs of them all. Lots of work went into this site.

Click here.

UPDATE

To see a comparison of Simpsons scenes with famous movies, check this out.

Yes We Did!!!

Yes We Did!!!












“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!”

Dreams do come true

They called me Mr. Glass.

I love M. Knight Shyamalan's movie "Unbreakable." It was on cable, so I watched it -- again. Noticed for the first time the headline on a newspaper clipping in Elijah Price's office; nice typo.

Best Prop 8 Ad Ever!Vote No on Proposition 8

This is the best "No on Prop 8" ad ever -- it's a parody of the "I'm a Mac" ads from Apple.

We never get tired of O.J.

A little something macabre for Halloween: this is a panel from a remix I made of an old O.J. Simpson ad for Dingo boots. With genuine O.J. quotes (as far as I can verify on the web)!

My remix || The original

Studs Terkel - RIP

Oh sleep, thou art a gentle thing
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen, the praise be given,
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slide into my soul
Coleridge (1772 – 1834) poet, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” written in 1797


I was saddened to hear that Studs Terkel passed away. Any journalist or wannabe journalist should know Terkel. His interview style allowed the subject to tell the story without the intrusion or interruption by the writer or interviewer. I wonder today if anyone is still interested in journalism and if so have they read Terkel?

I vividly remember a passage from his book the “Good War” when a U.S. soldier was wounded, but he had killed the German soldier who lay dead with blood dripping – it was described far more graphically – and the soldier noticed that the enemy had his shoes on the wrong feet.
Terkel wrote several books and I pulled out his book “Will the Circle be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith,” which was suggested by Gore Vidal many years before he actually wrote it. As he started working on the book his wife of 60 years passed away, which makes the book even more poignant.

I loved this piece from the LATimes obituary:
When officials from Rutgers University knocked on Terke's door in May 2007 to present him with the Stephen E. Ambrose Oral History Award, they could hear furious typing inside, [he was 95].

I hope that will be the case with me too, but I suspect it will most likely be subpoena servers for my blogging.

The verse from the poem above was the words that allowed a child Terkel to find comfort to sleep, and I think a nice send off for a writer who listened to the proletariat.

For a professional obit see the NYTimes' profile.

Which is scarier?

From my cellphone:

Something really scary:Scare tactics at the polls

Synchronized Blogging

This guy has remixed the debates to give us a better sense of the talking points they resort to, time and time again.

(Thank you, BoingBoing, for pointing to these guys.)

A New Hope

More here.

Prop 8 = HateVote No on Proposition 8

1. Marriage is a right that belongs to everyone.

2. We shouldn't single out one group of people to be treated differently under the law.

3. Voting "no" on Proposition 8 will help ensure that all Californians have the freedom to marry the one they love.

No Power Without Accountability

Another great song from Billy Bragg. Caution: if you're a right-wing nutjob you may not agree with the sentiments expressed in this song. He explains (before he sings) that the struggle used to be between capitalism and socialism, but these days what's more important is the struggle between capitalism and accountability.

The song itself starts at 3:10 -- feel free to skip ahead to it if you would rather be entertained than indoctrinated.

I grew up in a company town
And I worked real hard til’ the company closed down

They gave my job to another man
On half my wages in some foreign land

And when I asked, "how could that be any good for our economy?"
I was told nobody cares, so long as they make money when they sell their shares

P.S. This is why YouTube is so great.

Lucky Dog

My new dog and my new camera.

Wassup 2008

First, here's the original beer commercial:



Now, here's the election year reunion (same guys!):

InkJet Printers

Best quote about printers ever (how appropriate for a blog named Toner Mishap!):

"Those aren’t really printers; they’re more like temporary housing units for your ink cartridges."

Jewish Comedians for Obama

Opie and Richie, Back on Screen

The only way to see this excellent video is to follow the link

Currently reading

I am in the middle of the new book by Dennis Lehane “The Given Day.” I highly recommend it for a thoroughly enjoyable transportation into the early 1900s of Boston and the issues workers faced from 12 hours days for little pay to the threat of communism being throughout about if one disagreed with those in power.

I only get a hour or two to read on the weekends and only a few minutes before I fall asleep during the week, but while I'm awake every minute reading is very satisfying.

Wait, James Ellroy *isn't* one of the Jetsons?

A few years back I read this and LOVED IT, and just saw the movie, which reminded me how much I liked the book. Apparently it wasn't a fluke -- I'm now reading this, and it's freakin' awesome!

Who Won the Debate? Remix

tip of the hat to Monkeys for Helping

Cool enough to just fucking ignore zombies.

[Source]

ABC3D: the best pop-up book in the world

Thanks, BoingBoing.net, for sharing this.

Full story.

Why I Blog

There is an excellent article in the Atlantic Monthly by Andrew Sullivan titled “Why I Blog.” I highlighted a few of the points :

• Blogging rewards brevity… it’s a broadcast, not a publication.

• We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges.
• A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing – and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater.
• Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.
• It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before.

The bullet points are just the pieces I identify with as a blogger -- a real blogger, once a upon a time, four years ago to be exact. We did daily blogging for a year and it was time consuming, fun, intoxicating, and creative. We have kept it up in bursts, which works for us, but not so much for regular readers. I hope to start again, but it depends on how much time the day job requires. I doubt I or we will reach our halcyon days of that first year, but that is okay and to some extent preferable. I found myself writing to an audience or for a reaction rather than writing for me.

iPod Random 11

I now have a new Classic iPod because my old iPod was packed into my suitcase and the Neutrogena soap seeped into it. I returned it to the Apple store on the day the new versions were released and they give me $50 for my old one, so I purchased a new old one with 160GB. The downside was that I lost all my old play lists. I had some of them on my hard drive, but I altered the order in the pod and not on the computer, so a lot of great play lists disappeared.


Now that I have gotten use to my Apple computer, I have been frequenting the iTunes store much too regularly. I have spent hundreds of dollars in the past few months buying music; I will write a post about some of the new music I have purchased. An example is the Seals & Crofts for wife for our relaxing weekends of floating around and doing nothing.

“Walk On” by U2
“Sugar Baby” by Bob Dylan
“On a Misty Night” by Joe Lovano
“Even the Losers” by Tom Petty
“Besame Mucho” by Carmen McRae
“Besame Mucho” by Eldar
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Frank Sinatra
“Dedicated to You” by John Coltrane and Johnny Hart
“We May Never Walk this Way Again” by Seals & Croft
“Worrisome Heart” by Melody Gardot
“Are you Alright?” By Lucinda Williams

Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot for President!

Spider-Man, Santa Claus, and Fishing

Best. Ad. Ever.

Just a Heart Beat Away...

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
Graham Greene (1904–91), novelist

I suspect the fact that the world, no matter who is elected, is going to start to change for the better once the "Disastrous Duo" of Bush and Cheney leave office on Jan.20, 2009. This is finally setting in and Cheney's heart is having a hard time accepting this situation.



Vice President Dick Cheney experienced an abnormal heart beat on Wednesday morning and will see doctors to ''restore his normal rhythm'' -- the second time in less than a year that he will have the procedure.

Cheney, 67, canceled a campaign event he was scheduled to attend Wednesday

Snake Alert

On vacation, saw a snake. Still waiting for my brother-in-law to identify it for me... can you do it? 12-16 inches long, and it looked like -- well, like in the picture I took up.

UPDATE

It's a mountain gartersnake -- thanks to my brother-in-law, who responded to my facebook page post.

Don't send this child to camp again.

Names have been censored to protect the allergic. This is a real notice from camp last summer regarding one of our campers. I just dug it up to share it with a friend, and now you get to enjoy it as well.

Live Blogging the Debate... Sort Of

OK, I've got the vice presidential debate paused so I can share a few first thoughts.

Right at the beginning, Sarah Palin entered the debate arena, shook hands with Joe Biden, and loudly asked, "Can I call you Joe?" Someone apparently told her to stick with the "just us folks" approach.

She's already used the phrase "hockey moms have to unite."

Did she really use the phrase "never again" in regard to the economic situation we're in right now? Did she *really* want to evoke thoughts of the Holocaust?

She actually said, "darn right!" She's so folksy; I think I'll vote for her, 'cuz she's just like me!

My favorite quote so far, in response to Biden's prompting her for an on-topic response: "I may not answer the questions the way you or the moderator want, but I'm going to talk straight."

UPDATE

She pronounces "nuclear" just like W: "nook-yular." [shiver]