I’ve been watching a lot of this dude lately, and the other night I dreamed that David Wayne [Wain, alright? Wain. -Berated Barrett] and I were on his show, chatting about how awesome he is before we went on. The man is hilarious. He so perfectly skewers those powerful blowhards on Fox News, and it’s so funny that sometimes I forget that those people actually have a good deal of traction in the real world. Recently Colbert was up in arms because ignorant people are getting discriminated against, and he felt like there should be a week-long Ignorance Month. But check out this column from Paul Krugman yesterday; it reminded me that all of this satire comes from a true, and truly scary, source.

I’ve kept meaning to do a Stephen Colbert-style celebratory post with confetti and balloons on this subject for quite a while now, and my previous entry reminded me to do it. Please, consider the following (from the VH1 website):

Now, please dig this incredibly prescient comic from late in aught-six:

This was inevitable, of course. After the bell bottoms of the late Nineties gave way to the Eighties revival which was replaced by early Nineties grunge and hip hop cool, where else could we look for semi-ironic cultural inspiration but our own goddamn decade?? And so we have. Bless you, VH1. I can’t wait until cargo pants are back in style this fall.

I know it was cool in Pitchforkland to not be absolutely bonkers crazy for Paper Planes, and to instead dissect its samples and influences. I also know that by now, cool people must be sooo over this song, especially because it has gone national, being so thoroughly attached to the Pineapple Express campaign. But you know what, every time I hear it, I get so damn excited, cause it is a really! fucking! awesome song!

Also, I really like the flying hand gesture MIA makes when she let’s us know she’s fly like paper; gets high like planes. I even don’t hate her nineties-revival style. Retro pastiche of the previous decade has never been done with such aplomb.

Oh, bloggers. I’m ready to make the Portrait of the Week weekly again. As Caitlin has mentioned, I now have a mega-studio. She usually refers to it as The Master Studio. I came into some money, and I got a tabloid-sized scanner and a Wacom Cintiq, which is a monitor that you can draw on with a stylus. Both very nice. Also, she and I moved some things around, and now I’m comfortable with our workspace. So basically, things are moving again. Things are happening again.

Now, I think that these portraits could start to fall on a consistent day, don’t you? Like what about Mugshot Monday, or Famous Friday, or Celebrity Saturday? I like that last one because it’s only an aural alliteration, which is fun and funny. So probably I’ll start putting them up then.

Anyhow, Cait and Chadwick Matlin (“the staff reporter for The Big Money, Slate’s business site, which will launch later this year” -from his Slate byline), and I went to the © Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum recently and we had fun. So here he is with his mascot sprites, Kaikai and Kiki.

Okay, okay. I forgot how long it takes to settle into a new place. It’s almost been two weeks, and obvi I haven’t been keeping up with the weekly portraits, or, for that matter, drawing much at all. But! this ain’t LiveJournal, so I’m gonna berate you with another unnecessary change I’ll make to our writing system once I enforce my Totalitarian will on the people.

Numbers. They ain’t right. Whenever I’m measuring, or reducing, or enlarging, I always end up with .125s and .8625s and I hate it. I remember my middle school geography teacher telling my class that the Maya used a base-six system, which is actually better than base-ten because it divides better. Six divides into halves and thirds and ten divides into halves and fifths, and who the hell measures things in fifths? I think we could go a step further and make our base unit also divisble by quarters.

How about twelve?? Twelve!! The perfect number! It’s actually not all that ridiculous. Think about it! We already have unique words for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. Past that, we ad the -teen to the digit in the one place, right? That means we’re already set up for making King Twelve the successor to King Ten. I’ll admit this gets tricky once we get past nineteen, but what’s so bad about tenteen, eleventeen and twelveteen? Or what about twenty-ten, twenty-elven and twenty-twelve? Or even deci-one, eleventy-two and twelfy-three? We could do worse. I mean it. Cause we are doing worse, dudes.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking. You’re thinking, how could we ever transition to this insane new system? You’re thinking it! Come on, admit it! But, just ponder a moment, please, about circles. 360 degrees. That divides into twelves. And, uh, hello? Twelve hours? Sixty minutes? Three feet? Twelve inches? Do I even have to go there?

Of course we’ll need new numerals. Don’t worry, everybody, I got it covered. Since twelve is the new ten, it is represented by a one and a zero. And I made up some passable figures for ten and eleven. Check it:

Ookaa, duu yuu get it? Xen get wix it!

Here she is, in all her Liz Lemmon glory, scarfin down some Sabor de Soledad off-brand Mexican cheese puffs.

Sorry blogfiends, there’s not gonna be a Portrait of the Week this week. I’m moving, and my hurried attempts at Tina Fey are so far no good.

In other drawing news, this is my contribution to a project by Eve Mosher called Insert____Here. The idea is, people see something that could improve the sustainability of their area, tag it with a sign that says what should be inserted, and then somebody visualizes it with a drawing over the image. Fun project! Good idea! Mine’s a bioswale, meaning a natural water filtration system, like a marsh.

Bruuuuuuuuuce!!! We’re talkin Asbury Park-E Street Shuffle-Born to Run mid-’70s young and smokin’ The Boss here.

I’m glad to say my favorite Top Chef Chicago won. She’s wonderful and she’s the hometown hero, with a delightful Chicago accent. Does anybody else think that people from the Midwest talk the way they do because they’re always cheesing? I think there might actually be something slightly insidious about all those hard R’s, gleeful E’s, and enthusiastic A’s… What are Midwesterners hiding from us???

Always-comin-through Jen May curated a group show that’s hanging in her apartment hallway Little Omar’s Gallery, and it’s all about roses!! My contribution is called “By Any Other Name” and it’s all about Gertrude Stein!!! And gold, no less!!!! Exclamation!!!!!

Finally, the Portrait of the Week for last week. There’s another one coming for the end of this week, so don’t fret.

I’ll tell ya, back in January I really loathed both of the Clintons. But now, after Ms. Clinton’s suspension speech, I’ve got nothing but love. If the drawing seems overly heroic, just wait until I do Barack.