A Problem Like Maria V

Originally, the suits at EMI thought the Beatles ought to replace George Harrison with Maria Von Trapp. "'I Need You' is so dreary," said one. "The kids today, you like it upbeat, lively! Something like 'The Lonely Goatherd'!"

Here are the nearly-fab four spelling out "URJV" in semaphore.

A Problem Like Maria, Seite Vier

Maria might have found a career with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders if only her residual nun's modesty had not deterred her from wearing that skimpy uniform.

And her short hair. They really like the girls to wave their tresses about on the field.

Q Toon: Welcome to Wartmart

In the interest of getting a holiday-themed cartoon our there in time for most editors who run my cartoon, I really wanted to do something about Hallmark's "Don We Now Our Fun Apparel" ornament this week. But I don't think anyone will be able to top Ellen DeGeneres's take on the contre-temps.

This Week's Sneak Peek

And an early Happy Thanksghivukkah to all!

The Hills Will Go On

Returning to my little obsession with The Sound of Music for a moment:

I'm trying to decide whether I needed to flip Julie around 90 degrees, or the background. Ah, well. There will be more of these eventually.

Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend John?

Let's take a moment to mark the fiftieth anniversary of a tragic day in world history.

Q Toon: Jack and Alec

In case you don't keep up with MSNBC on Friday nights, brand new program host Alec Baldwin has been suspended for two weeks after being filmed calling a pesky photographer a "c***sucking f**." (Baldwin tried explaining that he actually called the guy a "c***sucking fathead," which is only half as homophobic.)

I don't usually have MSNBC on during Baldwin's particular time slot, but I presume that the channel has temporarily gone back to programming about what it's like to live in prison, where such language is completely unheard of.

As I mentioned the other day, drawing Baldwin from opposite angles proved to be quite the challenge, in part because he must have decided that his right side is not his good side. (Insert rightwing-vs.-leftwing snarky remark here.) After writing that, I tried image-Googling "Alec Baldwin cartoon" and found very little evidence that other cartoonists have been able to capture essence of Alec in their work. So I guess that while I don't feel that I've quite captured the Baldwin Moue, I don't feel so bad about my efforts this week after all.

A Problem Like Maria (Episode 2)

This business of photoshopping Maria from The Sound of Music into other pictures began with a college friend of mine who came home from a vacation through Virginia and posted a photo of rolling hills and distant mountains as his Facebook cover photo. Somebody suggested that the the only thing the photo lacked was Julie Andrews dancing in the foreground.

My friend, who is also named Paul, added Maria singing "The Hills Are Alive" to the photo, and a meme was born.

Paul followed that picture up by photoshopping Maria onto the balustrade of the West Virginia capitol building, which inspired me to replace the "Wisconsin" statue atop the capitol dome in Madison:

Maria should be warned, however, that Governor Snotwalker and his minions have decreed singing to be a capitol offense.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Try Image-Googling a celebrity, and you will quickly discover which he or she believes not to be his or her good side.

Pity if you're drawing a cartoon that necessitates drawing him or her from that side.

A Problem Like Maria (Part 1)

On Facebook, a college friend and I have been posting photoshopped pictures of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music lately.  So, what the heck: I think I'll share some of mine here.

Let's start at the very beginning:

(Click image to embiggenate.)

Q Toon: Say It Ain't So, Jo

Hawaii State Representative Georgette "Jo" Jordan provides a curious sidebar to her state's passage of marriage equality this week. A lesbian who is "not part of any faith-based group," Jordan was appointed to the state legislature in 2011. When Governor Abercrombie called a special session to consider marriage equality, LGBT groups such as Equality Hawaii wanted her to be the face of the bill.

But Jordan decided that she did not want to be pigeon-holed as a representative of her state's lesbian and gay citizens. In an interview with Honolulu Magazine, she says,

"I know who I am, I’m grounded in who I am, I’ve never hid who I am. And when I walked in this door, the GLBT community came knocking on my door and they said, "We’re so glad you’re here. Come on in here." And I’m like, 'I’m Jo, I’m a legislator, those are my hats first.'
"I know what it meant to step in this room for a kid from Waianae, who graduated from public school, who has no background, to be a female and to be GLBT on top of that. And I didn’t want to come up the gate saying, "Look at me, here I am." Because it would distract from anything that I worked on. I have never waved my flag. I don’t wear it across my chest."

So determined was she not to be type-cast, that she proceeded to vote against marriage equality. Her claim is that there aren't strong enough provisions in the bill to allow people to discriminate against same-sex couples if they want to. Apparently, she was swayed by the "citizen's filibuster," in which 5,184 right-wing religious folks showed up to testify against the bill, repeating the same tropes over and over as long as they possibly could. Jordan found them to be nice people, unlike the people over at Equality Hawaii who felt betrayed and let her know it.

"I totally thought I was going to get blasted by the religious community. When I walked into the hearings, I was like, those faith-based guys are going to come out. And not one of them said anything. They were more about, 'Thank you, thank you for listening.' And they didn’t know who I was. Outside, I was Rep. Jordan sitting at the table. They had no idea who I was, or my lifestyle, and that’s why I like it. Can we get to know each other before you know the rest of the stuff?
"I was blasted by the GLBT community on Saturday, outside the door. That took me aback. At the time, I hadn’t stated my position, and I was still undecided. These were testifiers the day before, saying, 'How can you be undecided? You should be a 'yes.' Do you know what this means?' And I politely engaged with them: 'I have some problems with SB1.' I explained the issues and they slammed me again. 'It’s good. Just vote yes.' They started getting boisterous. My natural instinct is, I’m going to fly some words at you. But you can’t, so I’m like, 'Thank you.'"

 If Think Progres's figures on support for marriage equality in Hawaii and in Jordan's district are correct, come next election, her constituents may be like, "See you."

This Week's Sneak Peek

There was great news out of Illinois and Hawaii this week as the states joined the ranks of those with marriage equality. So as an editorial cartoonist making a career out of criticizing everyone else, I'm reminded of a Gilbert and Sullivan song from Princess Ida:

Oh, don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and nothing goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!

Q Toon: Your Mirandskavitch Rights

This week's cartoon was occasioned by this brazen attack on a St. Petersburg HIV support group on Sunday, but it's really about the open season on LGBT Russians declared by their government.

Anastasia Smirnova, the general project manager of the Interregional Social Movement Russian LGBT Network, reported on Russian queer newsgroups that two masked men with guns and baseball bats attacked a "rainbow social" at the offices of LaSky, an HIV organization for gay men,  just over an hour ago. The police reportedly arrived at the LaSky office but left immediately saying they saw no evidence of a crime. 

Two patrons of LaSky were hospitalized; one had reportedly been shot in the eye, and a woman had been beaten with a baseball bat.

Well, you can't blame the Russian police for not wanting to do anything that might get themselves in trouble for violating the ban on "pro-gay propaganda."

Russia's antigay pogrom (also against immigrants and dark-skinned Russians) has been going on for months now, possibly to distract citizens from the massive sums of money being spent on the Sochi Olympics. In July, the Guardian's Nancy Goldstein rattled off a list of other antigay attacks:

[Do Vladimir Putin and the International Olympic Committee think t]hat we'll just happily ignore last week's news of skinheads luring gay teenagers with an online dating scam, then taping the sessions where they torture them so long as no one blocks our view of the figure skating events?...

[A] BuzzFeed photomontage of '36 Pictures From Russia That Everyone Needs to See' brought millions of viewers image after image of bloodied and crying LGBT Russians clinging to one another — people trying to shield themselves from blows and rotten eggs at peaceful protests turned violent where the police, skinheads, and large crowds of anti-gay protestors beat, mock, assault, and arrest them.
So the news from the Russian LGBT Network that four Dutch tourists had just been jailed under the new "gay propaganda" law for filming a documentary on LGBT rights in Russia was the last straw. ... 

Last month, killers reportedly stabbed and trampled a man to death before putting his body in his car and setting it on fire. Just weeks before, 23-year-old Vladislav Tornovoi's friends murdered him because he mentioned he was gay while they were getting drunk, according to the BBC. They raped him with beer bottles before smashing his skull in with rocks.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I'm sure this week's cartoon will not get me in trouble with the authorities.

Except, perhaps, authorities on authentic uniforms.