Your Amusing Image From Matthew Phelan For The Day

Looking for used painting/portrait frames on craigslist, and came across this dumpy little hero. Has any man ever more looked the part of the WWI-era "doughboy"? Sedentary trench warfare will pork you out.

In Which I Get Excited About Seeing The New Wallace and Gromit Short

The last legitimate Wallace and Gromit installment, A Close Shave, is over a decade old and my hope is that A Matter of Loaf and Death will cleanse my palate of the middling, feature-length W&G --- which Dreamworks evidently mucked with, and mucked up, much more than I'd thought. According to this Telegraph piece on creator Nick Park:

[T]he experience of working for a big, pushy American studio left a sour taste in Park's mouth. He found the experience stressful. It didn't suit his nature. This, after all, is a man who is happiest when out bird-watching with his binoculars in the English countryside. 'I would get these notes saying, "Shouldn't Wallace have a cooler, more modern car?" and I would say, "No, you're missing the point. The irony doesn't translate. It's cool because it's not." Having made three half-hour films already, I was in a position where I could say, "No, Wallace wouldn't do it." There is a false assumption that if things look old-fashioned children won't relate to it. Well, my favourite programme as a child was Dad's Army.'

Work Music.

Thinking of a way to celebrate the mediocre passage of our half-assed health care bill, one of the things I've decided on is listening to the 2008 Election day live set that Killdozer did on WFMU. And thanks to the internet, you can too. Home grown left-wing radicalism and proto-grunge to express our collectively ambivalent feelings.

Way to go, Newt.

Not to be outdone by the new radical fringe of the GOP, Newt Gingrich decided to suggest that the HCR bill will lead to the same kind of political fallout for the Democrats that Civil Rights legislation had in the 1960's:

But former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Am I reading this right? He's basically gloating about the fact that Democrats suffer for taking on unpopular, but morally righteous, legislative tasks, right?

I like to imagine he was skinning a possum as he said this.

[via Washington Post]

I Did an Event Review for You, teh Internetz

It was for Anthem and about a special viewing of the MoMA's Tim Burton Exhibit. [One of the tags below is included in the taxonomy because Tim Burton draws a lot of things with huge boobs: sexy sunflower womanoids, sexy lady zombies, sexy female aliens, etc.]