Ferguson Police Deportment

MUSIC:

In the interest of pure visceral response to a situation that makes all decent Americans feel sick with anger yet powerless, I wanted to gather a number of music videos that address our feelings about the situation.

You know, as powerless as we all feel about this, can you imagine how powerless these craven, paranoid, infantile and cowardly racist cops must feel to think it necessary to cover up their own wrongness with that much more wrongness?  Pathetic, it is.  Sorry guys, a gun will never be a penis, no matter how tightly you grip it at night.




Charley Patton
Tom Rushen Blues
1929





Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
Trouble Every Day
1965






Kris Kristofferson
The Law is for Protection of the People
1970






Marvin Gaye
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
1971






Bob Marley & The Wailers
I Shot the Sheriff
1973






Fela Kuti & Afrika 70
Zombie
1976





The Clash
Police on My Back
1980






The Dicks
Hate the Police
1980






Dead Kennedys
Police Truck
1980






Peter Gabriel
Biko
1980






Rick James
Mr. Policeman
1981






Black Flag
Police Story
1981






NWA
Fuck Tha Police
1988






Public Enemy
Anti-Nigger Machine
1990

See also: most of the rest of PE's songs.  It's pretty much there in their name.






Ice Cube (featuring Chuck D)
Endangered Species
1990






Main Source
Just a Friendly Game of Baseball
1991






Body Count
Cop Killer
1992






Wally Pleasant
I Hate Cops
1993






KRS-ONE
Sound of da Police
1993






2pac
Holler If You Hear Me
1993






Sublime
April 29, 1992
1996






dead prez
Police State
2000





 
J. Dilla
Fuck the Police
2001






Le Tigre
Bang! Bang!
2001






Bruce Springsteen
American Skin (41 Shots)
2001






Rob Hustle (Featuring Liv)
Call the Cops
2014






Now that I look back at these songs in a historical context, the silence of today's biggest rappers is even more damning, but not any particular surprise.  After the explosion of hip-hop in the late 80s and early 90s, Big Music invested heavily in "Gangsta;" favoring rappers who put personal gain above the socially conscious issues affecting Black America.  Yes, there IS still socially and politically aware hip-hop out there, but they've been pushed to the thinnest margins of alternative hip-hop while mainstream America continues to pretend that Jay-Z matters.


Note: Neither this blogazine nor its writer endorse violence against the police.  I do, however, understand how people can get to feeling that way, given the current (police) state of "law enforcement" (accent on the "force") in America today.  We're all pretty fucking fortunate that poor and minority urban Americans don't react to genuine abuses the way NRA fanatics react to the slightest imagined sleights.


Here's one for you, racist gun-nuts and shit-bag cops...

Remembering Remembrances of Robin Williams

TV & FILM:

Robin Williams died, and that sucks.  I don't have much to say about that, but these people do, so I'd rather just let them do the talking.


David Letterman remembers the night the hurricane hit the Comedy Store...





Norm MacDonald tweeted a powerful memory of The Funniest Man in the World...







Conan O'Brien remembers when Robin gave him a bicycle...







Jimmy Fallon remembers on behalf of the Tonight Show...







The USO remembers Robin's years of support...







Koko the Gorilla remembers making a friend...




I like that one because it's the least guarded I've ever seen him.  The shield of comedy is down, and he's just completely present to the experience.



It seems only right that the last word should belong to his daughter Zelda, sharing the most honest and universal of grief...

“My family has always been private about our time spent together. It was our way of keeping one thing that was ours, with a man we shared with an entire world. But now that’s gone, and I feel stripped bare. My last day with him was his birthday, and I will be forever grateful that my brothers and I got to spend that time alone with him, sharing gifts and laughter. He was always warm, even in his darkest moments. While I’ll never, ever understand how he could be loved so deeply and not find it in his heart to stay, there’s minor comfort in knowing our grief and loss, in some small way, is shared with millions. It doesn’t help the pain, but at least it’s a burden countless others now know we carry, and so many have offered to help lighten the load. Thank you for that.
To those he touched who are sending kind words, know that one of his favorite things in the world was to make you all laugh. As for those who are sending negativity, know that some small, giggling part of him is sending a flock of pigeons to your house to poop on your car. Right after you’ve had it washed. After all, he loved to laugh too…
Dad was, is and always will be one of the kindest, most generous, gentlest souls I’ve ever known, and while there are few things I know for certain right now, one of them is that not just my world, but the entire world is forever a little darker, less colorful and less full of laughter in his absence. We’ll just have to work twice as hard to fill it back up again.”

I, for one, promise to tell more penis jokes, to help pick up the slack.  Farewell, good sir.

Drawing the Derby

CULTURAL EVENT:

PDX Adult Soap Box Derby 2014
Saturday August 16, 2014
Mount Tabor Park

I couldn't find my preferred camera, so I decided to sketch my outing to the Derby.

The Breaking Bad Winnebago was a crowd-pleaser.

The Zardoz car was less ungainly than it looked, with that giant head on the back of it.
The winning race was much closer than any of the other heats I saw, and the cars were the most no-nonsense.

While I was there, I saw the person for whom I created this logo, based on the joke that her band name should be Grouch.  This seems as good an excuse as any to share it.

Unca Timo's Cartoon Cabana

Aloha from Summerland!

Don't you think it's about time we enjoyed another cavalcade of cartoons?  Well I do, and it's my blogazine, so here it is!

I'd like to say that there's some sort of theme at work here, but there really isn't, other than that I find them all interesting in at least one way of not more.  At first there was a musical thread, but that kind of fizzled, so just dig it.

Get gnarly on these tasty 'toons, brah!

SHAKA!











This Land Is Mine - 2012
by Nina Paley

Nina is a fabulous and versatile animator producing top-drawer work with a fiercely independent vision.  Her masterful 2008 feature film Sita Sings the Blues challenged both Hindu scholars and American copyright law.  This short, This Land Is Mine was conceived as the final scene to a forthcoming feature, Seder-Masochism. 






Accidents Will Happen - 1979
Song by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Directed by  Rocky Morton & Annabel Jankel

Witness the birth of the 1980s.






Sesame Street: Capital I - 1972
Song by Steve Zuckerman

I was watching Sesame Street with my actual nephew (hence the "Unca" in "Unca Timo") yesterday and this came on.  Like many of the cartoons on Sesame Street, I instantly recalled this with startling clarity.  The prog-folk neo-minstrel tune always seemed to be telling a bigger story than "Hey, here's the capital letter 'I'."  Notice how they spend all day at hard labor, simply to keep the CAPITAL letter "I" polished?  They live "in the middle of the desert" because global warming and deforestation have left us in a bleak netherscape?  Could it be a parable about the human servitude inherent in self-centered Capitalism?  This one's on me, Fox News.






Arrow to the Sun - 1973
Designed & Directed by Gerald McDermott

Adapted from a classic Native American legend.  I'm pretty sure it tells the story of graphic designers going to the desert to do peyote.  I think it foretells the coming of Burning Man.






Mowgli's Brothers - 1976
From the Book by Rudyard Kipling
Adapted & Directed by Chuck Jones

A shorter but more faithful adaptation of Kipling's Jungle Book from master animator Chuck Jones.  You will notice a distinct familiarity about the "jackal" herein.






The Stork - 2002
by Nina Paley

And just because I still wanted to share this one, and just couldn't wait until the next time I post 'toons, here is another great cartoon from Nina Paley.  She is a mad genius, and I totally dig that about her.