This was one of the most challenging pieces I did for Koen during my year there. I knew this piece called for a sophisticated and cool approach, and, well, back in 1999 I was not nearly as familiar with the whole gay/lesbian world as I am now(thanks, Karl Rove, for making me more pro-gay rights than I had ever thought I'd be in my life!).
This design doesn't have any real meaning behind it other than trying to give the reader the "slices of life" feel, and I thought the use of the dark red and b/w photography was very striking. The printer used a really nice thick cardstock for the cover, giving this piece a real solid feel when you hold it, and it remains one of my favorite jobs I did for Koen.
This was one the rare times I had at Koen when I was able to talk my superiors into spending a little extra dough to make what I thought was a superior product.
Most of the time I didn't bother getting into what kind of paper the printer--a hilariously charming guy named Tom--used, but since this catalog of Civil War titles was so slight(it was only sixteen pages), I thought it needed some extra thing to make it cool.
Luckily, the printer had in stock a sort of old-timey parchment paper, which cost a little extra but my boss went for it. When I got the actual catalog in my hand, I was amazed how well it came off--the paper had a nice look and feel to it, and I think it added immesurably to the effectiveness of the piece.
Now that the Joel Martin project is given to the ages, I wanted to go back and talk about a couple more Koen projects. I've got books on the mind right now, so Koen is on my mind a little more.
Anyway, this is Loose Canons!, a twice-a-year catalog we did of off-beat, "alternative"-type books spread across every genre. It was organized by a Koen employee from the sales department who, in retrospect, was Koen's version of The Office's Michael Scott--a very nice guy, but so desperate to be cool and hip and "different" that sometimes you wanted to either A)strangle him, or B)hide under your desk when you heard him coming.
Anyway, this was the second of the two LC! catalogs I did, and when it came time to come up with a design, I was sorta bereft of ideas. Everything I came up with seemed too self-conciously "different" and that drove me nuts. Finally, I decided to give my comedy writing skills a shot and just do a front page-type thing, featuring articles about Koen that hopefully made people laugh. (click here to see a readable version)
The top two articles are self-explanatory enough, but I was especially proud of the "Where will aliens get the books they need to burn to keep us warm at the labor camps? From us." bit, turning my boss Jim into an unrepetant sales whore, even when it meant the enslavement of mankind. He liked it, too.
The little girl pictured, in fact, is Jim's daughter, brandishing a Koen "K" rub-on tattoo they had at the time. Surprisingly, Jim had no problem with me using the photo, in fact he gave it to me to do so. What a boss!
The little blurb headline at bottom left is a total in-joke. The guy I replaced in graphics was apparently moonlighting as a club DJ in his spare time, and considered himself quite the hipster. More than once, he came in so tired from being out all night he fell asleep at his desk, his face pressed against the keyboard, inadvertently typing "cvbnmmmmmmmmmmm,,,,,,,,," all day.
The only change asked for was the top article, where I had originally featured quotes of hopelessness from Bookazine, Koen's real-life main competitor. This whole layout was run by Ed(then head of sales at Koen, now my pal and runner of All Things Fun) just to make sure nothing jumped out at him, and he thought the Bookazine jab might be just a tad over the line, so he asked that I change it. That was no problem, I assured him, and then he told me "but I want a copy of the original for my wall."
...you know, I didn't even realize I was making that poster/ity joke before. Honest.
Anyway, the votes are in, and now it seems the only place this poster will get seen is here and then on the next namtab.com update.
We didn't even get into whether the client liked it or not, instead it was more about whether it was a suitable cover for what they were looking for.
After a few days of discussion and more research on the subject, it was determined that the whole graphic approach they wanted--Joel interacting/connected with Eminem, Clinton, etc., was wrong, and so they decided to not use illustrations at all, and simply go with photos from his life.
So...I'm getting a kill fee for my work, and that's it. Bittersweet at best, and while I'll miss the money I would've made, I'm so glad I pushed forward last Saturday and did this thing full out.
Like I said on Monday, I think this is one the best pieces I've ever done. Even after 1,200+ illustrations, I can count on one hand(and a Simpsons hand, at that) the number of pieces I've done that actually came out better than what I originally saw in my head. So it's a real treat when it happens.
Koen just started to getting into the comics racket(oh, and it is a racket) in my last few months there. I was asked to put together a newsletter called Koen Comics, highlighting the various TPB collections for sale. They didn't have enough books to fill a catalog, so initially they went with just a six-page newsletter.
There was a lot of info to cram into a small space, so other than an old-timey comics logo, I didn't get to do much desigin', though I did manage to add this little embellishment to the brief Koen sales pitch that accompanied every piece of marketing material.
Looking back at this, I sorta can't believe I got away with A)making a joke about a naked Batgirl, B)calling comics fans "trolls", and C)getting to slap the Koen "K" logo right next to it.
I remember my boss being a little concerned over it, even though he thought it was funny. He knew I was a comics fan, so he let me run it since he figured I was insulting my own kind.
I left about a month after this got sent out, so I don't know if Koen ever heard any complaints about it. Not that I would've cared--everything I said there is completely true.
While I wait to hear what the response is to my poster cover idea(early indication: not good) I thought I'd troll through some other stuff in the Namtab back catalog.
I worked as a graphic designer for Koen Books--a book distributor in Moorestown, NJ, for exactly one year. I designed catalogs, flyers, the website, plus lots of other tedious internal stuff that was not anything creative.
I really enjoyed doing the design stuff--my boss, Jim, was the head of marketing(which the design dept.--me and one other person--was part of) and he made no pretense about being creatively inclined. So he pretty much said to me as long as its not offensive in any way and it helps promote Koen, do whatever you want.
That gave me an enormous free hand to try and come up with the most eye-catching designs possible. I had to concentrate all my efforts on the front cover, since for the most part the insides were just endless lists of books and the back cover was frequently paid advertising. I had about 2-3 catalogs per month to do--sports books, gay/lesbian books, mother's day titles, etc.
Of course, we had a sci-fi catalog, and since I knew ahead of time what was coming, I felt this catalog would be the best chance I had to knock it out of the park and really come up with something cool.
By now, of course, I've done a ton of retro movie posters, paperback book covers, and the like, but at the time--1999--putting this together was a relative new idea for me, so I put more time into this one than any other. I found an old ad from a comic book and pulled the monster off of it, and the fearful crowd is from my favorite movie poster of all time, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. The taglines are all my own and I even carried the UFO motif throughout the catalog--I had them flying all around the book listings, on each page.
Of course, when I look at this now I see how far I've come, but at the time this piece was a quantum leap for me in terms of sophistication of design and tying it all together visually. I was so proud of it and I even remember Jim, when he first saw it, saying "wow" or something to that effect. And I thought it served a sales purpose, too--bookstores got piles of catalogs all the time, so I thought if one really stood out visually, it might give Koen a leg up in potential sales. So I didn't look at good design as just a way to entertain myself on Koen's dime(or nickel, considering what they paid).
The only negative part of it was the other marketing person in the department who was under Jim but still my boss. Her name was Vicki and she was in charge of handling all the co-op advertising that helped pay for the printing of the catalogs. She and I never quite got along--she didn't seem to appreciate my whole attitude, and I think she was a little offended Jim and I got along so well(there are other stories related to this, but that's for another time). I used to kid around with him and my other co-workers, and a lot of the time she seemed to take the job very, very seriously.
Anyway, originally there was very little advertising set up for this piece, so I had planned the back cover to have the classic "The End ...or is it?" tag that you saw on a thousand sci-fi and horror movies from the fifties. It would take up the whole back cover and I thought gave the catalog a really nice cohesiveness--an artistic flourish, sure, for what was essentially a sales tool, but I thought it worked and Jim agreed.
At the last moment, she got some publisher to book a half-page ad for the catalog, and told me to put it on the back cover. I showed her my design, and told her we had exactly a half-page of empty space on the inside back cover, which the ad could be slotted into perfectly, thereby not monkeying with the design.
She looked right at me and said "put it on the back cover", even though the ad only took up half the space, which I thought would look goofy. I was convinced she was doing this partly because she just didn't like me very much, and thought here was a chance to exercise some authority.
I think I even went to Jim to try and override her decision, but he demurred and I'm sure that soured her towards me even more. So the ad went where it went, looking odd and out of place to me, marring what I thought was my finest piece I ever did--or would do--for the company.
I'm currently working on a cover and interior illustration for dBusiness magazine, all about business goings-on in the Detroit area. I've done some previous work for them, but it was standard portrait work; nothing too ambitious.
Anyway, I've been commissioned to do the illustrations for a bio on Joel Martin, a music producer and entrepreneur, who has worked with people as diverse as Eminem, George Clinton, and The Romantics.
The magazine wanted some sort of rock poster type feel for the cover, but that was the extent of their ideas. There's been a lot delays getting this off the ground, from getting me pics of Joel and any idea what the article will read like.
I had planned to put together a rough for them to look at this week, but when I sat down on Saturday(with Johnny under my chair, snoring contentedly, and Sports Night: The Complete Series on the DVD player) something came over me--in an instant, I had an idea in my head what the poster should look like.
I had originally thought of a late 60s, psychedelic poster, like for The Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane. But then I thought a better idea was a riff on those classic, fun, dynamic Motown Records concert posters--that way I could work in pictures of some of the famous people he's worked with, instead of just being stuck with a picture of a guy nobody recognizes.
As I kept working, the damn thing kept getting better and better, and each little piece fell into place like clockwork. I originally had just wanted to do maybe a little more than a rough, but as the afternoon wore on I realized I wanted to finish this thing--and there was no reason to stop since it was all working out so well.
So by around dinnertime, I had produced this--the rare piece that actually looks better on the screen than it did in my head(that never happens). I had forgotten to eat lunch and other than to take Johnny for a walk, I never stopped working for about five and a half hours.
Anyway, the point of this way-too-long story is, I just sent the piece(with a dummy cover to show how I'd use it on there)in to the client, and with fingers crossed I hope they give it a thumbs up.
The odds are against me, since most of the covers I've done before seem to require a lot of pushing and pulling, nipping and tweaking, and when I get too attached to a piece(like I am to this one), it often as not backfires on me, and I'm asked to make some change that to me ends up gutting the thing(oh, the Time Out New York stories I could tell...).
So I wanted to post this piece, just this once, for everyone(read: the five friends of mine who read this blog, plus my Dad) to see, before it possibly gets shoved into the editorial meat-grinder and is rendered unrecognizable.
My buddy Charles Howell, who I met(virtually) via our mutual love of Aquaman(he supplied the super-cool giant Aquaman Plush Doll back in January), have been commisserating about our inability to find the various new Justice League Unlimited in our local stores.
Finding Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern is child's(or overgrown child's, in our case) play, but the more obscure members of the DCU are a lot harder because there's so few of them. Oh, how we suffer.
So anyway, we struck a deal where if each of us found a JLU figure that the other needed, we'd pick it up and form our own action figure Underground Railroad. Not too long ago, I found a 3-pack featuring Batman, Black Canary, and the Joker. I needed(not just wanted, needed) a Joker, but already had a Black Canary, so I shipped her off to Charles.
Then, unexpectedly, Charles found a 3-pack featuring the Demon, one of my most desired figures! He shipped it off to me and it just arrived this morning! Oh frabjuous day!
And since, as everyone(?) knows, Etrigan the Demon talks entirely in rhyme, I wrote a little poem to Charles to say thanks. Not being a poet by trade(oh, but how I tried!), I was pretty proud of myself, so I thought I'd post it here, as well: oh how i was happy when i spied the mailman past for i knew what i was hoping for had arrived at last
it was a wonder to behold i jumped up and started screamin' for along with the kryptonian and the amazon was a little plastic Demon
These goofy collage pieces of mine have been getting a good response, so I thought I'd share a few others from that time. Blame yourselves.
I think this sequence doesn't require a lot of explanation--I was still smarting from a failed relationship(or, more accurately, a failed attempt at one) and when you combine that with a lot of free time and an inability to write songs you get this.
You can click here to see a readable version. After you do, thank yourself you aren't me circa mid-1996. I know I do.
I just updated namtab.com, for the third(and next to last) time of the year.
I thought a fun thing to post here for those of you brave/bored/foolish enough to read my random, rambling thoughts would be a piece not put up on the site, since I tend only to pick the best of new material I've produced in the last three months--Rob Kelly: The Bootleg Series, if I want to be insufferable about it.
Problem is, my ratio of good to bad pieces has gone up a lot in the past year, so I really don't have any really bad pieces "laying around" anymore. When I find myself working on something that I know isn't going anywhere, I more often than not just give up and never finish it. After over 1,200 pieces, I no longer feel the need to finish every little idea I come up with.
But this piece is not on namtab.com--it's my contribution to Jelly of the Month, that art-group website that gives its contributors a new subject each month. September's theme was The Muppets, so I worked up this piece of one of those guys in the balcony--Statler(or is it Waldorf?) and titled it "The Man Who Laughs."
This is probably my single favorite collage/sequential project I did, ever.
First off, its more goofy-funny rather than bitter-funny, so I think its aged a lot better. Plus I like the visuals a lot more, since each panel features someone different.
The nightmarish Batman and Robin movie was still a year away when I made this, so as you can see the enthusiasm I had for the then-Batfilms was not yet entirely piddled on by Joel Schumacher and Warner Bros. executives.
Most of the jokes are fairly obvious, but I do like the picture of the kid eating a live fish behind the Penguin simply because its so odd.
And you can't see it here, but behind Catwoman is the warning "Caution: Filling Is Hot", which I cut off of a McDonalds Apple Pie box. I spare no expense for my art.
And now that the Batman films got so wonderfully rebooted with Batman Begins, the pain of those earlier films is gone!
Before I developed my current art style, I had done a lot of collage illustration.
I "discovered" it during my third and final year at the Kubert School, when my general lack of drawing skills frustrated me and I wanted to find some other way to produce my assignments.
I even got some client work with the collage stuff--I did two pieces for a music magazine, and several jobs for a newspaper up in North Jersey. But the inherent limitations of the style started to wear on me and I after I started doing the portraiture I generally left the collage stuff behind.
But not entirely--during my wilderness years(1996-1998) I was trying all kinds of different stuff, and somehow I got inspired to do some collage stuff again.
I created a character named "Timmy" who would appear in Archie Comic-style gag stories, only one page long each. I did several of them, but none of them came out better than this one--Timmy in "There Ain't No Romance Without Finance."
While I still think this holds up--both graphically and er, writingly--I can see the acid tone that I had at the time come through. I was really angry and depressed during those years, and a lot of that surfaced in my work.
It's our beloved pup Johnny's second birthday today! It seems like it was just yesterday we got her, and yet we both feel in a lot of ways we've had her forever.
She's so sweet and loving and smart and fearless and fast...she's our little girl.
Trace has been talking about what Halloween decorations she wants to put up this year--last year we ended up not doing anything, but this year she really wants to do it up.
So that got me started thinking about Halloween, too(even though Summer has still got a week left!), and my thoughts as usual turn to the oddest, goofiest corners on any given subject. So I've been looking around trying to find goofy Halloween costumes.
For this one, its not the costume that's so weird--though since this is listed as "Hairy Gorilla", I'm wondering how red and pale green got thrown in--but the description.
As you can see, this costume--a Quality Costume, as they say--is "Bright for Night", has "Wide-Vision Eye-Holes", and is "Flame Retarded."
"This is the first post on the new companion blog for my website, www.namtab.com. There's lots of weird stuff that I would've liked to mention on my site, but I kept wanting to keep it strictly about my illustration work. So now I have the chance to indulge all my nerdy obsessions, and hopefully you'll come along for the ride!"
That was my first namtab log post, a year ago today. I've been blogging for a whole year now; my how time flies and all that.
I started blogging just to sort of see what it was like, not knowing it would grow into a major part of my day--I'm currently running four of 'em(with a new one in the works) and it's really become a major creative outlet for me--I had no idea I liked to write this much! Plus, through these blogs(especially the Aquaman Shrine), I've made some great new friends and have had the chance to talk to some of my favorite artists and writers. It's been amazing ride so far.
Via ExpectingRain.com, I found this article online about some music producer named Jacknife Lee. The opening paragraph is this whopper:
"Garret "Jacknife Lee" is a Grammy-award winning producer and remixer who has worked with U2, Green Day, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party and the Editors. He will also be working on Bob Dylan's new album in January 2008 with Rick Rubin."
As I've mentioned before, I keep giant portfolios of my pieces, that way when I need to find an older one I can quickly flip through 'em all and then find it on my back-up discs.
It originally started when I was doing collage illustrations, and all my pieces(done before I knew anything about having to copy my work easily)were so huge that I needed some way to look at them all quickly.
Anyway, over time I've come to enjoy going back and looking through my old stuff, seeing how inspired I was at certain times, my good periods, my bad ones.
I recently started my newest portfolio, and the first piece is this one, my portrait of Rob Zombie for Time Out New York. This is piece #1,205--sometimes I can't believe I've done that many, but yet it still feels like I'm just getting started.
The last book was started in February 2006, and filled up in August 2007, which means it took me a year and a half to do 240 illustrations, the shortest amount of time its ever taken me to fill a whole book up. Almost five years into freelancing full-time, I take that as a good sign.
In a reponse to the simple question "Is this war making America safer?"(posted by Republican Mark Warner of Virginia), Gen.Petraeus said "I don't know." The guy in charge of the whole war--the guy Bush has deified and basically declared infallible--can't even tell us whether the whole point of this war is working.
For too long, the Democrats and/or the Left have been so bad at the political game--while Bush and Co. gave out simple phrases, Democrats would get bogged down in endless statements turning back on themselves. You can make an argument--and a good one--that its not good to dumb things down as much as the Republicans do--but the reality remains that if you can't present your view in a brief, concise manner, the average voter will tune out, especially when you've got a Republican opponent screaming "I support the troops!" and "9/11! 9/11!" every five seconds.
But Petraeus just handed Democrats the best simple bumper sticker-ready phrase they could ask for--is the war worth it, General?--"I don't know."
Now the Democrats are great at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, so they'll probably goof this moment up to(after all, it was a Republican that asked the simple question, prompting the bewildering response). But if I were running the DNC, I'd be hiring an ad firm to put together anti-war and anti-Bush ads right now.
Its not going to make Bush change his policy--nothing short of Impeachment will do that--but it works as an instant, simple refutation to every screeching Conservative and Fox News commentator.
This is one the empty heads in Congress that spent a good long time today going on and on about MoveOn.org ad--Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinan(R-Florida). She kept talking and talking, and I kept cutting away, going back, and she was still talking, yet saying nothing.
The Democrats and/or The Left have got to learn to play this political game better. Putting that dumb ad in the paper gives the morons who only speak in Talking Points like this the chance to score some easy points, pretending they're patriotic and getting to say they "Support the Troops" while committing more of them to death.
Watching this bag of wrinkles surrounded by a haze of AquaNet kick the anti-war side of the argument around made me sick, and that MoveOn.org ad only helped her do it.
This is the top part of Moveon.Org's full-page ad they ran in the New York Times; today's edition I think.
This ad makes me roll my eyes and wonder who the living hell over there thought this was a good way to go.
Blaming the wrong guy? Check. Personal attack? Check. Dumb joke? Check.
This ad just gives the morons on the other side a thing to wave(which they've already started doing) as a symbol that "the left" is silly and not serious. And even though that's not true, this ad just is giant step backward.
WASHINGTON (CNN)--When President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq last weekend, he made clear he was pleased with what he saw.
"The security situation is changing," Bush told reporters during the visit. "There's more work to be done. But reconciliation is taking place."
But according to the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia, the president gave a more-to-the-point assessment to Australia Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile.
"We're kicking ass," Bush said to Vaile Tuesday, according the Herald, after the deputy prime minister inquired about his trip to Iraq.
That's it--no more idiot Frat Guys as President. I want nothing but nerdy Brainiacs in the Oval Office from now on. People that, y'know, think about stuff.
My love and obsession with The Simpsons DVD audio commentaries is well documented. As nerdly as it sounds, over the course of all these boxed sets, you get to feel like you sorta know these funny, creative, hard-working people behind the show, so "catching up" with them every six months or so upon the release of another season's worth of DVDs adds, to me, an extra level of enjoyment.
But I found the last Simpsons season DVD set--season 10--to be maybe my first step towards not buying them automatically anymore. Matt Groening is present for very few of them, and a lot of my favorite people to listen to--producer/writers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, writer David X.Cohen--stopped working for the show around this time, so they are no longer present at the commentaries, and a lot of the people who replaced them are just not as interesting for me to listen to. Season 10 is around the time when I stopped watching the show regularly, since its creativity began to become a lot more hit or miss(something I think is still the case, nine seasons(!) later).
Luckily, another show has come around to sort of fill that spot, The Office. I didn't start watching the show until the beginning of the second season, but then I(and Trace) became quickly addicted to it.
And, like the Simpsons, the DVDs come with audio commentaries by cast and crew, who are very entertaining to listen to. So when Season 3 came out on Tuesday, I went right out and got it and began basking in the creative glow of a very, very funny show and listen to the people who created it.
The Office staff is not quite as committed to the commentary idea--there's only eight commentaries over a 24-show season, as opposed to wall-to-wall commentaries you get with The Simpsons, but I think that's because its mostly from the cast, who don't seem as quite comfortable in this format. But it was still fun to listen to their thoughts on the past season, which ended with my(and Trace's) single favorite moment from the show, ever:
...pure bliss, with a great laugh at the end. Can't wait for Season 4...
This is Jenny singing "Rise Up With Fists!" from her solo album, on what is either A)an episode of The Sarah Silverman Program B)a video made to look like an episode of The Sarah Silverman Program C)an episode of Hee Haw from Dimension X:
Well, I'm still digging on all this Jenny Lewis stuff, plus I'm tired of writing yet another Bush Pisses Me Off post.
So here's Jenny with her band Rilo Kiley singing the awesome "Silver Lining." The song and video are made even more unsettling when you learn that the guy in the video Jenny leaves at the altar is not only another member of the band(Blake Sennett), but that he and Jenny were a couple for many years and yet are still in the band together, writing and performing songs like this. Holy Fleetwood Mac!
I came across Rilo Kiley leadsinger Jenny Lewis' solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat, totally at random, when I heard the song "The Big Guns" played at Borders. I downloaded it from iTunes, and now I'm obsessed with the album, it's so great.
I admit, I find its really hard for me to get excited about any non-Bob Dylan music, but I am totally in love with Jenny(musically!), and even though I do like some of the stuff I've heard from her with Rilo Kiley, its her solo album that's really rocking my world. The songs are great, the lyrics funny, self-effacing, revealing, painful, and profound. Plus I think she's the first person ever to cover a Traveling Wilburys song.
Here's Jenny on Letterman last year, singing "The Big Guns":
I read this story a few days ago, and it got me so mad I went and found it again. From the AP:
FALLON, Nev. — The White House and military officials said the exclusion of a Fallon woman from a private meeting with President Bush for families of fallen Nevada soldiers was an oversight, not an intentional snub because of her Wiccan faith.
Bush met privately with families of Nevada soldiers during his visit to Reno on Tuesday.
Roberta Stewart, the widow of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, was not among the invited guests.
Patrick Stewart and four others soldiers were killed Sept. 25, 2005, when a Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.
After his death, Roberta Stewart spent more than a year in a public struggle with the Veterans Affairs Department to have her husband’s grave marked with a Wiccan religious symbol.
White House spokesman Trey Bohn said Roberta Stewart’s exclusion from the meeting with Bush was a regrettable oversight by the Army, who provided contact information to the president.
“The president was not aware. This was an oversight on the part of the Army, and we deeply regret the mistake,” Bohn told the Lahontan Valley News.
A military official echoed the White House’s explanation.
“It was an unfortunate oversight by the Army. Inadvertently, the second family member was notified. A mistake occurred. She’s an Army spouse. She’s part of the family. It was a mistake, an unfortunate mistake,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington.
Stewart said she was told the “next of kin” was notified by the president’s staff prior to the visit.
“Funny, I’m listed as Patrick’s next of kin, so I don’t understand why I was not called personally.”
According to the “Record of Emergency Data” provided by Stewart, the spouse is the first person listed on the document for notification purposes. The children are listed second, followed by the service member’s father, then mother.
Rev. Selena Fox, senior minister of Circle Sanctuary, a Wiccan organization in Barneveld, Wis., doesn’t buy the government’s explanation.
“I don’t believe Roberta’s exclusion from the meeting with President Bush was an oversight,” she said. “Out of all the Nevada soldiers who were killed in the wars, the most visible of those was the late Sergeant Patrick Stewart and his widow Roberta Stewart, who was in the media for more than a year working to get him properly honored.
“I find it surprising and disappointing that with such widespread publicity she was excluded from the meeting,” she said.
...my god, the woman's a war widow, for Christ's sake. But hey, she ain't the right type of person, so she's out.
It's simply astonishing to me that the Republicans have been able to sell Bush as a folksy, nice guy, the kinda guy you'd like to have a beer with, especially over that boring elitist John Kerry.
He's not. The guy's a dick. A spoiled, falsely-agreeved rich kid who has deep, deep issues with his parents and just happens to be the most powerful man in the world. He can't admit he's a giant failure, so people--many thousands of them--have to die to keep his ego intact.
This was one of the most challenging pieces I did for Koen during my year there. I knew this piece called for a sophisticated and cool approach, and, well, back in 1999 I was not nearly as familiar with the whole gay/lesbian world as I am now(thanks, Karl Rove, for making me more pro-gay rights than I had ever thought I'd be in my life!).
By now, of course, I've done a ton of retro movie posters, paperback book covers, and the like, but at the time--1999--putting this together was a relative new idea for me, so I put more time into this one than any other. I found an old ad from a comic book and pulled the monster off of it, and the fearful crowd is from my favorite movie poster of all time, 
