Author: Joey deVilla

These have been floating about the next for the past couple of days and I thought I’d share them here. First is Schultz City, which gives Peanuts the Frank Miller treatment. Click the comic to see it at full size:

And here’s Presidential Trouble, which answers the question “What if The Watchmen" did a Hostess Fruit Pies ad?” The answer: nothing very pretty. Click the comic to see it at full size:

Michael Steele – he’s the de jure Chairman of the Republican National Committee; Rush Limbaugh is the de facto one – has a challenging mission: to restore America’s Republican Party to power. His plan is to make it cool, or in his own words, use “off the hook” PR and by applying the party’s principles “to urban-suburban hip-hop settings”.

GQ recently interviewed him, and when the topic of conversation turned to music, he competently dropped some old-school rap and hip-hop names in that “I’m still cool! I keep up with the times!” way that some parents do:

Who do you listen to?
I actually listen to a cross section, because I like to hear what the medium is saying, what the voice is.

But do you have a favorite?
P. Diddy I enjoy quite a bit.

Do you want to rethink that?
[laughs] I guess I’m sorta old-school that way. Remember, I came of age with the DJ and all this other stuff, so I’m also loving Grandmaster Flash, and that’s not hip-hop, but… Um, you know, I like Chuck D. And I always thought Snoop Dogg was–he just reminded me of the fellas back home. So I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed him.

Strangely enough, it’s when he starts talking about Frank Sinatra and company that he fumbles. You have to keep in mind that being a fan of Sinatra is a Republican cliche so well known that it was featured in The Preppy Handbook and Family Ties’ Young Republican character, Alex P. Keaton, was written as a Sinatra fan:

Who else?
I like Sinatra. I like old-school. You know, Bing Crosby, Sinatra, Dean Martin. Love Dean Martin. He was one of these guys who just didn’t give an F. He just didn’t. Life was a party, and you either want to party or you don’t. But yeah, I like those. I’m a big Pack Rat. I love the Pack Rats from the 1950s–Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, those guys.

You mean the Rat Pack.
The Rat Pack, yeah.

Dude. Even the most casual Sinatra listeners (such as Yours Truly) know that.

For someone claiming to be a follower of classic rock music, an equivalent mistake would be to refer to The Beatles as “The Four Fabs” or Mick and Keith as “The Glamour Twins”.

This was summed up best by Talking Points Memo’s Eric Kleefeld, who made the following observation:

So Steele doesn’t just sound like a middle-aged man trying to talk to his kids and failing to sound cool. He’s also trying to talk to his parents and failing to sound cool.

Apparently Tokyo wants to raise its international profile, which seems pretty odd. I think that if you asked people what the best-known cities in the world are, Tokyo would easily land in the top ten. That’s the kaizen ethic for you.

In addition to their work ethic, the Japanese have some other qualities of note, including a fondness for all things cutesy and a commensurate ability to give that cutesiness a slightly creepy twist. This Reuters report says that they’ve got ambassadors for these qualities now:

In a bid to raise its international profile, Tokyo has appointed three young women as cultural envoys because they represent Japan’s long-running craze for all things cute.

Inspired by the characters in Japan’s distinctive "anime" animated films and "manga" cartoon books, one of the new ambassadors dresses as a schoolgirl, another as a Victorian doll in voluminous frilly skirts.

On first glance, it looks like just another tourism board promotion effort. The Reuters article suggests that these “ambassadorships” are part of a larger strategy:

Faced with the prospect of being overtaken in both economic and military might by giant neighbour China, Japan has been making concerted efforts to boost its "soft power", a strategy that analysts see as important.

"You get people to love your culture and use that as a way of gaining power around the world," said Phil Deans, professor of international relations at Temple University’s Tokyo campus.

"America has a lot of soft power, because people like American culture."

So it would seem that one of the strategy’s core assumptions is that the tastemakers and other holders of the levers of power in culture are also the vaguely creepy shut-in type who almost never say the word “legal” without preceding it with the word “barely”.

I wonder if Tokyo is considering ambassadors of subway groping and “upskirt” photos.

Those of you with (ahem) digestive issues might want to install a toilet with Quattro flushing technology in your bathroom. Marvel at the promotional video below, in which all sorts of stuff gets flushed down a Quattro toilet: 2.5 pounds of carrots, 4 sets of plastic chess pieces, 3 pounds of gummi bears. 18 large hot dogs and all sorts of other stuff that would render an ordinary toilet non-functional. If I had one of these, I’d be flushing all kinds of weird stuff all the time!