Satire - The Art of the Prank

July 24, 2007January 15, 2019

A Royal Pain

Under Spanish law, anybody who insults the royal family can face up to two years in prison.

Spain in uproar after royal sex cartoon banned
New Zealand Herald
July 22, 2007

Madrid – Spanish media poured scorn at a judge’s decision to pull a satirical magazine that published a cartoon of the heir to the throne having sex, saying it trampled freedom of expression in a first world democracy.

On Friday, Juan del Olmo ordered police to round up copies of El Jueves, whose front page carried a drawing of Crown Prince Felipe having sex with his wife and commenting on a government plan to give parents 2,500 euros ($NZ4423.99) for each child born.

Continue reading “A Royal Pain”

July 11, 2007January 15, 2019

Doug Marlette, Cartoonist – In Memoriam

Cartoonist Doug Marlette Killed in Accident

Raleigh, N.C. (AP) — Doug Marlette, the North Carolina-born cartoonist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988, was killed in a single-car accident Tuesday morning in Mississippi, authorities said. He was 57.

Marlette was the passenger in the car, which struck a tree after skidding on a rain-slicked road, said John Garrison, the coroner in Mississippi’s Marshall County.

“Evidently, it hydroplaned, left the highway and struck the tree,” Garrison said.

Marlette’s editorial cartoons and his comic strip, “Kudzu,” are syndicated worldwide… “Cartoons are windows into the human condition,” he said when he joined the Tulsa World last year. “It’s about life.” Read more here.

July 10, 2007January 15, 2019

Baby Collagen

Submitted by Clyde Tressler:

July 10, 2007January 15, 2019

Prankster Running for Mayor of San Francisco

Chicken John who would be mayor:
Burning Man devotee says his platform is bed of pickup truck
by Cecilia M. Vega
SFGATE.com
July 9, 2007

If Chicken John is elected mayor of San Francisco, one of his first orders of business will be to hold a raffle so that some lucky person wins the chance to drive a truck smack into the gigantic bow-and-arrow sculpture that sits on the Embarcadero.

Mayor Chicken John would see to it that more city money goes to the arts, but not the kind of art like the 60-foot-tall fiberglass and stainless-steel structure by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen erected nearly five years ago on San Francisco’s waterfront, which he calls an insult to every artist in the city.

His platform, he says, is the bed of his 1975 GMC pickup, which he converted to a zero-emissions vehicle that runs on coffee grounds and walnut shells. His party affiliation is simple: “I like to party. Party hardy.”

So what if Chicken John, ne John Rivaldi, doesn’t pay much attention to city politics and the only thing he has ever really run for in his life was from a fight as a child (hence the chicken nickname). The longtime Burning Man devotee, who is a superstar in his own right among the large community of festivalgoers, hopes to give Mayor Gavin Newsom a run for his money in November. Read the rest of this article and check out a video clip of Chicken John here.

Here’s more about Chicken John’s candidacy and links to his petition (he needs signatures from 10,000 registered voters in San Francisco by July 26) from Scott Beale at Laughing Squid.

July 4, 2007January 15, 2019

Remembering The Realist – July update

Ethan Persoff announces the second update to the Realist Archive Project, an ongoing Internet archive for Paul Krassner’s counterculture magazine The Realist (1958-1974; 1985-2001). Four issues a month will be mounted until the archive is complete.

The main archive can be found here

More detail from Ethan:

For July / Four New Issues / Details:

1) Realist Issue #26 – May 1961

Featuring: Television as a Cause of Disease, An Impolite Interview with Hugh Hefner, For the Separation of Church and Sex, and Rumor of the Month.

Rare early snapshot of Hefner at his cockiest; predicts he will still be single and swinging into elder age. Quote: “I hope to still be very much a young man–psychologically, at least–when I’m sixty. Maybe physically, too. Charlie Chaplin fathered a child when he was 70. And I’ll have all those ‘Playmates of the Month’ around to keep my interest up.”

Also includes a searing and very funny Adolf Eichmann joke on page two. And note the article Television as
a Cause of Disease. A great early 1961 issue.

2) Realist Issue #58 – April, 1965

Featuring: Dick Gregory in Mississippi, An Impolite Interview with Woody Allen, and Three Authors in Search of Obscene Literature.

If you enjoyed the filthy cartoon character sex from the Disneyland Orgy then you’ll get a genuine overloading kick out of the Tijuana Bible flavored Exhibit A. The Woody Allen interview is everything you want it to be – and then there’s the Dick Gregory article, with cameos from Sammy Davis Jr, Muhammad Ali, and Sonny Liston. Of particular note, this might be one of the last articles to ever refer to Malcolm X in the present tense; as he was assassinated as the issue went to press, see Editor’s note on Page 24. Continue reading “Remembering The Realist – July update”