Gallery of the Absurd

Barack Obama's New Anti-McCain Political Poster

In response to John McCain's controversial celebrity ad, Barack Obama's campaign released this Heidi Montag endorsed poster today. Insiders claim Senator McCain thought his own campaign was responsible for the poster and after viewing it, proudly informed reporters his campaign is striving to attract younger voters by using "talented actresses" such as Montag. Campaign officials quickly ushered the stuttering McCain away from the microphones and explained that Obama's camp was responsible for the ad. Witnesses say McCain began pumping his fists as he burst into a fit of Hulk-like fury and berated his cowering employees for not coming up with the idea themselves. Medium: Graphite on paper, digital color.

UPDATE: I find it amusing a pro McCain ad magically showed up on my blog next to the drawing of McCain looking like a half-dead angry chipmunk. Readers are emailing me to have it removed, but I take sick pleasure in it being there and even grabbed a screen shot of it. And no, I'm not a McCain supporter.

Fun With Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt

Something about Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt's habit of posing like cloying robotic clowns in staged photographs reminds me of those simplistic Dick and Jane books that were used to teach kids to read back in the 1950's. Riveting story lines involving the adventures of Dick and Jane typically went like this: See Dick run. Run, Dick, run. Run, run, run. Jane has a toy. It is a red toy. Heidi and Spencer are about as interesting and complex as sawdust as those repetitive Dick and Jane stories, so why not use them in an updated version?

There could be several volumes, maybe even one devoted exclusively to holidays: Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day, Independence Day, Mother's Day, Halloween, National Gun Day, you name it. Kids would love it! Since Heidi claims to be such a devoted Bible thumper, perhaps they could even create a Christian version of the story to go along with the Christian album she wants to record. So much fun with Heidi and Spencer! Medium: Usage of paparazzi pictures kindly given by PacificCoastNews.com

If Rothko Had Painted Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt

Each time I glance at a photo of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, all I'm able to see is a blur of predictable colors (see below). Take for example all those ridiculous staged photos of them prancing about on the beach. Their hair dissolves into a floating rectangle of yellow-blonde. Exposed flesh translates into large amounts of peach and light orange, which dominates the image. If they're smiling, flashes of blinding white might appear. Depending on what color bikini Heidi is wearing, lurid infusions of hot pink or zebra print cuts through the monotony of the flesh and sand tones and reminds the viewer that they're almost naked, but not quite.

Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970) was a Russian born American artist best known for his large-scale paintings of cloud-like rectangular forms of color floating against a solid color background. I seriously doubt he'd find any interest in painting the vapidity and force-fed "entertainment" that Heidi and Spencer represent, but if he did choose to paint them, this is how I imagine the canvas would look. Medium: Oil on linen with a splash of digital paint.

Heidi and Spencer as they appear to me. Remarkably, you can still recognize them.

Wouldn't it be amusing to remove all the headlines from this Rolling Stone cover...except for the one on top?

Heidi Montag a Feminist Hero?

New York Times critic Gina Bellafante called Heidi Montag a “feminist hero” because Heidi focuses more on her career and stands up to that bubble-headed dolt she’s dating. I can’t really comment on the feminist perspectives explored in “The Hills” because I only watched it once and all I came away with was that the girls say “like” a lot and their voices sounded like ducks quacking. Oh yeah, and I was bored senseless.

Looking for some feminist reaction, I stumbled onto Feministing.org and discovered that Bellafante wrote a 1998 essay for Time magazine declaring feminism dead and “devolved into the silly” with “popular culture [insisting] on offering images of grown single women as frazzled, self-absorbed girls.” Soooo, are frazzled, self-absorbed girls with fake body parts, fake jobs, and fake lives the new feminist icons? Yes!