Artist Profile on Charles Addams

Originally run on the Culture page of the Union Weekly on 28 September 2009.

Charles Addams is a spectacular weirdo, the kind of weirdo we should all emulate ourselves after. Besides being an accomplished cartoonist, he also collected antique crossbows, used a little girl’s tombstone as a coffee table, and would conduct interviews with journalists while wearing a full suit of armor. While the majority of his antics were more than likely a persona he used to impress the public and whatever journalist that happened to be interviewing him. This bizarre aura makes perfect sense though, since he is the guy who came up with the Addams Family.

Besides spawning two live action series, a cartoon show, and two feature films, the Addams Family were featured in single panel cartoons that Charles drew for the New Yorker. His cartoons weren’t all of the family, the rest were one-shot jokes that looked not unlike a version of The Far Side written by Edgar Allen Poe.

Addams’ art is also featured on the cover of Ray Bradbury’s 2001 short story collection From The Dust Returned, a novel which features any equally strange, gothic family called the Elliots (the two men previously worked together, but eventually went their separate ways). Unfortunately, most of his work seems to be in various phases of being out of print, I can’t imagine having a childhood without pawing through books filled with his drawings. Then again, my dad did buy the house we live in because it looked like the Addams Family manor.

What might be the most interesting aspect of the comics is that they’re a looking glass into the past. The ‘40’s and ‘50’s is a time we usually associate with conservatism, xenophobia, and generally being no fun at all, but Charles Addams stands against this stereotype. He shows us that the past that was just as interested in bare breasts, shrunken heads, suicide, and psychopathic children as we are. Or at least I am.

If you’re a fan of cartoon art, laughter (and who isn’t? Jerks, probably), or if you want some sort of indie-goth credibility, the collections of his work are well worth hunting down. Charles Addams is an artist everyone should know about, because he’s the kind of weirdo we could all learn something from.

Art via Charles Addams, clearly.

A Keffiyeh By Any Other Name

Originally run on 9 February 2009. Image from Google, even though I wish I took it.

As we march through the months of winter, I’m beginning to realize that the keffiyeh has become the Che Guevara t-shirt of the 21st Century. I say this because, lately it seems that the political connotations of the keffiyeh have been compromised. It’s gone from a political statement to a fashion statement. Like many problems our society is suffering from, I blame the hipsters.

If the keffiyeh was associated with one person, it’d probably be Yasser Arafat, who seems to never be without his black and white keffiyeh. Saudi males have their version of the scarf, the shemagh, which is typically red and white, giving it the distinct look of an Italian restaurant’s tablecloth. The British special forces have traditionally been rather fond of scarves as week. The specific incarnation of the keffiyeh that I’m talking about though are the black and white checkered ones—the ones specifically worn by those that wish to show solidarity with the Pro-Palestinian Movement.

My problem with politics the scarves ten to accompany, but rather with the fact that I think that most people don’t know that they have a political connotation at all. It’s probably safe to assume that most members of the MSA know what they represent, but I have my doubts about the girl across from me on the bus wearing the keffiyeh she bought from Urban Outfitters while reading In Touch. I have my doubts about her in the same way that I have my doubts about the stoner with his Che shirt.

I doubt that this many people on campus are politically enlightened about the Palestinian/Israeli situation. If that sounds like a dig, it isn’t meant to be. I read the newspaper on a regular basis and I can barely make heads or tales of that whole situation. It’s probably one of the more complex and ambiguous conflicts on the face of the earth. I mean, Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad isn’t even sure whether or not Israel exists.

What this whole Palestinian scarf thing reminds me of was a jerk in one of my film classes. I didn’t bother to learn his name and for the longest time I couldn’t even remember what he looked like. All I knew about the guy was that he would wear t-shirts emblazoned with the letters “IRA.” I wondered, was he a naïve second-generation Irish-American or did he actually support scumbags that sell heroin to children and shoot their countrymen at funerals?

When I think of this guy, I also realize that the Irish aren’t just a bunch of carbombing drunks. Obviously, Palestinians too are more than just a rabble of rocket-hurling fanatics. We shouldn’t let jerks with bombs ruin your scarves or pride for your heritage or anything else. You shouldn’t let know-it-all snobs like me ruin them for you either. With that said, be smart about what you wear, it can be just as much of a political statement as anything else. Be aware. I mean, hey, there’s no reason that you can’t both look sharp and learn something about the world, right?

The Only Good Ganguro is a Dead Ganguro

Originally run on 3 November 2008.

There’s a lot of pretty great stuff about Japan—ramen, Akira Kurosawa, ninja, robots and the elderly, but there’s also an ugly underside to the Land of the Rising Sun. No, I’m not talking about cheap anime, tentacle porn, the Rape of Nanking or one of the highest suicide rate in the industrialized world, I’m talking about some of the less obvious things that haunt the neon streets of old Yamato. Specifically, I’m talking about this horrible thing the kids have deemed the “ganguro.”

The origin of the word ganguro apparently comes from the Japanese word for “blackface,” so it’s good to know that racist stereotyping isn’t isolated to our half of the globe. The fashion consists of what I assume are color-blind female youths tanning their skin into Oompa-Loompa hues and bleaching their hair into nuclear whites. It is one of the uglier things I’ve seen people inflict on themselves and I’ve seen the BME Pain Olympics. Apparently this fashion was sort of developed as a direct challenge to traditional Japanese beauty, where women are supposed to be small, quiet and pale (Scientifically, it appears that ganguro style is as far away from the geisha as possible without segueing into another species). Luckily this questionable chic that started in the 90’s has been tapering off in popularity ever since the dawn of the new millennium. My guess is that one of these girls ended up looking in the mirror.

You could probably make an argument about me being some racist, misogynist imperialist, but come on—Look at these broads. Tell me with a straight face that there’s anything about that picture that could be considered a good idea. Unless, of course, you’re desperate for a Halloween costume.

Image from the foulest pits of hell and Google.

Screw the Medals, I'm Here for the Fashion

Originally run on 3 September 2008.

The Olympics, if you hadn’t heard, happened over the summer. As spectacular as the record breaking feats of athleticism were, nothing was as amazing as the opening ceremonies. They not only demonstrated that China is leading the world in replicant technology, but it also showed that only about a third of the world can dress themselves.

I guess I should start with Saudi Arabia, which was a walking, talking sausage-fest. There wasn’t a single woman on the team. I’ve seen gay porns with less dudes involved, which is odd considering that possession of a limp-wrist is punishable by death over there. So way to go, Saudi Arabia! Leave it to you to make the Chinese government look like a drum circle at Haight and Ashbury.

Niger I couldn’t help but feel bad for. Their procession was literally only one man holding their flag. He had the body language of a kid called up to the front of the class to solve a math problem, except that the class is an audience of several hundred million. God speed, dude.

Italy, rakish as ever, proved that you can travel five-thousand miles, spend untold millions of dollars, and still look like you were scraped off the bottom of the Euro-dumpster. Seriously, cargo pants? Were zip-off jeans too formal?

By the way, who knew that there were so many screw-ball sounding island nations there out there? Islands like Kiribati. I didn’t know that Hannah-Barbara cartoons had Olympics teams. And Portugal? Who ever heard of a Portugal? That’s got to be bogus. But, I did get an idea for when I’m rich and crazy, like Richard Branson or Bono, I’d just buy a tiny island for the express purpose of having an Olympic team. Now that’s vanity!

Someone needs to tell the Netherlands that just because your national color is orange, doesn’t mean you need to cram it onto the outfit. They look like they bought their suits from an outlet mall that specializes in surplus costumes from The Prisoner. Ireland has green, but you didn’t see them sacrificing their dignity for the sake of nationalism. And was that a caveman the Dutch had in their procession? How progressive.

Britain didn’t look too bad. They could hold their heads up high with the knowledge that they’re the best tanned team in the whole stadium. A significant achievement considering that Margaret Thatcher stole the sun from them in the mid-eighties.
Germany looked like they were having fun, but as my grandpa said, “If there’s anything I learned from the war, it’s never to trust a smiling Kraut.” Which is odd because he served in Korea.

Us Yanks we looked dapper as all-get-out this year. The silly newsboy caps almost compromised the ensemble, but luckily they had those sharp navy blue blazers with them. With those things on, they look like friendly Marines, the kind that help old ladies across the street, not the kind that fly in at the speed of sound, turning stone age nations into Oliver Stone movies. I’m just glad they’re on our side.

It must have been embarrassing for the French to have the Americans kick your ass in the fashion department. Fashion, historically, just isn’t our thing. The Gauls look like they rolled out of bed and into a suit my grandpa rented. Half of them didn’t even button up their blazers. Trés brut. The ladies in the French crowd looked fairly cute with their berets and sashes, but that’s just because they get credit for looking like the most likely to have crazy, anonymous sex with you while drunk on butter and wine on a park bench. That could just be me, though.

Last, but not least, we’re left with China, who is one scarf short of being the largest assemblage of House Gryffindor alumni in world history. It’s a shame the losers on the team are going to be melted down into low-grade cattle feed and cheap automobiles. They knew the risks. Luckily they managed to pull off the neon red and yellow look, unlike Spain who looked like a bunch of refugees from a theme park I’d never want to visit.

The spectacle of the whole thing was really quite amazing. The massive procession of countries really opened my mind to just how different we can all be and still be, at our core, the same. It was almost enough for me to stop being afraid of the coming century of Sino-hegemony that will surely crush us all into dust. Almost.

Image from a google search of "Spain," "2008 Olympics," and "Utter shame."