The year: 2004. The place: Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California. The occasion: the “private” opening for an ironic showing of Thomas Kinkade’s Christian-fished, trademark-marked work with select important people (at the time, your editrix was an art critic and thusly very important) and 300 or so of Thomas Kinkade’s closest fans, who had a nice group prayer. That’s when yours truly saw a bunch of people on the Grand Central board discreetly gathering in an artist’s studio to be addressed by the Master himself, and so decided to crash the party. As everyone stood around, smiling and nodding politely, an old man who was dean of Cal State Fullerton’s art department beamed and thanked Kinkade for showing artists how to be financially self-sufficient. Then he spoke joyously of a gal who had found a niche as a Painter of Fish™. It seems when a sports fisherman catches a really wonderful bass and wants to commemorate it, he calls this gal! And she’s making a living! Painting fish! The smiles got tighter, and Kinkade took over. He thanked the board for the lovely installation of his work—it’s the first time he’s been shown at a respectable institution—and approvingly mentioned the exhibit’s “subtle irony” so we’d know that he knew that we knew and that it wasn’t like he didn’t know.
But then, having inculcated in us a shred of grudging respect and having used terms like hyperromanticity so we’d remember he went to ArtCenter, he started in with the Bushian straw men. And those straw men went a little something like this: “Tax dollars, tax dollars, death art, tax dollars, rotting flesh and tax dollars.” But everyone knows Damien Hirst is British; he gets tax pounds.
We smiled and nodded, but finally someone on the board grew some big full balls and, smilingly, asked Kinkade, “When you say ‘tax dollars,’ what exactly do you mean?” “Well, the NEA,” grumped Kinkade, who actually had a very smug and loveless face for a Jesus freak (Jesus freaks are supposed to beam with the Light™ of the Lord), and then it was my turn to have a sac full of swimmers, as I (smilingly) reminded him that the NEA hasn’t granted individual artists since, well, Jesse Helms. Kinkade didn’t have much to say to that, because he had been caught in a stupid rightwing talking point lie. Ha, ha! I WON!
And now Thomas Kinkade is dead, the End. [LATimes]
{ 589 comments }
Is it true that Kinkade would hide an "N" in every painting in a tribute to his wife?
Was she blah?
You're thinking of the wornderful illustrator Al Hirschfeld (lived to 100!), who would hide "Nina" in drawings as a tribute to his daughter, and often, a number to indicate how *many* times "Nina" occurred in a particular drawing. The drawings themselves were awesome, but hunting for the Nina Easter eggs always made them more fun.
Just Googled it and Kinkade did it as a tribute to his wife, Nanette. Jeff mentioned it to me and I was hoping Rebecca would confirm.
So, Kinkade did something that another artist thought of and did first?
GASP!!!
Yes, but he never hid a winning mega millions lottery ticket in a McDonald's.
He also embedded 214 in his paintings as a tribute to their wedding day (Valentine's Day).
Who would want to look that closely at his paintings?
That's probably for the better. You might get blinded by the light that just radiates from the canvas.
Y'know, it's a fine thing that he loved his wife. Even enough to rip off a another artist. So anyway, now he's dead.
He's still a fucking hack.
Yeahbut, America's Most Successful Fucking Hack.
A relative has one of his paintings on a living room wall. I immediately noticed that the light and shadows were wrong.You could tell where the light in the scene was coming from, but the shadows were in the wrong direction from the light source. His "work" would be better placed on plates used to serve children food than on a wall someplace.
One of my relatives, who I don't really get along with because she's a very angry person, is always nasty to me, so I sort of avoid her if I can. Last year, visiting her new and completely renovated and redecorated house, what did I see but a GINORMOUS Kincaide painting in the dining room where you couldn't possibly NOT see it from anywhere in the room.
Strangely, I went from disliking her to feeling sorry for her [melodramatic]: "I didn't know, Man. I just… didn't… KNOW."
It's a MIRACLE!!!!!!!
Are you saying he's gonna rise again? Please say no!
Sounds like he's never gonna rise again, unless they just happen to position his body in such a way as to make the blood all drain to that one spot.
Unless he hanged himself
"His 'work' would be better placed on plates used to serve children food than on a wall someplace."
Oh, Steverino! You have solved the childhood obesity problem!
Indeed. The punishment for finishing your entire plate is having to see that crap!
And even if they do finish, it'll just come back up on them.
I thought real artists were supposed to starve because they couldn't sell their paintings and show real concern for their fellow men living in poverty. You know, like Van Gogh, who suffered from insanity as well as poverty.
See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Man_Gr…
Yeah, I've got that going for me…..
Two dead right wing icons in the last month. You know what they call that?
A good start?
This is the absolute first thing that came to my mind upon reading that, and lo and behold, you are there with the first comment expressing my thoughts.
Good to see you, Abandon.
I call it "Satan is calling his spawn home."
We need his stuff to decorate certain of our, umm, facilities.
I was wondering if Obama had Kinkade snuffed too, cause, you know, Muslins hate the Jeebus people.
Look for Quitter Palin to "write" a FB post accusing POTUS of that very thing…
^
Every single comment in this thread is so full of win!
*sniffle*
I love you guys!
*wipes away a single tear*
Cocaine mixed with Viagra?
Spanking for Jesus?
No?
Shouldn't there be something called "Spanking for Jesus", though?
Well, there's Betty Page, but the spanking came first, then the Jesus. Found Jesus and quit spanking.
Sad too. The loss of the perfect cheesecake/nude artist of all time to religion. I will never forgive organized religion for that crime against art and humanity.
Art theft of the century.
Naughty, Naughty Zoot!
I saw what you did there.
Karma?
Mourning in America?
Dirt pollution?
The Aristocrats?
The Aristocats?
You've probably answered this before, but how do you get negative pee points? Do you comments somewhere with Intense Debate downfists?
A quick click on Indie's name confirms the usual suspect: hangin' out with Ghost Andrew Breitbart and attempting to point out his transparency has been responsible for all the negative pness I've seen in my brief time here.
Good things come in threes?
The Aristocrats?
Who was the other one? Buckley's sister?
I'd call it "Not enough," but that's probably a violation of the New Civility.
I dunno, but they do say good things happen in threes (Thanks, Radio). Who else is gonna die to complete the trifecta?
Any one know if Spanky2B is still alive?
He is now Spanky3B.
Hope and change?
Terrorism?
So maybe Kinkade & Breitbart's actual personal hell is Kinkade painting Breitbart throughout eternity?
Hitler?
ALL OF THEM, KATIE.
(somehow I felt it needed to be put in this thread.)
A Palin's dozen?
That would be ten. She's only got ten fingers.
Forgive me; I meant a Perry's dozen, 'cause that idiot can only count to two.
Palin can count all the way up to four, but she never gets past two, because she always quits halfway through.
Great, now his works will appreciate in value one hundredfold. What is 100 times nothing?
Where's your God now, Thomas Kinkade?
He painted himself into a corner, and now he has painted himself into the light.
This is simultaneously the best and worst moment ever for the Hallmark Corporation.
I'll be here all night, unlike the poor (and somehow more conservative) man's Norman Rockwell.
I think Norman Rockwell gets an undeserved rep for being conservative because those are the paintings that got famous (that damn Thanksgiving picture probably sent 1000 therapists' kids to Harvard!).
While I don't know what he, personally, believed; all of his work wasn't cutesy in that Disneyfied, world-that-never-existed, way. If you look at some of his less famous pictures like "The Golden Rule", or "Moving In", or "The Problem we all LIve with" ( a painting of a small black girl walking to a newly integrated school accompanied by an escort of U.S. Marshals), you can see that he was a decent, compassionate man, who could have stuck with the cutesey, money-printing stuff, but who chose to tackle some of the important issues that were controversial in their day.
For those who might be interested: http://www.artscope.net/VAREVIEWS/NRockwell.shtml
The difference between genuinely naive artists like Rockwell and cynical hacks like Kinkade is that Rockwell had empathy for others. Hard to believe it now but that picture was very controversial.
Much of his painting was naive, but he wasn't. He did this one with civil right workers getting murdered in the 1960s.
Maybe he didn't do too much stuff like this, because the profit margin was kinda low on this type of thing.
Wow, didn’t remember that one. (Like many, many American families, mine got the Saturday Evening Post every week, which more often than not had a Rockwell on the cover.)
Rockwell idealized America as perfected even as he enjoyed pointing out our little foibles (like in "Triple Self-Portrait"). Even "The Problem We All Life With" can be seen as illustration the problem being solved, rather than the problem (segregation in particular) itself. Even the title is a little suspect: Is the problem school desegregation or the racism shown on the wall or jackbooted government thugs. (OK, I'm quibbling.)
At least Rockwell put actual human beings in his paintings. Kinkade wanted "the light" to be the central and only element of life in his work. Not the people who lit that welcoming light. (OK, I don't like him.)
Anyway, THANK YOU Tessiee for your comments and the link.
I think his most "progressive" painting would be "Southern Justice". IMHO.
I suspect (as a long term wanna be artist) that the ambiguity is intentional.
I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about here so feel free to tell me to "cram it with walnuts, ugly", but I thought the thanksgiving picture was a work done in response to Roosevelt's speech and represented "Freedom from Want". Sounds kinda socialist if you ask me…
He might have been a conservative, I have absolutely no idea, but I never really got that vibe. Please correct me if Im wrong. Im an art idiot.
Those were the days when being conservative and being decent went together pretty well.
Late reply, I know, my point wasn't particularly about Norman Rockwell's personal political beliefs, but rather of the political beliefs of the average household in which one will normally find some Norman Rockwell paintings. That Thomas Kinkade is the artist for people for whom Norman Rockwell can be a little too daring.
Rockwell was very socially liberal, and butted heads with the Saturday Evening Post for decades over his desire to make political statements and their desire to suppress him. His thanksgiving portrait ("Freedom from Want") was part of his Four Freedoms series, which also included Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, and Freedom from Fear, all of which were meant to loudly demonstrate his support for Roosevelt's New Deal.
"The Problem We All Live With" is one of his most controversial paintings because it was a portrait of Ruby Bridges, a little black girl in New Orleans who was walked to school for years by US Federal marshalls because every day a crowd would gather outside the school and try to lynch her (not even kidding; a 6-year-old girl would regularly receive death threats. Every teacher in the school refused to teach her, so she was forced to have lessons by herself with a teacher they bused in from another district. The threats against her were so severe that marshalls forbade her from ever eating school food because of a credible threat that someone was trying to poison her). Rockwell could not believe how monstrous this story was, and that such an affront to human dignity was allowed to go on in his homeland.
Rockwell also made "Southern Justice," the theme of which is the lynching of a black man. Both of these paintings were ground-breaking enough in the fact that they featured black people as their protagonists; hell, the Post had never allowed him to feature blacks as anything more than crowd members or servants for the almost four decades he worked for them. Rockwell insisted that his later work be overtly political so that no one would associate him with his kitschy Post work.
So please don't think less of Rockwell because the Precious Moments crowd idolizes his cutesy commercial work. None of them understand that most of his work was ironic, or was explicitly anti-war (look at his "Soldier Returning Home"). It's like Republicans who love Springteen's "Born in the USA" without realizing that the song is a razor-sharp attack on Republican war-mongering and outsourcing.
Appalling story. Sometimes I'm truly ashamed to be an American — no — I'm ashamed to be in the same country where some people are like that and others allow it to happen.
Thanks for that.
That was needed just to set the record straight. I was second guessing myself when I kread the comment, because I just knew the guy had a progressive mindset for the time.
Excellent. Do you write for a living? You could, I suppose.
ETA: The part about the 6yr old in Louisiana needing full-time body guard detail for years is… something I wouldn't believe if I saw it in movie (too disgusting, too over-the-top), except that I know it's true.
That there are certain peoples who want to repeal those protections is something I don't understand, but also reminds me of how conservatives say "there was a time an place" for unions — but now they're unnecessary.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7373488n
President Obama meets with Ruby Bridges as he rotates The Problem We All Live With through the White House art collection.
So, since I apparently can't edit my original post, what I am saying in that post is not that Norman Rockwell was, himself, politically conservative. The point I was making was that Thomas Kincade is more artistically conservative than Norman Rockwell. In the sense that a burkha is more conservative than an ankle length dress. While Rockwell frequently painted an idyllic portrait of American life; Kincade painted things that looked like the greeting cards I send my devoutly Christian grandmother. I never intended that to be a dig on Norman Rockwell, plenty of Rockwell's works have both social and artistic merit, it is just that stylistically he was fairly conservative. While there is perhaps something vaguely soothing in the works of Thomas Kincade (like a visual laxative) there is just absolutely nothing of merit in there at all. Kincade's work is all about how the White Jesus Light God (Ra?) shines on cabins and little churches and tiny schoolhouses and all the things racist-ass white people think life was all about back before the civil war. Fuck Thomas Kincade, and I'm glad he died reasonably early, of, I presume, auto-erotic asphyxiation.
This whole discussion makes we want to burn a Kincade in protest. Not sure it will fit into my vaporizer, though.
yeah, plus I do not think you want to get high off those fumes. A Dali or Picasso repro maybe, but a Kincade? That's probably like PCP if it had dispositioned its users to violence and shopping at Walmart with equal zeal.
And "Russian Schoolroom" is pretty awesome.
Poor guy gets a bad rep because pretentious art critics (no offense, Rebecca) didn't consider commercial art to be "real" art. Even the wikipedia article refers to him as "American Illustrator Norman Rockwell", (an originally derisive term that he embraced as a way of sticking it to his detractors), and even the wikipedia writer fails to delineate the boundary between "illustration" and "art". The Problem We All Live With, The Four Freedoms, Southern Justice and Russian Schoolroom are fairly clear indications that he was an "artist", (whatever that word means) and a rather effective one.
Yes, we are passionate defenders of Norman Rockwell.
"Even the wikipedia article refers to him as "American Illustrator Norman Rockwell", (an originally derisive term that he embraced as a way of sticking it to his detractors)"
Every person in every Fine Arts class I've ever taken uses [sneer] "ILLUSTRATOR" as the second-worst insult in existence; the worst, of course, being [Sideshow Bob shudder] "CRAFTS".
According to the Wiki article, "Russian Schoolroom" was stolen from
"a small art gallery in Clayton, Missouri, in June 1973. In 1988 it turned up and was sold at an auction in New Orleans for about $70,000. Steven Spielberg bought the painting from Judy Goffman Cutler, a noted art dealer who specialized in American illustrators, in 1989 for $200,000. A member of his staff spotted the painting on a FBI web listing of stolen works of art and the authorities were immediately notified.[2]
As of 2009 the painting was in the custody of the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.[3] The court decided in 2010 that the painting belonged to art dealer Judy Goffman Cutler who has added it to the collection on display at the National Museum of American Illustration.[4]"
It seems fitting that Steven Speilberg should buy a Norman Rockwell painting, but I'm glad that it's in a museum where everybody can have access to it, because I'm a big socialist.
Spring cleaning?
He's just another tragic victim of not winning our latest picture contest…
He didn't make it among the top ten, like me.
Ugh. You couldn't pay me to carry a piece of that crap "art" home. I stick it in the same category as Precious Memories "collectibles", as in: it is crap.
Precious Memories collectibles come from the Franklin Mint because that's what you'd need to get the shitty taste out of your mouth after they arrive.
I had the dubious pleasure of visiting the precious moments shrine down in Missouri or Arkansas …. somewhere. It was creepy. All of those sightless children scattered about the lawn. The artist was just as creepy.
You should check out painteroflight.com
Brandon Bird hijacked it and used it to sell cultural mashups in the Kinkade style.
Works of art like Micheal Landon holding a dying squid: http://brandonbird.com/anguish.html
Or, the Noam Chomsky Mystery Machine: http://brandonbird.com/signifier_signified.html
You also get Bea Arthur wrestling a velociraptor.
Um, that guy's fucking amazing. I might order one of his paint-by-number sets!!!
Precious Memories? Is that like those "Love Is…" sexless, horrid, hellbeasts?
"It's a cartoon about two naked eight-year-olds who are married." — Homer J. Simpson
My mother-in-law collected those stupid David Winter cottages (and when she passed away, got bequeathed to me…ugh). But whenever I see them–tucked in a cardboard box on a closet shelf–I think of Kinkade's paintings & hate them even more.
Maybe she left them to you in hopes you'd take life a little less seriously. The world can be a playful place . . . for the delusional.
No matter how bad Kincade and Precious Memories may be, nothing tops (bottoms?) the guy who makes the "jesus is behind you" figurines.
In honor of Opening Week in baseball I offer this fine example:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KsROmkzxqyc/SdolMNmQpBI….
Darn. I was hoping to have hum paint my house to look like one of those snow-covered cottages. Now I'll have to wait for winter.
The man made millions selling prints of quasi-religious paintings to the rubes that Motel 6 would be embarrassed to hang on their walls. On some level one has to admire his ability to separate fools from their money, though I'd respect him more if I thought he had the same contempt for his fans that he obviously had for art itself – you know, like Jeff Koons.
Kinkade: Even Motel 6 wouldn't leave a Light™ on for him.
married to a porn star and created a giant balloon dog- and that is why I love Jeff Koons
He really took his franchisees for a ride too. He had the whole sales chain paying up wazoo. He was brilliant at that. Also totally amoral, at best.
Hooking the cash-milking machine to stables full of the dumb and tasteless (in cages so tight that they can't turn around! Tormented in cruel experiments!) is, in general, a very bad thing. I'm not going to argue about that.
But I want to carve out an exception in this case. If Kinkaide hadn't existed, every last penny that was spent on his dreck would have gone instead to the American Family Foundation and the Santorum campaign. The man was, unsuspectingly an American hero.
In a window in 'downtown' Port Jefferson Station, NY, there is a Kinkade painting of Mickey and friends marching down Main St. in Disney World. I contend that that image is part of the reason I needed to go back on antidepressants.
Robert Stone – "Mickey Mouse will see you dead." (And I think that is an accurate quote (too lazy to get up and look through the book.) )
I don't care what anybody says; I like the happy little trees.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/…
Are they the right height?
Bob Ross was the boss in Boondocks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhn_TAbvSH8
If only Jeebus would call this painter home: http://img.chan4chan.com/img/2012-01-28/132770651…
This man has many many more laughs to give me and the world. He is a pure joy.
God that infuriates me. What would that jelly-bean-brain Reagan know about the fucking Constitution? I guess that Congressional hearing into the Iran-Contra scandal was just to congratulate him for doing such a bang-up job.
I've realized that, like Jesus, Christian conservatives always talk in parables. You're confused and angry because you think the Constitution in the painting literally represents the founding document. Actually, like the Founding Fathers, the Constitution represents "America the way it was and should be."
And the message of the painting is simply, "Mr. Negro, how can you stand there being president of the United States when it makes white men so sad? Don't you know what you're doing to him?"
So, you see, it has nothing to do with the law or the Iran-Contra crisis. Reagan was a Constitutional hero because he believed in America the way it was and should be.
OK, I would now vote for Obama if for no other reason than to distress the reactionary asshat who painted this (McNaughton?).
With that settled:
1. Who's the depressed-looking guy sitting on the park bench, and why is he depressed?
2. What did the white-wigged guy in the knee breeches catch, and why is it invisible?
3. What is everybody in the picture looking at, slightly outside of the right-hand margin?
1. Santorum. You need to ask why?
2. invisible poo. from barack the magic negro (it's magic poo, you see). he's shitting on the constitution, remember.
3. they're looking at the commies that will soon be marching into frame. you can tell, because all of the mean and nasties are to barack's left, and the rest (the majority, i might add, including Trick Dick) are to Barack's right. You know, rightwing and "right". somehow JFK and Johnson got painted to the right of Barack (for starting Vietnam?), while Teddy got the left (protecting wildlife?).
Teddy Roosevelt Libel!!!
That is a lotta pissed off white guys.
Painting by Numbers will eventually kill you.
I see what you did there
Painting by Deuteronomy is even riskier.
OT, but remember a couple weeks ago, in response to Trayvon, how we were hearing about "The Talk"? Well, then this guy from National Review wrote a super-racist "white version" that he says to his kids. Now the blowback.
My father says that the roots of racism are hate and the fear that "The Other" is really superior to "Us".
RW reactions to the Trayvon Martin murder has proven to me the truth of his statement.
I can agree with that. I also think there's a residual primal fear that other tribes will be superior to us ("us" being my own mixture of Eastern European muttery) at using up our resources; food, shelter, women (fer-baby-makins/gene expression), etc.
*Now I will put on my reading glasses and sound even more pretentious*, and so, I suppose wingnuts can't turn off that fear by rationalizing with themselves that the blah tribe isn't going to eat up all their food and knock up all their women. But instead they try to pass laws to make women be subservient to men, and marginalize the blah and brown tribes' powers in any way possible (voter registration is a recent example).
I'm not a sociologist or anything, so realize that's all just my opinion.
Refreshing to see the racists outting themselves in the comments over there. That's why I generally stick to sites like Wonkette and AVClub.com , where I can read the comments without weeping or raising my blood pressure.
Agreed. And I shouldn't have posted comments on the Daily Caller a couple days ago. My email filled up with comments…. I guess I have to do something like that every 6 months or so, to remind me why I shouldn't.
Is the artwork of Thomas Kinkade featured in a gallery near you? Show us where and we might air your photo on tonight's show! – from the ABC World News twitter
So watch! Or not.
One of you guys should probably teach me how to embed links in comments.
We use HTML code.
{a href="http://www.bullshit.gov"}bullshit link {/a}
but replace { with < and } with >.
Mighty white of you, Barack. Thanks!
When in doubt, Ctrl+U
YOU DONT CONTROL ME!!!!11!!!!ONE!!!!!
http://www.bullshit.gov
Ahh, Boehner's personal site.
Other stuff too.
http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_links.asp
Oooh! Oooh! Teacher, ask me, ask me!
[Not that Dewey taught me how to do it on the Ann Romney spanks that rascal Mitt thread]
I assume (since, really, what else could it be) you want to provide a link to the results of this weekend's world curling championship semifinals and finals.
Here's how you do it (though there's no need because I've done it already):
[less than sign] a href="URL YOU WANT TO LINK TO"[greater than] TEXT YOU WANT – In this case: "this weekend's world curling championship semifinals and finals."[less than] /a [greater than]
I don't talk to stupid people.
painteroflight
Left angle bracket to start an element definition, 'a' to specify an anchor element, href is an attribute to the element to direct where the anchor should land, and then a right angle bracket to close the element definition, then the text that you are marking up, and the a closing element definition to ensure the next bit of text is unaffected.
w3schools.com as mentioned earlier.
Just think of html as a specialized form of glossing or highlighting. Once you grok that, the rest falls into line.
Fuck HTML. I had to have the a href gobbledeygook tattooed on my forearm. And I are smart.
Jeez. Talk about totally sucking up to the teach.
Good luck, commiegirl. I've followed these directions to a T and it doesn't work for me. What I typed just appears as what I typed.
just paste the link into your post, submit it, and go back and edit it. Intense debate takes care of the formalities, you just type what you want between > and <
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_elements.asp
To paraphrase Picasso: I know a lot about Art and I don't know what I like…but that Kinkade stuff is pure crap.
I know what I like, too.
You guys! You guys!!
Does anybody remember a kids' TV show called "Learn to Draw"?
This artist would take whatever you wanted to draw — a house, a tree, a dog, a cat, etc. — and show you how to draw it, step by step, with squares, circles, and triangles.
Since I loved to draw and got really frustrated when my pictures didn't look right to me and I couldn't figure out why not, I loved that show. I forced my mother to buy me the OFFICIAL LEARN TO DRAW SKETCH PAD and had it ready whenever the show came on. It was so awesome.
Actually, I sorta wish they still aired it.
Jon Gnagy? I still have some pencils.
Yup, Jon Gnagy.
I must have been very small, because I was still teaching myself to read by sounding out words, but I couldn't figure out how to sound out "Gnagy" (it's pronounced "nagy", btw).
Me, too! Me, too!! I had the sketchpad. His hipster beard and plaid shirt would be a totally acceptable look even today.
So — did you learn to draw?
I learned to draw (well enough to win third place in a statewide student art show in my sophomore year of high school), I learned to read (even words that I couldn't sound out) — and I eventually bought a car from Jon Gnagy's grandson.
So, full circle: Life and drawing.
Yup, I got his boxed set of supplies. Great stuff.
Jon Gnagy
By his daughter.
I may not know Art,but I know his brother Randy?
And his other brother, Brandy?
But all the trees are definitely not the right height. On the other hand, Thomas Kinkade is dead, so he's got that going for him, which is nice.
You're sick! Thanks.
No, THANK YOU!
So I clicked on the link, and I have to say:
There are four groups of people who can rock badly dyed jet-black hair:
1. Elvis
2. Alan Rickman
3. Keef Richards
4. Frenchwomen of a certain age who live in Paris.
You will note that shitty painters fall into none of these groups.
He didn't even Just For Men his goatee. If you have a mop of oil-slicked Shemp hair atop your kopf and salt-and-pepper face pubes, you are not fooling anyone.
I don't care what the bloody topic is. I just like your list.
All faves of mine, too. Alan Rickman … (sigh).
Finally saw "Galaxy Quest" a movie from the late 1990's which had one of my great fantasies; Sigourny Weaver as "Space Bimbo" Having not seen it before I did not know Alan Rickman was in it. He was rocking the Professor Snape character well back then.
By the hammer of Gravtar.
It's "Sigourney." If you're hot for her, you could at least spell her name right.
I'll watch Alan Rickman in anything – he's the greatest:
"Dogma"
"Truly Madly Deeply"
Even such dogs as "Robin Hood" and "Michael Collins" were worth enduring
He was hilarious in Robin Hood. It was as if he was in a different movie, ( the movie that SHOULD have been made).
Neither does Darrell Issa or Mittens Romney.
Put enough Jeebus and/or porn in your "art" and sure as hell somebody will buy it. That should be in all MFA curriculum.
That's the editorial approach that Newsweek uses.
I'm sorry, but I would sooner place a "Dog's Playing Poker" on every wall of my house, than a single Kinkaid over the fireplace.
You could mix it up with a Dog's Playing Poker on one wall, and Cats At the Last Supper on the other.
http://slog.thestranger.com/files/2007/09/Cats_La…
…and Dog's shooting pool; I like that one. http://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/blackunigrypho…
I'm partial to the people playing musical instruments with wild and crazy hair.\
http://www.fashionsoccercenter.com/images/childre…
Hah…if humans were descended from cats rather than apes, there would be no such thing as Christianity. Can you imagine that many cats sitting near a fish and not losing their shit?
A kinkaid burning in the fireplace!
Putting a Kinkade over the fireplace would be kind of redundant, wouldn't it?
Unless it's a fake fireplace.
I'd pay for a "Jesuses Playing Poker." It'd be set to the Last Supper, and every Jesus would have an ace-and-a-face.
BTW, you know who else liked the number 21?
Let me know when the person who made this dies. Then I'll be sad.
Cool, I've never seen the uncropped version of that before, I've only seen it with the male bandmates.
Hugh Fleming: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hugh_Fleming
and http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/posters/ea73/
Kind of like the Galactic Fleetwood Mac.
Oh my God – that is fucking awesome..
There's a painter who does most of his work here in NY for the Private Equity business – every time they close a plant, he does a painting of it for them… The paintings hang proudly in their offices – just like a prize fish or a 8 point buck!
Kind of like he who dies after putting the most schlubs out of work wins…
……but, teach a man how to PAINT a fish and he'll never go hungry. Nay, I say unto thee, he rolleth in Ameros!
(Latvianicus 13.3.5 V2.1)
YouTube informs me that today would be Billie's 97th birthday.
All of Me
Lovely. Thanks.
Here's Frank O'Hara's utterly brilliant poem, The Day Lady Died:
It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
Needs moar John McNaughton.
Needs moar DEAD John McNaughton.
fxd
I think it was implied that death/hell needs more John McNaughton.
How much you wanna bet McNaughtie Johnny is bawling his eyes out now that his
celebrity boyfriendmentor has kicked it?I'm hoping that whoever painted those huge-eyed, sad-looking children and dogs is dead as well.
Norman Rockwell? Yeah, sucker's dead.
Walter Keane, who took the images of starving kids with huge eyes he saw as a GI in Europe in WWII and turned it into kitsch, went to the big mall in the sky a dozen years back.
Actually, it was proven that his wife Margaret who painted those.
Wally used Margaret as an early version of giclée. But you are correct, she could paint circles around him and proved it in court.
You're talkikng about Margaret Keane, an abused woman whose husband Walter forced her to do all those painting for which he took credit. I knew her in San Francisco, she is still alive and has a gallery there. If you knew her, you wouldn't say that.
So, I read this, and I thought, "Kincade is dead? Cool. What did the old shit die of?", and despite my doomsday-weapon-quality laziness, I actually clicked on the link, and come to find out? He was 54.
FIFTY FOUR!???!!
Then I thought, Ha ha, everybody here has outlived him!
But he well outlived Breitfart, so there's that.
That's the part that amazes me-both Breitbart and Kincade were not exactly ancient, but kicked rather early on. I knew Breitbart went on some benders now and then, but was he a full blown soak? So much for "Only the good die young."
Hard to take the man seriously as an artists since he eschews black velvet.
Every time I see his work I think, "That's the "Happy Land" Republican politicians send their minds to, when they get that weird far-off glaze in their eyes and start repeating talking points like a broken record." Wonder if his factory will just keep cranking them out and what happens to the franchise stores in suburban malls.
"Kinkade's Media Arts Group took in $32 million per quarter."
So, $128 million a year for the most boring paintings imaginable.
Sounds about right.
Those silly Christians.
I love to find a way to make $32 million per quarter off those pesky Xtians and Repugs.
Eat your hearts out, Wonketeers. Kinkade at least has two mentions in all good dictionaries, and we don't. One mention is in the definition of "schlock" and the other is under "kitsch." There was no room under "crap" and the good dictionaries don't have "shit," or otherwise he'd be there four times.
Isn't he the guy who painted the original 'Dogs Playing Poker'?
Candy Spelling owns that. I saw it on the teevee.
Don't confuse Kinkaid with an artist.
The lesson here is that you should only paint sharks.
i hope Bob Ross is kicking Kinkade's ass in the 9th dimension , right now. Ross' hippie pot-induced happy accidental trees shit all over Kinkade's cookie-cutter, manufactured pancy-ass glowy all-white gated community cottage crap.
House painters can do much better than Tommy Kinkade!
WOOHOO hooray! My neighborhood lady.
Whoa, Betty!
That homeowner must have the most laidback homeowners association in the whole wide world!
Kincade will be welcomed into Middlebrow Paradise, where he will be greeted by the Archangel Meh-chael. Serenaded by The Carpenters' Greatest Hits, he will stroll through vistas of not-altogether-unpleasant pastoral views, and everyone will be more or less satisfied for all eternity as they walk the streets of Pleather. Finally, he will be welcomed into the presence of a semiomnipotent and liking Gosh.
I always thought Karen was underappreciated.
Hear, hear – she's my secret guilty musical pleasure. If she'd only dumped her brother sooner and eaten a little more heartily …
She had a gorgeous voice and, though her choice of material was suspect, I agree she still was not in the same category as Kinkade. He had crappy subjects and an execution that was devoid of skill or originality. She had the execution part down.
I think Dok needs to exchange Kenny G for "Rainy Days and Sundaes". Noodle drool has no redeemable value, and check this out.
Joe Queenan, a writer who is usually kind of assy, wrote a review of a Barry Manilow concert that said in part, "If you don't like him, don't go; but at least these are SONGS, with a beginning, a middle, and an end; not Kenny G jerking off over the same note for three hours". I'm inclined to agree with that.
Amen. Karen was a great talent not to be mentioned in the same breath as Thomas Kinkade. If one is looking for the musical equivalent of Thomas Kinkade, try George Winston, who compared himself to Beethoven.
Oh, all right then.
Neil Diamond, maybe?
The Archies. I hear that Archie, Jughead and the rest of the crew didn't do a lot of their own work, too.
Is he deaf?
Completely OT, but I'm on Al Franken's mailing list, and just got an email from "People in Stock Photos for Franken" that has obviously had its desired effect–I'm posting a link to the Mother Jones story here. Nice to see somebody doing some smart meta-campaigning!
–Man Typing on Laptop
That's what you get when you let a comedian run the government – brains.
Al's the rare politician who isn't afraid to make fun of himself.
Yeah, I got that email too. It was funnier than BALLS.
Cause of death: tackycardia.
BubMoronic plague.He died in his kitschen.
Gather 'round, fair Wonketeers, the joys of working in the "collectibles" market. "Collectibles" are nothing more than mass produced art that targets a very nebulous group of people that think of these things as "investments". I cannot tell you the number of people who inquire as to the future value of Disney porcelain or Swarovski crystal figurines. I tried as delicately as possible to tell these dears that you should buy these things to enjoy them. One customer had so much of this stuff in her home that her bathroom was filled with Hummel figurines because there was nowhere else to put them.
Kinkade, of course, in edition to having dedicated mall "galleries" also sold his art trinkets in independent collectible stores. A fond memory: Kinkade made a "personal appearance" in Seattle at the height of his power that cost $500 per person. What you got was to spend a January morning in the unheated hangar at Boeing Field where his private jet was parked and thrill as he walked down and shook hands and had his picture taken with store reps. He got tired rather quickly and actually turned people away. Feel justified in gravedancing. I assure you he was an awful person.
So … are you trying to tell me that my prize Beanie Babie collection is worthless?
OMG! Disney porcelain is my retirement plan!!!!!
I feel your pain.
I work in antiques.
I guess the most often heard phrase is; "But its XX years old."
The Antiquities Act protects such things as telephone/telegraph poles and railroad ties, yet neither look much like antiques to me, hough I have several of each as landscape features.
No doubt about that. And it is a fact that he didn't have a whole lot to do with painting any of those headache-producing pieces of art. Probably not terribly difficult to program a computer and robot to slap a lot of different colors on a trite scene and then have him sign them. Most people are just sheep.
But died at 54 with a gaggle of little daughters, which is more tragic than his paintings.
I just read more about him, retract former comment.
In its February 2006 decision, the arbitration panel said Kinkade and other company officials used terms like "partner," "trust," "Christian" and "God" to create "a certain religious environment designed to instill a special relationship of trust" with the couple.
What the company didn't tell them, said their attorney, was that they would have to sell Kinkade's works at minimum retail prices while the artist undercut them with discount sales, some of which he made himself on cable television.
In its February 2006 decision, the arbitration panel said Kinkade and other company officials used terms like "partner," "trust," "Christian" and "God" to create "a certain religious environment designed to instill a special relationship of trust" with the couple.
What the company didn't tell them, said their attorney, was that they would have to sell Kinkade's works at minimum retail prices while the artist undercut them with discount sales, some of which he made himself on cable television.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/qvc-artist-teams-u…
Never buy a used car (or anything) from someone who keeps talking about God, Jesus, how often they attend church, how they just try to be a good Christian, etc.
Holy crap, that's completely insane!
How lucent.
Like I said with Breitbart, I felt bad for their family before it was trendy.
Dark Portrait of a `Painter of Light
"In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.
And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim."
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/05/business/…
Also, the guy at the convenience store near Kinkade's vacation house said he was a big porn hound who would come in and buy all the porno mags. And not just the regular ones, either, all the really pervy ones like "Gigantic Asses".
He was into well-hung donkeys? That is pervy.
He wanted his real Prom to be "One Nite in Tijuana" — just like the 21 Jump Street reboot.
Visual Muzak–perfect!
Ha, ha! I WON! And now Thomas Kinkade is dead, the End.
Whoa, that's harsh. But since I hated everything Kinkade stood for, as well as his sappy "art," I had to laugh.
And a stunned art world can only take solace in the knowledge that Margaret Keane lives on.
Meh…art has been dead to me since Bob Ross died…oh, and that German dude with the "happy trees".
How fortunate, Rachel, for you to have such nice memories to remember him by, while the rest of us have only his schlock.
Get the name right, Battleknocks. It's "Raquel."
I'm sorry, Rebecca! Don't know where "Rachel" came from.
It's cool, Baffle. I actually have two sisters named Sarah and Rachel, and Rachel is the go-to for about 4/5ths of everyone who gets Rebecca wrong. It's an Old Testament thang.
I have a friend named ReBecca. It does make her stand out in a crowd, I guess.
"THAT'S NOT RACHEL TRANSCENDENCE!!1!"
kincade art needz moar blingees.
And because one can never make too much fun of Kinkade, here's the link to Something Awful:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday…
Twelve pages of Kinkade parodies in Part 1 alone.
My favorite was Red Horse Glue.
The most succinct possible comment on the man's oeuvre.
Now that's art!
Does it come in camouflage and constitution?
Oh God, thank you so much for that! I want the 'America under attack' one so badly I can't stand it (page 2, second from the top)!
No, the one with the Klan burning a cross on the lawn!
That link had me laughing so hard, the orderlies here at the Institute had to bring me a second set of meds because the first set came up out of my nose! Thanks, tessiee!
Thank you for the link – some of that stuff is indescribably great. The nuke-ular bombs going off in the Kinkade scenes are particularly outstanding.
That slinky is so touching! I'm all verklempt, *sniff."
My mother bust a gut at the Exorcist. Those are too beautiful for words.
I'm not sure why this one makes me pee a little bit in my pants:
"..a painter of a lot more light" http://images.somethingawful.com/inserts/articlep…
I cannot WAIT to hear what HennesyYoungman has to say about this.
Kinkade, he did paintings worthy of a King…………here King, here King.
I now have a reason to love you, Rebecca!
Since I have not the slightest idea of who this person is/was, would it be slanderous or libelous to call him a skullfucker?
The occasion: the “private” opening for an ironic showing of Thomas Kinkade’s Christian-fished, trademark-marked work
Unfortunately, time and money do not know when they are being wasted ironically.
According to NPR, a Thomas Kincaid picture hangs in one in every 20 houses in the USA. I suspect this means that 5% of the commenters here will be getting culled shortly.
"According to NPR, a Thomas Kincaid picture hangs in one in every 20 houses in the USA"
Meanwhile, one million people with talent and training in art are working crap jobs for minimum wage.
Did any of you get a chance to read John Derbyshires' most recent racist article?
http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_vers…
Awesome, ain't it? Too hot/odious for National Review! The link's a bit stressed by so many hits, so here's a quote.
Holy shit, it sounds like he lifted that from some kind of zombie survival guide.
(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
How am I suppose to tell if I know them: they all look alike.
(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.
No problem; I live in Seattle.
(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).
Don't go to Disneyland on "Women with Big Asses Get in Free" day.
(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
That's why I stopped going to church.
(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
If you're at the supermarket and they start giving out free samples of Kool-Aid, drop your organic hummus and get the fuck out.
Brilliant. Needz moar upfists button.
What's your point?
That really deserves its own thread.
Agreed
It is quite ironic that an Englishman would try to warn his kids about black people in public places. All the laws against hooliganism that exist all across Europe today were prompted by the way his countrymen behave when they travel abroad.
I guess.
Clearly, Derbyshire doesn't even listen to rap by white, English people: "The Irony of It All" & "Too Much Brandy" explained this ten years ago.
Aaaand he's been fired, which I'm sure no one could have seen coming.
I am actually surprised they did not pull the "victim card" stupidity about how the "liberal media" and everyone else are the real racists.
I'm so confused after reading the comments on the Politico article, which people wrote with their facebook accounts, visible to their friends, families, and employers. To wit:
Patrick Despaw · Syracuse University
I echo what those of us here with experience already know.
The haughty liberals on this thread and the same haughty liberals who run National Review are so blind to the truth it could walk up and mug them and they wouldn't know it.
Stephen Manning · San Francisco, California
Why is there even a person called Ta-Nehisi Coates?
Preston Wiginton · Top Commenter
Peggy can you define racist? Just because some one does not like another group of people, does that make them racist? What a fascist you are for making us love everyone.
Preston Wiginton · Top Commenter
Matthew Foster Matthew maybe you would like to go to Austria and meet with the last SS survivors or to Italy to meet with the last of Mussolini's men. You would be glad you did. Books are for jews. I prefer to learn from experience and to hear it from those who lived it.
That last guy is punking the comments, right? Books are for Jews, indeed.
Now, even National Review is RINO. Guess you shouldn't have smoked that joint, William F. Buckley, Jr.
"National Review? Why don't you get William F. Buckley to kill the spider?"
-Alvy Singer
Preston Wiginton · Top Commenter
Peggy can you define racist? Just because some one does not like another group of people, does that make them racist? What a fascist you are for making us love everyone.
So much to unpack here.
"Peggy can you define racist?"
I think the definition of racist has been defined quite nicely by innumerable people back in the 20th Century.
"Just because some one does not like another group of people, does that make them racist?"
No, it could also make them a homophobe and/or misogynist.
"What a fascist you are for making us love everyone."
Yes, because the main purpose of fascism was to get everyone to love people they hated.
And that's just the zeroth-order deconstruction of Preston's mental state. The average therapist would require about eight degrees of meta-therapy in order to probe all the way down.
Anyway, books are for jews.
"Look, John, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in T-shirts with crying eagles and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as rednecks, I get worried. I get nervous."
I had a homeschooler on my most recent flight to DC. I bit my tongue about asking if she's a birther or vaccine denialist.
Now you have to go work for Fox, Negropolis.
James Fallows has written a nice FTFY piece based on Derbyshire: "The Talk: What Parents Tell Their Children About John Derbyshire"
Very well done, Mr
FallowsFisher. Now I have about 18 other tabs open with articles I have to read.My bad–thought that was Fallows, but it was indeed Max Fisher…oh, and goddammit, look at all the cool stuff on Fallows' actual blog…Chinese dissidents, flying cars, and several nice pieces on false equivalence (guess what! Obama didn't force Detroit to make electric cars!)
Yes — the case of mistaken identity gave me twice as much reading fun yesterday; first, all the embedded links in the Fisher article, then his entire ouvre, then the follow-up to see what Fallows did write. It was a nice, lazy Easter afternoon, reading the Atlantic while a house full of little girls ran around shrieking and generally enjoying themselves.
And then, after following up on your Al Franken thing, I found Mac McClelland's terrific I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, which I highly recommend.
Well, Rich Lowry may have fired "Derb", and much of the three-page list of NR writers is unfamiliar to me, but he still pays
Charles Krauthammer
Clifford D. May
Daniel Pipes
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
Jay Nordlinger
Jim Geraghty
Jonah Goldberg
Kathryn Jean Lopez
Larry Kudlow
Lawrence A. Chickering
Lee A. Casey
Mark R. Levin
Mark Steyn
Mona Charen
Victor Davis Hanson
and even Rich Lowry, for their opinions. And he has Ralph Reed and John Yoo on retainer. I'm not sure much has changed over there.
Kincade died?? Oh, man, I'm gonna miss his comments here on teh Wonkette. I mean, I didn't always agree with Chet, but RIP, dude!
Oh, wait …
Chet, the Artist of Snark, will never die.
Just don't try and take my TV set!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyXeyww854
Oh no, not Chet!
Not my secret lover ChetKincaid??? Who else can portray the gorgeous, ebony-skinned airman hiding in my hay-loft ?
Don't fret, Baby! After we blow up the private office of the Kommandant of the Hauptwache at the Hotel Meurice on Rue de Rivoli with the last of my grenades, we'll flee Paris in the back of a camion full of legumes, breathlessly holding each other through the checkpoints. Then I'll make you a bowl of jambalaya in the barn, and later, in the loft, I'll place your slender reed between my lips and practice my embouchure.
Is that what you Yanquis call 'Le Be-Bop?”
Let's form a sextet, Sweety! I'll be your founding member. You are a delightful chant-tease!
Ok you two. DON'T get a room.
Sorry to disappoint you.
Needz moar bullwhips in rectums.
Ah, good times.
I got a pair of Sperry Top-Siders for only $60 last fall.
Mysteriously, however, new paintings of "his" will continue to flood the market. HOW is this POSSIBLE?!?
Poltergeist Kinkade!
Same reason I can still buy new V.C. Andrews' books at the Rite Aid.
God works in mysterious ways.
The Thomas Kinade Legacy?
Nobody told the North Korean slave-artists?
"How is this possible?!?" Barto rhetorically boomed.
Brilliance…Editrix, Art Center the Baja Brooks of Photo-tapestry, or Photo-sophistry, all Kincaid's minions are now left pondering if sometime tomorrow, his tomb, er…safe deposit box will indeed be empty, or filled once again through the coffers of empathy.
Is this post some type of confession? You didn't mention HOW you killed him!
Grand Central Art Center? Kind of a redundant redundancy.
Step right up and receive your Certificate of Redundancy Certificate.
i prefer reredundancy.
What, no mention of Kinkade's 2010 DUI arrest? Or the lawsuits against his empire for defrauding his franchise stores? For shame. I expect more post-mortem muckraking from Wonketeers.
Somebody already said he cursed at an employee who helped him when he fell off a barstool and he collected porno while calling himself born-again; I just assumed a DUI is a given.
Didn't you used to see his stuff at the corner gas stations…next to the velvet Elvises and dogs playing poker?
Dogs playing poker were classier than the crap Kinkaide put out.
True…and if the DPP pictures maybe weren't as technically astute (I don't know art, so I'll have to ask for some slack here) as Kinkaid's, at least it was funny and not diabetes inducing god-bothering.
if it ain't a crucifix in a jar of piss it ain't art
…or The Virgin Mary and elephant dung.
He had convinced the Vatican to re-paint the ceiling of the Capella Sistina, so the Lord called him, in the name of Art.
Looking over his paintings I really appreciate Bev Doolittle more. Hell, I appreciate the illustrations that used to be in those old 'Ideal' magazines more.
Hey, Bev Doolittle was my favorite when I discovered her in an art shop back in 1982. Loved those pintos on the snow covered mountain.
Eh, we did a jigsaw of one of his cottages as a family one holiday. The graphic worked nicely for that. I'd never heard of him until then. I move in the wrong circles I guess.
It will be interesting if his family sells off the originals. That is considered one of the keys to his business model. The posters weren't copies in the same way because there was never an original available.
Kinkade makes Hitler's paintings look normal
And John Wayne Gacy's paintings look competent.
My BFF has two of his paintings (she paid $$ for them) and she's willed them to me.
I'm sorry for your gain.
She has my undying respect! That's perhaps the cleverest device I've ever heard to ensure careful, attentive medical care in case of a serious accident. I assume you've taken a job with a flexible schedule just in case.
She better watch her back, eh?
If she dies by falling into and through both paintings you can sort of take care of the matter and maybe the frames will be worth something.
I was amazed to hear that he went to a reputable art school. His work screams "self-taught," but not in a good or interesting way.
He's definitely no Bob Ross–his trees were happy & probably a little high (and not in the tall way).
I think of Kinkade as the redneck's version of ____ (fill in the blank with any credible artist). Kind of like TLC is to PBS as Thomas Kinkade is to Monet.
You know who else was a clown and liked to paint?
Adolf the Pierrot?
John Wayne?
Ernest Borgnine?
He clearly likes to work in pearlescents.
John Wayne Gacy and Red Skelton?
It will be interesting to see how many "Hidden Masterpieces" the family and business manages to find over the next several years. My guess is that he shit out a whole bunch of these things and if not, someone out there has the talent to duplicate the "masters" eye for capturing light and shadow and perspective so well. QVC or HSN will no doubt be breathlessly announcing the finds shortly, and continuously for years to come. "Just when we thought we had found the last of Thomases works we have stumbled miraculously on another, and it can be yours for four quick pay installments…"
Yes, they just need to find a competent painter and it could be just like van Meegeren.
Except that Vermeers are rare. And nice to look at. And van Meegren wasn't a better painter than Vermeer.
But otherwise exactly the same.
"It turns out he had produced hundreds, if not thousands, of more 'Masterpieces of Light' that are exclusively available to QVC customers. It's a testament to Kinkade's talent & legacy that you can have by going into credit card debt."
you may find a bunch of his work on"Storage Wars."
Tits Brandie, Tits!!
You can find many Chinese-made replicas on ebay, typically painted by people with hilarious ideas of life in the United States.
He trained a whole team of people to duplicate his "work." He supposedly hadn't painted an entire painting for years. So, like Celine Dion's heart, his work will go on.
just a little while from now a "Helga" book will come out, but more likely to be titled "Helmut" or " Silvio" , Secret paintings of light falling across the glistening abs of his gardener.
OT, but Chuck Grassley twatted that President Obama is "stupid."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/07/chuck-gr…
Chuck Grassley is to politics what Thomas da glow worm Kinkade was to art. The sickly illumination you should run from, not to.
He's my senator, so I'm qualified to say: Am ppl r as stupid as this corn fed govt grifter grassley.
Yes, I saw Grassley call Obama "stupid" Happy high holy Christian holiday!
WWJCS?
What would Joseph Campbell say?
Who would Jesus call stupid?
He'd give us a skeleton key to Finn McCool's shiva.
I think he would say "Alea Jacta Est". After he crossed the Potomac to kick Grassley's ass.
That is so the pot calling the kettle blah.
Grassley. Bless his stupid, little heart. He don't know no better, god bless 'im.
OT: Maybe compounded by the fact that I'm on a "Game Of Thrones" marathon right now to set the backdrop of wicked decisions made by a cruel ruler, but this strikes me as far more foreboding, because it's "real life":
http://bit.ly/Hr6K0a
Thomas is the vilest justice on the court, bar none. Scalia cops to his rank evilness. Thomas just sits their like a silent coward as he helps in dismantling the nation in the cruelest of ways.
Wow, and there I was making fun of him only a few days ago.
Life is so fleeting.
Same here. My ex-sister in law was talking on FB about some art she bought, and I told her not to mention that Kinkade, ever. When he tipped over, I wrote on my wall that perhaps I shouldn't have joked about his crap, and I couldn't believe the shitstorm that rained down upon me. I think I need new "friends."
Sure, he was a drunk and hack and a dick, but he did have his moments:
http://www.ocregister.com/entertainment/montereyh…
If the Disney corporation had as finely developed a sense of irony as I do they'd have a bunch of Disney employees dressed up in costume go and piss on Thomas Kinkade's grave and announce in chorus "This one's for you Walt."
Kinkade himself started as a background painter for the cinema. The background art in the Winnie the Pooh shorts from the sixties towers over Kinkade's work like a 200-year old Weeping Willow towers over an ant. No wonder he felt threatened.
I was wondering when someone would bring this up! I hadn't heard of it until the stupid Today Show reported it with the utmost solemnity. I truly thought I was watching an SNL skit.
And then I proceeded to tell everyone I've ever met.
Oh, and here's a fun picture of Kinkade's DUI.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/dmcnamara/thomas-kinkade-…
Every bit as good as The Master could have done!
He failed in his attempt to upstage David Hasselhoff.
Kinkade played it safe. I like an artist with the courage and guts to always play it safe in his work. It's kind of like life: boring, predictable, and oh so pretty. That's what great art is supposed to mean you fucking elitist college-educated libtard snobs!
– Rick Santorum
Fun fact: The buy-in ("initial investment") required to sell Kinkade's stuff was (at the time) $100,000. Lladro, which is hand-finished in Spain and doesn't resemble the aftermath of a Baskin Robbins exploding, had a buy-in of $20,000.
There are two reasons nobody looked at Kincade's paintings and said, "I could've done that."
(1) They lacked minimal eye-hand coordination, color sense, and good taste; or
(2) They didn't want to leave the world uglier than they found it.
OT: Li'l Ricky's cancelled his weekend events…uh-oh! Adios, you rat bastard.
Somebody mention Bob Ross? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnnPFgRBDNw
Joe the Painter.
Winner, winner chicken-fuckin'-dinner!
Thomas Kinkade, fucking punk with his candy-assed paintings of light.Jack Kirby or Tom of Finland could have kicked his ass any day of the week. Kirby would have taken him out with some awesome <a href="http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=kirby+crackle&qpvt=kirby+crackle&FORM=Z7FD"> and Tom of Finland would have finished him off with an acutely detailed drawing of an inhumanly large and erect penis.
I will not deny that I once completed a Thomas Kinkade puzzle. It was challenging, especially in the trees… but when it was finished, it was rather attractive. A gaslight near dusk, and a pastoral thatch-roofed brick, with a cobblestone walkway that led to a stone bridge crossing a brook. It really was pretty, because I actually paused to think if the homeowner was inside, reading a copy of The Saturday Evening Post or The New Yorker, perhaps…
First off, however, who among us doesn't romanticize a sunset already?
I also kept my keel by saying, "he sold the rights of this piece to be reproduced as a puzzle". Mass production of art, and not in a flattering mien. To equal what he did to a perfectly good painting, I cannot wait until that MacNaughton asshole misses a fucking mortgage payment and must turn his Holy Shit™ into a puzzle.
and I hope they leave a few pieces out of the box, when it gets packaged… like Kinkade's company did.
Some pigfucker was too much even for NRO?
Name of Skimmertown, or something…..
This is my favorite Rebecca post ever. If she had mentioned the untimely demise of Fabritius, who was younger than Kinkade when he died, and painted a lot fewer works, but is still remembered today, it would have been perfect.
Thus far, mine is the undead Dick Cheney.
Walter Keane was maligned when he passed! I hope there is a Margaret Kinkade in the shadows to keep the Master of Light TM and his work alive! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Keane
So, what you're saying is that Kinkade was the WalMart of the Art World, then?
Actually, I think he was more the 7-Eleven of the art world.
No. Big Lots or Dollar General.
I would think Dali would be a better choice for the "Painter of Freedumb™".
Dali was a shameless self-promoter that was also a fascist. And at least he had talent.
Milan Kundera defined kitsch as the "absolute denial of shit." Of course, the paradox is that the denial of shit is itself so drenched in shit that it is inseparable from shit. The little twee village where no one ever dies or has a stroke or chases some younger skirt is a deadening crapotorium. Because shit, unlike sex with which it is often compared, has no creative value. And, ultimately shit gets in by the back door. (How do you think the fucking fields got so green?). I am sick of lecturing on aesthetics and politics, as that is what I do for a fucking so-called living, but there ya go.
I would normally join in the Kinkade bashing here (and I truly find his work as or more gawdawful than the rest of you do) but for one thing. He occupies the same position for art that blush wine does for wine. It sucks, and loudly, but it might motivate someone to think about why it sucks and what could be better, and maybe, just maybe, that would move them to a more sophisticated understanding. Of course, this is also middle America and I'm probably horribly mistaken.
Weren't wine coolers the cause of Bristol's downfall? I may be barking up the wrong metaphorical tree.
I don't think that he's necessarily ridiculed for his bad art. I think it's his hubris and taking himself as a serious artist given his relative lack of talent that gets people. Plenty of people create shitty, mass-produced art…and most of them are humble and self-reflective enough to rightfully stay in the background realizing that there work is what it is.
Sorry, Renoir is already fulfilling that function.
Thomas Kincade, painter of money™.
Myself, I prefer me some Skyrim and its happy little speedtrees.
In tribute to the loss of this great artist, a moment of silence will be observed in every hotel lobby, dentist waiting room, and retirement home activity room in the country.
Don't forget cruise ship cabins.
Has anyone released a painting of good artists pissing on Kinkade's grave yet?
Not yet, but someone let the dogs out.
That is awesome!
RIP Mike Wallace. I think he finally succumbed to the embarrassment of having Chris as a son.
Too bad this didn't have a "The Hunger Games" twist and Chris could have filled in for his dad.
I always wondered why he had bouts of depression. That would have done it.
Too soon, Mike. Too soon.
I love the guy, but I'd kill to live to 93.
Those of us who are chomping at the bit to nuke Iran because, oil and brown people or whatever, just elect Romney for prez. He's bestest buddies with Beebz Netz (just made that up, think it will track?). They go waaaay back, to youthful "experimentation" or something.
I can't get the link to work, but I read the story in the Denver Post this morning. Birds of a feather.
Oops, here's a link that works: http://nyti.ms/Hq87i5
For you people what don't not know shit about art, let me give you the basics. The two best are The Scream (my life) & Dogs playing Poker (how did he get them to pose).
The worst & I was sure of this until I heard of this dead guy were Normal Sumthin what painted for the Saturday even pots & the gut what drawd the kids with keene eyes .
Learn art or at least his brother simon.
Happy Easter Bitches! I'm going to go to worship at a casino for a few hours and then buy some marked down Easter candy.
Once in the '90s, I celebrated Easter by going to brunch with my Jewish girlfriend, and then we rented "Monty Python's Life Of Brian" and watched "The Ten Commandments" with mockery in our hearts and on our tongues. I got food poisoning and hurled all night. Was probably my Preacher Dad smiting me from beyond the grave.
There you are!
I figured you were in mourning.
P.S. Good luck, Barb.
~
Huh?
I assume it was a "Kinkaid/Kincaid" joke.
It's too late to get marked down Easter candy here. They pull it off the shelf before Easter morning for some reason. Gotta get those garden tools up on the shelves I guess. Are you in Vegas or at you hanging at one of those Native-American joints?
Native American joint. Won $600-ish. Stopped and picked up something to grill for dinner and some Easter candy.
"They pull it off the shelf before Easter morning for some reason."
That's to save it for next Easter.
I'm more interested in finding some marked-down Passover macaroons. They have coconut in them, so they're clearly good for you. At least, that's the theory I'm working with.
Dear Editrix;
Would you please send me the posts a day before you post them. This time zone crap means that before I can use 1/2 my witty comments everthing is a day old.
If you can send them to Barb first so that she has the first comment, sad as mine will be, gimme a chance to comment within 24 hours.
Thank you or sumthin.
Just like the NBA should start an auxiliary league for humans under 6 feet tall, Wonkette should host an alternate website for the time-zone deprived AND those of us with jobs that don't allow us to surf during the day.
Or, just save up all the entries until, say, 8 p.m. and then post them all at once. What delightful chaos that could be, kinda like those Black Friday stampedes where people get killed!
There's already a WNBA.
That is SO racist!
The comments don't come to me first. I sit here during the day and debug software for a friend of mine and I post and then go back to work.
Ah, fuck it! I get the comments before everyone else. I am so busted.
Barb said Fuck on Easter and NOW my whole day is made. Yes. I have the sense of humor of an 11yo boy and I'm sheltered. Whatever. It's funny like when I saw my teacher in jeans on a zoo field-trip.
Lol, Fakakta. You bring me so much joy.
Sarah Palin tweeted "Happy Easter" and I answered, "I am out of tampons & I'm using a marshmallow Peep" Now she's blocked me, LOL!
Ow! Tomato slices out the nose hurt!
Easter's been cancelled. They found the body.
(And yeah, the joke's as old as the short story it's based on…)
*sunglasses*
YEEEAAAAAHH!!
…with a little pop-culture, it's good as new.
Thank Darwin! Now I won't have to put up with peoplez coming up to me on the street and asking me, "Have you found Jesus?".
We should all be grateful he was a successful painter because remember that other guy..
I was given one of those Xiamen monkey paintings as a housewarming gift when I finished my house. I'd put it up against anything by Kinkade, and Xiamen monkey paintings are really terrible.
I know absolutely nothing about fine art, but I know something that makes me want to vomit when I see it.
It's not the wanting to vomit that brings value, it's the actual vomiting.
These things actually exist? People actually display them? Are they the same people who find "modern art" too confusing and/or disturbing? Yet they are perfectly fine with these…um, "works of art"?
I ask these questions seriously.
That link I posted should be taken as proof that they do indeed exist. I think most of them are purchased ironically, unlike the works of Kinkade.
I mean come ON, who wouldn't want this oil painting of Rmoney on the wall of their bathroom/vomitorium?
The Rmoney one is uncanny.
Ah, for the good(?) old days of Bush or chimp.
Freeper response: "Yeah, but they call us 'racist' if we depict Obongo as a monkey."
They're pictures for people who find Darwin's theory of evolution too upsetting.
Is the monkey wearing the crown supposed to be Duhbya Bush?
Because if not, those all suck shit in hell.
If you buy the panting(hint-I did not), you get to name it anything you want.
"'I just want to be a halfway educated monkey in a suit.' So he went to Business School" — Futurama
Happy Zombie Jesus Day everybody…..now back to my regularly scheduled in-laws.
Hopefully you don't get a stomach ache from all those chocolatey Jesus eggs
Happy Bonne Idée! Laissez les bon-oeufs rouler~
I would like to commission a painting of this, in the Thomas Kinkade style: http://youtu.be/z4sxbfaxOZc
There's some light for ya to paint.
Happy Easter!
I never understood Kinkade's schtick. Always thought his whole body of work (if you can call it that) was schmaltz and phony.
Anyway, Happy Bunny Day.
An Easter story I figured all Wonketeers would want to read.
Hopefully he gave a little prayer to the Jets cuz they gonna need it.
Good thing I didn't eat any chocolate, I'd be throwing it up. Apparently Tebow is another one of those people who thinks what's written on the money is more important than what's written in the Constitution.
WE'RE A CHRISTIAN NATION!!! JUST LOOK ON THE DOLLAR BILL!!!!!!!
I dunno…the $1 bill is rockin' that Eye of Sauron thing, isn't it?
WE'RE ALSO A NATION OF SURVEILLANCE!!!!!!
Jesus fucking Christ.
"one nation under God". Tim's command of political history ranks right up there with his deep out.
I realize that professional athletics in this country is a field crawling with obnoxiously stinking pious yet marginally literate individuals. So why are this particular yokel's utterances considered newsworthy?
Because he was the first college sophomore to win a Heisman Trophy? Because he willingly and actively let himself be used by religious whack-a-doodles who have "shoved him down our throats"?
Timmeh Tebow, you're trying way too hard. Timmy T-boned, you're doing it wrong.
This guy is so going to get caught in some strange sex scandal. There have always been rumors since he flaunts his virginity that he likes to PIITB with his girls, and like some GCBs, that's not considered "sex".
Had a little jackrabbit hopping around my yard earlier this morning, I'ma go looking for the eggs I know he left me.
Those little round brown ones – they're not eggs.
He can't know that for sure unless he tries one.
No, they're yummy raisins!
Most certainly not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q33drZUXSzY&fe…
You use the jackrabbit analogy for your pot dealer too! I put a torch to an egg and smoked one for zombie jesus.
Nah, Lizzie and I are the anti-pot grinches of teh wonket.
In your
earEaster bonnet, wonketteers! ♪I hope Peter Cottontail took care of you today, M.
Mike Wallace is dead and they let an extraterrestrial Oosthuizen play in the Masters but those southern misogyists won't let a women play.
The winner, Watson, is a fundamentalist Christian. His wife is Jesusy in a very cult-like way. I am wondering if the fact he played all weekend in completely white clothing has something to do with the fact it's Easter. The way he wears his shirts buttoned all the way up to his chin no matter how hot it is looks creepy to me.
BTW, he's the one who behaved in a very boorish way at the French Open, being rude to European players and criticizing French culture. When some other golfers publicly criticized him, his response was to send out the typical Republican tweet, "If I offended anyone I apologize." The big IF. Apparently, his intention was to hurry home to play with the Dukes of Hazzard car he bought at a Hollywood auction for more than $100,000, not that he can't afford it.
Very odd body language, that dude.
Wearing your 'polo' shirt buttoned all the way up is a sign of your wealth/superiority/aristocratic heritage, whatever. Really, I'm not kidding. This is a tradition almost as old as the first time Izods were accepted as golf wear. The working class wear their 'polo' and other shirts with the top button open. Having the top button closed is one of many elements of 'gentlemen's dress' which signifies the opulence of custom tailoring and proper fit.
Except he's not an aristocrat, he's a Florida community college Bubba.
Therefore a posser.
I hear ya, but it's kind of at odds with his Dukes of Hazzard obsession, don't you think?
Knowledge of the personal lives of pro golfers and the Dukes of Hazard rank high on my list of “Things Senility Will Cure.” How to tie a proper Windsor and ‘never wear a white belt’ are not.
White clothing, trimmed out with all hot-pink, including his driver. That was weird to me. And I think he grows his hair out like that to accentuate his Jeebus Crimbus complex — not cuz it's hip. Now, on Jeebus Day, he becomes Jeebus by winning a golf game. Hope he doesn't drown when he tests out his new water-walking abilities.
He's an ugly little bugger, ain't he? Looks like something straight out of Lord of the Rings. But, he plays good golf. There is something a little off about all of the South Africans. lol
Is there life after Schlock?
Yes.
You could order a cheap knockoff of any of Kincaid's worst paintings done in Asia, and you could even get them to add a picture of you in the painting, giving the finger or fapping.
You're welcome in advance!
Easter Eggs: Now you know.
My butt hurts
Gotta chase out all the evil schlock spirits 'ere the morrow.
Koko Taylor
Rawr! Nobody growls the blues like Koko did.
Stupid fucking birthers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/06/vicky-ha…
I wish the Republiklans would spend less time yapping about birth control and more time on birther control.
But you repeat yourself.
I'm tired of the birther crap. Where was Nixon's birth certificate?
Obama sure is being suspicious about his birth certificate. Why doesn't he just show it to us? Then we'd stop asking.
I am so glad that they are still on this. Before the president put out his birth certificate, this may have been enough to win more votes than you'd lose pushing this bullshit, but now it seperates the crazy voter, from the a-political independent who is turned off by this through-the-looking-glass craziness.
GOP, you've chased this white rabbit about as far as you're going to chase him and still have new people following you. Jus' sayin'.
I see that Spanky stopped by to look at my profile today and probably many others. He enjoys referring to the lovely Michelle Obama as the "first ho of the United States."
Srsly, Barb, what is this clown's intent? A rather feeble attempt at intimidation? Boredom, stupidity or somehow trying to just annoy us? Aside from "All of them, Katie," this payaso is as worthless as a remote limp dildo without batteries.
So how did you do at the tables?
Happy Easter, Sugar!
I won $600.00-ish. I put it in the cookie jar for Vegas on the 26th.
Jeff said I could use my Samsung Galaxy phone to create a wi-fi hot spot to my iPad for the drive to Vegas. I can Wonk the whole way there.
"Wonk the whole way there"
You realize they can pull you over for those sort of shenanigans, right?
No, Arizona doesn't bother white people. We could do just about anything and they will allow it.
Barb, not to get too tech-knuckle here, but I have Sprint, and with a few tricks other carriers, I have dropped an app called "tether" from PdaNet onto my droid and MacBook. You can get the internetz anywhere you have phone service on your Mac or iPad. For free!! I didn't believe it at first, but I have been using it for the last year and a half. One of my greatest anti-capitalist pig-dog tricks evah. Check it out — if possible on your configuration.
Mrs. Radio has used it continuously in the car for up to five hours on road trips.
Radio, is there something special I have to do here? If so, please e-mail em about it. Thanks!
Jeffer found DIY "tether" and it seems to work. Thanks! We live to Wonk another day!
Thanks Radio! I'm posting from the IPad tethered to the Android. It's not quite as fast as straight WiFi, but it will keep Barb Wonkin from ABQ to Vegas!
GIve those truckers a thrill!
Aw, the poor widdle fewwow is unhappy because he can't post at teh Wonkette because we don't agwee with him.
He goes around and has to tag each name so that we know he's watching us, lol.
He's watching me, too. I'm scared. Hold me.
I will nuzzle you until all of the fear is gone, Spurning.
I'm not scared, but hold me, too.
I always hold you in my heart. Flaming.
Actually that's very sad since it takes quite a bit of time to do that….on a holiday even.
Just remember ppl.
“We don’t use the term ‘insane’; we prefer ‘mentaly hilarious.’
Now, back to my Easter wine.
Smashed, always a pleasure to see you. Enjoy your wine.
It's Chanel Number Five and Easter chocolate.
You're a pip Barb. I hope you have a jug of passable gargle in your luggage.
Smashed, have gargle, will travel.
What was he – a modern day El Greco? You'd think he was the way everyone is crying about him dying. Funny I never heard of him. I guess I'll go rip up my Art History degree, also MFA, too.
Remember when you were deciding on your last elective, and it came down to "Linear and Color perspective in Cézanne" or "Mass Produced Dreck in Late Twentieth Century Kitsch Markets"? Well, your appreciation of visual space came at the cost of not knowing who Thomas Kinkade is.
Mrs D went to an art school where "Mass Produced Dreck in Late Twentieth Century Kitsch Markets" was a requirement, not an elective. The faculty was populated with ex-Leo Burnett Art Directors, and they actively discouraged students from pursuing "fine" art in favor of the only art job that pays — advertising.
RIP Morly Shaffer. Thanks for all that reporting.
Not trying to be a bitch. Did Morly die?
I believe old Morley is not dead. Not dead as a door nail.
Mike Wallace has totally bought the farm, though. At 93 years old. Somewhere in custody.
He wasn't dead earlier today.
He's not dead, but he's really old. So I'm wishing him peace.
Now the Neo-Nazi clowns based in the Detroit area who are patroling the streets of Sanford, FLA are a white civil rights group.
If I had a hammer, I'd be hittin' my head in the morning … all over the land.
Apparently, I cannot get out of the weekend without at least one "Oh, for fuck's sake"."
Is Tucker Carlson supplying water bottles and lawn chairs for these nazi fucks?
OT: [Filed under: OBAMAPORN]
This article put a smile on my face: http://bit.ly/Ioh1Zc
Man, are these hundred-millionaires and billionaires a bunch of cry babies! Further, I'm wondering how some of them made so much money in finance and trading when they don't seem to understand economics and the deficit and national debt.
Super-rich sociopaths have the boo-hoos. They'll stop whining when they're dangling from trees of the right height.
So true, so true. From Winner-Take-All Politics by Hacker & Pierson — which I cannot recommend enough to all free thinkers and my Wonketeer friends. Obama, for all his faults, knows what the deal is. From a campaign address march 27, 2008, entitled "Renewing the American Economy." And in front of some Wall Street fat cats:
We've lost some of that sense of shared prosperity. Now, this loss has not happened by accident. It's because of decisions made in board-rooms, on trading floors and in Washington. Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we've failed to guard against practices that all to often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practice. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales….
The American economy does not stand still and neither should the rules that govern it…Unfortunately, instead of establishing a twenty-first century regulatory framework, we simply dismantled the old one, aided by a legal but corrupt bargain in which campaign money all too often shaped policy and watered down oversight. In doing so we encouraged a winner-take-all, anything goes environment that helped foster devastating dislocations in our economy.
Goldman Sach's employee of the month: The Traderbot3000, making over three hundred thousand trades per second! All based on an algorithm guaranteed to erode the value of the working class' 401(k)s.
Traderbot, you'll always have a job here, at least until you've crushed all confidence in the soundness of the capital markets, at which point you'll be sold for scrap. Could be months, could be years, why am I talking to a robot, you don't have emotions.
Also, I'll stop whining when they're dangling from trees of the right height.
I find this post remarkably easy to masturbate to.
Shorter Obama: You motherfuckers should be glad I hdidn't round your asses up and put you on trial.
It's crazy they don't realize that the president is the only thing that stood between them and some serious jail time. They are also lucky they live in a country that worships wealth as if it were some kind of organized religion. There is almost nothing that we won't sacrifice to Mammon. Hell, we nearly sacrificed the entire country, whole-hog, to him.
500th comment gets a Kinkade print!!
NOOOOOOOO!
ALL of them, Katie!
Congratulations!
505 comments. Looks like I lost again, lol.
505th gets TWO Kinkade prints!!!!
Lol, George. I want YOU to have my 2 prints. You owe me.
I bet D_R would gladly trade his/her/both prize for the 600 Ameros you lifted off our brown brothers earlier today.
So, I guess we can assume that
RachelRebecca and friends got the day off today while all of us had to come to work as usual.Flaming, what's up with that? They left us alone and without direction. We sat here with our minds all on fire with knowledge and it was just wasted. Not one of us got to respond to a comment with "drop that cross one more time and you are out of the Easter parade."
I had to look him up in the Google. His paintings creep me the fuck out, what, with the bizarre and tasteless use of light along with the non-euclidean geometry. In my mind, every single one has the screaming caption, "What in God's name is going on in that house?"
Comrade, the artist was afraid of the dark. He used to come home and the lights were switched off, sniff. It's remarkably difficult to reach that switch plate and click it.
That's because he painted Heaven as seen through the eyes of the Damned – his own!
You didn't win, Ms. Schoenkopf. DEATH won.
Death.
Always.
Wins.
[Cue Mozart's "Requiem Mass" or something else that's suitably apocalyptic like they play in movie trailers. That shit's cool.]
Needz moar Chopin's Marche funèbre or Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. also.
Lux Aeterna (the Requiem for a Dream instrumental), preferably the version with Nicolas Cage going bat-shit.
Haha, I was staying RIGHT BESIDE Cal State Fullerton for the last four days. Also, I had to hear from someone who had considered "collecting" Kinkade.
It takes a lot of willpower to stop oneself describing it as emetic-painting with an overcoat of cynical religious horseshit only present in order to build a market.
The hummingbirds were cool.
edit: Also, Damien Hirst is a cunt. I remember him and some other fucking dickweasel whose name I forget in fucking Quo Vadis in Soho bragging about how they'd spent a day filming their anuses and would sell stills as art.
Fuck knows whatever happened with that. A quick google reveals nothing, luckily.
I have been pondering Radio's avatar and I am, disturbed.
I'm kinda drunk and bored and about to go to bed, so I'll write a little disquisition about US education (science in particular) which I'd advise you all to ignore and wait for a Rick Santorum post.
I'm sure you've all see the new commercials about how badly the US does in Mathematics and Science in a global market. Below the UK. Below Germany. Below Poland. Below fucking Hungary, and they're an ex-communist state.
That only gives half the picture. For me, the most worrying thing about the test was that the US students scored first by a mile in confidence in their results. So you have kids who, frankly, suck fucking balls at this shit, yet they're thinking "NAILED IT!"
As an ex-pat living as a guest in your country, I should make clear that I do love this place.
Having said that, I think it's damaging to give kids the message that "you can do ANYTHING! You're an AMERICAN!" without inculcating that, uh, you really need to study your fucking ass off for school, or study at home in some subject that you're good at, or SOMETHING – there's no free ride for just being a mouthy cunt whose ability is to name movies.
The American Dream is a laudable thing. Your own property and a job to support a family. The Dream has warped in the last thirty years to being "Imma gonna be a millianoirere and illa fuck you guyz!!!" Which is extremely stupid as a goal and unattainable. That's the image of being American pushed at kids.
Now, I'm lucky enough to know a few people with a lot of money*, and they tell me it's not the money which counts. It's not even the toys that money buys, although we all have a hankering for the Ferrari or the Pebble Beach house. The people who can just buy those things say that's not important. Yes yes my skepticism is as large as yours – certainly I'm not in that league. The point I think they're trying to make is that you still have to live; whether that's looking after your kids on a day out, or travelling to Thailand and seeing what's what, it doesn't matter.
edit here: It's important to give kids breadth of mind, which is a hard thing to do. Just shoving them at afterschool programs isn't the same as showing them Mexico or Europe. I know every parent can't do this. Even teaching about it at home would make a difference. Breadth of mind leads to thirst of mind, in my opinion.
So, back to math and science. What damages this *is* the US zeitgeist of "you're american, therefore win". In that scenario, how could you lose? I detest that fuck Hannity with his "you live in the greatest country god ever gave the earth" bullshit because a country is made up of people. Ah, well, technically not, but each country has a feeling of what it is. Once a country gets to the point of "we're just us. fuck you." then there's no surprise when kids from other countries beat the shit out of your kids with technical ability.
It's thirst for knowledge and innovation which makes countries great. The US is losing that. Complacency is a killer – I've seen it in the UK.
Don't do it in the US.
* edit 2 – "lucky" isn't the right word. I happen to know people. None of the people I know with money were born with it. *I* am lucky to be smart and well-educated. Since I know *that's* luck, I'm very happy to pay far higher taxes than we do to push other people into the bracket. People who are *born* to money often don't fucking get it, imho.
Thank you.
Hey, Fukui-san…I knew something was going on with you out in the real world, but I've been unable to stay on the Wonks here for any length of time to find you. I've finally scrolled back through your comments and see that you're going through hell. I just want to add my voice to the (one assumes) chorus of "I'm sorry" and "I'm thinking about you" and "Fuck the fucking insurance companies straight to fucking hell."
Your presence around here is welcomed, and, although I've nothing to offer in the way of material help(although if we had a Wonkette barn-raising in internet space I'd be there) I want to tell you I care, I'm thinking of you both, I'm sorry.
As an American, the only proper response to this is to shout yoou down with "USA, USA" until you are dragged away in shame or leave of your own volition.
But, to be more serious, no amount of logic will ever defeat the idea of "American Exceptionalism." We are going to have to learn the hard way what this really means before we give up this ghost; we're forcibly going to have to be laid low to let go of the hubris we've built up around this national religion. It's going to be hard to shake something that came over on the Mayflower. You know, they brought over smallpox and "divine providence"…and one of these still hasn't been cured.
It also doesn't help that a large portion of the population is explicitly anti-science. Creationists are bad enough; they've made teaching biology in public schools difficult in plenty of places. And then there's the spillover–with a substantial number of people convinced that an entire field of science is built on an atheist plot to undermine God, it's comparatively easy to slide over into thinking that climate change is also an international plot to take away our SUVS and liberty.
But we feel really good about ourselves.
So Fukui-san yer sayin' that if Heisenberg had been born an American he would not have been able to conger-up his Uncertainty Principle?
Um, wait – did you say something?
So after this long weekend when some of us consumed fish and some of us consumed chopped liver and some of us wore ridiculous, over priced hats, we must bow our heads and thank Ms. Schoenkoff not just for her festive post of intellectual liberation but for her early stand against one of the talking point atrocities foisted by those who wish us to be sanguine with propelling even more than our meager bowl scrapings of rational sustenance to those of bloated visage and fetid morals whose only guiding principal is More, More, More; Andrea True notwithstanding.
What is most depressing about Kinkade's art to me is that it represents millions and millions of mouth-breathers who think it is the highest form of art possible – and they can vote and procreate, probably.
I've always hoped for an editrix to come over and "correct my grammar". Something, something dangling participle.
Jesus is apparently hiding in my mom's (fake?) Kinkade painting. An unnerving, scary Jesus…
http://seetimblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-jesus-l…
Dead of "natural causes" at age 54? Oh, lordy, there are so many possiblities here. I'm assuming a meth-fueled rentboy orgy with lots of auto-erotic asphyxiation is considered "natural"? I mean, in California. (Miss you, CA!)
As long as the librul press doesn't revel that he choked to death on a gerbil, his future marketability is as safe as empty foreclosed-open houses.
His San Francisco paintings are pretty cool, though.
and apparently neither did that crazy lady
I'm waiting for the crazy lady to blame the Hamburglar for the missing ticket.
Well, it would make more sense than blaming Ronald McDonald (unless it were a child sex crime, which I could totally see).
In America, you don't watch the money, money watches you!
I'm a hip and easygoing gym teacher with an afro, no relation to the shitty painter.
Peeps, Chet.
"I prefer to learn from experience and to hear it from those who lived it."
I know it's just speculation on my part but I think Preston Wiginton, who has the honor of being Top Commenter, probably hasn't done either of these things.
It's just wild speculation on my part but, as we have learned from Michael Savage, it would be irresponsible of me not to wildly speculate.
Preston Wingnut's "Top Commenter" status says quite a bit about Politico's commenter ranking system. I mean, intensedebate is certainly blind to the content of our comments; a popular Breitbunatic can easily earn more p-points than we have, and you wouldn't know without context whether a particular intensedebate commenter is sane or not, judging just from the score.
But this is Politico's own in-house commenter ranking system we're talking about. What possible criteria (other than the obvious RWNJ hackery of Politico) would land this guy at the top of the heap? Jeepers.
btw — McDonnellville — isn't that where IKEA builds its sweatshops?
You smell good, Barb.
Dag, you guys picked that up quick. Anything to keep Barb Wonkin' to Vegas. I can't wait to see the film adaptation.
The best part about tethering is that it surely drives the telecommunicators crazy. Why get something for free when you can spend $30 a month?
You are right in one regard though, it is a bit slower, especially with vids, but nonetheless, watching Jon Stewart clips on the highway — priceless.
Radio, when life's little quandaries get tough I just turn to Jeffery. He helped me to figure out the ingredients in honey mustard dipping sauce. Turns out that it was just honey and mustard, who knew?
And that wasn't even Mike Nesmith's real hat.
Hyperlinks are the Devil's workshop. I know better, for instance, than to ever read anything at tvtropes.org unless I am prepared for the inevitable rabbit hole. (Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!)
That's because it WOULD BE racist in their case! Stupid freepers.
Besides, there are a lot of low, beetle-browed white people out there who look a lot more chimpish than most blah people.
I see, so, yeah, the usual double standard of the Left.
(Nancy Reagan always looked particularly simian to me…)
Well duh, the Left is twice as good at everything than the Right is.
Yes, tess, that was one of Queenan's better observations. I think he tortured himself for a year with American schmaltz and dreck.
You're a class act, Mr. Curley.
Right back ats ya’.
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