The New York Times celebrated the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre by publishing a column calling for a similar crackdown here in the U.S. It has not gone down well. Critics are horrified that the paper of record would amplify a call for military action against largely black protestors and there is a reported "rebellion" in the NYT newsroom. On social media, parodies unravel the Times' vacuous both-sidesism by posing absurdity in its classy, restrained op-ed format.

From Pixelated Boat:

From Brian Lockhart:

The Dahmer one, up top, is by myself. Below, the one everyone is posting in some form or other: good old Palps.

Here's a few more:

If you spot any good ones , add them in the comments. Read the rest

Over the weekend Randy Rainbow released another parody song, which hits the nail on the orange head in the most delightful way. Read the rest

This take on Solomon Linda's "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" could be used for a Biden campaign ad. One of the better parodies I've seen in a long time. Read the rest

My friend Mitch O'Connell (that's O'Connell, the world's greatest artist, not McConnell, the invertebrate fascist symp), sent me a cache of Trump Tijuana Bibles, secreted in Tony Schwartz's 1987 book, The Art of the Deal.

Tijuana Bibles are little 8-panel pornographic comic books that were popular during the Great Depression, and usually starred famous comic strip characters, like Blondie, Popeye, Dick Tracy, and Mickey Mouse, engaging in all manner of carnal congress.

Mitch is selling copies from his stash of Donald Trump in "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?", by I.P. Freely, on his Etsy shop for the low price of $5 a copy!

Here's what Mitch has to say about it:

"Tijuana Bibles" or "8-Pagers" were palm-sized pornographic comic books produced from the 1920s to the early 1960s. The usually crudely drawn hardcore thrusting and pumping was illustrated by anonymous artists, and produced in secret printing facilities, as these spunky pen and ink hi-jinks violated about 20 different ye olden laws. Their popularity peaked during the Great Depression era selling millions of "under the counter" copies.

Well, I thought those were just memories from a bygone era, until I came across a source while taking my annual Tijuana vacation and bought all the store had, which was a boxful of little porno pamphlets called “Donald Trump in 'Why Does It Always Rain On Me’?”

It’s 8 (not including covers) sweaty 3" by 4 1/4" pages of palm pounding fun as our President and the lovely Superstar Stormy Daniels (plus a surprise love interest) get it up, get down and get it on!

My family came late to the Arrested Development series, and so we've been binge watching it on Netflix. The series is narrated by Ron Howard, and also narrates this very good Arrested Development: Star Wars sketch from The Star Wars Show. Spoilers, of course. Read the rest

This ad, featuring happy people grinning in clinically perfect environments, is immeasurably improved by having its soundtrack replaced by remarks from comedian Bill Burr concerning his experience with the 3D-printed transparent braces. I found my way to it after reading this article about smarmy "free speech grifters" who decry political correctness while supporting the status quo: it leads with a funny anecdote whereby oleaginous creep Bill Maher expects Burr to agree with his anti-PC whining but is instead berated by him. Read the rest

There are some great music parodies coming from Parody Project, which look at today's politics in all of its strangeness. "Confounds the Science" is about Trump's tweets and stupidity. Here are the first two verses:

Hello darkness my old friend. It’s time for him to tweet again, but first he’ll have to check in with Fox news ‘cause that’s the only place he gets his clues. That’s how things get planted in his brain, where they remain, and it confounds the science.

The problem is he’s not alone. He tweets to people on his phone that global warming is a giant hoax perpetuated by the liberal folks, and he hires people that all think the same, that play his game and it confounds the science.

If you like this one, here's another one of their other Simon and Garfunkel spoofs, The Tweeter (Lie Lie Lie), which parodies The Boxer.

Read the rest

A classic Christmas tale about family, love, and hunting down machine gun-wielding terrorists one by one, while shoeless, is finally being turned into a children’s book.

Written by comedian Doogie Horner and illustrated by JJ Harrison, A Die Hard Christmas: The Illustrated Holiday Classic is sure to bring the Christmas spirit to any child or adult interested in single handedly diffusing a hostage situation.

Delightful illustrations of John McClane jumping off the Nakatomi Plaza is complemented by the original plot of the 1988 film imitating the poem commonly referred to as “The Night Before Christmas.”

"The explosives were wired to the rooftop with car, in hopes that the hostages soon would be there," reads one of the 32 pages. Read the rest

An intense prison dramedy might not seem like the most natural fit for a kids’ show, but that didn’t stop Sesame Street from doing a pretty solid Orange Is The New Black parody anyway. Read the rest

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

The Coloring Book for Goths: The World's Most Depressing Book

by Tom Devonald

Atria Books

2016, 96 pages, 5.5 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches (paperback)

$9 Buy a copy on Amazon

I wasn't a big fan of high school, and my high school wasn't a big fan of me. Weird, awkward, and music-obsessed, I was a concert-tee-clad speck in a sea of polo shirts and boat shoes. My 30th high school reunion was last July. A friend of mine from high school, who has a sadistic sense of humor, added me to the reunion Facebook page. One of the organizers for the event asked the group what songs they wanted to hear at the reunion. They all commented with one singular word, "Eighties." The organizer tried their best to be diplomatic, and calmly asked which particular songs they wanted to hear, which then prompted the response of, "Eighties." This went on for a while. Finally, someone commented with Starship's "We Built This City."

Needless to say, I didn't attend the reunion. I try my best to avoid situations where I might accidentally hear one note of Starship's "We Built This City." In a strange coincidence, some of my friends who didn't attend my high school organized a gothic/punk/industrial 'club kid' reunion the weekend prior to my high school reunion. During the early-to-mid '80s, the midwestern city I lived in had a great alternative music club scene. We would spend most of our evenings dressed in black and coiffed outrageously, dancing to Bauhaus' seminal track "Bela Lugosi is Dead," Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," amongst other doomy, angsty, deep cuts and non-hits. Read the rest

Bad Little Children's Books by "Arthur C. Gackley" darkly reimagines innocent kids' books from the mid 20th century.

Read the rest

Richard and Allen are kidnappers from a multigenerational kidnapping family. They're thingstarting a sustainable, green kidnapping practice that supports local farmers, green energy, and a community focus with biodegradable filthy rags and organic chloroform. They've got some great rewards for supporters, too -- I want a copy of their book Sustainable Kidnapping, with a forward by Michael Pollan!

Sustainable Kidnapping (Thingstarter Ep. 4 of 6)

(Thanks, Matt!) Read the rest

A very important "What the Fox Say?" parody by students from the 2016 class of Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

And, for the record, the spleen is involved in filtering blood and recycling red blood cells and also serves as a storage reserve of white blood cells. Now you know. Read the rest

In "Fixing Breaking Bad," a disgruntled visual effects artist on the series shows how he could have improved Breaking Bad, if only that meddlesome Vince Gilligan had stayed out of his way.

Watch the series here Read the rest

Last summer, Zach Weiner (creator the most excellent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic) ran a monumentally successful Kickstarter for a CC-licensed Choose-Your-Own-Adventure title called Trial of the Clone: An Interactive Adventure!.

I've finally gotten around to reading my copy and it's an absolute delight. Not only is it witty and often laugh-aloud funny -- it's also got a novel and well-thought-through game mechanic that introduces an element of tabletop RPG-playing to the system (instead of rolling dice, you flip randomly through the book and get your roll-value from the number at the bottom corner of the page).

The premise is a fun spoof of the Star Wars trilogy. You're an orphaned clone (they decanted you in order to fill a hot market wherein rich people competed to adopt orphans, quickly exhausting the existing pool of orphans and giving rise to the practice of cloning; alas you were decanted just as the market crashed) and you're sent to live with a mystic cult of warriors who train you and enlist you in an intergalactic war. The humor is trenchant, never too on-the-nose, and never gets in the way of what turns out to be rather a good story. As an added bonus, "nearly all the proper names in the book are dirty words in Czech."

Profits from this book are donated to Fight for the Future, one of the activist groups that led the charge that killed SOPA last year.

Trial of the Clone [Amazon]

Trial of the Clone [SMBC] Read the rest