Cover of National Velvet with Liz Taylor

Why did she die at a fairly young age, 79? I looked it up in several sources, and it was congestive heart failure. That can slow you down. As I understand it, your heart becomes this squishy thing, not like a strong muscle, so your blood kind of swishes around, instead of squirting properly all over. Your legs are what the medical profession calls a “second heart.” That is, when you walk, they push the blood back up to your heart that gravity has let fall down to your feet. So, it’s healthy to walk. And not so healthy that she was in a wheelchair the last few years.

Turns out I’ve hardly seen any of her movies. Mostly, I admire her for being outspoken, and for appearing in public without much (any?) plastic surgery. You have no idea how hard it is for older women in Hollywood. Hell, even a good number of the girls on The Bachelor have had things done, even at 25! (although it’s mostly boob jobs.)

My Elizabeth Taylor filmography:

Jane Eyre – I think I saw it. I read the book, great girls book.

National Velvet - Yes, read the book (all the horse books I could find) and saw the movie. There may have been some tears.

Little Women – probably. I saw one version, and liked it a lot. Who was she, Jo? And I read the book several times.

Image via Wikipedia - Elizabeth Taylor taking off her shoe

Ivanhoe – I think I had to see it in high school. But I might be getting it mixed up with the Ivanhoe Reservoir I see every day.

Cleopatra – Yes. I remember thinking she didn’t look that beautiful to me. She and Richard B. had some chemistry, though.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – I hate this play. It was originally a play, then a movie. A married couple battle it out, and they’re not as clever as they think they are, but they sure are mean. It makes you squirm. If you saw the Emmy- nominated episode of The Office where Michael and Jan give a dinner party (the only dinner party) — like that.

A Little Night Music – I love this movie! Saw it as a play, too. It’s kind of like Glee for theater-goers, romantics, and sophisticates.

Cartoon after the jump. 

national velvet horse mourns elizabeth taylor's passing

Not what you expected for Ms Taylor’s eulogy?

Rob Tornoe, a talented cartoonist out of NJ,  posted on Facebook:
Who’s going to draw the first political cartoon of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra being carried to the pearly gates?

Which was funny because so many cartoonists will do/have done that. It looks weird to me to have editorial cartoonists draw heaven, just like gag cartoonists do, but I think death is hard to do well.

Daryl Cagle has several blogs, which is very confusing, but I managed to find his collection of Elizabeth Taylor cartoons. I’m not going to name the cartoonists, because there are 3 or 4 of the most hideous portraits I’ve ever seen there, and 4 have the SAME drawing of just her eyes! Poor Liz. You can make up your own mind whether Gocomics (which has most of the same people) is any better.

Interpretation of Elizabeth Taylor cartoon

Cartoon caption: National Velvet, the horse speaks to us about how he misses Liz Taylor. (title) IF NATIONAL VELVET WAS LIKE MR. ED I m-i-i-s-s L-i-i-z! Elizabeth Taylor, 1932-2011.

National Velvet was one of her first movies, when she was just a teen, so I just went with it. I titled it 2 ways: the one above, and also, IF NATIONAL VELVET COULD TALK. I wasn’t sure if most readers would know about Mr. Ed, an old TV show which is still on TV in syndication, and also spawned some fun comic books.  In any case, Mr. Ed, the name of the horse, only talked with his owner Wilbur, so no one else knew he could talk. From the theme song:

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, And no one can talk to a horse of course. That is, of course, unless the horse, is the famous Mister Ed.

Funny set up, but I can’t remember what else happened! Mr. Ed talked with a loud whinny, of course, so I tried to write his words like that.

And that’s my Liz Taylor take.

My latest cartoon for Psychology Today: How to Write a Personals Ad for Love.

More cartoons:

1. Wordless Wednesday: Not ready for primetime Slate cartoon.
2. The White Rabbit Cancels the Tea Party.

bank of japan throwing money into the country to stabilize the stock market

Of course, I may have the entire scenario wrong, but I got a nice colorful cartoon out of it, with a red Japanese sun on top. (Some of the editorial cartoons I saw on Japan had only the sun!  Oh, well, I took the path less trodden.:))

More cartoons:

1. Nuclear radiation from Japan!!!!!!
2. Banks timed failures to hide behind the election. Right?

cartoon on building mosque near 9/11 Twin Towers

Interesting story of man who burned the Koran on 9-11 and then was FIRED from his job at the NJ Transit Authority. From NY Daily News:

Derek Fenton, 39, of Bloomingdale, N.J., burned the book during a protest on the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11 outside Park51, the controversial mosque slated to be built near Ground Zero.

“Mr. Fenton’s public actions violated New Jersey Transit’s code of ethics,” an agency statement said.

“NJ Transit concluded that Mr. Fenton violated his trust as a state employee and therefore [he] was dismissed.”

“He said, ‘This is America,’ and he wanted to stand up for it, in a Tea Party kind of way,” a police source said.

Another police source said Fenton described himself as a “loyal American” exercising his “right to protest.”
If Fenton was fired for burning the Koran while off-duty, his First Amendment rights probably were violated, Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said.

I would think so! The guy is doing this on his own time, and certainly not representing NJTransit! I don’t believe any book should be burned, let alone religious books. But a book isn’t as bad as a flag, and he did have a right to his beliefs.

Myself, I did some research on the poor souls who were forced to jump from the Twin Towers on Saturday September 11, 2010. Very interesting, and I may post it here. It was the most horrifying part of the event to me, and perhaps to others.

And I think even Obama realizes now that he may have put a big schism in the Democratic party for voters, for him to act like this is no big deal. Freedom of religion, yes. But it’s not like everyone can just build wherever they want to anyway. Zoning, neighborhoods, height, number of similar businesses, traffic congestion – these all regulate where building is allowed.

And so should a major event in our history.

And I was really pissed off when someone on Facebook wrote this on someone’s page:

Yes, while I honor those who died, I never cease to flinch at the hyperbole about freedom surrounding 9/11 when it seems to me that since 2001 we have played into the terrorists’ hands by ultimately forgetting some of our core-values—-like freedome of religion. And don’t get me started on the “marketing” of 9/11.

This started a long discussion of me disagreeing with all the other libs there who seem to think 9-11 was just a dream or a movie or a fantasy. It’s almost as if…and feel free to correct me here…they’re jealous that conservatives can point to an actual event that happened. As if this is a PARTISAN issue, instead of history! Amazing.

There are probably many more comments on this cartoon on Gocomics, (Sorry, no link now. Uclick threw away 2 years of my cartoons on Slate, Gocomics and Yahoo News when they kicked me out of Gocomics.) and I made a few minor changes in the drawing there.

For search engines: GROUND ZERO and GROUND HALF A BRAIN. Ground Zero is the Twin Towers and Ground Half a Brain is the White House. (meaning Obama.)

More cartoons:

1. 9/11 Cartoon in 2009.
2. The cop who ordered green ice cream.

9-11 Photographer Unknown.

Famous Falling Man photo from 9/11. Apparently the photographer made several photos of this man, one of which shows him aiming straight down, like an arrow.

I’m not sure if this is the same photograph sequence that Esquire talks about, although it’s obviously a tall man.  Esquire gets a little dramatic talking about what the AP photographer, Richard Drew, had in mind with his photos, but this still gives me chills:

They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died.

More cartoons:

1. 9/11 Cartoon in 2009.
2. What Barack Obama could learn from Balloon Boy Dad.

Maybe I was wrong. And maybe cartoonists can help. I’ve never read editorial cartoons until about a year ago, so I had no experience to draw upon. But cartoonists leaped right into the fray, even as corpses sailed across the tv. In one sense, I guess it was brave of them(the cartoonists.) Here are some cartoons that worked, and some that didn’t. (Cartoons are after the jump.)

I originally read this story in AP, but it’s disappeared now. From Fox News:

All told, some 132 people have been pulled alive from beneath collapsed buildings by international search and rescue teams, she said.

Experts say the chance of saving trapped people begins diminishing after 72 hours. One mother still missing her children said it’s too soon to give up.

“Maybe there’s a chance they’re still alive,” said Nicole Abraham, 33, wiping away tears as she spoke of hearing the cries of her children — ages 4, 6 and 15 — for the first two days after the quake.

Oh, no worry! The entire report was copied from the AP and pasted on Puff Post as if the reporters were working for them.

Only a small number of funerals have been held since the 7.0-magnitude quake struck, with most people buried anonymously and without ceremony in mass graves on the outskirts of the city. An estimated 200,000 people died, according to Haitian government figures cited by the European Commission. The United Nations said Saturday the government had preliminarily confirmed 111,481 bodies, but that figure does not account for corpses buried by relatives.

The LA Times has word from yet another survivor found 11 days after the quake:

He told of passing out in the rubble, dreaming at times that he could hear his mother crying. The furniture in his room had collapsed around him in such a way that it created a small space for him amid the ruins of the house. He had no food. When he got desperately thirsty, he drank his urine.

Also Friday, an 84-year-old woman was said by relatives to have been pulled from the wreckage of her home, though doctors said her condition was critical.

People, don’t give up looking for survivors!!! Especially now that we have Chile with the same problem. I don’t think it’s the rescuers that give up, however, it’s the government. But miracles happen, they happen every day – (thanks to Denny on Gray’s Anatomy – I miss him so much).

I saw a lot of cartoons use this idea of the name of the country with a lot of cracks in it – get it? – the earthquake. I thought the first one was very clever – I never would have thought of it. After a few of them..But remember, most readers see just the one, in their own paper, and think their cartoonist is very clever, and don’t know that a dozen other cartoonists are doing the same concept. You can learn from the Internet, not just imitate, so let’s hope the identical ideas are just coincidence.

I thought this one by Gary Markstein from gocomics.com was better than the other similar ones I saw.

Jeff Parker from cagle.com has an easy, clear style, which I always like, but I picked this one because I was impressed with how quiet and yet effective the idea was, and it’s how most of us get through the day – thinking about something horrific, and then finally acting on it. (I picked this out yesterday, but to my great surprise, Jeff and Steve Kelley (both editorial cartoonists, and Steve is one of my favorite op-ed cartoonists – I have one of his books!) just started a new comic strip today, which isn’t political at all! More on that later.)

I am not into scratchy black and white drawing styles from the 19th century, sorry – and they look their worst online. But I thought John Deering from gocomics.com did this difficult idea well – that both the buried Haitians and the UN were having problems with no seeming help.

Mike Luckovich from cagle.com did a nice visual here. Maybe this is a cliche, or a classic concept, the hourglass, but it’s new to me, and I thought the imagery of the bodies falling to their death was powerful. Sad.

Signe Wilkinson at gocomics. com is one of my top 3 political cartoonists! Great style, color, ideas, and she hardly ever misses, which may be the most amazing part of all!

Small World by Tom Briscoe from gocomics.com is 2nd only to Ted Rall in popularity in Gocomics. I just noticed that recently, after a year in there myself. I’ve only seen Small World once or twice, but why the subscribers…? This just seems weak to me.

I’m a sucker for a good graphic! The hands outstretched is a popular motif, as you can see even from my little collection here, but the bold colors and stylistic font and careful placement of elements make this my favorite. Thanks, Deng Coy Miel from cagle.com !

Thanks to all the cartoonists, and especially to Gocomics.com and politicalcartoons.com that offer some of the best cartoonists in the world, 24-7.

More cartoons:

1. Who doesn’t hate AIG?
2. Ted Rall scolds Time Magazine for their Top 10 cartoons.

I know Ted only slightly, from a gallery in Santa Monica  that we were both in, Impolitic, that had rather fantastic parties. (Hi, Josh!) We also share the same publishers (NBM and Andrews McMeel), although my books there are about chocolate, and true love cartoons, and  unfortunately he dropped the ball on those topics. (America Gone Wild: Cartoons by Ted Rall and The Year of Loving Dangerously). We’re also both in Slate and Gocomics.

But we had similar cartoons this weekend, both about murder by the state (capital punishment), although we were attracted to different stories. I am disgusted and appalled by states that still believe that they get to play God and decide when someone dies. On PURPOSE. This includes California, my current state. In the incident last week, Ohio did its damndest to kill Mr. Romell Broom for allegedly killing and raping a 14 year old girl. They couldn’t find a vein to torture him with their lethal drugs, which suffocate you and stop your heart. (Why didn’t they try waterboarding?) CNN points out that Ohio has had a few problems in this area before.

The  LA Times had a good article about the attempted execution, saying the Ohio asshat officials wouldn’t allow him to talk to his attorney as it stretched out to 2 hours and 20 minutes, and that he started to cry, covering his face, after an hour. They also said he flinched when they inserted a shunt in his leg. Can you imagine that?!

Weisberg said California is a prime example of a state that retains a death penalty in theory yet rarely conducts executions despite having the nation’s biggest death row, with 685 condemned prisoners.

In California, executions have been on hold since early 2006: Lethal injections have failed to fully anesthetize inmates in six of the 13 executions conducted in the state since capital punishment resumed in 1976.

I think at this point, everyone would agree that it is cruel and unusual punishment in his case. Well, maybe not Ohio. I always liked them before. Not so much now.

Ted’s cartoon after the jump. 

Ted Rall is talking about a problem in Texas, a love affair between the lawyer and judge!

There are lots of comments there, so I’ll let you figure this out by reading them. I only interpret my own cartoons, thanks. :) But at least we both mentioned Texas.

Caption on my cartoon: Mr. Romell (got the name wrong, should be Broom) was bad, children. So, Ohio tried to killhim for 2 hours, until he finally wept. But don’t worry, they’ll kill him DEAD next time!” “Texas does it better.” I don’t know why I decided to do this in the classroom, but how spooky the condemned man looks with his head raised! I’m sure it terrified the children!

Except for the bratty one in the corner.

More cartoons:

1. An odd couple of cartoonists.
2. California is the place you ought to be – maybe.

It’s unbelievable, this wretched fire is still burning in places, several weeks later. KHTS:

The Station Fire is 94 percent contained, with full containment now expected September 22. So far, the incident has consumed 160,557 acres of the Angeles National Forest which has not seen major fire activity in more than 40 years. It is the largest fire in the recorded history of Los Angeles County and the 10th largest in California history.

As it turns out, my cartoon is right; there was an arsonist, although I have much stronger words for him than crazy. They’ve established that it’s arson – caused by “some substance” – and it’s homicide, since 2 firefighters died. (also, at least thousands of animals, birds, reptiles and trees – DB)

I was really happy that Daily News ran this cartoon the week of the fire. Not much to contribute, but at least I was doing something to bring awareness to the tragedy. I also took photos and posted them on my park blog; I wanted to get the word out that once again, the whole Los Angeles area is vulnerable to wildfires, because OUR TRUCKS AREN’T STRONG ENOUGH.

But FINALLY -okay, I won’t ask why it took them so long – good old neighbor to the North Canada sent us 2 Super Scoopers! . :( Best part? We get to keep the SuperScoopers til December!

Because I wanted to get the fawn just right – vulnerable, yet real – I looked up photos and for some strange reason, found several of fawns with horses! I could not believe how beautiful, cute,  and squee-worthy these were! Aahhh…!

More photos like this at gentlehorses.com.

And the animalliberationfront includes a story of how they saved this fawn from some coyotes!! Amazing!

Cartoon Caption: Smokey the Bear asks, Can YOU prevent forest fires? Government bailouts? US Forest Service? Local Fire Depts? Crazy arsonists? Careless smokers?

I know, government bailouts don’t seem to fit in with the rest, but the money the state got SHOULD have been used for fire protection in this terrible fire-prone state.

More cartoons:

1. 9-11.
2. California is the place you ought to be – maybe.

* UPdate: Different version of this in Psychology Today.

I have a growing collection of Sad Cartoons, it appears. I could have put this in the Holiday category, but that wouldn’t have been appropriate, when this is a memorial cartoon for September 11.

I forget that holidays are big in newspapers. Newspapers, and in schools! I never forget what happened that day, of course, but wasn’t paying attention to the calendar. Fortunately, I follow Daryl Cagle on Facebook and Twitter, and he put up a whole slew of September 11, 9/11, and 9-11 cartoons, no matter how you spell it. I noticed some good ones there. A lot of the cartoonists used the “eleven” part in Sept 11 to be the two Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Very clever…the first 3 cartoons, anyway.

So then I had to work to think of a totally different idea from that!

I always think of the sky that day. The black smoke, the falling, burning tower, the falling bodies – when I make the effort to think of someone besides myself I think about those people in the Towers over and over, and the terrible decision so many made: burn or jump. I remember telling a friend at the time that I couldn’t understand why they didn’t have helicopters right there to swing ropes or whatever to the poor suffering people. He made fun of me, but I still think it was logistically quite feasible.

But anyway, the sky was so blue and beautiful, like I never think of NYC looking usually. With the whole tragedy going on, in it, around it, and under it, it stayed that way. It’s now in my permanent collection.

Caption: “Remember? That’s the color of the sky on Sept 11.” “And we’ll never forget all the brave men and women who were there.”

More cartoons:

1. Building a mosque near Ground Zero? It’s a NO-brainer.
2. 9-11.

The worst part is wondering if someone slashed it – which I have had happen before – and my horror that anyone could be that evil, that malicious, destructive, and just plain awful.

Now, I’m not saying the Pope is evil. I am sure some of his intentions are good, very good. But he certainly comes out with destructive, condemning statements a lot, doesn’t he? No birth control, no condoms, no homosexuality…no money, no health care, no education.

Of course, having less abortions is a worthy goal. But I suspect Obama means less abortions by better birth control, which of course, the Pope ALSO hates.  More kids and more overcrowding, and more of US Catholics, is the papal edict! I am pro-choice, as if that isn’t obvious, and I think the Pope could care less about women, or women’s rights.

I think the cartoon is explanatory, but here I go, anyway: hanging this grotesque poster up, of the Pope with the monster from Alien coming out of his mouth, would be enough to have women go screaming out of the clinic, thus, less abortions. I took great pleasure in researching what the Alien monster really looked like – a fantastic movie. But then I decided he just looked a little…phallic, so I redrew it even scarier, below. Google isn’t always right the first time, btw. More  horrific cartoon after the jump.

Something kind of strange happened while I was coloring this. Do you see that big white splotch above the crucifix? (I’m not Catholic, and this is the first time I ever drew a crucifix.) I don’t know how the white square got there. Yes, it’s like the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast, or in a tree. I mean I’m not the best at Photoshop, but I don’t make mistakes this big or strange. I realized it looked as if there was a window casting light on the cross, which was a nice effect, so I left it.

You know, this is a scary cartoon, even to me.

* Time has a photo essay on Obama meeting the Pope. Aren’t they kind of late on this? Had to take time to get the film developed?

Cartoon caption:”Obama promised the Pope less abortions in the U.S. To help, this poster will be hung in all women’s health clinics. ©D. Barstow, All rights reserved.

More cartoons:

1. Barack Obama has a dream, too.
2. Cartoons on murder, a shark, and an octopus.

tasers as torture cartoon, 5th amendment cartoon

Nancy Pelosi seems so far away now, doesn’t she? There was a story that didn’t last long. Or tptb buried it! Yet it was just last month…

I’m sure she did know about the CIA tortures in Guantanamo Bay. Politico says she did. She was probably only given a few details, and didn’t quite understand it: no one is proud of torture, even, or maybe especially, the armed services. Many decision-makers just believe it has to be done. I’ve read that it’s not an efficient way to get confessions,  but I’m quite sure I would squeal about anything in the world after about 1 minute of it. Maybe less.

News reports say only 3 of the Gitmo detainees were actually waterboarded, which everyone agrees is the worst kind of torture. One of these guys claimed responsibility for beheading Daniel Pearl – and nothing is more heinous than beheading someone, in my kingdom. But US News & World Report says:

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, has claimed responsibility for beheading Pearl, but it recently came to light that the al Qaeda operative was waterboarded more than 180 times in 30 days. This has left some of Pearl’s colleagues skeptical of the confession.

Um, me, too, now.   This is certainly going overboard. Who’s telling the truth?

I’ve written before that I hate torture more than murder. Still, I do think that as a LAST RESORT it MIGHT be necessary to save many many more lives. Just seems like common telephone marketers and “people persons” like bomb squad talkers, could do a better job at getting people to talk, doesn’t it?

But let’s jump to our legal torture, Tasers. Police in the US have been using Tasers for what, 8 years? Reading the news, it appears that most, if not all major cities use it. Electrocuting our own people. I remember the first (and only, thank God) time I saw it, on the news, when California Highway Patrol used it to subdue one of those very dangerous people, freeway joyriders, who drive at 40 mph on the freeway, helicopters circling, until they run out of gas. When I saw the officer (using that word loosely) shoot the driver, and saw his body twitching and convulsing for a good minute, obviously in excruciating pain, I burst into tears, and immediately called the LAPD to complain.

Some police have been tasered themselves, as a way for the department to inure themselves to the violence they were about to affect on others. They describe it as unbelievable, excruciating pain that first makes you rigid, as all muscles contract and then release, over and over.

When my first book was published I had a couple of headaches that were nerve based, from my neck, and sent me to the emergency room. It felt like an electric cattle prod is applied to your spine and I screamed and wept because of the jabbing pain. I’m sure the taser pain is much worse, but most of the time, no one remembers it.  They black out because of it, but observers can see them writhe and scream. Short-term memory loss – how convenient for the Taser company.

But beyond pain, how about DYING? Amnesty International has been keeping track of Taser deaths, but I see many more just reading the LA Times than they actually count at AI. In fact, I’ve been cutting out articles for a folder on this, and it’s quite full. People die frequently from getting Tasered. By our own police, to us.

This is a rather gentle cartoon, about a horrifying torture device. The Taser Company itself has a quaint explanation of how they got the name:

The name stems from an acronym created by the original inventor of TASER technology, John H. “Jack” Cover, former chief scientist of North American Aerospace’s Apollo Moon Landing Program. Jack’s favorite book character is Tom Swift of the Tom Swift Series, authored by Victor Appleton in 1910-1941. One of the books, TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE, inspired Jack to create the acronym TASER.

They have a picture on the home page of a mom and child who will buy one together, all family-like. That sounds like a winning combination.

Youtube of 72 year old grandmother being tasered. USA Today has an article from 2004 that says Seattle police used Tasers 500 times that year. CREEPY.  The UN Committee Against Torture condemns Tasers as being torture.

So do I.

More cartoons:

1. The 405 shuts down, but we gain our lives.
2. The cop who ordered green ice cream.