I have dozens upon dozens of assistants, like Jeff Koons, but unlike good old Jeffy, I’m not a total hack (yet). I also don’t pay my assistants anything, so there is that, too.

Uh oh! Here my assistant is trying to escape. Good thing my studio is surrounded by an alligator moat!

Sometimes I don't really even know what's going on in my sketchbook. I think I was watching Dune at the time?

Ayn Rand’s Adventures In Wonderland: The Complete Graphic Novel

RIP, but still, don't believe in miracles

Something rather sad happened on Friday. Jeanne Bice died. Most of you probably don’t know much about Jeanne, because you don’t watch countless hours of QVC, where for many many years she consistently sold a self-styled brand of the silliest, most obviously terrible clothes on earth, called QUACKER FACTORY. It’s a testament to her as a saleswoman that she could sell such insane sequin-clad kitsch so consistently to people. She invented her own subculture, the Quackers, as they call themselves. They are defined as human beings by their love of Quacker Factory clothing as well as cruising. Quackers receive their power from the awkward compliments they receive based on their silly clothing. They also spend a lot of money on QVC, obviously.

As I’ve previously said, marketing is awful, and Jeanne must be counted among the throngs of humans who love to sell people stuff they don’t need. Still, Jeanne was such an entertaining, insane presensce on television, it was impossible not to enjoy her and her bizarre for-no-reason headband. She was the one human on QVC who never appeared overly plastic or rehearsed, she designed visionary clothing, and clearly didn’t care what other people thought of her. She will be missed. Sadly, QVC doesn’t even acknowledge her death on their front page. Jeanne was their greatest star, but clearly death doesn’t sell.

On the Quacker Factory main page a eulogy appears, which reads as a strange edorsement of QVC from beyond the grave.

She loved QVC.  Everything about it.  She loved the people: the executives who ran it, and the production people who worked so hard to make every show perfect.  She loved the famous stars who appeared there, and had to pinch herself when others considered her one.

She loved the hosts of her shows, her buyers and all the people who worked with her and for her to make Quacker Factory clothes a reality.

She was better than QVC. RIP Jeanne Bice.

July 20, 1939 — June 10, 2011

There is a ritual we have, where we fear each new Perry production will redeem his reputation. I say, “What if this one is better? What if it’s a good movie?” I always ask this because my human brain is now so dependent on irony to function, if Tyler Perry made a good movie it would be sort of like an aging alcoholic quitting the drink only to find his or her body unable to process the humors which the human machinery naturally produces (sincerity and goodwill). Luckily my fears are usually assuaged rather quickly. The closest Tyler (we are on a first name basis , despite never having met) has come to “inspiring” me (which I’m told is the #1 best emotion in film, inspiration!) is his film I Can Do Bad All By Myself, due to Taraji P. Henson’s skillful performance, but mostly due to the fact that the television I saw the film on had a brightness setting set very low, making the film appear darker and more “gritty” than his previous work. Of course in reality, that movie is just as over-lit as every other thing he’s done, but somehow turning on the dark (like Spiderman), made it easier to take his work seriously despite the bizarre slapstick violence (with no consequences) which characterize the Tyler Perry experience.

Guys, look! I'm making ART.

For Colored Girls, which was adapted by Tyler from Ntozake Shange’s Tony-nominated play, lacks Perry’s signature dialogue style (trains crashing into one another) and is replaced by drunken slam poetry. Yes, For Colored Girls is the Tyler Perry Art-haus film. The word “fuck” is even injected a couple of times. Tyler is really stepping out, getting that R-rating, he is so brave! The story follows 9 women who somehow all have a verbal IQ of 180, sort of like The Gilmore Girls, but with more poverty and also Janet Jackson (now a Perry regular). The last time we saw Janet was when she destroyed a room full of glass furniture in Why Did I Get Married, Too? Janet tries to channel a bit of that (admittedly hugely satisfying scene) into her For Colored Girls character, a high-powered fashion magazine editor, but is too busy hating poor people for no reason, and also finding out that her trapeziuslly endowed husband is an unsubtle homo. This is somewhat ironic considering she works for a fashion magazine and would constantly be swarmed by swathes of gay men. You would think Janet would have developed a better ‘dar than that, but it is true that those down-low gays are xtra sneaky. Janet doesn’t really have the range for the role, and it doesn’t help that the expressiveness of her face is limited by the gobs of botulism she and (pretty much all) her fellow cast members inject into their foreheads.

I'm still not sure.

Before delving into the most bizarre aspects of the film, something must be said about the all-around awesome Whoopi Goldberg, who performs admirably as a religious zealot with a taste for white robes and hoarding disorders. Whoopi really commits to the role, and it’s hard not to take her seriously. Loretta Devine, too, performs with a nuance and style that has rightfully made her famous. Unfortunately her role as a nurse is not particularly interesting. The best thing about Tyler Perry is that he consistently keeps under-utilized black actors working, but when the rest of the cast is competing with the emotionless carbonite-face of Janet Jackson, what can they do? Because this is 2011, and reality no longer matters, everyone must have a frozen face, which is odd because it makes one wonder how all these poverty stricken women afforded all that botox. Perhaps they went to rich-lady Janet’s house for an injectables party?

This is Janet's angry face.

It’s not easy being a colored girl ( so-called because each woman represents a color, like in The Power Rangers). When one goes to get a back-alley abortion, she is greeted by Macy Gray, who pretty much plays herself, a mumbling amateur whose rusty instruments produce inadequate and disappointing results. The abortion is unsatisfactory and about as heavy-handed as you imagine it to be. The other major dramatic turning point in the film is when Janet Jackson’s poor assistant confronts her alcoholic beau, who for seemingly no reason throws their two children out of a three-story window, killing the two adorable scamps. Was Janet Jackson comfortable with this scene? It’s awfully reminiscent of her brother’s legendary baby-hanging-over-the-balcony incident. How did an alcoholic get those children so neatly out the window? Not even MJ was so dextrous as to stick two children out of a window at once.

To return to the topic of dialogue, the movie is highly stylized, retaining the poetic style of the play. According to Wikipedia, the original play is pretty good. Tyler does no justice to the play’s style of soliloquizing, though—appearing as bizarrely overwritten Deviantart-style poetry translated into Japanese and back again by a homeless person who went to a Def Poetry Jam in 1998. The result is often totally incomprehensible, and worse, boring. Below is an example of dialogue from the script delivered by the totally forgettable dance instructor Yasmine.

She gets raped like 5 minutes later

YASMINE: I love dance more than I waz maduh-huh, uh-huh, more thanwhen I discovered Archie Shepp & subtle blues don’t cha know I wore out the magic of juju heroically resisting being possessed.Oooooooooooooh the sounds sneakin in under age to slug’s to stare at’a real ‘artiste’ ans every word outta imamu’s mouth waz gospel. And if Jesus couldn’t play a horn like Shepp wazn’t no need for colored folks to bear no cross at all and dance is my thank-you for music and I love you more than dance more than Aureliano Buendia loved macondo more than Hector Lavoe loved himself. More than the lady loved gardenias. More than Celia loves Cuba or Graciela loves el son more than the flamingoes love bein pretty. Te amo mas que  te amo mas que, we’re here. I had the best time.

In the hands of a more skillful director (like Michael Bay,) someone could maybe make sense of that, but whatever works on stage clearly lacks for context in Perry’s bizarre universe. Despite everyone’s genius level verbal IQ, everyone comes off as a blathering, self-obsessed sod. It’s another factor which contributes to the clumsiness of the entire ordeal. Another example: Tyler transitions from scene to scene by having the women tangentially interact with one another, transfering our focus from woman to woman to woman. It’s ambitious, and in the hands of a more subtle storyteller (Paul Verhoeven), it may have worked. The camera seems as if it’s operated by a bobbing voyeur, which works well enough, but is then spliced with hyper-stylized art shotz like the one below. Tyler surely got an A on this assignment when he turned it in for his Intro to Film class at University of Pheonix.

WATCH OUT FOR THAT GAY, JANET!

We’ve all seen Tyler Perry masturbate before (he usually performs under the name MADEA), but this is surely his most furiously masturbatory venture yet.

Fun Factor:%74.8

Please don't believe in miracles, it's just a lie to sell you garbage!

Let’s get something straight. Advertisers do not care about you. Not at all. No matter how much they insist they care about you, they don’t. They are lying to you. Anytime an advertiser has ever made an emotional appeal to you, they are flat-out manipulating you. Never forget that.

You see, advertisers ONLY job, the ONLY thing they are paid to do, is trick you into buying stuff you don’t need. You may say, “well Benjamin, what about INFORMATION? Don’t advertisers provide valuable INFORMATION to consumers?” Haha, no. Information, facts, truths, are not the stuff of advertising. Think about it, what good is information when you only have 20 seconds or 200 words to sell your sweat-shop garbage to dumb people? Pretty much the only place to get real consumer information is Consumer Reports, which no one reads, sadly.

When was the last time you heard a CLEAN COAL® commercial relate a basic fact like: “Coal mining is a hugely destructive and costly practice that finances yachts for rich people while forcing those West Virginia poors to die of the black lung.” LOL never, because CLEAN COAL® is “ENERGY FOR TOMORROW,” or some other horrible, meaningless, manipulative slogan.

These made a white man very rich, remember that!

It wouldn’t be such a problem if advertisers just admitted that their only job was to steal your money. Wouldn’t that be refreshing? If advertisers actually just admitted what they were after? Well that isn’t going to happen, because we’re just too stupid and we will fall for anything. Want proof? KINOKI FOOT PADS®. People bought them!

Take the company AMWAY®. Please! Are you familiar with AMWAY®? It’s a pyramid scheme. For some reason they don’t tell you that in their ads. Let’s take a look at one, shall we?

Well I’m convinced! Positivity is great! Wait, no it isn’t. Positivity is just an easy substitute for actual facts, like:

Amway is a huge corporation, and like many corporations, they have been targeted often as a pyramid selling scam. A large amount of Amway’s profits come from business tapes, books and compact discs rather than from direct selling. Other controversies surrounding Amway include tax evasion and customs fraud. In 1983, Amway was fined 25 million Canadian dollars (CAD) after being found guilty of both. Amway is also very vocal regarding reports of deception and has tried to shut down Internet sites that have run reports on their practices.

POSITIVITY! That’s what you should take away from AMWAY®, positivity! They positively love exploiting people, for money! AMWAY® was also featured on the Celebrity Apprentice this season— they got an 1 1/2 hour-long infomercial made for them by a bunch of celebrities and NBC KABLETOWN. Do NBC or Donald Trump care that AMWAY® is a pyramid scheme? No, because they just want to sell you garbage as well— positivity!

FUCK YOU

Remember how, for the last 2000 years, how it was horrible to be a gay person? If you lost the genetic lottery and ended up as one of those %5-ish of people who happen to be gay, you had a guaranteed miserable life. Imagine, never being allowed to be a fully realized person, for 2000 years, imagine being lonely and sad and depressed and suicidal your entire life! The simple and profound joy of being able to TO BE YOURSELF was denied to millions of men and women throughout history thanks to the pope and lots of other rotten institutions.  Well, thankfully SEALY® has remedied all of that with the ad on the right (found at the excellent Sociological Images). Isn’t it great that SEALY® supports gay people in 2011? Hell no it isn’t. Where was SEALY® during the AIDS crisis? Were their award-winning POSTUREPEDIC® mattresses supportive of the entire generation of (now dead) gays who had the incredible courage to live their lives AS THEMSELVES in an environment that was openly hostile to their existence? Haha, maybe if SEALY® sold coffins.

Fun facts about SEALY®: SEALY® is owned by an even larger mega-company called BAIN CAPITAL®, which is a private equity firm. They own DOMINOS®, STAPLES®, and lots of other terrible businesses. Do you know who founded BAIN CAPITAL®? Mitt Romney did. So does this ad mean MITT ROMNEY® supports the disgusting sexual habits of gays? DRUDGE SIRENS. Clearly Mitt Romney doesn’t care about you, and neither does SEALY®. No one in advertising cares about you, if they pretend to care about you, it means there is money in your pocket, so congratulations on having money! But never ever get it into your head that advertisers care about blacks or gays or women or being “green.” They only care about where their money comes from, and if an advertiser says they care about your race, class, or minority, it means their money comes from you.

Edit: This piece was posted prior to news of Jeanne Bice’s death  (the lady in the picture up top), I posted some thoughts on that here.

This stuff is LITERALLY rotten and still tastes better than VELVEETA®

Did you know that the Chinese HATE milk? As a culture, they just aren’t into the stuff, they would rather eat tofu that’s been submerged in rotting vegetable matter than take a sip from a cow’s teet. Culturally, this is due to a perception about milk being unclean (when you think about it, you ARE drinking the homemade PEDIALITE® of a cow’s mammary glands so maybe they are on to something). I do feel lucky though, because I was born into a culture that values milk, and by extension cheese. Cheese is surely one of the best things about western civilization, because it’s just cheese, and it can’t bomb anyone! It is just too bad we have a habit of pasteurizing all our dairy products.

Pasteurization is when you heat something, in this case milk, to a certain temperature to reduce the potential for pathogens which might prematurely sour the food and make people sick. It’s actually a very useful thing because it prevents many people from getting sick every year. Hooray public health! We can all drink as much NESQUIK® flavored milk product as we want and never worry about being infected by that killer e-coli stuff that 20/20 tells me about all the time, on television. You may have heard Europe is having one of these e-coli problems right now, which means it’s an excellent time for people to write opinions on the subject for the famous gossip blog site CNN.com. Alex B. Berezow, an actual scientist writes:

(CNN) — The strain of E. coli that has killed at least 25 people and sickened more than 2,600 others in Europe is a terrifying reminder that killer microbes lurk in places where we least expect them. Though it is not a reason to panic, this incident should force us to rethink some important food safety issues.

One good place to start would be to completely ban the sale of raw milk and juice.

Jesus Christ, no. This is why we can’t have nice things— like cheese and milk that don’t taste like cardboard. Instead of actually thinking about regulating the production of sensitive products effectively, let’s just ban them altogether, because of Europe! I think we should ban cows altogether because they fart all over the place and ruin the climate and also they make you fat. Aren’t obesity and cow farts a more important public health concern than raw milk? Apparently not.

Excrement on noodles

Berezow is an actual PHD, which is strange because I didn’t think they let people with specialized knowledge anywhere near a newsroom these days. And while I certainly have respect for his credentials, I can’t for the life of me understand why this piece exists. First, getting unpasteurized milk and cheese in this country is already damn near impossible, and as he notes, regulations are already in place to keep the dirty cow juice from crossing state lines. It’s just bizarre that the European e-coli crisis, (which is still a mystery), would prompt someone in the US to want to CLAMP DOWN on that disgusting un-boiled cow milk which is already almost impossible to get in the land of the free.

The Europeans actually have excellent regulations regarding raw-milk, many producers are required to wear the equivalent of a milk haz-mat suit while juicing the cow. Because of these regulations, cheese in France actually has a taste. That’s what they don’t tell you about pasteurization— it makes cheese taste pretty blah, it’s sort of like ordering a plain pizza from DOMINOS® instead of the MEAT LOVERS PIZZA® with extra VELVEETA®. It’s just not as good! Of course, it would be silly to suggest that we stop pasteurizing everything. Knowing how American dairy production works, were we to stop pasteurizing everything, %90 of America would be dead in 30 days because of all the cow shit and dead rats that would never be boiled away by the ghost of Louis Pasteur.

Pour some VELVEETA® on it!

If any of you doubt the glory of unpasteurized cheese, take a trip to your local farmers market and TRY to find something unpasteurized, trust me. Or you could just melt a block of VELVEETA® onto a plate full of saltenes and call it dinner, either way.