UMass cartooning legend Steve Lafler received a lot of emails when the following image appeared in the fashion mags:
The model is wearing headgear that UMass alumnus of a certain age would recognise. Lafler explains:
People have emailed me since yesterday regarding the appearance of a funny hat in New York during fashion week on a male model. The hat, from designer Thom Browne, looks just like the foil hood that my character Gerald Forge wore in my college comic strip, Aluminum Foil.
Gerald appeared with his side kick Benb for four years in the Massachusetts Daily Collegain. The strip was so popular in it's hey day in the late Seventies that the foil hat became the default Halloween costume for the tripping masses at UMass (yup, the late 70s saw Halloween become a three day psychedelic bacchanal at the UMass, Amherst campus).
Was Thom Browne even alive then?! Who knows. But I got a huge kick out of seeing Gerald's doppleganger on the runway. The only thing missing was a GIANT DOOBIE OF STINKY BUD!
As Steve explains, he also has a new book out:
Part entrepreneurial primer and part swashbuckling memoir with lots of hilarious anecdotes, Self Employment For Bohemians is available for $12.00 plus shipping. The book offers a lot of nut & bolts advice for freelancers, wound up with tales of my adventures in cartooning, publishing and running a wholesale custom T Shirt shop. Just like the header on this blog says, if having a regular 9 to 5 job is your idea of a living death, this is the book for you!
NEW YORK — New York's iconic Empire State Building will light up red and yellow Wednesday in honor of the 60th anniversary of communist China.
The Chinese consul, Peng Keyu, and other officials will take part in the lighting ceremony which will bathe the skyscraper in the colors of the People's Republic until Thursday, Empire State Building representatives said in a statement.
The upper sections of the building are regularly illuminated to mark special occasions, ranging from all blue to mark "Old Blue Eyes" Frank Sinatra's death in 1998 to green for the annual Saint Patrick's Day.
Just last week the tower turned bright red.
However, that was not to mark some other communist achievement, but the 70th anniversary of the film "The Wizard of Oz" in which Dorothy wears ruby slippers rather than the silver of the original L. Frank Baum novel.
So those are moral equivalents? The Wizard of Oz and Chairman Mao?
Hamp Things
This truck parked in downtown Northampton this morning reminded me of the amazing Paolo, still twittering away in New York City.
Is this sign in front of First Church serious?
On the woodland way downtown this morning after the rain stopped.
I came across this inspiring essay in the official publication of the Journal of UMass Amherst Asian American Student Association. However, it has worthwhile things to say to people of any background about the importance of individualism. It also illustrates how America's core values are being reborn through its immigrants, as many people born in America would not speak with such wisdom.
Asian American Apathy by Peter Cai
A professor somewhere once bragged to his class about giving Asian students full credit for participating in his course, despite not speaking in class. His reasoning? He said that he recognized that Asian cultures did not value speaking out, and that he was being equitable and fair in respecting that.
When we encounter things that are unpleasant or unfamiliar, we should never hide behind our cultural identities like come convenient shield. The professor eventually rescinded this policy, as he drew the ire of the other students in the class, including Asians.
Somewhere else, a prominent Chinese businessman ran for ward council three times in his hometown, a city that had pockets of town approaching 50% Asian-Americans. He lost overwhelmingly. It did not take much digging to find out why: the Asians did not vote.
Why do Asian Americans regard politics (and speaking out in general) with so much apathy today? Some may simply find it convenient to quietly ignore the call of duty. Many people prefer to not waste time in what they see as mostly a formality that does not affect their day-to-day lives. After all, what is one vote? Still others follow a Chinese adage: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down." And nobody wants to support a cause only to discover that it was the losing one. The result? Dismal Asian turnouts.
The apathy stretches back millennia. China was never a democracy. In ancient times, those who spoke out against the will of the emperor were killed. Nobody wanted to be the nail that stuck out. As late as the twentieth century, life was a communal affair where everyone shared in the toil and possesions of a rural collective whose sole purpose was subsistence farming. And without the allure of capitalism, few people had reasons to draw attention to themselves.
One exception was Mao Zedong, who seized power in the middle of the last century and killed tens of millions of Chinese citizens during the Great Leap Forward - the most ambitious and fundamentally flawed econonmic plan in the history of the world, where citizens starved to death in their own fields, even as their poor harvests were being exported as "surplus." Unbelievably, all of Chairman Mao's constituents went to great lengths to hide this fact, at one point secretly importing grain to show Mao an example of a successful field. HIs party lavished him with praise for his stunning success.
Throughout all this, nearly everyone, from his top advisers to his lowest peons, was complicit. Those who spoke out were jailed or murdered. Today Mao's story highlights the very worst of socialism and the forms of government that derive power arbitrarily, without input or consent by the people.
There are, of course, similar stories of tyranny at the hands of military dictators and their like from other parts of Asia. Most are still monarchies or oligarchies (masquerading as socialist republics) - with the notable exceptions of India and South Korea, which are democracies.
Today's generations of Asians do not worry much about political reform. Native Chinese worry about their job prospects and about electronics and fashion trends. People that are on average 300% richer than their parents were have little to complain about. And Big Brother is always watching: the press is controlled, the internet is filtered and political dissidents disappear without a trace. There is no revolution coming to Communist China, or North Korea or Vietnam.
Asians have a long and powerful cultural heritage - and yes, it is one that discourages individuality and nurtures the notion of a collective good at the expense of all else. It is a culture that was forged from generations of governance by tyranny, indoctrinated with the barbaric principle that the individual is less important than the welfare of the State, and that somehow these two ideals are at odds. Many Asian countries have a history of suppressing freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and perpetuating the hoax that someone else knows better than you do, that humans are not capable of governing themselves.
But today, here and now, we are in America. We have freedom of press and freedom of speech. Let's not blame our history and culture for our shortcomings. As Asian Americans, we must not subscribe to the fallacy of apathy and complicity with our government. We must always question its every move, debate its every intention, and do our duty as citizens to ensure that the spirit of democracy and liberty is not swept away by excuses and indifference.
We must vote.
And when the time is right, we must vote Asian Americans to the honor of public office - not simply because they are Asian, but when and if they are the ideal candidates, so that those nations to which we trace our ancestry will look at us in awe from across the ocean and follow our example.
In Hamp
A clever chalkboard ad in front of Sam's.
A candidate at the farmer's market.
I like the way the doors have been restored at the Academy of Music with all that ugly grey paint removed.
I'm slightly irked by this sign saying thankyou for the Community Preservation Act funds.
Since the CPA only has whatever funds the public gives them, why should we thank ourselves for spending our own money?
At Hampshire
I went to Hampshire College today to see an outdoor performance by Vermont's Bread and Circus. They've been playing a lot in the area recently.
The show is heavy on lefty propaganda, but it will make you laugh regardless of your ideology.
They had a good turnout and the weather was just gorgeous.
Today's Video
Lay your cards face up and play your last broken-hearted hand.
