josh pincus is crying

The challenge word this week on Illustration Friday is “soar“.

Hank Soar played nine seasons for the New York Giants and caught the game-winning touchdown pass in the 1938 NFL Championship Game against the Green Bay Packers at the Polo Grounds.
He coached the Providence Steamrollers in the Basketball Association of America (the forerunner to the NBA) in 1947.
His officiating in a baseball game during World War II drew the attention of Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack, who recommended him for an umpiring career. He became an American League umpire in 1950. He was the first base umpire when Yankees’ Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. He was again at first base on June 1, 1975 when Nolan Ryan of the California Angels pitched his fourth no-hitter. Soar also officiated in four All-Star Games, as well as the American League Championship Series in 1971. His on-field career ended in 1975, but was an assistant supervisor of umpires into the mid-1980s. He was greatly respected by players, a rarity among umpires, prompting Ted Williams to say “He’s absolutely consistent, that’s the most important thing in calling a pitch.”
Hank Soar died on Christmas Eve, 2001 at age 87.

The challenge on Monday Artday this week is an unusual one. It’s “children’s book“, with the actual challenge being “illustrate a page out of a childrens book you plan to make! If you do not plan to, just make an imaginary one!”

I chose “Zombie Jack and Jill”, a story I may write in the future (but unlikely that I will). I just thought the concept was funny.

Zombie Jack and Zombie Jill
Went up a hill
And came down with a bucket of blood.
They hungered for brains
And other remains
As they dragged themselves through the mud.

The challenge this week on illustrationfriday.com is “horizon“.

This reminds me of a joke. (Everything reminds me of a joke.)
A publishing company circulates a correction to a recently published book on skydiving.
The correction says: On page 47 of our publication “How To Skydive“, in the third paragraph, the line that reads “State zip code” should read “Pull rip cord“. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

This illustration represents one year since my first submission to illustrationfriday.com. 52 consecutive weeks.

The challenge word on sugarfrostedgoodness.com for this week is “santa“, of course.

First of all, as you may have figured by now, I do not celebrate Christmas. When I was a kid, we didn’t decorate for Christmas either. No lights. No tree. We weren’t Christian. And we didn’t feel bad or slighted in the least. We happily dragged out our plastic, electric menorah and twisted a new orange bulb into each socket with each new night of Chanukah. My mom would give my brother and me a token Chaunkah gift, usually chocolate coins and underwear or a pair of socks. My parents were both in the retail business and Christmas was a convenient day-off for holiday gift-giving. And considering the haphazard arrival of Chanukah, we could always count on December 25 coming the same time every year. But, I knew that there was no Santa. My mom would take me with her when she shopped for gifts for my brother and me. She always used the same “present hiding place” every year, the back of her closet. And I looked there every year. One year, I even caught my mom and dad assembling some toys for my brother and me. Plus, we didn’t have a fireplace. Our chimney lead to a closet in the den that housed our furnace. But, I also knew it wasn’t “Christmas” and I knew weren’t celebrating Christmas.

When I was an kid, I sat on Santa’s lap and had my picture taken. Sure, I watched “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and “Year Without a Santa Claus” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” every year. All of my non-Christian friends watched these shows, too. And we enjoyed them. I always thought Winter Warlock was cool.
And, although I am not a fan of holidays, I have never been offended when someone wished me “Merry Christmas”.

Most everyone knows the basic story of what Christmas commemorates, even if the details are a bit fuzzy. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus. After that, the facts are skewed. Nowhere in the Christian Bible is it stated when Jesus was born. December 25th was chosen as Jesus’ birthday 440 years after he died. The story of “no room at the inn” was most likely fabricated, as “house” was mistranslated as “inn”. In locales at the time (like Bethlehem), houses had shelters for their animals constructed of stone, not wood, built inside their homes. A “manger” is more of a feeding trough than a whole barn. And Jesus probably wasn’t born in one.
Similarly, the story of the Maccabees‘ triumph over the army of Antiochus IV Epiphanes is remembered on the celebration of Chanukah. The story is full of pride-filling symbols like a rag-tag band of unequipped soldiers overcoming tremendous odds and a one-day supply of oil miraculously lasting eight days. However, the storytelling stops when it gets to the part about the Maccabees being some of the most corrupt rulers. Maccabean rule caused dissent among those who desired religious freedom over political power and was responsible for one of the darker periods of Israel’s history.

Ron Everett founded United Slaves (US), a group of dissidents who challenged the Black Panthers for domination of the Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA.
Everett changed his last name to the African-sounding “Karenga” and awarded himself the title of “maulana,” which means “master teacher” in Swahili. In January 1969, about 150 students had gathered in the Afro-American Studies Center to discuss the increasing tensions between US and the Black Panthers. The Panthers took turns trashing Karenga. Karenga’s followers took umbrage. By the meeting’s end, Karenga had been soundly dissed by Panthers John Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter. A confrontation erupted as the Panthers exited the gathering and Huggins and Carter were shot dead.
In 1966, Ron Karenga invented Kwanzaa. He claims that his goal was to present an alternative holiday to Christmas. He stated, “…it was chosen to give a Black alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.” (An unknown sixteen-year-old minister, named Al Sharpton once explained that the celebration of Kwanzaa would perform the valuable service of “de-whitizing” Christmas.) The name Kwanzaa derives from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza“, meaning “first fruits”, an annual harvest festival. An additional “a” was added to make the word have seven letters to correspond to the seven days of the holiday. Swahili, an East African language, was chosen because of its widespread familiarity in the United States as a significant part of Africa, though most African-Americans have West African ancestry. Curiously, Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 through January 1, though harvest time in Africa is in October. Ears of corn play a major role in Kwanzaa. Corn is not native to Africa. It was first cultivated by Mayans in Mexico.
Five years after Karenga created Kwanzaa, he was convicted of felony assault and false imprisonment for assaulting and torturing two women from the US organization. Deborah Jones & Gail Davis, as described in testimony, were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. A hot soldering iron was placed in Ms. Jones’s mouth and placed against Ms. Davis’s face and one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths.
In 1975, Karenga was released from California State Prison and re-established the US organization under a new structure. One year later, he was awarded his first doctorate. In 1977, he formulated a set of principles called Kawaida, a Swahili term for “normal“. Karenga called on African-Americans to adopt his secular humanism and reject other practices as mythical. Central to Karenga’s collectivist doctrine are the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles of Blackness, which are reinforced during the seven days of Kwanzaa: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith). These principles correspond to Karenga’s notion that “the sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black.” The principle of “collective work and responsibility” can trace its roots to Marxism, a concept that Karenga has fully supported.
We shouldn’t be too quick to judge other people’s celebrations as right or wrong. Chances are that our own celebrations seem just as unusual. We all have a skeleton or two in our own closets. But, once you discover the facts, everything seems a little silly. And by the same token, Festivus doesn’t seem silly at all.

The challenge word on Monday Artday this week is “grandpa“.

Louis Marshall Jones was born on October 20, 1913 in Niagara, Kentucky. He spent his teenage years in Akron, Ohio where he began singing country music tunes on a local radio show. By 1935 his pursuit of a musical career took him to WBZ radio in Boston, where he met musician/songwriter Bradley Kincaid who gave him the nickname “Grandpa” due to his off-stage grumpiness at early-morning radio shows. Jones liked the name and decided to create a stage persona based around it.
Performing as “Grandpa Jones,” he played the banjo, yodeled, and sang mostly old-time ballads. He played a style of banjo called frailing, which gave it the rough backwoods flavor of his performances. He moved to Nashville and became part of the Grand Ole Opry and a regular cast member on the popular TV show, Hee Haw.
A resident of rural Ridgetop, Tennessee outside of Nashville, “Grandpa” Jones was a neighbor and friend of fellow musician David “Stringbean” Akeman. During 1946, “Grandpa” began working with Akeman, a fellow old-time banjo player and comedian. Jones and Akeman continued to work together on the Grand Ole Opry and later on Hee Haw, eventually becoming two of the show’s most popular performers. On a Saturday night in November 1973, Akeman and his wife, Estelle, were shot dead by robbers upon returning to their home. The Akemans’ bodies were discovered the following morning by “Grandpa”.
In 1997, “Grandpa” was still going strong when the Opry management helped him celebrate his fiftieth anniversary on the show. Jones had a severe stroke moments after his second Opry show performance on January 3, 1998, and he died February 19.

The challenge this week on illustrationfriday.com is “backwards“.

Bizarro is an enemy, of sorts, of Superman. He made his comic book debut in 1958 in Superboy #68. The original Bizarro was created when Superman was exposed to a “duplicate ray.” Bizarro lived in “the Bizarro World,” a cubical planet called Htrae (Earth spelled backwards) which operated under “Bizarro logic” (it was a crime to do anything good or right). He had gray or chalk-white skin and a twisted sense of logic which typically manifested as a superficial “opposite” of anything Superman would do or say and a resultant speech pattern (”Me am going to kill you” would mean “I will save you” in Bizarro speech). Bizarro has appeared in Superman comics for years and even showed up in teen-angst-come-superhero show “Smallville“.
Not to be confused with this guy.

This week’s challenge word on Monday Artday is “Christmas“. The actual challenge is to illustrate what Christmas means to me.

Christmas. O Christmas.
When I think of Christmas, I think of three things:
A day off from work.
Chinese food.
Going to the movies.

Not everyone celebrates the same way.

This week’s challenge on illustrationfriday.com is “little things“.

Things don’t get much littler than this.

The challenge word on sugarfrostedgoodness.com this week is “winter wonderland“.

I hate snow.
No wait, let me reconsider.
I REALLY hate snow.
As far as I can see, snow serves no purpose. It isn’t good for crops. It kills crops. It is dangerous for driving. Earlier this year, a snowstorm closed a large section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and left hundreds of drivers stranded. Several years ago, my normal 50-minute commute home from work was increased to a tedious ten hours due to snow.
Snow causes inconvenience for workers and businesses. Shoppers, about to venture to the mall, are disouraged by TV weathermen. Instead, those same shoppers flock to the supermarket to stock up on milk, bread and eggs - fearing a lengthy snowstorm will trap them indoors for months without French toast.
I have no pleasant memories of snow. None. When I was a kid, I remember my father standing at the open front door, with a cigarette in one hand and a scowl on his face, watching the snow fall and muttering “Shit! Shit! Shit!” under his breath. Then, he would watch the evening weather forecast and curse even more as the weatherman predicted (as my father would put it) “plenty inches”.
I remember my one and only attempt at sledding. I banged the front of my sled against a large ice chunk buried in the snow, which in turn, banged into my mouth, which in turn, blew up like an innertube.
Years later, I remember having several co-workers who had grown up in Florida. During the night, six inches of snow had fallen. It made my drive to work slow and horrendous. When I finally arrived, my southern co-workers were out in the parking lot taking pictures and giggling. Adults! Giggling like four-year-olds!
I have also spent many a weekend day shovelling snow from my sidewalk. I don’t like to shovel anything. Ever.
In addition, I have less than fond memories of sitting in the passenger seat, as my wife navigated the car through a blinding snowstorm on an eight-hour, white-knuckle trek across Pennsylvania on a return trip from Cleveland.
I hear a lot of people say, as the snow is falling, “Oh, look at the snow. It’s so pretty. It looks so nice up in the trees.” And then they are silent several days later, when the snowplows and car exhaust and dirty boots have turned the “crisp blanket of white” into a gray-black-brown, drippy, chunky sludge, piled into eight-foot high mountains in shopping center parking lots.
If Irving Berlin hadn’t have picked up a pen in 1940, no one would be dreaming of a white Christmas with every Christmas card they write.