Faces of Trump - Or How I'm dealing with the Inauguration of Donald Trump.

People deal with bad news in different ways. Some people use alcohol to numb the pain. Some wall themselves off from the outside world. And some stare into the abyss. I did all three in various forms over the past couple of months. The bad news, of course, is the election of Donald Trump - a man who seems an unholy mix of Bond villain, abusive stepdad, and enraged toddler. 

Lately, I've been compulsively drawing portraits of the man. Like I'm up to somewhere around 100 or so pictures. It's a weird coping mechanicism, I suppose.

So I decided to make a poster out of it. I'll be carrying this at this Saturday's protests. 

Naked Trump and Pence on a Sad Unicorn - The T-Shirt!

Confused? Scared? Not sure what to think? 

Well, deal with these dark feelings but wearing something topical and fabulous. That's right, a T-shirt of Donald J. Trump and Mike Pence naked on a sad red, white and blue unicorn. The shirt comes in white and pink. 

Did You Miss the Veeptopus Book Kickstarter? Worry Not!

Did you miss the Veeptopus Book Kickstarter in October and are haunted with feelings of regret? If so, good news. You can still be a part of the party here on my new pre-order site.

There you can order not only a beautifully-designed book featuring hand-drawn portraits of all 48 U.S. vice presidents with octopuses on their heads but also a way cool Veeptopus poster:

And a super cool Veeptopus T-shirt.

Click here to get the shirt, the poster and/or the book.

Only 48 hours left the Veeptopus book Kickstarter

That's right! Only two more days for the Veeptopus book Kickstarter campaign. This will be, I will say with confidence, the finest vice president and octopus book you will ever own. 

These Pictures of Trump and Tentacles I Drew Last Year Seem Much More Sinister Now

I drew a few pictures of Republican party nominee Donald J. Trump with tentacles last year and this. At the time, they seemed funny. Now after all the groping/sexual assault allegations being leveled against him. They seem much less funny and much more depressingly apt. I'm really looking forward to this election season drawing to a close. 

Oh, and if you having seen my Kickstarter campaign, you really should.

Happy Birthday to the Scandalous Richard Mentor Johnson

I woke up this morning to discover that Veeptopus was featured on i09.com and Laughing Squid. There are definitely worse ways to start off the day.

But who I really want to talk about is Richard Mentor Johnson, America’s ninth vice president. Today is his 234th birthday. If you ever wanted to get a sense of just how weird the slavery debate was prior to the Civil War, look no further than Johnson.

While out on the frontier during the War of 1812, Johnson first made a name for himself by allegedly shooting Shawnee chief Tecumseh. At the time, Johnson was already a representative for the state of Kentucky to the House of Representatives. Being a bona-fide war hero, however, put him in the political limelight.

By all accounts, Johnson didn’t really care much for convention. He rarely combed his hair. He once described his upbringing as being “born in a cane brake and cradled in a sap trough.” English author Harriet Martineau, who sat opposite him in a White House function, described him thusly: “If he should become President, he will be as a strange-looking a potentate as ever ruled. His countenance is wild, though with much cleverness in it, his hair wanders all abroad, and he wears no cravat. But there is no telling how he might look if he dressed like other people.” The doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate was more blunt, calling him "the most vulgar man of all vulgar men.”

Yet this was the age of Andrew Jackson. Being rough around the edges was considered to be a political asset. Before he became Martin Van Buren’s running mate in 1836, he angled to become Jackson’s. In short, Johnson, for all his eccentricities, seemed to have a bright political future.

Except for one thing. He was in a common-in-law marriage with his mulatto slave Julie Chinn. Johnson had inherited Chinn from his father and soon fell in love with her. Chinn ran Johnson’s plantation as the lady of the house during Johnson’s long absences in Washington. He even had two (reportedly gorgeous) daughters with Chinn -- Imogene and Aledine. Johnson made sure that both of his children were properly educated and that they both ended up marrying white men.

But don’t mistake Johnson for being some forward-thinking love revolutionary. When Chinn died of cholera in 1833, Johnson took up with another slave, Chinn’s niece. The only problem was that she was already married to another slave and refused his affection. So he pulled ultimate asshole power play - he sold her off. Then he took up with her sister.

Johnson’s complicated personal life, not surprisingly, scandalized some in Washington. Amos Kendall, a close personal associate with Andrew Jackson, described Johnson’s companion as "a young Delilah of about the complexion of Shakespeare’s swarthy Othello." She was "said to be his third wife; his second, which he sold for her infidelity, having been the sister of the present lady."

Martin Van Buren

Nonetheless, as a war hero and a Westerner, Johnson was considered to be a good counterbalance to Van Buren’s East coast fussiness. During the election of 1836, he campaigned with Van Buren to the jingle, “Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.” On election night, Van Buren got enough electoral votes to win. Johnson didn’t. Southern electors clearly didn’t approve of Johnson’s private life. So for the first time in US history, a vice president was appointed by the U.S. Senate.

Just imagine how American history would have been different if Van Buren died in office. The wild man from Kentucky might have be president and, for all intents and purposes, a black slave might have been first lady. Of course, that didn't happen and in 1840 both Van Buren and Johnson were voted out of office.

Years later, Johnson ended up the butt of a joke during the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate of 1858. “I will add to this that I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men,” said Abraham Lincoln. “I recollect of but one distinguished instance that I ever heard of so frequently as to be entirely satisfied of its correctness – and that is the case of Judge Douglas’ old friend Col. Richard M. Johnson.” 

You can buy prints of Richard Mentor Johnson, Martin Van Buren and every other vice president over at the Veeptopus store.

We Are Funded! Now Help Us Meet Our Stretch Goals!

My $9,500 goal was the price for a quality hard cover book, but without a lot of frills. You know, those the cool little features that can turn a book into a work of art onto itself. Little touches that just make you want to show it to everyone.

For $12,500, I'll be able to make the book I really want to make. Instead of a standard smooth matte finish, the book cover can now have a cloth-like texture along with an Veep-related image embossed into the cover. Instead of the inner cover being a standard white, we can add a cool tentacle-themed pattern. It will be an amazing, elegant book.

Call it Veeptopus Deluxe.

If we unlock this $12,500 stretch goal, then EVERYONE getting the physical book will get this new fancy version.

But wait, there's more!

T-shirts!

By popular demand, I'm adding a T-shirt! Get a load of this:

Imagine showing up to your favorite gastro-pub or job interview in this! Click here and contribute $25 + postage or more and it can be yours.Also for $25 + postage, I'm offering a stand along poster option. Imagine this gracing your cubicle, classroom or study.
Please, help us unlock our $12,500 stretch goal!

Cheers

Jonathan

Happy Birthday, Henry Wallace

Today is Henry A. Wallace's birthday. He was FDR's second vice president and, until the previous VP, John Nance Garner, a committed New Dealer. In perhaps his most famous speak, he stated that, “Men and women can never be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over.” It's hard to imagine a mainstream politician of any stripe saying something like that these days. Wallace proved to be too left-leaning for the more conservative members of his party. FDR dropped him from the ticket in the 1944 in favor of Harry S Truman, who became president only a couple months after getting sworn in. 

The Veeptopus Kickstarter: 2 Days Old, 70% Funded

WOW! 

Thank you everyone! I am overwhelmed by the response. In two short days, I went from 0 to 70% funded (and counting.) This is the home stretch. We have less than $3000 to go. So if you have a octopus-enthusiast friend or a weird uncle who's obsessed with Spiro Agnew, please spread the word.

Happy Birthday, Chester A. Arthur

Today is Chester A. Arthur's 185th birthday. He’s of those rare vice presidents who ascended to the Oval Office yet still remains largely obscure.
 
Arthur came to office in the middle of a national tragedy. While walking through Union Station, the newly inaugurated President James Garfield, America’s first and only completely ambidextrous president, was gunned down by grade-A loony Charles Giteau. During the trial, Giteau argued that he just shot the president; the doctors actually killed him. And while this didn’t prove to be a compelling argument for the jury – Giteau was hanged – he probably had a point. President Reagan suffered from similar wounds one hundred years later at the hands of a love-struck John Hinckley Jr., but unlike Garfield, Reagan was back at work a couple weeks later. When Garfield’s doctor Dr. Willard Bliss – who was suspicious of Joseph Lister’s newfangled theories about germs – tended to the bleeding commander-in-chief, he jammed his horse manure-flecked fingers into the presidential wound, hoping to dig out the bullet. This is probably what killed him. Garfield lingered for three months before dying of blood poisoning, among other things.
 
At the time, the Republican Party was split between two factors. The Stalwarts, led by New York City kingpin Roscoe Conkling, who really, really liked handing out patronage jobs, and the unfortunately named Half-Breeds, who were not into patronage jobs. Arthur was a Stalwart. Garfield was not.
 
Giteau, who was dubbed “Charles Getout” at the Oneida free love commune before he was thrown out, came to Washington to look for a patronage job. When he was rebuffed, he figured he might have a better chance with a Stalwart in office. As he shot Garfield, he reportedly shouted, “I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be President!”
 
Arthur’s crowning achievement as president was signing the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which (in theory) awarded government jobs according to ability not political affiliation. After Garfield’s assassination, Civil Service reform became, not surprisingly, a pressing issue on both sides of the aisle.

Arthur presided at a time when the political battles of the day seem distant and hard to fathom. Perhaps that’s why he is barely remembered today. But when Arthur died in 1886, none other than Mark Twain praised his term.  “[I]t would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration.”

Veeptopus Book Kickstarter Campaign Coming Very Soon!

Next month, I’m going to launch a Kickstarter campaign to publish a Veeptopus book.

Anyone who's been following me knows that I've been trying to get my Veeptopus series into book form for a while. While drawing these watercolor/ pen & ink cephalopod-bedecked portraits over and over and over again, I learned something about each and every one of these vice presidents. Little stories that were not only weird and wonderful but also revealing about both the character of the man (and, to date, they are all men) and the time he lived. I wanted to share all that with you.

So I painstakingly researched biographical facts about every VP and then I had those facts vetted by noted scholar on the Vice Presidency Aaron Mannes. He not only wrote an introduction to this book but also came up with a great reading list on the Vice Presidency too.

And then I managed to get Joan Lau to design the book. She's an amazing art director, currently employed by Apple, who did all the graphics for the movie (500) Days of Summer and she even had a hand in the opening titles for Mad Men. She’s also my wife, so that helps. She made the book look amazing.

Last year, I published a very short run of the book. And I was blown away by the response – I sold out in 24 hours.

This time around, I want to redesign the book, give it a solid hard cover, of course, include the next vice president – either Kaine or Pence. And this time around, I want to publish a much bigger run.

I'm really excited about this campaign. So if you are a fan of strange art, odd historical facts, cephalopods and/or Joe Biden, then I think you'll like this book too.

So please mark your calendars and tell your friends and neighbors, the Veeptopus Kickstarter is coming October 3.

What you can get with the Veeptopus Kickstarter

I've been working really hard for the past couple of weeks to get the Veeptopus Book Kickstarter off the ground. It's going to launch next Monday, October 3. That's the day before the VP debates.

I'm really excited about this project and I wanted to give you guys a heads up about three things that I will be offering you during the campaign.

First, there's the book:

It will have all 47 former and current vice presidents plus whoever wins the election. And it will have all sorts of facts and stories about each veep.

It will also be beautifully designed and it will be in hard cover. For $35 + postage it can be yours.

Then there's the poster:

That's right! Every single vice president with an octopus on his head on one single poster, printed on thick archival paper.

This is a Kickstarter exclusive. I'm not going to sell this on my Etsy site or anywhere else. Get this plus the book for $65 + postage.

An original portrait of you with an octopus on your head:

Sure, you might not get elected vice president, but you can at least look like you have.

For $300 + postage, you will not only get the book, the poster and a shout out in the book's thank you page, but you'll also get a portrait drawn by me of you or that special someone bedecked with a cephalopod. It makes for a great conversation piece and will no doubt be cherished by your grandchildren.

And there will be even more cool stuff available.

So check out the site on October 3 and watch your mail next Monday for the link to the Veeptopus Kickstarter.

The Veep Trifecta: Happy Birthday to Hannibal Hamlin, Charles G. Dawes and Lyndon Baines Johnson

Be it written in the stars or the dumb luck of a cold and meaningless universe, three vice presidents were born today, August 27. LBJ was born on 1908 and was elected vice president in a squeaker of an election in 1960 and then, of course, ascended to the presidency in 1963. He named his penis Jumbo and showed it too way too many people. He also used to make his own vice president, Hubert Humphrey, cry. He was an able legislator but not exactly a nice guy.

Charles G. Dawes, who served under Calvin Coolidge, was born at the end of the Civil War, 1865. He is the only VP to date to have won both a Nobel Peace Prize and to have written a number one pop hit. He got the prize in 1925 for brokering the Dawes Plan for Detente between Germany and France after WWI. And in 1958, Tommy Edwards added lyrics to his song "It's All in the Game." The song soon topped the charts. 

And Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln's first VP, was born in 1809. He was a Maine Abolitionist who generally proved to be uninspiring at his job. That said, Hamlin not only was born on the same day as two other veeps but he died on the same day as two other veeps. He breathed his last breath on July 4, the same day (but not the same year) as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams also passed on. 

Octopuses? Octopi? Octopodes? Which is it?

One issue that has come up again and again during my two years of running Veeptopus is the proper pluralization of octopus. 

Like a lot of you, I originally thought that the correct plural for our favorite eight-legged cephalopod was "octopi." Then my friend who has a PhD in Classics - the sort of guy who used to read Aramaic for fun - informed me that while the word "octopus" is a Greek word but that the "pi" pluralization is Latin. Therefore "octopi" is, for linguistic purists like him, silly. I found his argument to be compelling. So these days, I use the good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon form "octopuses." The word might not be as mellifluous as "octopi" but it feels more honest, more straightforward and more correct. Of course, if I wanted to be really hardcore about it, I would use the Greek pluralization "octopodes," but I'd probably get a lot of funny looks. 

Below, someone far more articulate and knowledgeable than me expounds on the subject. 

Kory Stamper, an Associate Editor at Merriam-Webster, talks about the plural version of octopus. See more videos at http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/asktheeditor.htm

Veeptopus T-Shirts Now Available

Hi there. So I'm in the process of rethinking and expanding this site. Bigger and better things, as they say. It's been a lot of work and promises to be a whole lot more work before I'm finished. BUT, I can say that after way more screaming and yelling than I expected, Veeptopus T-shirts are here. 

For now, there's just one design but in the next week, I will add more. Make sure to check back at my snazzy new shop at Shopify. 

Tim Kaine Wins Hillary Veepstakes and Gets The Veeptopus Treatment

Here's my picture of Tim Kaine. I would have finished it earlier but I fell asleep while drawing it. 

Trump and Pence On a Unicorn

The epic clusterfuck of the Republican National Convention is over, climaxing in Trump's harrowing speech which no doubt sounded better in its original German. I found the whole thing to be both frightening and dispiriting. Above is how I dealt with the stress. You might have a beer or three, devour a tub of ice cream. I draw naked pictures of politicians. 

Mike Pence is Donald Trump's unfortunate VP Pick

So the GOP convention is under way and it looks like a complete clusterf*ck. As I write this, the anti-Trump delegates are trying to find some way, any way, to chuck Trump from the ticket, but to no avail.

Last week, of course, was all about Trump’s choice for the number two spot. For a good 48 hours, it looked like the nod was going to go to Newt Gingrich. But then Mike Pence ended up getting tapped – even though the Donald reportedly changed his mind and tried to weasel out of the decision.

So Pence is one of two people who will be the next Vice President, I drew a portrait of the Indiana Governor. Like the last VP pick hailing from the Hoosier state, I think I managed to capture the vacant look in his eyes.

I also drew one up of Newt. I really nailed that I-dumped-my-cancer-stricken-wife-on-her-deathbed shit-eating smirk of his.

Veeptopus at Politicon 2016

So a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to set up shop at Politicon, a Comic-Con of sorts for political junkies. Sarah Palin, James Carville, Ann Coulter, Rosario Dawson and bunch of other pundits and political figures were there hosting panels and participating in debates. Not that I saw any of that. I, along with my friend Ted Mills, spent both days parked in the Democracy Village – a marketplace, forum and art gallery for folks to peruse between presentations.

I had no idea what to expect what it would be like. I feared that I would be crammed in the corner, next to the anti-circumcision stall, getting snarled at by stark raving Trump supporters. But I was pleasantly surprised.

There was some surprisingly good political art there. From prints of that famous nude of Trump to the original Shepard Fairey Obama “Hope” poster. One genius made a Trump University vending machine where diplomas can be had for a mere 15k. Trump was a frequent punch line here. Along side my usual spread of art prints, I also sold Trump toilet paper, designed by my friend Dan Levin. Those sold like hotcakes.

I got a great location, right on a corner of two aisles almost spitting distance from the book-signing table. It helped that one of the coordinators was a big Veeptopus fan.

And the crowd was generally speaking open and good-humored, filled with socially-minded college kids, aging hippies, Bernie Bros, and one sweaty guy in a cowboy who tried to sell me the bumper stickers he had balled up in his fist. But hands down my favorite person I saw there was a budding politician – maybe fifteen, accompanied by his mother – who was dressed in a brown suit, a bowtie and a bouquet of Ted Cruz buttons on his lapel. With the same of studied polish of a pro, he shook my hand and called my art “positively joy sparking.” I wish I caught his name. I’ll probably be voting again him in a couple decades. In spite of sharp, intolerant divisions we can see on cable news and social media, Politicon left me with a sense that we aren’t quite so divided after all and that there is still general faith in the American idea.

I also left with a pile of cash in my pocket. That was nice too.