15. Hannibal Hamlin
President: Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865
Party: Republican
State: Maine
Slave Owner?: No.
Hannibal Hamlin spent much of his time as veep as far away from the Civil War as he could get, serving for part of the time as a lowly cook for the Maine Coast Guard. He was dropped from the ticket for the 1864 election.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia joust over justice, extreme justice, in a post apocalyptic America.
14. John C. Breckinridge
President: James Buchanan, 1857-1861
Party: Democrat
State: Kentucky
Slave Owner?: Hard to tell.
John C. Breckinridge joined the Confederacy even though his home state Kentucky didn’t secede. Charged with treason by the Union, Breckinridge fled the country at the end of the war for Cuba – battling alligators, disease and pirates. He was given amnesty by President Johnson in 1868. He is also the only vice president who might have been descended from a raccoon.
Justice Stephen Breyer makes do anyway he can in a post-apocalyptic America.
13. William R. King
President: Franklin Pierce, 1853
Party: Democrat
State: Alabama
Slave Owner?: Yes.
William King was vice president only six weeks before dying of tuberculosis. He was also the only bachelor veep in American history. King was reportedly inseparable from James Buchanan, who would become American’s only bachelor president. Make of that what you will.
You might remember Wolfgang the Octopus from both the Millard Fillmore and the Elbridge Gerry pictures. He's one of the top cephalopod models in the industry. We caught up with him while on break on an Elton John music video and let me tell you, he just radiates charisma. Wolfie might just have talent to break through Hollywood's much discussed eight-legged glass ceiling. You go, Wolfie!
Name: Wolfgang. Octopuses aren't really into the whole surname thing.
Sign: Gemini
Family: Wife, Brittany, and 3 squids.
Interests: Wheel of Fortune, tennis, astrology, sensual massage.
Quote: "I'm working on an album. It's going to make me a star."
12. Millard Fillmore
President: Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850
Party: Whig
State: New York
Slave Owner?: No.
Millard Fillmore became president when Zachary Taylor died after either getting poisoned or after eating too many cherries. Nobody really knows. They exhumed Taylor's body in 1991 but the lab results were inconclusive. When Fillmore died in 1874, his last words were reportedly, “The nourishment is palatable.”
Byzantine King Basil II
What I realized is that it's all about the concept. Before I came up with this blog, I was casting about looking for a hook for my site. Most really successful blogs out there had a gimmick and a tightly defined niche. I'm thinking of Julie Powell, who over the span of a year cooked all 542 recipes in Julia Child's cookbook. As she documented her ups and her downs, she built a following, a community. Along the way, she also got a big fat book contract and soon Amy Adams was playing her in an Oscar-nominated movie Julie and Julia. I want to have Amy Adams play me one day. Sure, I'm a lanky 6 foot tall dude with asthma but Adams is a talented professional. I'm sure she'll pull it off. But first, I need to come up with a killer idea.
All of the books on art blogging say that the key to building that coveted following is to show your progress. So with that in mind, here's some of the ideas I haven't pursued. Yet.
1. Go to every party in a year as if you were expecting it to be a costume party. Blog your experience. Publish book.
2. Direct a shot-by-shot remake of Gus Van Sant's 'Psycho.' Blog experience. Publish book.
3. Eat nothing but corn nuts for a year. Blog your experience. Publish book.
4. Spend a year living in a trailer filled with 200 ferrets. Blog experience. Publish book.
5. Get that artisan gasoline business off the ground. Blog experience. Publish book.
6. By any means necessary, seduce actor Tom Skerritt. Blog experience. Publish book.
7. Disavow current identity. Insist that I am instead a loose affiliation of conflicting motives. Call myself 'Unit No. 74.' Blog experience. Publish e-book.
8. Walk across America planting kumquat trees. Get dubbed 'Johnny Kumquat.' Trademark name. Blog experience. Publish book.
9. Every day dress up as a different pope. Do all 265. Blog your experience. Publish book.
10. Develop my street cred. Blog experience. Publish book.
11. Apparently when you get a PhD in Finland you also get a top hat and a sword. So...get a Finnish PhD. Wear said top hat and sword everyday. Blog experience. Publish book.
12. Invent a language with one word and an infinite number of tones. Blog experience. Publish book.
13. Try and work Byzantine emperor Basil II (AKA The Bulgar Slayer) into every conversation. Do this for a year. Blog experience. Publish book.
14. Send nude photos of myself to every member of congress. Hire lawyer. Blog experience. Publish book.
15. Develop a completely tight 20 minute long standup routine in Esperanto. Tour America. Blog Experience. Publish book.
16. Write an epic palindrome poem about the life and absurd death of President James A. Garfield, America's first and only ambidextrous president. Blog experience. Publish book.
17. Construct yurt made of meat. Live in it a year. Blog experience. Publish book. (Likely book title -- 'Bears: Why You Shouldn't Live in a Yurt Made of Meat.')
18. Write a nine-part erotic fiction series about the Supreme Court called 'The Penal System.' Blog experience.
19. Rabelais in Gargantua and Pantagruel wrote that the best way to wipe your bum is by using the neck of a young goose. See if this is actually the case. Blog experience. Publish book.
20. Reenact Meg Ryan's famous diner scene from 'When Harry Met Sally...' at each and every presidential library in the land. Blog experience. Publish book.
21. Send William Shatner a turkey baster every day for a year. He knows why. Blog experience. Publish book.
22. Declare that you're from the future. Warn against squirrels. Blog experience. Publish book. (Rake in money when squirrels stage a worldwide attack.)
23. Become a semi-feral wild man of the Australian outback. Earn the moniker "Johnny Wombat." Blog experience. Publish book.
24. Make a behind-the-scenes movie of Andy Warhol's 'Empire' that is 8 hours long and one shot showing Warhol hanging out, changing film rolls, and eating soup. Blog production experience. Publish book.
25. Perfect my one man show about life and love in Saskatchewan called 'The Regina Monologue.' Blog experience. Publish book.
26. Spend a year with my shorts filled with yogurt. Blog experience. Publish book. (Likely title: How to grow flesh-eating bacteria -- why you shouldn't put yogurt in your shorts.)
27. Re-edit the end of 'Jurassic Park' so that Laura Dern dies horribly while Sam Neill survives only to suffer crippling guilt. Blog experience. Publish book.
28. Create an audio book based on the erotic fiction of Henry Miller as recorded by Chewbacca. Blog experience. Publish book.
29. Draw portraits of all 47 vice presidents in American history with octopuses on their heads. Blog experience. Publish book.
11. George M. Dallas
President: James K. Polk, 1845-1849
Party: Democrat
State: Pennsylvania
Slave Owner?: No.
Dallas had no idea that he being considered for veepdom. He found out when a band of drunken delegates showed up at his Philadelphia home in the middle of the night. Dallas answered the door in a nightshirt clutching a shotgun.
Chief Justice John Roberts looking like a chief in a post-apocalyptic America.
10. John Tyler
President: William H. Harrison, 1841
Party: Whig
State: Virginia
Slave Owner?: Yes.
When President Harrison gave a two-hour inauguration speech in frigid weather and died 31 days later from pneumonia, John Tyler became the first veep to ascend to the presidency. He was dubbed “His Accidency.”
From my continuing series about Supreme Court justices navigating a post apocalyptic America.
9. Richard Mentor Johnson
President: Van Buren, 1837-1841
Party: Democrat
State: Kentucky
Slave Owner: Yes. See below.
Johnson had a common-in-law marriage and two daughters with one of his slaves, Julia Chinn. When Chinn died of cholera, he turned to another one of his slaves, Chinn’s niece, who refused his affection. So he sold her. Johnson was dubbed by the doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate as “the most vulgar of all vulgar men in this world.”
Vice President George Clinton, before and after.
During From Dusk til Drawn, I was a machine. I cranked out 22 portraits of Vice Presidents in 24 hours. That’s one an hour, excluding a 2am jaunt to get a rice bowl and a handful of bathroom breaks. No sleep. Just veeps. In fact, I was so in the zone that I probably could have done portraits of all 47 vice presidents if the event was a two-day affair. I would have been a stark raving lunatic by the end but I could have done it. Sadly, they wouldn’t let me stick around.
Yet when I got back to Los Angeles, I knew that I wanted to do the full set. Since I didn’t that the urgency of that event, however, I took more time on the drawings. My portraits during DtD were efficient and clean, painted with a thin wash of watercolor. In the less pressurized environment of my apartment, I started spending more time with each drawing. The pictures got more detailed and I took more chances. My style evolved. By the time I reached Harry S. Truman, it was clear that I would have to do go and redraw all 22 of my older veeps.
Around that same time, my wife had my son. Surprisingly, drawing portraits of cephalopod-bedecked politicians became a relatively low priority during those first sleep-deprived months. As my adorable pint-sized martinet became less demanding of my time and I finally completed the whole set. So it wasn’t until last month that I completed the full set. And even now, I’m going through and redrawing some portraits that didn’t quite work out. Chester A. Arthur, for instance, is getting his third redo.
But there’s one VP who has driven me nuts. His face is so distinctive yet so oddly bland that I’ve never quite hit the mark with him, in spite of trying about a half dozen times. I’ll tell you about that next week.
8. Martin Van Buren
President: Andrew Jackson, 1833-1837
Party: Democrat
State: Kentucky
Slave Owner: Yes
Born in Kinderhook, N.Y., Van Buren’s nickname was “Old Kinderhook.” That was shortened to “OK” in rallies for his failed 1840 reelection campaign. Somehow, that abbreviation evolved into the ubiquitous idiom. You can literally say that Van Buren was OK.
I think that all supreme court justices should wear bunny ears.
7. John C. Calhoun
Presidents: John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829, Andrew Jackson, 1829-32
Party: Democratic-Republican
State: South Carolina
Slave Owner: Yes. Big time.
Calhoun became embroiled in the Petticoat Affair in 1830 when his spouse, Floride, along with a slew of other Washington socialites organized against War Secretary John Eaton’s new wife. The recently widowed Peggy Eaton had the unladylike temerity to own a bar and a boarding house. Eaton’s main defender was, Calhoun’s boss, Andrew Jackson. Calhoun was dropped from the ticket during Jackson’s second term. The scandal was turned into the 1936 film The Gorgeous Hussy.
Kickin' it.
6. Daniel D. Tompkins
President: James Monroe, 1817-1825
Party: Democratic-Republican
State: New York
Slave Owner?: No.
Daniel D. Tompkins was the only vice president to work for free. His entire salary was garnished for outstanding debts to the state of New York. Of course, his personal finance issues along with a raging case of alcoholism meant that Tompkins rarely had the time, or ability, to perform his vice presidential duties.
5. Elbridge Gerry
President: James Madison, 1813-14
Party: Democratic-Republican
State: Massachusetts
Slave Owner?: No
Gerry signed a bill on election redistricting that was highly favorable to his party. Rival newspapers decried the bill as “gerrymandering.” The name stuck. Like George Clinton, Gerry also died in office, making James Madison the only president to lose two vice presidents.