Break On Through to the Other Side

It's the 251 digest, plus other nonsense.

It’s our biweekly 251 digest, and today’s featured cartoonist is Chris Gural! Chris lives in Queens and his work recently appeared in Issue 25 of The American Bystander. He’s a frequent contributor to 251. I recently sat down with Chris for a wide-ranging conversation, conducted via online chat as I was writing this newsletter. Let’s get right to it.

Thanks for talking today. Chris, do you drink Kool-Aid?

Yes, mostly red.

Fascinating—what do you like most about Kool-Aid?

The water.

Meaning, you don’t love Kool-Aid, but it gets the job done?

Exactly. I’m looking to stay hydrated.

That’s terrific. Anything else you’d like to add?

It's bad for your teeth and worse for your walls

Thanks, Chris! Funny enough, this is the perfect segue into your recent 251 cartoon. It goes like this.

And by this point we had pretty much covered everything, so the interview ended. Thanks to Chris for taking a bit of time out of his 4th of July to answer my stupid questions.

Speaking of the 4th, here is a piece about America by T. Kent Jones. It’s titled “The Gettysburg Address Ruined By Finger Quotes”:

All “men” are created “equal.”

Speaking of America and its failure to meet its highest ideals, a bunch of us in the 251 writer’s room put together a list of Kennedys we’d prefer to RFK Jr.:

The list is by Robert Criss, Anthony Scibelli, Zack Rhodes, Jeff Kulik, and moi, and here’s the full thing:

JFK, Sr.

Rosemary Kennedy

Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy’s car

RFK III

RFK (bridge)

Kennedy (space center)

JFK (statue)

JFK (movie)

JFK (Jesus Fucking Khrist)

JKL (consecutive keyboard letters)

RZA (Wu Tang)

RZA Jr. (Wu Tang, Jr.)

Anthony Kennedy (Supreme Court Justice)

Jamie Kennedy

John Kennedy Toole

J(F)K Rowling

JFK, Jr.

RFK

Cheryl Hines

Besides for all this, check out this cartoon about Nikola Tesla, this screed against modern bread (by Wonder Bread) and much, much more, over at twofiftyone.net.

Answering Actual Questions

Jeremy asks:

Who would win in a ten block foot race, S.J. Perelman or Gertrude Stein?

I think I can speak for all of us when I say that Gertrude Stein would beat the living shit out of S.J. Perelman. I suppose afterwards she’d go on to win that race.

Joe asks:

Is there really a speakeasy-style cocktail lounge and taproom on the top floor of Bystander HQ? And if so, why won’t you let me in?

OK thank you because I really need to clear this up. During lunch on Thursdays the Talmud club uses the lounge for study with Rabbi Ari Bontshwag—and before you say anything, he was never convicted. If you’re not convicted, you’re innocent. That’s how it works in America. My advice to all the people who are “scandalized”? Move on. OK? Get a life, really. But any time but Thursday lunch, just stop on by. Thanks, Joe!

(MG here—the Bystander Taproom is very exclusive, and photography is so prohibited that I, the nominal owner of the joint, had to hide a camera in my hat. This lovely lady is the inventor of Bystander’s famous “Corpse Reviver.” She won’t tell me the recipe but I taste notes of Malort and Jockey Club cologne. After hearing the shutter-click, she chased me out of the room.)

The American Bystander’s New Yorker Caption Contest

Usually, this is where I beg, in a heavily stylized way, for you to promote yourselves in the comments. But possibly I’ve done too good of a job in that department lately, having solved most of your self-promotion needs. Let’s try something different.

Subscribers know that Michael Gerber has me on captioning duty for a magazine feature we call “Give Life Unto the Image of the Beast.” The premise, basically, is The Bystander was handed a generous grant in the 70s to document everyday American life. It was supposed to be patriotic and inspirational but, as it turns out, Americans are total weirdos, and so the project was shelved and never published. Until now!

To find material for these features, I’m constantly looking through strange photos that seem like they really need to get captioned, preferably with a bit of dialogue spoken by one of the folks in the pic. But, tragically, only some of them really work for the magazine.

THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN.

Caption this photo. Work together, though. This isn’t an individual contest, this is a group effort. How good and strange of a caption can we create?

I’d like to see some good old-fashioned teamwork in the comments. Let’s yes-and our way to the finest, strangest thing that this man, dog, or whatever might be saying. I have “high hopes” for “us” “all.”