Grace Hopper (December 9, 1906-January 1, 1992)

My BFF Grey has a listing on the Internet Movie Database.

As you may know, if someone listed on IMDb wants to upload a photograph to their listing they need to buy a pro membership on the site.  While I couldn't do that for her, I did the next best thing: I redrew my Fairey-ish portrait of her in smileys, and posted it to her IMDb message board.

I can't help but think the potential of message board smileys as an artistic medium has barely been scratched.

A rough Doctor Who sketch from 2000 or 2001, done to stave off the boredom of the retail job I had back then.  I wasn't allowed to nap, so the Doctor got to instead.

I sketched this clandestinely behind the store's counter in black ballpoint.  This scan is color-corrected to counteract the old cheap ink having gone a bit violet over the years.  Around 9x6".

My homemade Tom Servo hanging out at the movies in 2004.  This display seemed to catch his interest for some reason.

He's a totally functional puppet, built out of most of the same parts as the MST3K crew used (or, where unavailable, fan-made replicas of same.)  I'll put up some clearer pics of him soonish.

I subtly altered a scene from the Blake's 7 episode "Bounty."  I wonder if you can spot what I changed.

Digital illustration of the different TARDIS keys seen over the years on Doctor Who.

Multiple screenshots of each were used as reference material to ensure that even the bumps on the normal-key-style keys are locksmith-accurate.  I'm sort of a dork like that.

The background is this NASA photo, which was widely enjoyed by Who fandom as it resembles a real-life version of the show's "Crack in the Universe."  For extra giggles I drew the keychain in the shape of the Crack.

My Mother the Matchmaker

I made this comic for /r/behindthegifs, a subreddit where the idea is to take a GIF that's going around and make a comic that tells what led up to it.  I'm pretty happy with how this turned out after scratching it together at stupid o'clock in the morning.

Here's the Reddit post, and here's the Imgur gallery.

Drawn in MyPaint, lettered and laid out in GIMP.

The President's Red Phone

The Moscow-Washington hotline which existed during the mid-20th-century Cold War was a teletype-based affair, not a telephone, but that didn't stop the imagined concept of a red emergency phone in the White House catching on in popular culture.  One example of this is the Red Phone's starring role in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; indeed, the film's Spanish title is ¿Teléfono rojo?, volamos hacia Moscú, which means “Red Telephone?  We're Flying to Moscow.”

The iconic “Red Phone” image continues to grip the public imagination today, appearing regularly in fiction, art, and even Presidential campaign ads.

Acrylic on canvas, 5x7″.  From my series of paintings of historical telephones.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 seats, the most minimalist ASCII art I've ever done.  Thanks, ISO-8859-1!

fuckyeahmst3k:

ooòôõ

Filmed in letterrama

"Bell Odyssey" - This phone-phreaking-themed parody of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" was written by RBCP for issue 39 of the Phone Losers of America zine, which was released on July 27, 1996. Thirteen years later to the day, I released my own performance of the song.

The release date was entirely coincidental; I randomly got the urge to record the old track, spent a few days putting it together, and just happened to finish and release it on July 27, 2009.  RBCP later informed me that it just happened to be the song's 13th anniversary.  I blame the ghost of David Bowie; he isn't dead of course, but that's certainly never stopped him before.

Soon after I posted this, my colleagues at Off the Hook surprised me by using it as the closing song on the July 29, 2009 episode while I was away from the show.  RADIO AIRPLAY!

The genuine phone company recordings used in this track came from ThisIsARecording.com.

This song is downloadable as an MP3 from PLA's songs page.

In today’s daily doodle, President William McKinley wishes he had a Nintendo Game Boy.