Now that someone has started a blog called Stuff White Trash People Like, may I suggest “Tacky High School Yearbook Photos” as an item for them to cover? Should they need an example, may I suggest the photo below, which says so much in a mere 406 by 604 pixels…
Bringing us closer to Idiocracy, one bad decision at a time. Next stop: a subprime loan! Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
(Yes, it’s quite possible that it’s not a high school yearbook photo, but that was the photo’s title, and gave me a good laugh. It could very well be an engagement photo, from that part of the country where marriage proposals go like this: “You’re what?“)
A couple of readers have sent me email asking if there a more concise way of illustrating the “Credit Crisis”/”Subprime Meltdown” than the 23 comic panels in my earlier posting, The Credit Crisis, Illustrated. There is a single illustration that captures the essence of what caused the crisis, although it’s missing a lot of the background information:
The Ginger Ninja just sent me a link to this article about Jewno, which parodies Juno by filtering it through a Jewish lens with high-larious results. The video gets bonus points for getting J.K. Simmons, who played Juno’s dad in the real movie, to reprise his role, but this time with a Crown Heights accent. The video also scores bonus points for having an accordion in it:
Keep an ear open for the musical parodies — in the video, they make fun on the Moldy Peaches’ homely alt-folk songs (which were featured in Juno) as well as Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes: “All the young Jews…awkwardly schmooze…”.
Image from Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog Click the image to see it on its original page.
Back in the mid- to late nineties, one track you couldn’t avoid on alt-rock radio was Pulp’sCommon People (from their excellent album, Different Class), a song that pokes fun at the genteel faux-poverty of kids from rich families at art school.
In the lyrics, the “narrator” tells the story of a rich Greek sculpture student at St. Martin’s college who wants to do a little lifestyle tourism amongst the British working class. The song is purportedly based on a real-life female acquaintance of Pulp’s lead vocalist Jarvis Cocker, who had a rich Greek female acquaintance at an art school named St. Martin’s who said that she wanted to “live like common people.” Cocker embellished the story in the chorus’ lyrics, adding “I want to sleep with common people like you.” According to Wikipedia, The BBC went so far as to try and locate the real-life rich art student who inspired the song without success.
Image from Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog Click the image to see it on its original page.
There are (ahem) commonalities shared by Common People and the situation in Archie comics between rich girl Veronica Lodge and the very middle-class Archie Andrews. There are probably thousands of Archie storylines that are based on Archie not having enough money take Veronica on the type of date to which she has become accustomed. Some clever Photoshopper noticed the Common People/Archie connection, took the Common People lyrics, mashed them up with panels from Archie comics, and the result is over at Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog: Archie in…A Different Class!
Image from Chris’ Invincible Super-Blog Click the image to see it on its original page.
(“My parents are dead!” has been an ongoing gag about Batman since PvP creator Scott Kurtz illustrated a parody — covered in this blog entry — a couple of years back.)
