Happy 4th of July! Click on the image to make the cartoon larger. This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

It was probably a great idea in concept and design: a new mascot for the Amarillo Sox, an independent minor league baseball team. It was supposed to look like a sock. But instead it looked like an Anthony Weiner tweet. And it’s going back to the drawing boards. From amarillo.com’s June 25 report (just sent to me this morning by a friend): Amarillo Sox general manager Mark Lee shook his head late...

Celebrity independence is making Fourth of July weekend news as famous names couple and uncouple. In California, JFK’s niece takes steps to terminate the Terminator while 6000 miles away Princess Grace’s son enters wedlock in a low-budget version of the extravaganza that starred his mother, nee Grace Kelly, 55 years ago. Saving all this from utter cheesiness is the new British royal family, geographically...

Obscene Video Violence by Peter Funt The rejection by the U.S. Supreme Court of California’s video game law was a welcome victory for free speech, but a frustrating defeat for the protection of young people. In striking down the 2005 law – that was never actually implemented due to legal challenges – the Court continued its campaign to safeguard the First Amendment. Last year, it ruled 8-to-1...

So far, Cars 2 is leading the pack as the most commercially crass movie of the decade. Although up to this point I’ve been a big fan of the Pixar/Disney John Lassester magic, I just can’t swallow the Cars sequel. Simply put, Cars 2 appears to be more about stock holders than stock cars. It’s a movie made for the purpose of increasing global Disney theme park attendance and merchandizing options. It...

So says Comedy Central in a press release: “The Daily Show” Earns Its First Adult 18-49 Crown For A Full Quarter Breaking “The Tonight Show’s” 40+ Quarter Victory Streak Dating Back To At Least 1Q 2000 “The Daily Show” And “The Colbert Report” End The Quarter As The Most-Watched Late Night Talk Shows In All Of Television Among Adults 18-34, Adults 18-24,...

So beautifully shot and edited it’s hard to believe this short film was shot entirely on a cell phone. The video won the Nokia Shorts 2011 mini-movie contest, and earned director JW Griffiths a $10,000 prize. See also, The Making Of…

Waterloo Sunset by David Goodloe I love music, all kinds of music. I guess that is to be expected. I was raised with the sounds of music filling the house. My mother loved folk music. My father loved Middle Eastern music. They both loved classical music and bluegrass. In that environment, as I say, I developed a fondness for all kinds of music. I liked the music my parents liked — still do — but I also...

Narrowly. The vote was 5 to 1 in favor, but the ads can run only during his show. Colbert’s is the nation’s 114th SuperPAC. So what’s a SuperPAC? It’s a consequence of the “Citizens United” Supreme Court decision which gave corporations, unions and individuals the right to give unlimited cash to outside groups to campaign for or against candidates. With it Colbert can: Take...

Ballet comes to mind for what GOP divas as doing in the Hawkeye State, a new variation on the graceful duet in which dancers usually make their moves in harmony but in this case as if the other were invisible. La Palin comes into the state on tiptoe for the premiere of an adoring movie about her, cloaked in classic subtlety that sets off equal and opposite images in the eyes of two leading political blogs: “Sarah...

Now That Would Have Been Some Marketing Meeting! WOW! If this marketing meeting had taken place, about the only thing that could rival it would be Lenny Bruce’s “Religion Inc.” Seems the former Big Cheese of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was fretting that his creation of terrorism and murder was losing its’ marketing punch. Osama wanted new name for al-Qaida to repair image As Osama bin...

The tweet read “Susan Boyle moment.” I trusted the sender, so I clicked … and was treated to the spectacle of American talent judges being as dismissive (nonverbally) as those British ones had been. This singer, however, is male, black and from America’s backwater to top all backwaters: West (by-god) Virginia. And for 10 years, the 36-year-old has made his living washing cars. Give him...

Burning up the internets this morning, Chris Wallace asking Michele Bachmann, “Are you a flake?” Bachmann calls the question “insulting,” she’s “a serious person.” Wallace apologized but Bachmann’s apparently not accepting. This following on the heels of the week-long aftermath of Wallace’s Jon Stewart interview. In that interview Stewart said that Wallace stands...

Cartoon fans — particularly younger TMV readers – -get ready for a treat. One of the funniest classic routines was done waaaaaaaay before my time by radio-TV comedy star Jack Benny (who was one of the comedians credited with inventing the situation comedy on radio) and Mel Blanc. It is as funny today as when it was first done. This should be of special interest to cartoon fans. Blanc was the voice...

It seems everyone I meet has a story of a challenge or a downright woe. And, because of this, this showstopper from the classic baseball musical Damn Yankees seems a song for our times. Watch and listen to the words — since they are worth remembering:

Everything is a Remix. Don’t try telling that to famed photographer Jay Maisel. When Andy Baio released a chiptunes tribute to Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Kind of Bloop, he used a pixellated re-creation of the original’s Maisel cover photo. Maisel, who lives in a six-story, 72-room, 35,000-square-foot lower Manhattan Beaux Arts Gilded Age mansion (for $5,000 you can go inside for a Jay Maisel...

Martin Sutovec, Slovakia This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

When I was a child, slip-n-slides were fastened to lawns with large boulders. Consequently, the definition of summer fun was sliding headfirst between 10 pound rocks, at breakneck speeds, on a moistened strip of plastic runway. Currently, this activity is more commonly categorized as child endangerment. The use of boulders built a natural time limit into our wet and wild fun. After about an hour of head first...

Perhaps no one knows when O.J. Simpson hit bottom — probably not even The Juice himself — but it probably occurred sometime in the run-up to the 1995 slaying deaths of his wife and Ron Goldman, which I concluded as a journalist who covered the story nonstop from murders to acquittal were a consequence of a cocaine-fueled binge, a fit of jealousy, or most likely both. In any event, it is sadly obvious...

Three years ago on June 22nd, American comedian, social critic, actor and author George Carlin died at the age of 71 from heart failure at a Santa Monica, CA hospital. He had a wickedly twisted yet objective take on life, politics, religion, and the English language. He understood the darker side of human nature and was always ready to explain life to his audiences from his uniquely critical perspective. Carlin’s...