oswald in a jam
you may have seen this famous photoshopped pic where the shooting of oswald becomes his smoking hot vocal, delivered with the help of his able keyboard man and a guitarist. when i first saw it in 2000 or so, i stared and laughed for about 2 minutes.
just noticed that george mahlberg (AKA “dr. cosmo”), the guy responsible for the masterpiece, created a flash page to fade between the original and his version. two often overlooked details become obvious: a dead kennedys logo spraypainted on the brick wall, and george mahlberg’s signature on the far left — himself. extra nice touch: the copyright notice looks like part of the lower keyboard’s graphics.
[note to george: as a courtesy, because you mentioned being tired of your pic being copied, i was going to not lift the thumbnail above. then i noticed that you couldn't help crooning that "it violates several federal and international intellectual property and copyright laws." human action, baby. send the goons after me for my crime against humanity.]
without even evaluating anything, my gut reaction because of the photo manipulation was to laugh my ass off at one man’s reaction while another man shot him fatally. i don’t know that oswald did anything to deserve what happened, yet the addition of keyboards, mic, and guitar mean that hundreds of thousands laugh at this murder. does that maybe shake your mind up a little?
one of my favorite comedians, jeff altman, had a gag about the oswald murder in his routine. i laughed along with everybody else. it was funny as hell. strange things, humor and death.