Publisher at The American Bystander
is Blogmom of Hey Dullblog. His novels and parodies have sold 1.25 million copies in 25 languages. He lives in Santa Monica, CA, and runs The American Bystander all-star print humor magazine.
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I saw this painting on Regretsy, the site that comments snarkily on products offered for sale on Etsy. Readers of Hey Dullblog, which Beatle comes off worst here? Best?
[Note that this is an old listing — you can’t buy this painting, but you can read the Regretsy post about it.]
When I saw this, my first reaction was one of horror. I read the regretsy comments, absorbed them, then looked at the picture again. Something shifted in my brain, and all of a sudden it became the cover art for a Beatles album, if the Beatles had continued into the ’80s, embraced new wave, and featured an “outsider art” cover, ala the Talking Heads. Maybe one of the tracks would be a Beatle version of the Talking Heads’ “And She Was”
– hologram sam
George has a gigantic chin.
Paul is wearing a puffy shirt.
John has a nose shaped like a butt.
And Ringo is extremely chubby.
Frankly, I think it’s a draw. (Bad pun intended.)
–Drew
As early as 1964, The Beatles coined a name for fan-made artwork: “gonks”. This is definitely a gonk.
My favorite gonk was displayed in The Complete Beatles, I think…believe it was CBS News footage of Beatles fans in New York before the second Shea Stadium concert.
This young woman painted Paul McCartney sprouting out of the ground like a plant. (Yeah, I know—how apt)
The depiction of Paul looked halfway like his Yellow Submarine cartoon likeness and halfway like Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon representation of Bilbo Baggins.
PS- I have a humble suggestion for a future topic. The Beatles have been portrayed in many movies and television shows. Who, in your opinion, has turned in the definitive portrayal of the Beatles collectively, or individually? Who has been dreadfully miscast as one of the Fab Four?
My favorite portrayal of the Beatles is the scene in “Walk Hard” when Dewey Cox goes to India in 1968 to see the Maharishi and encounters the Beatles (Jack Black as Paul, Paul Rudd as John, Justin Long as George, and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo).
I found it! It’s at about 0:38 of this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oV_GqrYLM4