only if he has a contract with a gallery that covers that particular piece.

I just went over the emails, and I don't think this one was/is in a gallery. Originally he said, "about x price, I won't know until I frame it" and now he says "publicly listed at x + $550".

Bummer-drag.

Okay, this is kind of awesome:

Porn industry seeks federal bailout

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people."

Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger — DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.

But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said in the statement. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly."

That must be a very nice frame, Sparky. Then again, a professional frame job is very spendy.

Surely the porn industry will be revitalized by the influx of good-looking realtors and banking employees looking for jobs in a different field?

Of course Tintin's gay. Ask Snowy

Snowy: The only unambiguously heterosexual male mammal in Tintin's entire universe. We know that because of Snowy's tendency to be distracted by lady dogs: a tendency in which he is consistently foiled by his master and by Hergé's plot. Pity this dog, wretchedly straight and trapped in a ghastly web of gay human males.

Clearly, it's Clovis.

laughs and laughs and laughs

FatCat 1, Owner/Tabby/Boston Terrier 0

Seriously, I can't stop laughing at the sequence of events, especially now that I know the dude was uninjured. [link]

Hah!! I love the two cats in that penultimate picture--the one on the left is all "WTF is going on?" and the one in the middle is all "Look what fun I started--joke's on the human here!"

Stewart and Maddow should get gay-married and have lots of babies.

Amen.

Obama, Spider-Man on the same comic-book page

In a growing world of Barack Obama collectibles, one item soon may be swinging above the rest.

On Jan. 14, Marvel Comics is releasing a special issue of Amazing Spider-Man #583 with Obama depicted on the cover. Inside are five pages of the two teaming up and even a fist-bump between Spidey and the new president.

eta:

"It was a natural after we learned the new president is a Spider-Man fan," says Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada about reports that Obama once collected Spider-Man comics. "We thought, 'Fantastic! We have a comic-book geek in the White House.' "

The White House transition team did not respond to a question about the extent of Obama's comic-book geekiness, but Obama did mention Spider-Man during the campaign, primarily at children-oriented events. And during an Entertainment Weekly pop culture survey, Obama said Batman and Spider-Man were his top superheroes because of their "inner turmoil." (John McCain picked Batman.)

The article has a picture of Obama and Spidey together, which Wonkette made fun of:

Who is that mysterious black person in a business suit who looks absolutely nothing like Barack Obama, your new president? It’s COMIC-BOOK Barack Obama, that’s who! Jesus fucking christ, could Marvel Comics maybe hire somebody who can maybe draw something vaguely resembling the president-elect, rather than “random negro dude in a suit who also seems to have neck tumors”?

Barack Obama Is President of Spiderman