SlapClap

America. Your black President has been replaced. I’m your black President now. I wear a lot of track suit pants. My favorite TV show is Leverage. I hate the post office. I work at the post office. Women are the death of me. And most white people can kiss my ass. Any questions?

You may notice that there is something missing from this particular post. Whilst we usually like to feature an abundance of pictures, it is perfectly possible that should we have included any images of the lovely Miss Christina Hendricks, you might not managed to take your eyes off them for log enough to read the article itself.

The good news is that we can expect to see the beautiful Christina Hendricks in a number if upcoming films. Of course, Hendricks has been appearing on our screens for some time now, but it wasn’t until the success of Mad Men that she became something of a household name.

Since then, she has gone on to appear in a number of feature films, distracting audiences all over the world with her stunning good looks. If you’re involved in a tense game of partypoker or about to operate heavy machinery, you might want to stop reading here. If you’re interested in finding out about Hendricks upcoming film roles, however, then take a look below to see where you can catch her on screen.

Of course, if you haven’t already managed to see Nicolas Winding Refn’s crime drama, Drive, then it is worth seeing for Hendricks’ performance alone. She plays a woman involved in holding up a pawn shop, and a character wildly different to that which audiences are more used to seeing her play.

Hendricks was also one of the all-star cast involved in this year’s hit comedy film, I Don’t Know How She Does It, playing a women who’s used to juggling her career and her family life. Next year you can expect to see Hendricks take appear in another comedy film, as she takes on a role in the coming-of-age film, Struck By Lightning That should be enough to keep you all going for a while!

Heartbreaking chat is a fun new web site of which I am very proud to be one-half a part. For my part, I write funny little things using my dumb imagination. But the real star is the artwork drawn by friend and frequent online collaborator Matthew.

The premise is simple, but the concept high: Weekly, we post our “chats” together about random, unrehearsed and unpredictable topics. Except that while I can use pretty words to get my points across, Matthew can only communicate to me by drawing pictures.

The results are genuinely bizarre. Check out the intro video. Take in a few of our chat stories. You will be sorry. But not because of this. Because of other stuff … you animal.

A brief recap of the trailer for the new Garry Marshall joint New Years Eve, starring everybody. Made for everyone:

This guy with the square jaw puts on a tuxedo to go find Katherine Heigel in New York (this film takes place in New York) because they both want to “recreate the magic” they shared filming Life as We Know It. The one about the baby? It had a baby poop joke in it? Anyone? Except…

Katherine Heigel already made plans to travel to the planet Hoth to ride tauntauns with Bon Jovi for New Years. Then…

The lady from Modern Family and Soul Plane who has all the boobs says something about not enough boxes of fruit in the background of her shot. She is serious, but between her heavy accent and vivacious curves it makes all the men’s pants burst out in laughter. Only…

Zac Efron HATES fruit. Str8 hates it, yo! And he poisons all of it. That’s the END for his part of the story. And no one ever learns anything new about Zac Efron for all of eternity, ever again. Sooo…

Hillary Swank holds a press conference about it to warn New Yorkers (this film takes place in New York) not to buy fruit at bodegas, or Trader Joes, or Occupy Wall Streets (places New Yorkers go). But…

Michelle Pfeiffer, who makes a list of all the fruit in the world to remind herself not to eat any of it, forgets to include Chinese dates which are just like regular dates except super Chinese. Consequently…

Halle Berry, fresh off the set of TNT’s Hawthorne, has to pump Michelle Pfeiffer’s stomach. It’s Catwoman on Catwoman action. And by action, Halle Berry makes Michelle Pfeiffer vomit into a waste bucket. You hear that Mr. Skin? Thankfully…

Hillary Swank has Ludacris for support. Even though her and Ludacris have nothing in common. Meanwhile…

In a different hospital, Jessica Biel decides not to get an abortion so that her baby can be the first newborn of the New Year. Only…

Satan, disguised as Jesus disguised as Ashton Kutcher, tells Jessica Biel “But wouldn’t you rather have the first abortion of the year, hmmmmmm?” Plus…

The girl from… American Idol I wanna say maybe? All the while…

Sarah Jessica Parker clops around Tribeca in a complete circle with a fancy dress on looking for Robert DeNiro. Only to find…

Hector Elizondo. And when she sees Hector Elizondo he asks “Have you seen Bobby DeNiro?” They spend the last 12 minutes of the movie staring at each other. Cut to…

Post credits surprise. It’s Bobby D! He’s on the roof holding a script Tim Allen passed on, contemplating suicide. He says something about it being New York (this film takes place in New York).

Before jumping off the roof, his last words are “Has anyone here seen Hector Elizooooooooooonn…?”

The END.

My love of Michael Jordan is well documented. He’s in this Hall of Fame. Not just for his astounding basketball talents, but also for starring in one of the greatest motion pictures of the era.

The Space Jam Movie is a movie. Its premise is a simple question: if alien slavers kidnapped our most beloved cartoon characters, and those cartoon characters negotiated a game of basketball on the moon to win back their freedom, would a black man everyone considers cool fly a rocket ship up to the moon and save them?

I can tell you, after having viewed enough significant chunks of this movie over a period of 14 years, that the answer is YES. And the question has shifted from “Is this the greatest sports movie of all-time where you going?” to “Is this movie the BEST movie?”

Don’t just take it from me. There are a whole legion of young people out there who are sharing their love and devotion to The Space Jam Movie. It’s like a more important ‘It Gets Better.’ Kids even made up slang for what they call their fandom. Something called “Derp.” An acronym, I gather: Definitely. Excellent. Racial. Parable.

So rent The Space Jam Movie. Why? Because – if I may quote from the movie poster – “Michael Jordan. Space. Basketball.”

Nic Cage stops traffic every time he acts. But not enough has been made of Laurence Fishburne’s performance in the Pray-day-ders movie– his “on steroids” “2.0″ tribute to Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now performance.

Fishyburne in Predators takes us back to a screaming Al Pacino’s “because she’s got a big ass!“ in Heat. Except Laurence does it in a whisper while Adrian Brody stands next to him trying to remember if he ever won an Oscar.

Laurence Fishburne in Predators: a slapclap? Absolutely.

Who has time to scour the net for recaps of VH1 reality show The Basketball Wives? Well now those recaps about ex-wives of basketball players — none of whom still married but still call themselves “wives” — who shop and eat brunch all day on South Beach are just a click away!

But wait, there’s more!

Included in each recap, photoshopped screen captures of actual episodes! [Little Girl: "Actual episodes?"] That’s right little girl. Like this picture of Ford truck spokesman Mike Rowe made to look like Marvel Comics space God character Uatu the Watcher standing in a parking lot at Toyotathon.

Remember. SlapClap Presents: The Basketball Wives Recaps will not be republished in The Wall Street Journal.

So click now!

• The Adorable List

Levar Burton has had an amazing career. His big break was playing the main character in easily the most important miniseries in television history. Roots is basically the go-to resource for any parent trying to explain slavery to their kids; forget parents, they use it in schools! Roots was that important, and this guy was the star.

Then he follows it up by hosting Reading Rainbow, a hit TV show for kids. FOR KIDS. Think about it. So growing up your watching this guy teach you how to read and about slavery; he’s in your home your entire childhood.

Although, I guess kids today see him as the Reading Rainbow guy first then, BAM, he’s a slave; then he does Star Trek so at least kids see him go to space.

To the Hiro Sushi Restaurant:

Whether you are aware of it or not your new restaurant is creating a major rift in our neighborhood between the people who enjoy using chopsticks to put droppings in their mouth and those of us who do not let droppings anywhere near our mouth.

Also, your store reeks. I’m serious. Do something about this please. It smells like the peaks of the Himalayas. Do you know who lives in the peaks of the Himalayas? Only monkeys.

So here’s an idea: serve hamburgers instead, or anything else besides sushi that smells like droppings from out the butt holes of Langur monkeys in the teak forests of India.

Sincerely,

Sushi Place Across the Street

Dear Sterling Antiques,

Hi. I was in your store a few days ago. Remember, I accidentally tripped and fell and knocked over the entire left side of your store? That bookshelf from the Civil War fell onto those glass ballerina figurines from Tsarist Russia? Then they knocked over Teddy Roosevelt’s crystal fish bowl and the water spilled out on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s handwritten letters?

I’m so sorry. I left all of those peanut shells on your floor when I ran out. I should have finished the bag outside. This is more of an apology than a suggestion, really.

Signed,

Harry Hamleen

Ps, also so sorry for accidently stepping on those wood flutes Nelson Mandela carved in prison with his own fingernails. When I came back to your store to drop this off in the suggestion box I did not realize I could walk around them.

Green Grow Lawnmower Company:

Hey bud. How’s it hanging? Noticed your lawn the other day. Those blades are getting a little bit long in the tooth don’t you think? I really don’t care but the ole wife and chain likes to make a point of things; i’m sure you got one just like her at home.

Anyways, if you could be a buddy and maybe give it the quick once over this weekend I’d really owe ya. Course you’d have to take that Honda del Sol off its cinder blocks first. Park it somewhere else. Kick ass flames by the way. Hey, you know what? Maybe park it over on Cypress? I swear, the parking over there… it may as well be a parade route.

Digging the new bench press by the way. You working out in your garage a regular thing now, or…?

No rush though on the grass cutting. Just trying to keep the wife happy. “That’s what she said!” From The Office? But if you could cut that lawn by Saturday. We’ve got some people coming over. Family, actually, uh, you know. That would be A-MAY-zing.

Keep it cooley bro,

Corbin Bernsen

“He was wearing that shirt with a picture of the Kool-Aid Man giving thumbs up on the toilet, and he was humming “A Man Needs a Maid” by Neil Young. You think he’d go out with me?”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak we too refuse to step down … FROM WENDYS ALL NEW SPICY CHICKEN SLIDERS FUN PACK!

ACT NOW AND WHEN YOU BUY A 3-ORDER OF SCRUMPTIOUS “SPICY CHICKEN SLIDERS” SERVED ON A HOT BUN, A 20OZ. SOFT DRINK AND BAKED POTATO, YOU’LL ALSO RECEIVE A COMPLIMENTARY “WENDY’S DOUBLE MIX MALT.” CHOOSE ANY TWO FLAVORS AND MAKE YOUR OWN, UNIQUELY DELICIOUS DOUBLE MIX TREAT. NOW THAT’S WHAT WE CALL FREEDOM OF CHOICE.

SEE YOU AT THE BEACH!

I know I’ve been away from the blog for a while and for that I apologize. I could lie and tell you that I’m a superhero but then would a superhero lie? He would, of course, to protect his secret identity. That puts us back at square one I guess. You still not knowing if I’m a superhero and me still not saying I am but at the same time fully admitting that if I were I would never tell you. The only thing left for us to do is back away slowly from each other and find the strength to continue on with this blog post. You first.

Sorry, this got off track didn’t it? Probably because I haven’t blogged in so long. Too busy shaping new canals in fresh magma to siphon off destructive lava flows headed towards dense populations. Joking! Superheroes do that. AND I’M NOT ONE.

(…)

Anyway, this video of people singing “Let It Be” more than makes up for my absence that all of you so deeply felt: Mom. Dad. Special thanks to the following musicians for singing this song:

George Wendt, Steve Guttenberg, David Faustino, Philip Michael Thomas, Roger Moore, Jason Alexander, Huey Lewis, Rikki Lake, the blonde on Melrose Place, Corbin Bernsen, Katarina Witt, a hypnotist, Glenn Close, Alfonso Ribeiero, the guy who beat up Donna on 90210, Dolph Lundgren, Judd Nelson, Peter Falk, Kelly McGillis, Rickey Schroeder, Robert Englund, Boyzone, Kathleen Turner, one half of Milli Vanilli, Dee Snider, Right Said Fred, Darryl Hannah, the band Rednex, the guy who played Forrest Gump as a boy, Lou Ferrigno, the band Berlin, and an extra debt of gratitude to Malcolm Jamal Warner.

Welp. New York Comic-Con was a success. I got a publisher for my self-made indie comic that I’ve been working on, on and off, for weeks now in the bathroom when I take “breaks.” Here is some preview art. Below is my pitch.

In 2007 the American Movie Classics channel, AMC for short, debuted a new pilot called Draper’s Little Secret. All of America watched two years later on DVD. It had breakout performances by little known actors Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, January Jones, and Vincent Karthees… Kartheims… Kartheisisizerdumm. Holding the show together was the charismatic lead actor who we see in the very first scene:

Opening scene: man in bar scribbles words on napkin. Is interrupted by Negro, as “Negro” is what they called them back then. That man’s name? Don Draper (not the Negros’). Don Draper as  played by … John Stamos?

SAY WHAT PROFESSOR!!!

How could this happen? How could an almost flawless show suffer such a self-inflicted wound? These entertainment media questions bubbled in the brains of two brave men who all of us look up to and admire: Batman and Hellboy.

And so Batman and Hellboy build a time machine that runs on aspartame traces found in the blood stream of Gulf War veterans to travel back in time and stop John Stamos from getting himself cast as Don Draper just because “he really livened up the sides.”

They also try to stop the Yitzhak Rabin assassination until they find out that changing history twice isn’t cool. So they have to re-travel back in time, shoot Yitzhak Rabin, blame it on Zionists, and then get Matthew Weiner to change the name of his show to Mad Men because of how mad they are. OF HOW MAD WE ALL ARE.

When I first started writing this I thought it was going to be a parable about racial unity.

(Above: a photoshop picture. Blagojevich courtroom sketches do not hang alongside Picasso's ... yet.)

Great art evokes emotion. I discovered this for myself several years ago when I visited the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid to see the iconic Picasso master painting Guernica. As I stood before this massive 11 x 25 ft. mural in oil I couldn’t move my eyes away from the 4 x 4 photograph of it in the “Around Town” section of my Time Out Madrid. That’s when I noticed the unlit matches tucked inside the pages of my tourism book.

It was no coincidence. Picasso’s masterwork was working through me- evoking me; provoking me. To do what exactly? Close my book, pocket my camera, and really view the thing? Or set that thing on fire? To whip out my matches and make a Picasso burn.

I didn’t of course. You would have read about it; I certainly would have blogged about it, and then the inevitable headline: “Uncomfortably Attractive Male Sets Picasso on Fire, Evades Custody, Admits to Crime via Beautifully Composed Weblog.”

But just because I didn’t burn down that Picasso doesn’t disqualify the emotions that Picasso evoked. It made me feel something. Or maybe it was the matches? Whatever. That feeling – be it reflective meditation or the lustful urge of an arsonist’s hate – it is a feeling.

Before that moment in Madrid I was not a big fan of art. More of a Bulls fan really. Up to that point, nothing I had seen stirred up such “burning” emotion (other than mailboxes) and no art has affected me the same way since.

That is until this courtroom sketch of disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich awaiting the 24 count verdict in his federal corruption trial. It challenges me. Arouses me. “Turns me on,” metaphorically of course. When I see it, I think a lot of things, but specifically these things: