I’ve found myself occasionally wondering what my final words will be. It’s an important quote, letting history sum up your life and beliefs in one soundbite, and thus deserves a bit of forethought, lest you say something terribly ironic or crass. Most likely, though, we’ll have brief flash of insight into our personal doom and manage to only get out a useless “Oh geez”.

President William McKinley had six days.

Just before a disillusioned man wrapped a gun in his handkerchief and stood in line to enter the Temple of Music and murder the President, an aide had begged McKinley to be more careful with his security. “Why should I?” McKinley replied. “Who would want to hurt me?” See? If he would have died right away, that would have been just a totally funny and awesome last quote, showing his bravado and foolishness. Except he didn’t die.

After the assassin shot him twice in the gut, McKinley slumped down, his suit turning red. “Be careful how you tell my wife.” Now THAT’S a great quote. Caring about your wife’s emotions in your final breath? Romantic. Much better. But he didn’t die.

When the President saw his attacker being violently beaten by his guards, he begged, “Don’t let them hurt him!” Great call. Very Christ-like, loving your enemies like that. Except he wasn’t nearly dead.

The next day, after awakening from his surgery, McKinley felt much better. “How did they like my speech?,” he asked. Throw in a little humor into your last words. Well played. He was strong even through the end, they’d say. But it wasn’t the end. In fact, he kept getting better, which had to bring a mix of emotions to the vice-president.

Four days after the shooting, the President ate a little egg and toast, which didn’t sit well with the gangrene and infection nobody knew he had. I’m assuming he said something about his gross bodily functions. Luckily, no one wrote that down.

Six days after an anarchist shot him down in Buffalo, William McKinley was at last about to die. He gathered his doctors. “It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have prayer.” Classy move, Will. A bit of a slam on your doctors, but hey, you’re about to die so I think you get that privilege. But he wasn’t done yapping.

As he slipped into his final sleep, the President pulled the old classic move and sang a hymn. Nearer My God to Thee. Very smooth, resting in your faith like that. Singing a song like that for your last words not only is soothing for yourself, but also gives hope and comfort to your loved ones standing nearby. Some would want a little more patriotism out of their president, like maybe Battle Hymn of the Republic. But I like it. All in all, not a bad one to land on.

The only thing that can go wrong at that point is someone nearby saying something even cooler. A Senator friend got all emotional and yelled out, ”Mr. President, can’t you hear me? William! Don’t you know me?” Geez. Way to say something powerful and really steal the thunder. Now people remember that instead. What a bitch.

Acrylic on oval canvas. 20″x16″

President James Monroe. Boring. Political arguments about Spain and Missouri. Can’t be bothered. Just enjoy the watercolor.

Sincerely, Barak John Hardley.

Hey kids! It’s time for Harry S. Truman FUNFACTS! Did you know…

Harry ran a habberdashery?
His middle inital “S” doesn’t stand for anything?
Harry had the highest and lowest approval ratings of any president until the 1990’s?
Harry killed his father and married his mother?
Harry’s unit fired some of the last shots of World War I?
Harry is the only person to ever order a nuclear weapon to be used?
The Great Depression caused his habberdashery to go bankrupt?
Harry still watches you through your windows when you sleep/dream?
Harry was a 33˚ Mason?
Harry’s super-Southern mother refused to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom?
He popularized the phrase “The buck stops here”?
The movie “Ghostbusters” was based off of Truman’s real-life paranormal adventures?

Thank you Wikipedia!!

I wasn’t terribly happy with my original John Quincy Adams. Although I still admire the fact he was a spider.

It’s still a toss-up which one I like more. Let me know which one you like.

President Thomas Jefferson did not believe in meteorites. So take whatever you want from that.

Acrylic on Canvas, 30″ x 40″

James Buchanan was the last of the American Presidents to placate against the growing tide of resentment and anger over the issue of slavery. For decades they had sought to compromise and capitulate and calm the southerners and the northerners, not knowing the terror that was slowly, inexorably sweeping towards them.

How were they to know this was the wave that would drown them all? That would cause the south to secede and the north to violently say, “No!” The presidents could see the sea was rough, but hadn’t it always been choppy? The presidents had fought against the French and the Spaniards, and had grown and flourished during the brief skirmishes. It was just a wave. They had tariffs to argue about and roads to build. Slavery was just another thing to paddle through, or from.

How could Buchanan have seen that this was the end of everything? That cities would burn, that brother would rise against brother and six hundred thousand men would be thrown in shallow graves in forests and swamps and mountaintops?

We stand at the coast and look out only to see an eternity of whitecaps rushing towards us. A thousand have already broken around our ankles and yet we stand. It is only when we realize, too late, that the shore has pulled far away that this is something new. The ocean had been gathering itself, the tsunami is suddenly upon you and it will sweep everything you know away.

I wonder what terrible things are headed towards us? The prophets of Israel walked through their towns and spoke of doom, yet none would heed their words. The citizens thought they were mad. There was peace. Then God struck the land with armies and plagues.

I, too, see the modern doomsayers scream from the street corners and televisions, yet I look to the sea and glimpse nothing but storms we can weather. I am hopeful and confident that we can overcome whatever the oceans have in store for us. Some day, though, the tide will pull back and show the sand bars and the reefs and the sunken ships it has claimed, and we will look up and see that something terrible is upon us and it is too late.

One of the remarkable things about our American society is our willingness to put aside whatever facts there are about a person for a more prurient and expedient fact. Or vice versa. We want to worship our heroes and will defend them against all naysayers, until the moment we are bored. Then we just need a hint of a rumor to get us to the garage so we can grab our pitchforks and torches.

President Richard Nixon ended the draft, got America out of Vietnam, established a treaty with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear weapons, brought Israel back from the brink of war with Egypt and Syria, an almost single handedly opened up China to the rest of the civilized world. Domestically, he instituted one of the most dramatic environmental programs and tough new anti-crime laws.

But all we have time to remember him for is Watergate.

And what is even more shocking for me, more than all of this, is that we somehow elected a man whose nose looks like a penis. Remarkable.

After John Adams first met his future wife Abigail, he sent her a letter detailing her “Faults, Imperfections, Defects, or whatever you please to call them.” It ranged from criticisms on the way she played cards to the way she walked on her “Leggs,” from how she hung her head like a Bullfish to his thoughts that she was too prudish and a terrible singer. She loved it. Player, player.

John Adams was a fiery and brilliant man, who was recently portrayed by the equally brilliant actor Paul Giamatti in the HBO miniseries. Which brings me to this small request- If I ever lead the kind of life where in later years someone wishes to make a miniseries about me, please please please don’t let Paul Giamatti portray me. Seriously. Please. Dude is not attractive. At least make it Steve Buscemi or something. Paul Giamatti… yikes.

(As always, click to enlarge.)

(My first president came about when I had maybe one drink and drew Lincoln in photoshop. You can see it here. Now that I’ve done a bunch more, I wanted to do it again, hence….)

A piece of campaign literature once incorrectly claimed that Abraham Lincoln was so super self-educated that he read the writings of first century Roman historian Plutarch for fun, though he had never read them. Since he was such an upright guy, and not wanting to be thought of as a liar, he naturally went right to the first century historian bookstore down the street and proceeded to read them all.

So basically you could claim Lincoln had done something, and in his quest for integrity would proceed to do it. With that realization I will now claim things and expect Abe to rise from the dead and prove me wrong.

1) Lincoln once fought Bill O’Rielly in Madison Square Gardens. He threw the fight in the third.

2) Lincoln drank a gallon of milk in three minutes and then ate a box of saltines and whistled.

3) Lincoln gave me $400 and told me I didn’t need to repay it.

4) Lincoln once gave a long lecture to Andy Dick about proper behavior and etiquette and turned that young man around.

5) Lincoln found out how Lost was going to end and totally spread it over the internet, ruining it for everyone.

6) Lincoln went to the Ford corporation and politely asked they take his name off their cars. Except for the Navigators, which he said were badass.

7) Lincoln once danced with Elizabeth Shue, real slow, real sensual. And then told me all about it later, high-fiving the whole time.

8) Lincoln totally powned some Generals on Modern Warfare 2 like it was NOTHING.

9) Lincoln appeared in a series of commercials as the Kool-Aid man, painted entirely red and bursting through walls.

10) Lincoln once parachuted into Kandahàr and settled some shit.

Balls in your court, Abraham.

And now, Lincoln getting shot by Jack Ruby:

Eight months before the world economy had its worst crash in human history, and a year or so before most of the dirt in America decided to take some time off from growing food, Herbert Hoover was elected president. Up until that point he had done a pretty proficient job at the kicking-of-ass and taking-of-names part of life.

After both his parents decided to die when he was nine, Herb took his GED, which at that time involved holding a full time job and then going to school at night. He became the first student at Stanford, which must have been nice, not having older upperclassman hazing him and selling him elevator passes. He got a degree in geology and promptly started digging holes in Australia and China. I believe they were called mines.

While in China the Boxer Rebellion broke out, and even though I know its not accurate, I still like to think of Sugar Ray and James “Clubber” Lang running around punching everyone. In reality it was people with guns. Herb took it upon himself to just about quell the whole thing and solve several humanitarian crises as he saved the lives of innocent babies. No big deal for a geology major.

After those hi-jinx, he decided he would slow it down and just become a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and universally admired public servant. Then came the big crash, caused by (based on my knowledge of the 20’s) the stock market, flapper girls, Al Capone, speakeasies, prohibition and Tommy guns.

Even though Hoover fought hard to battle the growing depression swallowing up the world, he refused to let government carry the responsibility, instead insisting that the people themselves lead the way, through their own generosity in their communities and volunteerism. He believed the people could rise above their circumstances and altruistically help others, just as he had time and time again, like his days in China.

And there lies the greatest failure of Herbert Hoover, believing that everyone was just like him. Sober and responsible and good.

They are not. They are more like me. Lazy and distracted, waiting for some organization to come solve all the problems of the world, and desperately wanting a drink to help forget it all.

The story of President Andrew Johnson is yet another example of the grand American Dream: That any man can raise himself by his bootstraps from poverty and ignorance, to rise through the ranks of society till one day that man can be successful and well spoken enough to be roundly vilified by everyone around him, until he is barely acquitted from impeachment just because he tried to deny others the very same chance he had to follow the American Dream.

That old story.

Also, I thought he would look pretty cool as a magical centaur warrior.

Clay, leather and acrylic 10″ tall

In 1989, George H. W. Bush declared hella war on Panama, who had it coming. Don’t you dare say they didn’t.

We totally paid for the canal, and Carter signed some documents saying we were the bosses, so when our boy Noriega turned a-hole and against us, we totally put our boot up his dictator butt. You can falsify the election results all you want, and be all phoney-baloney DEA informant to your heart’s content, but when you like totally blow us off, it is PAY DAY, BOYEEEEE. Then you kill a US GI with some half-A “Hard Chargers” unit, and think we won’t get mad? Not only did you ice our boy, but then you steal old Teddy ‘velt’s moniker? Hellz no, you headed OUT.

So old George HW sent our boys in and SETTLED BIDNESS. Blam blam, as they say. They called it “Operation Just Cause”, as in Just Cause We Wanted To. Basically we went in GUNS BLAZIN and took out all them Japs, or whatever they’re called. PAN’s, I guess. You want to read about it? Check out a little film called Heartbreak Ridge. It’s a documentary starring one Mr. Clint Eastwood. EVER HEARD OF IT? BOOYAH!!! The Good, the Dead and the Deader. OOORAH!

HDubs knew what he was doin. He got shot down by the enemy in some old war and still went on to be the CIA BOSS. That’s even doper than the Prezident. Even the DEAD PREZIDENTSSS. Ha you know I’m just playin.

You want to be all talking junk about HW, about Dan Quayle and how George was a 1 term PREZ and how his boy is W, cuz all I’m gonna say is Imelda MARCOS. That b-word had TOO MANY SHOES. And don’t be all tellin me how she and Noriega were never married, and in fact she was married to a dictator from another hemisphere. I don’t need to hear that.

All I need to know is the son-a-GUN Marcos is currently held in the Federal Correctional Institution in MIAMI, along with my boys the DeCavalcante crime family.

HEARTBREAK RIDGE. That’s where Mario Van Peebles gets shot. That’s a SHAME. But we honor the sacrifice. WORD. Thankyou President George Bush NUMBA ONE!!

I just have absolutely no desire to write about or read about President Warren G. Harding. I do not want to find out what the Teapot Dome Scandal is, I do not care to revisit my scant 8th grade knowledge about the League of Nations. I don’t want to know what advice he sought from an uppity Herbert Hoover. Wikipedia, thank you for offering to tell me a thing or two about his early life, but no.

I do not care today. In fact, I never have. And I have twenty American dollars to say I never will.

Please accept my apologies if I’ve become something of a doorway for you to Presidential history. I have let you down. But the man and the era were boring and I just ain’t up to it today. My problems are as widespread and unmeaningful as his, which means in just a little bit of time they will be forgotten, despite the immediacy they both have carried.

The G stood for Gamaliel.

During dinner one night at the White House, the kitchen caught fire. So Martin Van Buren, president of the United States and, I’m assuming, volunteer Fire Marshall, ran and put it out. When he came back to the table his arch enemy, Henry Clay, asked him what was up.

Van Buren answered.  Clay then remarked, to the man who had invited him into his home AND saved his life, “I am doing all I can to get you out of this house, but believe me, I do not want to burn you out.”

Which proves once and for all that Henry Clay was a colossal dick.

I made you a Martin Van Buren mask. Click here to download the large file, then print it out on 11″x17″ paper. If anyone makes this, please send me a picture!!

President James Madison was trying to stay out of the war between France and Britain, so he started a war with Britain.

And he was short. And his wife, according to the official whitehouse.gov website, had big boobs.

But here’s what I like the most: America totally lost the War of 1812, but Americans decided not to see it that way. They all just chose to dwell on some of their few military victories. And this is on top of it being a generally stupid war to begin with, so much so that after a couple years no one could really remember what it was they were fighting for, which is why they stopped.

This is the war where we got our National Anthem, by the way. As far as I can tell, the gist of the song is “We were getting, like, totally lit up by enemy war ships. Everything was blowing up and stuff. And I saw a flag. Isn’t America rad?” And it has that high note. Also, it has the word “Spangled” in it’s title. Classy.

But my point: I love this can-do spirit of misremembering. After the war we lost, their was a HUGE swell of national pride. If their horses had bumpers, there would probably be a ton of cocky bumper stickers on them.

So, why are we all frazzled over Iraq and the long years ahead of us in Afghanistan? Let’s just remember a couple times when we rocked a battle and MOVE ON. Come on Vietnam vets, chill out. Remember when we carpet bombed the HECK out of that one jungle? Or when Charlie Sheen killed Tom Berringer? THAT MEANS WE WON. Derrrrrr.

And yeah, they named the snacks after Dolley.

President Gerald Ford used to play center for University of Michigan. He rocked it. They went undefeated a couple seasons. As President, he used to have them play the school’s theme song instead of Hail to the Chief. He was voted a collegiate all star, too. Oh and in a golf tourney he hit a hole in one. What I would like you to take away from this is that he was an accomplished athlete.

Then he fell down a couple times, I guess.

So Chevy Chase made fun of him as a bumbling fool and we all kind of remember him as a bumbling fool. Then Chevy went on to make some very funny movies, so that, like, made Chevy’s side of the argument that much more compelling.

I bet Ford was piiiiissed.

But then Chevy went on to make many, many horrible movies. And then he tried being a late night talk show host and was even worse than Jimmy Fallon and Magic Johnson. And I feel the most awesome part of it was that, while impersonating Ford’s bumblingness, Chevy really hurt his back a lot. So he took pain pills and became addicted to them. Ford fell down but then got up, addiction-free, and signed the Helsinki Accords with Breshnev.

I’m not sure what the point of this is, other than Gerald Ford was President, and Chevy Chase is now trying a comeback as an ensemble performer in a very funny sitcom fronted by the Talk Soup guy.

Also, hi to Jen at ISI! Make sure people treat my dad with some respect, please.

William Henry Harrison’s father signed the Declaration of Independence. As a boy, William used to think he wanted to be a doctor. To help people. His people.

His father died. William was broke and couldn’t finish school. He talked to a friend of his father in the army. He joined the next day and was sent to fight the Indians. He met a girl and they eloped.

Tecumseh was an Indian leader. His childhood was filled with vicious attacks from Americans, seeking revenge from the actions of his tribe. His brother was a religious teacher among the Indians. He gained a following as the two waged a war against the Americans in Indiana, then known as the Northwest Territories. Tecumseh battled for land for his people; so did Harrison.

While Tecumseh traveled to find support from other tribes for the war, Harrison attacked his brother. The Prophet, as his brother was known, attacked in surprise. He killed many but was defeated. Tecumseh was known as a great leader. Enigmatic, well spoken and energetic.

Eventually, he was killed by Harrison.

The Battle of Tippecanoe, the New Madrid Earthquake, Prophetstown, the Red Sticks, and Grouseland. Do any of these names matter?

Years later, Harrison was elected President. He died 32 days later. A footnote. He became an exercise in Constitutional law and the cause of the 25th Amendment. What do you care? What do I care? What of the people he loved? What of the people he killed? This all moves on and nobody cares to look too far behind them. It’s hard to translate what it is you see.

I plan on being in Indiana in 18 months. Maybe I’ll rent a car and go see the plains where Tecumseh died.

But I won’t.

I’ve already done President Franklin Pierce, but didn’t like the first one. You deserve better. So, let’s try this again:

In 1853, President-elect Franklin Pierce and his family were traveling together by train. It jumped the track, rolled down the embankment, and the couple watched as their only son, Benny, had his head nearly torn from his body. He was eleven. Franklin and Jane’s other two children never made it past early childhood, and they lost their third just two months before his father’s inauguration.

Twenty years earlier, Pierce was a war hero known for his apetite for partying. He had just been elected as Congressman. Jane was very religious, a shy and frail girl. Although she had always hated Washington, she married the young career politician and instantly badgered him to resign. This would go on for decades. She was a fierce proponent of temperance; Franklin was an alcoholic. They both contracted tuberculosis, and would have bloody coughing fits throughout their lives.

It was a surprise to nearly everyone when Franklin was nominated for President, a true dark horse candidate. Neither Jane nor young Benny wanted Franklin to win the presidency, but Franklin convinced his wife that it would be helpful to their son’s future success. Upon Benny’s death, Jane’s tenuous hold on sanity was broken, and she spent her years in the White House wearing black and hidden away in the residency, writing constant letters to her dead child, a shadow of her old self.

Saddled with an ever dividing nation, Franklin’s drinking became worse. After his term ended, he remarked there was nothing left to do but drink. Jane eventually died from tuberculosis. Franklin, on the wrong side of history and disdained for his politics, died from a rotted liver and was buried next to his wife and three children.

President Zachary Taylor loved working them cotton fields. Check that- he loved his 100 slaves working them cotton fields. He was briefly distracted from his first love by a quick 40 years killing Indians and Mexicans. He ended up picking up a couple other loves along the way: nationalism, Whiggery (it’s a phrase. I don’t know what it means, but I’m assuming it has something to do with most of the guys I graduated with in Tampa Bay.) and apparently being generally sloppy.

He was only President for about a year, due to his forgetting to live. The big legacy he managed achieved came just a few days before when threatened literally murdering any southerner who wanted to secede. Which was an awful classy move from a gentleman who, as I stated earlier, OWNED A HUNDRED SLAVES. It was during those wonderful days when people weren’t necessarily opposed to enslaving other people, but rather would go to WAR over the issue of states’ rights. Which seems to be the moral equivalent of arresting rapists not so much because of the rape, but a strong stance against dresses being torn.

Eleven dead years later, the Civil War erupted and Taylor’s kid was a general for the south. Crazy rebellious teens.

So, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this Obama guy yet. Apparently some Kenyan runs our country or something. I’m not sure. I don’t listen to the news.

I showed this watercolor a couple weeks ago to my roommate Brad (hereforth known as Roommatebrad) and asked him what he thought. He replied that he thought it was good, “but the mouth looks kind of wonky on the left side.” At which point I realized he has never looked at my website, which is full of generally wonky recreations of presidents. This hurts my feelings. So, Roommatebrad, to prove my point, if you read this sentence and respond to it in the next 3 months and show you give a darn about your best bud Barak, I will owe you a dollar. An American dollar. On top of all the other dollars I owe you.

Oh, and as a snarky political comment: It’s kind of funny how a ton of people spent 8 years coming to the conclusion that you should never put your hopes in a politician and then did just that. OOH BURN I GOT YOU GOOD ZING!!

Ronald Reagan helped lead the fight to rout out communists from the Screen Actor’s Guild. He decided to test out his President-being and Pinko-hating skills there first.

His 69th day in office, he ducked behind a bullet proof car door to avoid a bullet, but it still ricocheted around the door and hit him in the chest. Reagan basically shrugged it off, apparently still playing the role as the resilient western sherriff from one of his 53 movies. “Pardon me ma’am, but I ain’t got time to bleed. I gots to lower taxes while increasing the defense budget while cutting social spending.” James Brady was never an actor. He remains paralyzed.

Basically Ronny is the reason we’re not all still doing duck-and-cover-from-the-nuclear-holocaust drills, but also the reason thoroughly crazy people are wandering around asking us for all our damn change.

The little bio I read on Calvin Coolidge confused me. It made a bunch of negative things seem like pretty chill quirks. The guy never talked, ever. He LOVED the status quo, and would say things like, “I love the status quo.” Not really the platform of change we’ve come to enjoy.

The thing I find crazy is that, right at the end of his sitting there quietly doing nothing, the Great Depression hit. The bio apparently didn’t find it necessary to include just a dash of context. Yes, Cal, you rocked the 20’s. The 30’s? Not so much.

He also seemed to want farmers to suck it. I haven’t studied this too deeply, but seeing as how the dust bowl happened right after Coolidge bid adieu, I’m thinking he maybe shouldn’t have vetoed everything that came across his desk marked “food makers.”

Yeah, so this is President George W. Bush. I wasn’t looking forward to doing Bush or Obama, simply because I wanted to do something completely random for them and knew it would be impossible. I chose this at random and started working on it, and wouldn’t you know it, it looks like it means something. Something like this drawing is probably for sale on some street vendor table in Berkeley or Santa Cruz. I wonder what those guys are selling now that Bush is out of office. It’s hard to get rid of all that anger they had stored up for that guy. And to get rid of all that excess merchandise.

President Woodrow Wilson pushed the legislation to outlaw child labor. I personally wouldn’t have been so hasty about it; their little hands can get to those hard to reach gears in our nation’s important giant machines. But the people of the 1910’s thought it was rad. Their loss, I guess.

He also kept America out of the war in Europe, which, between the two, led him to win reelection. “He kept us out of the war!” they used to say. Then he took it back and went to war and everyone probably stood around thinking of something else to collectively say. It probably took them a good month or two to come up with “Over There.”

So then America beat up the Germans or whatever, which I’m not sure how I feel about, cause all my great-grandparents were kicking it over there, probably all crazy for the Kaiser. Good thing they got out of there before Hitler showed up and America belatedly and begrudgingly headed over to rough up the general area a second time.

18″x10″ mixed media

President William McKinley ran on a platform of either being really for silver or really against silver. I honestly can’t tell. Or rather I don’t care to tell. There was a depression in the 1890’s? Crazy. I guess. And it involved tariffs and virulent arguments over coins? So boring. Honestly, try to work your way through this.

He did make a fun little war on Spain for 100 days, even though he didn’t want to. And guess what? We got Puerto Rico! USA! USA! Which, and it goes without saying, has been a victory that’s been paying off in spades.

He ran twice against William Jennings Bryant, a democrat. Bryant, who I’ve depicted mutating out of McKinley’s chest there, ran a third time at some point, never winning. He was the Bad News Bears of boring ass late nineteenth century politics. After beating Bryant a second time, McKinley had the misfortune of being assassinated. I think its probable that after hearing the news, Bryant thought to himself, “Crap! That should have been me!!!”

Oh and one more thing on Bryant. It just seems so awesome that the perennial golden boy of the Democratic party spent his days pushing for prohibition and whole heartedly fighting evolution. So, it seems to me the party has held a steady course over the years.  After winning at the famous Scopes trial, Bryant high fived his bros, signed a few Bibles, wrote “F- YEAH on Darwin’s office wall, and died five days later.

One thing he and McKinley had in common? A free Mars. With their plentiful Martian silver.

George Washington never cut down his father’s cherry tree. But if he had? I would go cut down every cherry tree I could find, just out of some damn respect. And you better, too.

I’m not sure what that meant. My head is spinning. I’ve been playing this stupid video game that is draining the life out of me and keeping me from important things, like drawing dead men. So, just, you know…. here:

Some of the details are small. Click on it and maybe that will help.

*Edit- after some emails, here’s some of what’s in there- GW Bridge, GWU diploma, Wizard’s basketball, National’s tickets, Washington apples, Washington Monument, stickers with the towns named after him, quarters, dollars, Washington Post, Redskins. I think.

So say you get dragged into West Point kicking and screaming, graduated so-so, and go back to work in dad’s leather store. Reasonable scenario? Makes sense so far? And then holy hell war breaks out.

And you’re somehow good at yelling at guys and convincing them to kill people with knives at the end of their muskets and getting their legs sawed off while holding a leather belt in their mouth that probably came from your dad’s store. Still with me?

So then you’re in charge of, like, everyone still standing. And all your buddies think you would be a great president. So they elect you and you find out you’re not really that great at president, but it’s cool cause you can still fall back on the leather shop. Following?

So when you retire from a good dozen or so years of being the most important man in the world, and you think, “Screw working for dad, I’m gonna make my own business.” And you do and you’re now the boss of like 100 people. And you manage to have it go bankrupt and lose all your money, cause, and I’m just conjecturing here, your business didn’t involve blasting southerners with cannons and asking Sherman to burn Atlanta. Have I lost you?

So you’re bummed and broke and your doctor comes by and says, “Hey you got throat cancer,” cause he’s a DICK. What do you then? Well, you write an autobiography to get some cash for your future widow. So, say you do all that. Say you live that kind of life. Say you finish your book and make $450,000 (and that’s in old-timey money!) Say you do all that. You gathering this? How do you celebrate like the day after your book is done?

Well, if you’re President Ulysses S. Grant, you die.

And mom if you don’t get the reference about the picture, let me know. But there’s a pretty strong chance I’ll tell you what movie it’s from and you still won’t get it.

William Jefferson Clinton, known as “Bill Jeff” to no one really, was originally named “William Jefferson Blythe III” after his late father, but changed it to his adoptive father’s name in highschool. It was a very sweet gesture, but I’m guessing a big “f- you” to his grandpa Blythe. “This family name ends HERE.”

Bill Jeff ran for Congress in the 70’s and lost, but CONSOLATION PRIZE married Hillary the next year. After serving two terms during which the country had unprecedented peace and prosperity, he left office to serve the country in other ways and be generally known for being super duper horny.

EDIT: In hindsight I really should have given him a single tear rolling down his cheek.

Chester A. Arthur’s politician buddies got pretty mad at him after he was made president (when Garfield was assassinated), cause all of a sudden he was too good for party politics. The nerve! Well, it’s cause Chester had a pretty good gag going- He was totally dyin’! Jokes on them! What, they’re not going to re-elect him? Oh no oh no, right? I’m guessing it was only in private that he would lean back in the oval office and snicker, “I HAZ KIDNEY DIZEAZE!!!”

He also slapped a sign on the Statue of Liberty basically saying “…except for poor people, crazies, criminals and Chinese.” So that’s where that started.

I had him over to catch some rays on the deck.

7″ tall, clay, aluminum wire and spray paint.

Just a note: Thanks Victoria, I’m glad you like he’s wearing a striped sweater. But you might have missed it’s a Freddie nod. Just an FYI, everyone, pop culture reference below.