Mistakes: a festival of gaffes

ISSUE NO. 26 // MISTAKES: A FESTIVAL OF GAFFES

Can I tell you a secret?

Just between you and me, I screwed up last month. I created a whole elaborate animation, completely forgot Lyndon B. Johnson, and covered it up.

But that, in conjunction with someone* pointing out a error in a doodle from a couple of years ago inspired today’s theme:

Mistakes.

One of my guiding principles with this project is not to be precious. If I worry about every last detail, it would take forever to get through a single book. And do you have any idea how many presidential biographies there are out there?** I’d never get anywhere.

Point being, I mess up. But unlike some people, I’ve never accidentally started a war or played my own national anthem while staging a secret coup.

Presidential Doodler

*Here’s the backstory, if you’re interested: after I posted Eisenhower sans pants (exhibit A) inspired by Kurt Deion’s book, Kurt said he bet I never thought I’d draw a pantsless president. Au contraire. Years ago, I drew a skinny-dipping John Adams (exhibits B and C). Kurt politely led me to realize it John Quincy Adams who swam in the buff.

**This guy knows. (Check out all the biographies he’s read. It’s unreal.)

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Exhibit A

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Exhibit B

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Exhibit C

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OH SH*T: mistakes I didn’t make

Make a PITA VP to keep him out of trouble.

When Chester Arthur was nominated to be James Garfield’s VP, The Nation comforted its readers: “there is no place in which [Arthur’s] powers of mischief will be so small as in the Vice Presidency.”

Then Garfield was assassinated and Arthur became president. On the bright side, we learned that the vice presidency isn’t a foolproof way to keep people out of trouble.

Just kidding!

Pain-in-tush Theodore Roosevelt was “kicked upstairs” to the VP role to get him out of the way and — who could have seen this coming?! — became our youngest president ever when William McKinley was assassinated.

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Play your own national anthem after hosting a coup in a foreign country

Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt, staged a coup in Iran. Then right before the new leader addressed the nation for the first time, Kermit accidentally got the radio station to play the freaking Star-Spangled Banner because if there’s any song you want playing when you secretly overthrow a democratically-elected leader in another country … it’s your own!

In the interest of transparency, I initially listed Kermit as the grandson of Theodore and Alice Roosevelt. I then proceeded to proofread this fifty times and didn’t notice my mistake until I doodled a family tree.

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Curse yourself out using your own name while under cover

Kermit Roosevelt cursed himself out with his own damned name while playing tennis undercover. You know, while taking a teeny break from staging a coup. He saved himself by claiming to be a super-passionate Republican, using FDR’s name as a curse.

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FRICK!: my mistakes

You may already know this, but when I catch mistakes I expertly hide them away under clunky arrows. Check out this spread… I’m so good at being bad that I was able to hide away six distinct mistakes.

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Grover Cleveland commented that it would be easier if presidents just wait until their term was nearly up and then die in office. I was pretty jazzed about my lettering until I realized, to my embarrment, I misspelled embarrassment. What an ass.

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John Quincy Adams had a didn’t have a pet alligator, is a thing I learned after ordering a ton of trading cards that announced he loved to scare the crap out of people with it.

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It wasn’t until I went to use my Monroe / Hamilton duel doodle for something Super Important that I noticed the missing d in scoundrel. Of course, that was AFTER I ordered a bunch of stickers and had been using them for a long time.

DID YOU KNOW?

POTUS Notice emails are repurposed as blog posts… but without some of the fun stuff (like recommendations and quizzes). And without chances to win! With this issue, subscribers had a chance to score a limited-edition John Quincy Adams error card and a rare “scounrel” sticker.

Now I ask you: where else are you going to get this kind of medium-quality content?

Subscribe to The POTUS Notice for chances to win weird free stuff. Sometimes the weird stuff will even be typo and error-free!

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