There is something curious, in the American psyche, about not being all gung ho about one dollar coins.  Way back in the day, we put Susan B Anthony (the B was for Bonequeisha) on one, and honored her historical role in the American conquest of the Moon on the other side.  Unfortunately, the coin never really caught on in part because it was about the same size as a dollar, and partly because Miss B Anthony had this sort of a sternly disappointed look on her face, as if she had already resigned herself to the fact that you were going to pick her up, put her in your pants pocket down by all your naughty bits, and eventually spend her on beer Friday night.

            So, back to the drawing board they went, those plucky designers of currency, and came up with an idea that involved a coin featuring a rattlesnake riding a flaming motorcycle out of a giant skull, which was of course struck down, because it made some who beheld it weep tears of joy at its ineffable awesomeness, while others who saw it wept tears of sissiness, for such was its unspeakable badassitude.  So they went with Plan B, Sacagawea, who unfortunately, never really caught on either, because even though she was way hotter than Susan B Anthony, there’s just something about a coin with a picture of a dead white guy on it that says “money” which brings us to where we stand today.

            Thus was the idea born to put a different President on each one, at the rate of four a year or so.  On one hand this is totally sweet, because I can finally fulfill my lifelong dream of walking around town with a pocket full of William Howard Taft, on the other hand, at some point in the future, I’m going to buy something, and someone is going to hand me a Jimmy Carter as change.  Ah well, one must take the bad with the good I suppose.  And at least we don’t get stuck with money with a duck on it like some other countries in North America.

            Anyway, let’s take a look, why don’t we, at the first four coins to be issued in the series, that we may better appreciate their fine art and craftsman ship make fun of them. 

            Let us start out then, with the tails side of the coin which, in commemoration of an event which is held fondly in the hearts and minds of all red-blooded Americans; the moment right before the Statue of Liberty brought down her mighty Jackie Wilson-powered arm on the roof of that museum in Ghostbusters 2, defeating Vigo the Carpathian, who at the time had been about ready to join up with Hitler and start an evil boy band (I know, all boy bands are technically evil, but this one even more so).  Notice how she’s looking right at the $1.  What? Is that all I’m worth these days?   Personally, I think it would have been a nice touch to put a tiny little Charleton Heston down on the lower left, but one can’t have everything, I suppose.

First, we have George Washington, whose cheekbones, apparently, cast a permanent shadow over a goodly part of his head, leaving it forever condemned to an eternity of freezing darkness, while the other side of his face was perpetually exposed to the Sun, reaching temperatures hot enough to boil lead; leaving only a narrow habitable region in his nose.  Or maybe he’s just clenching his jaw closed really hard, suggesting that this particular likeness was taken against his will,  as the engraver tried to cajole him into revealing his hippopotamus teeth.  Also, note how the hair on the front of his head seems sharply divided from the hair further back.  He actually cultivated this look because the hair wall up front acted as a shield and a wind break to protect the stand of tiny pine trees that covered much of the rest of his head from storms, low doors ways, and funny hats.

Next we come to John Adams who displays an excellent example of DRAMATIC CURRENCY HAIR, in which a person whose hair would normally just kind of hang out on his head is rendered in such a way as to suggest that he spent laborious hours each day setting his mighty follicle of steel with a pair of blacksmith’s tongs while holding his head in a mighty furnace.  Also, note how vacuous and doofy his eyes look.  While George seems to be saying “Are we done yet; I have people to punch in the face?”  John Adams seems to be giving off more of a “Hmmmmmm? Are those Cheez Doodles over there?” vibe.  Also, it just looks like as soon as they were done taking his picture here, he unbuttoned his collar and his chin just kind of merged back into his neck, ala Jabba the Hutt.

And who’s this then?  Why it’s President Thomas Jefferson, who once saved an orphanage from a meteor shower by shielding it beneath his mighty jutting caveman brow.  Honestly, when you look at it long enough, it’s kind of like a magic eye picture, where Jefferson’s head starts to morph away from his hair and you begin to perceive that this is really Fred Gwynn with a mop on his head.  He’s kind of doing a bedroom eyes thing there too, “Hey there baby, I kept a large collection of mastodon parts in my vestibule, wanna come take a look?” he seems almost to say.  Or perhaps he’s just completely stoned, and is presently imagining what it would be like if Washington DC were visited by Znorok, Alien Unicorn from the Gumdrop Planet.  Either way, he has more important things on his mind that being on money right now.

Then we come to James Madison, exactly as he looked right after Gandalf demanded that he hand of the One Ring.  Seconds after this, he will realize the error of his ways, and bequeath the Ring to his son, John Quincy Adams Baggins, who would one day leave the Shire to save all of Middle Earth.  Isn’t there a bit too much neck-swaddling going on here as well, it almost looks like his head merges straight into that cravat thing he’s wearing, as if he were in fact, James Madison, King of the Lizard Men, Five Seconds After Putting An Entire Lemon In His Mouth.  Which, coincidentally, is what his wife called him when no one else was around.

            Once, back in the late 1700s, around the time our mighty ancestors were having a revolution, there was a French sciency guy, whose name I am at present inadequately motivated to look up, so we’re just going to call him Monsieur Francis Martha Weaseltrousers (or as the French say, les pantaloons de weasel).  Now, Monsieur Weaseltrousers had a theory concerning the relation between animals on one side of the ocean, and their brethren on the other, and it went a little something like this:  Everything in Europe is bigger and smarter and stronger and more fabulous that anything over in America.  This, of course, made him very popular in France, while many great Americans, such as Ben Franklin, thought he was an enormous tard.  Old Ben went so far as to point out that, on average, Americans were a good two inches taller than the French, which he credited to our steady diet of buffalo and monster truck rallies.

            Anyway, if you’ve been watching the news lately, there’s something afoot in Britain that would surely make the late Monsieur Weaseltrousers most unhappy, and would doubtless cause him to mince about ineffectively in a manner most delightfully humorous to behold.  I am, of course, referring to the fact that England is being taken over by American squirrels.  The native squirrel of the British Isles, as it turns out, is the red squirrel, which gains its color from the millions of tiny krill it eats daily as it sweeps through the sky, filtering them through its baleen.  The grey squirrel, on the other hand is purely of American derivation and acquired its coloration in the late 19^th Century, when, during the Civil War, the vast majority of squirrels sided with the South, eventually distinguishing themselves in battle greatly, when, in a daring nighttime raid, they ate General McClellan’s nuts, crippling the Union war effort for some time.

            It is suspected by British Squirrelologists that the American squirrels first found their way across the Atlantic during the early 20^th Century, when old-timey bicycle merchants would routinely use thousands of live squirrels as ballast on the voyage over to England.  Once there, they would dump their cargo of squirrels into the Thames, filling their hold with delightful old-timey bicycles for all the good little children of the USA.  Unfortunately, it soon turned out that grey squirrels were in many ways mightier than the indigenous red ones.  They drank a lot more, were larger, drove SUVs, and frequently carried tiny, cute little firearms.  Alas, the red squirrels were mostly at that time occupied in fighting World War I, or as people called it then, “Fred” (later, when World War II started, and everyone realized they were going to end up having to call it “Fred Jr.” which was too silly to contemplate, they went back and changed the name of the first one).

            In 1918, when a war-weary red squirrel populace at last returned, having left behind their tiny little squirrel-sized gas masks and teensy weensy little machine guns that shot acorns or somesuch whimsical thing, they discovered that they no longer had the advantage of numbers.  And so it has continued ever since, with the red squirrel population dwindling, and the grey squirrels becoming ever more brazen, chewing holes in the Tower of London, beating up little of ladies, and recently taking up residence in Prince Charles ears, where an estimated 500 of them now live. 

            The emergency being what it is, the British government (the cool part, that always made exploding watches and crap for James Bond) claims to have created a Super Squirrel, larger, mightier, and more bloodthirsty than the American invaders, in hopes that it will chase them out, and going on to establish a benevolent dictatorship over the regular original recipe red squirrels, and eventually, the people of Europe in general.