Dear President Obama:

We're delighted that you have begun the long-awaited process of normalizing relations with Cuba, and we're anxious to see a US embassy open in Havana, but there is an action that you alone can take to further improve relations: take Cuba off the terrorist list!

Most people around the world would find it very strange that Cuba would be on a “terrorist list" with Sudan, Syria and Iran. Cuba is most known worldwide for exporting doctors, musicians, teachers, artists, and dancers–– not terrorists.

Cuban diplomats says they cannot conceive of re-establishing diplomatic relations with the United States while Cuba continues to be considered a sponsor of international terrorism. President Obama, your next executive action should include removing Cuba from the list!

Signed, Your Name   Click here to sign the petition

Glenn Brewer graduated with Honors and a BFA in Fine Arts from the Columbus College of Art and Design. He has created illustrations for numerous companies and publications including TSR, Inc., Visionary Entertainment Studios, The New Orleans Tribune, Frost Illustrated, Tygeron Graphics and Unchained Spirit Enterprises, a children’s book publisher. Brewer is best known for the six-part comic series Askari Hodari, which he wrote, illustrated and published. Askari Hodari was nominated twice and eventually won the Howard E. Day Prize. Brewer also was nominated for a Glyph Award in the Best Self-Publisher category for his Askari Hodari series.

1.      Describe for our readers the most compelling art piece you have made?

The cover for the first issue of my Askari Hodari comic.  It's an image of a man with his arms crossed on his chest holding two guns.  Readers had different reactions to it.  Some were disgusted while others got it. However the felt initially, the cover intrigued them enough to take a chance and give the book a read.

2.     Tell us about your best, most successful, or most fulfilling art show?

Sexual practices involving bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism are sometimes lumped together under the acronym BDSM. Whatever you call them, they’re all the rage at the multiplex.

  It was just a week ago that Fifty Shades of Grey started steaming up movie screens nationwide. And now the Gateway Film Center is offering a curtain call in the form of The Duke of Burgundy.

  The eccentric British film is about a lesbian couple whose sex life follows a rigid pattern of domination and punishment.

  The pattern begins when Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) arrives to clean house for Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a scholar who specializes in the study of butterflies and moths. Evelyn appears to take her chores seriously, but the poor girl invariably leaves something undone, and Cynthia finds it necessary to punish her.

  Though the pattern is cut-and-dried up until this point, what happens next isn’t—dried, I mean. Listening from the other side of the bedroom door, we realize that Cynthia is showering Evelyn with something, and it definitely isn’t praise.

On February 26th, the Federal Communications Commission (better known as the FCC) will be voting on whether to classify broadband internet as a Title II service - something that would give it the same open legal status as telephone lines, a concept called net neutrality. For those of us who regularly read, stream and, yes, even torrent from online sources, this is more than just a vague formality. Losing net neutrality could have a massive and possibly permanent impact on how we get not just entertainment but news and other information. And while some in Washington are speaking out on the side of an open internet, Republicans are already tossing out meaningless reactionary phrases like “Obamacare for the internet” to try to secure the tubes for their corporate sponsors.

  The concept of net neutrality is a simple one: Your internet service provider is not allowed to filter, throttle or otherwise meddle with what you’re accessing. They can’t block sites or slow down streaming from certain sources.

An old bag lady waits for the COTA bus downtown. She gets on at 11 a.m. She rides it as far as it goes and gets a transfer to another bus and repeats the action. She rides 10 buses through the course of the day. Eventually she ends up in the same spot where she started. She is older when she finishes than when she started out. End of story.

  This, my friend, is what the new Bob Dylan album, Shadows In The Night, is like. Nothing more. Maybe a little bit less. Except it's not circular, it's flat like Kansas.

  But here's the riddle, if not the punchline, and it is so goddam Zen it makes you love Bob even more than you already do: He's doing entirely Frank Sinatra songs!

  It's a joke, right?

  No joke, chump. The joke would be if he did Wu-Tang's 36 Chambers album in its entirety. That would be funny. Nope, the Chairman of the Croak does the Chairman of the Board. Fuggettaboutit.