Our Fifth Beatle (Except There's Two of Us. So Third Beatle, But That Implies George)

As much as we make references to the HttCttD Offices and its staff, this whole thing has been cobbled together by two guys who, combined, used their interests in writing, history and general tomfoolery, decided to see what would happen if the presidents were entered into a tournament of death.

Yep, those are the guys.

As much as we'd like to pat ourselves on the back for being the greatest American heroes to ever walk the planet (a conclusion we'd reach using specious reasoning and nonsensical logic) we'd actually prefer to acknowledge someone who you don't get to hear from, except for when he leaves a comment. He's our artist, Tim.

When Tony and I were first fleshing out the specifics of the greatest idea of the 21st century (again, specious reasoning and nonsensical logic), we knew we'd be able to handle working together. We've worked together on a few projects in the past, and petulant name-calling aside (usually by me), things have gotten done. We do, however, have our weak points. One of which is lack of artistic ability.

I can speak for myself when I say that I have no talent for drawing, nor do I know how to make things look pleasing to the eye. I can't really speak for Tony, but the fact that I can't think of any instance where I've seen him attempt to draw something leads me to the conclusion that he either can't or he just won't. He was the one who put together the blog's main artwork, and I'd say that came out looking pretty cool.

Scrolling up is for suckers.

I had an idea for the blog's logo, but no way of creating it. That's when I asked my friend Tim.

I've known Tim since I was in high school. I've asked him to design a number of things over the years, most of them had to do with half-baked ideas that I never got off the ground. I even got his artwork permanently etched into my skin.

According to astrology: The Pisces will offer admission to the gun show, even if you are without a ticket.
They're THAT kind!

So when I had my idea for our logo, I turned to Tim for help, who was happy to help out.

Although he always said he was happy to help out, I always felt like I was bugging him, so I didn't want to feel like I was taking advantage of him and his time. When it came time to produce actual blog posts, I took it upon myself to create the artwork that topped the individual Monday posts.

I was proud of myself for finding a picture of William H. Taft where it looked like he was throwing a punch (he's actually throwing a ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game). Other than that, it's pretty, umm, boring. A few weeks later, with Tony's help, we jazzed things up a bit.

Though it added about 15% more zing to the original model, was still an underwhelming amount of zing. But, what else could we do?

A month later, we were working up to the first fight we were actually looking forward to. Grover Cleveland (22) vs. Grover Cleveland (24), or "Clash of the Clevelands." Since this was a more exciting match (to us, anyway) I thought I'd ask Tim for help. I asked him if he'd be able to make this:

any more exciting.

Literally less than a half-hour later, he came back with this:

with a humble "How does this look?"

Tony's reaction was, "Holy shit! That's wonderful!" I agreed, possibly using other profanity. I decided since it didn't seem to take Tim that long to create this, to ask him if he wouldn't mind doing this for us every week. That afternoon, he sent me a bunch of others and he's been a part of the HttCttD family ever since.

So thanks again to Tim for giving us the artistic edge we had been sorely missing.

Creating presidential tourney of death-themed artwork isn't Tim's real passion. If you're interested in seeing some of his other artwork, you can see his stuff here. He's also quite good with the three-dimensional stuff as well. Feel free to check out Timbo's Creations.

As for this blog, we still have a week and a half of top-notch Chief Executive Fisticuffs left. This week, we're seeing who will be awarded the HttCttD Bronze, leading up to the exciting conclusion next week.