Whatever you say, Studley

Here I am (as the late Chicago columnist Mike Royko) listening to another one of Studs Terkel's crazy rants, down at the Billy Goat tavern after a Cub's game. Obviously, I couldn't give this one to the English teacher to hang up at school, what with the brewskis and all.

Call me 'Blockhead'

As long as I'm living vicariously through PhotoShop, I figured if I'd already incarnated the likes of painter Grant Wood and writer H.L. Mencken- then I may as well become the world's greatest cartoonist while I'm at it. This is me, in a parallel universe, at the desk of the master, Charles M. Schultz.

My days at the Sun

Every year our English teacher solicits our favorite poems for National Poetry Month and requests that we give her a picture of ourselves so that her class can make posters of our poems to hang in the hallway. Last year I made myself look like Iowa artist Grant Wood. This year I decided to make myself into H.L. Mencken, political columnist, humorist, social commentator, reporter, and editor of the Baltimore Sun, back at the time of Theodore Roosevelt.

I may never be as famous or influential a writer, but I love writing as much as cartooning. Please note that the beer mug tattoo was drawn on the original photo by Mencken himself- that's not something I added on my own.

An Iowa hero

"It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups."
— Henry A. Wallace

Here's a watercolor caricature I did of FDR's Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Vice President, who ran as the presidential candidate of the Progressive Party.

A straggler

Guess some people don't get around to sending out their rejection slips till about six months later.
No sweat, better to do it for love than to do it for a living anyway.

Just for the heck of it

What can I say? I have no time to cartoon this week, I ran across this in an old notebook and I knew this corny joke. Considering the bear market we're in, "I thought, what the heck?"

Watercolor

Just playing around while my students work on their assignments in Painting class.

Am I really that mean?

This offering was submitted to me by one of my Photography students. 'A' for retouching in Photoshop, but do I sense some hostility here? Just wait till I grade y our quiz this weekend Josh!

Dumb ideas #347

Existentialist Cartoonists

From: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/festival/2008/10/groening-barry.html

The cartoonists Matt Groening (“Futurama,” “The Simpsons,” “Life is Hell”) and Lynda Barry (“Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” What It Is) have been friends since they attended the same college, where, they said Saturday afternoon at the Metropolitan Pavilion, Matt tormented hippies and Lynda modeled nude for four dollars an hour. They also found teachers who inspired their offbeat work. Matt’s seminars on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche led to his “Life is Hell” theme, and Lynda’s art classes led to her belief in a natural biological instinct in humans to create “images,” whether by making a drawing, talking to an imaginary friend, or by merely recognizing the personality and significance of an inanimate object.

Also, they are really funny people. Lynda dispelled the false notion that a person should only make art if he or she can make a living from it in the following way (I’m paraphrasing):

That’s like having a baby and as soon as it’s born you jump on it and say, ‘Take me to the store and buy me dinner and go to work and make me some money!’

The point she was making was that you don’t have a baby in order to make money, you make money so you can take care of a baby—just like you make money so you can have time to make art, which is an enjoyable experience. The point I am making is that she pantomimed having a baby and jumping on its back and galloping to the store.

They also had a great interview with Dilbert creator Scott Adams: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/2008/10/scott-adams-dilbert.html

Get to work

This is my version of Dilbert's "pointy-haired boss." Actually it's loosely based on a combination of Joe Santos (Sgt. Dennis Becker on the Rockford Files), James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) and Danny DeVito (Louie on Taxi). In case you're wondering, my principal looks more like Joaquin Phoenix and I don't think I'd have the guts to characterize him no matter how frustrating the bureaucratic hoops we have to jump through as teachers get. I wouldn't want his job, he does the best he can. But lets face it, I'm sure plenty of my students think I'm as mean as this cartoon boss some days. Just part of life (see student's drawing of me in the previous post).

Occupational hazard

One of the occupational hazards of teaching high school is that occasionally you become the subject of your student's editorial cartooning. Elsa used to be such a nice girl too, shame about her Yearbook grade.

Pucker Up, Butter-Cup

Dog doodles

The New Yorker's Cartoon Lounge is having a Dog-off among their cartoonists. Here is a doodle I did on a legal pad. You'll have to click on it to make it big enough to read, so remember to hit the back button in your browser tom return to the blog.

The Random Albums Game

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit "random"
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on "explore the last seven days"
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop, the Gimp or a similar program to put it all together. Maybe you can do it in Picnik or whatever that web-based thing all the kids are using is.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" and TAG the friends you want to join in.

This reminds me a lot of the DaDaist (or maybe it's Surrealist) game "Exquisite Corpse," very random yet creative. This should be especially fun for any graphic designers, artists, photographers, or cartoonists out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse

PS- I give you "Gimp," free download, not QUITE as cool as Photoshop, but fun for those who have to do without. http://www.gimp.org/

Great moments in psychological hygiene

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This is gonna sound counter intuitive...

Last year I felt bad that I hadn't really done any work to pursue cartooning as a career. I made a Jonathan Winters quote as my motto- "if you ship hasn't come in, swim out to it."

I sent columns and cartoons to 8 or 9 syndicates and got rejected by every single one. Boy was I discouraged. This on about the time that I backed out of writing and cartooning for our small local weekly newspaper too (long story, kinda personal) gist of it is it was a hard time for me.

Now realistically I understand that this was only one attempt and most successful professional writers and cartoonists wage campaign after campaign for years before they hit get anywhere. I also have come to understand that most of them also have day jobs. But recently I've been reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl and I think I have a very different outlook than I used to. (I know, an existentialist psychiatrist's tale of NAZI concentration camp survival- kind of heavy reading for an aspiring cartoonist right? We're all supposed to be zany and light hearted, right?)

One is finding meaning. I've come to believe that any good artist, and certainly me as a high school Art teacher has the same role as that of a good psychologist- "The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient (viewer/reader/student) so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him."

I know, profound, huh?

Anyway, I also found something else very meaningful in Dr. Frankl's masterpiece:
"Don't aim at success- the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than one's self or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success:you have to let it happen by not caring about it... listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go carry it out to the best of your knowledge... -in the long run- success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it."

So in other words, I'm going to start using reverse-psychology on the universe. The freedom is that there's no pressure. I only cartoon what I want to when I want to and I totally get to cartoon however I want to. Cartooning for cartoons sake. Kind of like art for art's sake. The down side is that posting these cartoons here for free all the time is a lousy business model. I only hope that I can forget to think about how I'm trying to play this sly trick on the universe in hopes that God will reward me by making me an obscenely rich and successful writer and cartoonist someday.

Of course, Frankl also really emphasized that bit about it being "in the loooong run," He actually wrote, "Then you will live to see that in the long run---in the long run, I say!---" and between having adult A.D.D. and the fact that my original campaign of mailing cartoons to syndicates was pretty much my version of a midlife crisis- it's REALLY hard to have the patience for anything real long range. It may be pretty tough to forget to think about how I'm trying to convince Providence that I really couldn't care less. Like a watched pot not boiling, I may have to keep peeking over my shoulder to make sure God's noticing how much I don't care if I ever get to write or cartoon for a living, let alone win a bunch of awards and sell a bunch of books.

This dilemma is what Frankl would refer to as hyper-intention, which is where you want something too much so you end up making it impossible to ever get and hyper-reflection, which is a neurosis where you can't stop thinking about something. These what he contends is the cause of most sexual dysfunction in both men and women. Ah ha, but see, writing this somewhat satirical blog entry poking fun at myself for being so over analytical about it all is what he'd call "dereflecting," or engaging in a therapy known as "paridoxical-intention." That means I'm so charmingly self-efacing in my humorous essay about cavalierly and nonchalantly not caring about whether or not I ever get anywhere as either a writer of cartoonist that God's GOT TO see how sincere I am and go ahead and give me what I USED to want but now couldn't care less about (but if He INSISTED on blessing me that way, I guess I'd have to be gracious and accept it even though I don't really want it anymore). He's just GOT TO!

Isn't this the most sincere pumpkin patch you've ever seen? Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.

But seriously, I don't know if this is how metaphysics work, or just how my maladjusted mind plays tricks on me, but I know that all through junior high and high school and some of college I was absolutely miserable because I didn't have a girlfriend and finally I told God, "screw it, I give up!" And that's about the time that He dropped my wife into my life. So maybe there is something to it.

Completely coincidentally, I named my religious cartoons "Sheep in wolves' clothing" before I ever read "Man's Search for Meaning," and it's kind of one of his ideas. I THINK I can get away with it without having to pay his descendants or estate any royalties because he didn't quite use the exact same wording- he said "one may howl with the wolves, if need be, but when doing so, one should be, I would urge, a sheep in wolf's clothing." Of course now I feel OBLIGATED to draw more of them and they have to all be amazingly deep and meaningful and powerful and perfect and all that in order to be worthy of the name, so now I've got THAT hanging over me. Sheesh.

Well, they say that a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words and I always meant to just make this a quick, short little entry here and not bore people with something so flippin' long, so I guess I'll stop now. Dang it! Why can't I ever do ANYTHING right?! Stupid! STUPID!

Vortex

Doing my noö-dynamic best to stay out of the existential vacuum.

Wish this was in 3D

Here we go again

I think what this country needs now are more tax cuts for the rich and less regulation on business!

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"The neurotic who learns to laugh at himself may be on the way to self-management." Psychologist, Gordon W. Allport

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Phun in Photoshop

Remember the old Murphy Brown show? Recall how on the inside of her office door, she had a dartboard and famous politicians and media types often found themselves there? Like Dan Quayle. Well, here's my answer to it. Now that I have the template, I can put any perceived villain in the Polaroid. Fun way to blow off steam, huh?

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One last dig

Note that Bush is Mickey Mouse (cannibalized that caricature from previous cartoon I did) and Washington is annoyed (I actually did that in Photoshop). The "Our enemies..." bit is an actual quote, one of the top three dumb "Bushisms." By the way "Misunderestimated" is a real Bushism too, although "Stategery" is not, it was made up by comedian Will Ferrel, but "misunderestimated" really was made up by our previous president.

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Gonzo Girl Rides Again!!!

Here's one that illustrates Florida humor writer Sammie Mays' story, "Fear and Funk on the Overseas Highway" that was published in the Coconut Telegraph in March 2008

This cartoon is going to be used as the visual for "fear and funk on the overseas highway" being reprinted in the upcoming book: "bars scars & guitars /the official gonzo guide to Key West and the Florida Keys".

Sammie in the Keys

This cartoon is an illustration for humor writer Sammie Mays' story "Damn the Carnations: Full Speed Ahead," originally published in the Florida Keys Keynoter (Marathon, FL) June 2007

I don't get technology

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Money money money money

"Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age...

...I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things (1 Corinthians 13:11). The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness." ~BHO Inaugural address Jan 20, 2009

In other words, it's time to stop being selfish and short sighted and "Man-up," put on our "big-boy pants" and start looking out for our common best interest, not our personal comfort. High time. I say to this Amen.

Steve King would be rolling over in his grave, but he's not dead

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Happy Renewal Day America!