“I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn’t make it worse.”
Brendan Behan was right
Category: Cartooning
Beep beep
A tip of the Mad Dog’s ACME sun helmet goes out to Khal S. for finding this bit of signage along the Rail Trail in Fanta Fe.
With New Mexico being a hotbed of TV/film activity, I immediately wondered whether it had something to do with Warner Bros. shelving its live action/animation combo “Coyote vs. Acme” — and taking a writedown for shitcanning the $70 million feature — rather than simply letting it run heedlessly off a cliff, stop in midair, and hold up a sign that reads, “Yikes.”
I guess we’ll never know. That’s all, folks!
Oh, yeah; all right
OK, we all could use a good laugh these days — These days? Most days! — and I got one texted to me late last night by a couple of guitar-playing pals in California.
The cartoonist is Michigan’s own Dave Coverly, and you can catch his act at speedbump.com. Buy his book, prints, or original artwork while you’re there. He’s done a couple of these eye-chart gags and they’re all killer. Also, dogs and cats. What’s not to like?
Those of you who share my buddies’ fondness for pickin’ and grinnin’ — I’m looking at you, Pat O’B — should give this one a look-see. I haven’t tried it yet, but I did some research and Dave’s eye chart is 20/20.
• Update: I asked Dave (belatedly) for permission to reproduce his cartoon here, and he tells me that it’s a doctored version that musicians have been passing around for a while now. There’s another that uses notation from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I should’ve picked up on it because the voice balloon and chart don’t match his other work. Derned Innertube pirates are everywhere, and it seems they’re all in a band.
Mad Dogs and Grimy Handshakes
“Where the weather at?” I queried myself just before turning around and catching it right in the face.
The wizards have been predicting all manner of vile conditions, from skin-peeling wind to rain, snow, wintry mix, travel “impacts,” plague of toads (i.e., congressional nub-tugging), IBS, incipient fascism, the heartbreak of psoriasis, GOPee pestilential hopefuls getting flogged by “None of the above,” etc.
This uncertainty makes it hard to select the day’s workout, so I usually step outdoors to see if there are any MAGA hats flogging their diesel brooms across the blackening sky before naming my poison. This morning brought only the wintry mix, which I took smack in the gob as I turned around after shooting the pic up top.
Yesterday I ran, which was probably the wrong call. It was decent enough for cycling, but I didn’t feel like submitting to all the rituals — finding clean kit, checking the Fleet for a vessel that didn’t need chain lube, tire-pumping, flat repair, derailleur/brake adjustments, whatevs. Running is quick. Shirt, pants and socks, lace up the shoes, off you go.
Anyway, time was short and there were other items on the to-do list. Grocery shopping, for starters. Some “feets ball” extravaganza is apparently on tap this weekend, and I didn’t want to hit the store late in the week when the slavering mobs will be stripping shelves like hyenas wiping out a Chick-fil-A. An hour and a couple hundred dollars later our larder was stocked for the apocalypse.
Also, an old scribbler pal had tugged on my coat, asking could he borrow a cup of old Fat Guy cartoon to illustrate one of his excellent observations about the hallowed wintertime practice of stockpiling a few extra kilos around the waistline to keep the frostbite off your kidneys and, not incidentally, serve as a distracting amuse-bouche one can slice off with the Leatherman and toss to the wolves if they start circling while one field-repairs a puncture, snapped shifter cable, or broken chain.
If you are not already reading Mike Ferrentino you should be, and right now, too. Don’t make me stop this blog and come back there. Dude has been there and done that and he will go there and do that, too, because he likes it. And he is extremely good at it, which is not a handicap. One of the very few people I will drop everything to read. His joint these days is “Beggars Would Ride” at NSMB.com.
Anyway, for Mike’s ’toon hunt I had to snuffle like a truffle pig through the Archives, which are scattered around and about in various hard drives, mostly inside of or attached to a 1999 G4 AGP Graphics Power Mac that has more white hair in its ears than I do. This motley collection badly needs cataloging by a professional librarian; alas, the only one conversant with my workflow was otherwise occupied, earning our living.
I found a couple possibilities from way Back in the Day®, but the Fat Guy was mostly a roadie and Mike was hoping for something dirty. So finally I surrendered to the inevitable, broke out the utensils, and drew him up a whole new ’toon.
This was not a hassle. It was a blessing, because I hadn’t drawn a line since I parted ways with the Outside Hyperactive Currency Furnace back in January 2022. It may have been my longest hiatus from drawing since I was in diapers, working with my own boogers on the walls of various rental properties in Maryland and Virginia. They’re probably on the National Register of Historic Places now.
In the end, Mike ended up running with one of the old ’toons. Turns out he was under that deadline pressure I used to love so much, and it seems I’m not as quick on the “draw” as I used to be, yuk yuk yuk. I told him he could keep the new one for relighting the funny-pages fire. Thanks to him, you may see the occasional scribble here, too.
Labor Day in the rear view
“Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.” — Anatole France, “The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard.”
Whenever I think of myself as a “worker” I have to smile.
Oh, sure, I have worked, for short stretches, whenever there was no suitable alternative available. Drug dealer. Janitor. Installer of storm windows and patio covers. Appliance deliveryman. Dishwasher. Schlepper of pizzas and sandwiches.
But I spent the bulk of my worklife scribbling silly-ass pictures and/or arranging words in some particular order with malicious intent, to wit, attempting to convey an idea to an invisible audience.
This is right up there with tagging freeway overpasses and howling at the moon. But it pays slightly better, and mostly you can do it in the shade, sitting down.
There is a game-show quality to journalism. Your team has to collect, confirm, compose, and condense a mind-boggling overabundance of information, then stuff as much of it as possible into a sack that keeps changing size until the buzzer sounds, heralding the start of that night’s press run.
If you beat the clock, you “win” and get to come back tomorrow to play another round.
The word “play” is used deliberately. There were some long hours spent shoveling, to be sure, but they were easy on the lower back and the calluses formed mostly on the mind.
If journalism truly was a game, for me it was the only one in whichever town I was inhabiting at the moment. Composing the first draft of history day in and out in the company of (mostly) like-minded maniacs.
The U.S. Navy used to sell itself by crooning, “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.” Journalism’s pitch was that it wasn’t just a job, or even a game, but a Calling — to preach the Gospel daily in the Church of What’s Happening Now (tip of the stingy-brim to Flip Wilson and the Rev. Leroy).
Now, if you think you are Called to preach, you are easy to exploit. And the gods could be unimpressed and indifferent.
“Fine sermon, Reverend. But that was yesterday. What have you done for Me lately?”
So, yeah. Long hours, and you frequently took the Work home with you. Sometimes it dragged you in early, or on a day off. Often it took you someplace you didn’t want to go, not even for money. Especially when you considered the paucity of coins in your collection plate.
But the Work found me when I was teetering along one of those ragged edges that beckon to oddballs like me. And it kept me in bacon, beans, and beer for nearly 15 years, though I backslid to the edge from time to time.
Finally I decided I liked the edge and set up shop nearby. A small chapel, nothing serious. My sermons were unorthodox, but so was the congregation. Same old gods, but hey, whaddaya gonna do? I dodged their lightning and kept that shtick up for 30 years.
Fortune eluded me, but I got all the low-rent fame I could handle, more than I deserved. God’s honest truth? I got lucky. In the right place at the right time, with friends in high places, and more than once, too.
Could a 20-year-old stoner with zero skills wander into the smaller of two daily papers in a medium-size city today and set his wandering feet upon a path that kept him out of jail for nearly a half-century?
Never fucking happen, to coin a phrase. There are no more two-newspaper towns, and damn few newspapers, period. Most are the journalistic equivalent of dollar stores, all owned by the same two or three outfits, all selling the same two-bit expired horseshit. And magazines are following them down the Highway to Hell, which is no longer paved with good intentions.
In 2023 the 20-year-old me couldn’t even go back to selling weed, because that’s just another job now. And you know how I feel about jobs.
I once was lost, but I was found. Can I get a hallelujah?
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