Category: Cartooning

The Shadow knows

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Uh, whatever it is, I’ve got it penciled in … or not.

Whenever Herself zips off someplace for an extended stretch I suffer from delusions of creativity.

The idea is that somehow a window will open onto a shining world full of possibilities — blogging, podcasting, cartooning, etc.

Ho, ho. Miss Mia Sopaipilla gets more accomplished in one trip to the litter box than I do all day.

Here’s that annoying poet again, poking his big beezer through my window:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow — T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

In Herself’s absence Mia and I both find our daily routines disrupted, but Mia bounces back faster. Initially, upon discovering that her support staff has been halved, there is a related increase in vocalization, perimeter inspection, game-playing, and other attention-seeking practices related to separation anxiety.

“You may amuse us.”

But then she rockets right through all five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — and simply takes more and longer naps in various sunny spots, reasoning that time passes more quickly that way, and soon she’ll awaken to Herself offering a soupçon of half-and-half while preparing her breakfast coffee instead of that old baldheaded sonofabitch grumbling over a mug of tarry black heart-starter.

Me, I get to pick up a few more shifts in the barrel.

Herself gets up at 4 a.m. most days, so when she is not around to arise and deal with Mia, well, this means that I get up at 4 a.m. most days. This cuts deeply into my beauty sleep, which anyone who has seen me in the flesh knows I need desperately, the way Stephen Miller needs a walk-in freezer full of dead teenage runaways. (“Time for a cold one. …”).

Then there’s the cooking for one. Takes as much time as cooking for two, but now I have to handle the post-dinner cleanup.

Laundry. Won’t do itself. I’ve done the research. Same goes for taking out the trash and recycling, and loading/emptying the dishwasher.

And don’t get me started on the whole “making money” thing. Lucky for me it rolls in like the tide. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.

Birds gotta be fed. We were out of seed, so it was off to our seed dealer, who is a talker. Hummers are back, so their feeders had to get filled and distributed around the yard, which was in need of mowing.

Somehow mowing is one of my regular chores. I’ve argued that it should fall to Herself, since it’s basically vacuuming outdoors, sort of like the parkour of hoovering. But she just chuckles and reminds me who makes all the fucking money around here.

Then my old VeloNews comrade Casey Gibson happened to be rolling through town to spectate at the Tour of the Gila, so it goes without saying that we had to get together for a couple of meals and complain about all the money we weren’t making.

And of course bicycles must be ridden and runs ran. Run? I’ll get back to you on that.

Thus a whole lot of my daylight (and best-laid plans) went up in smoke. And all I’ve got to show for it is clean laundry, washed dishes, a trimmed lawn, a couple extended chats over restaurant meals, empty trash bins, full birds, and a happy cat.

Because Herself just came home. Half and half is back on the menu. And I’m sleeping in tomorrow.

Zero’s Day

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Understatement of the year. But it’s only March 5.

Congress is like a drunk dad watching as his sugar-crazed rug monkey tips over a display of Easter treats at an understaffed Walmart, wondering whether he should deal harshly with the little shit, blame it on the ex, or just hit the door running.

And no, we did not watch last night’s episode of “The Worst Wing.” I use the word “episode” in its medical sense, “an occurrence of a usually recurrent pathological abnormal condition.”

No, instead we watched the new Robert De Niro vehicle, “Zero Day,” in which the smart Black lady is president. (In this instance, Art does not imitate Life.)

But at least I didn’t already know what was going to happen in “Zero Day.”

You didn’t have to be Nostradamus to call the play on Zero’s Day in DeeCee.

Zero was going to rave like a poorly raised toddler. The Repugs were going to find it all oh-so-cute. And the Donks were going to be as bold, decisive and effective as a Walmart shopper, watching the kid step out of his overflowing diaper in the produce section as dad idly thumbs his phone, and thinking, “Somebody really should do something.”

Yes, somebody should. We’re still waiting.

Guess what. Didn’t stop. And this was in 1954.

I’m not picking on Rep. Melanie Stansbury here. I’ve met her. I like her. But god damn, etc.

You don’t derail the Dingaling Bros-Barnum & Beelzebozo Circus train by standing on the tracks holding a tiny sign, like Wile E. Coyote. What you get there is run the fuck over. Take it from a guy who knows what it feels like to get hit by a locomotive.

Breaking (away) bad

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Hey, bud(s).

Stupid warm in these parts.

On Monday I watered turf, trees, and shrubs. On Tuesday, I enjoyed my first ride since making my Denver pilgrimage, in shorts and short sleeves.

And on Wednesday, it seemed everything was springing to life all at once. Juniper, maple, alder, you name it. Pollen out the wazoo and right up my snout.

“Screw it,” I thought, examining a sodden Kleenex for signs of brain tissue. “I’m taking drugs.”

And lemme tell you, that behind-the-counter Non-Drowsy Claritin-D 12-Hour with the pseudoephedrine frosting will kick the tires, light the fires, and set your eyes out on wires.

During Wednesday’s Geezer Ride, after I spun past a few guys on a short hill, one asked, “Why aren’t you even breathing hard?”

“I’m on drugs,” I replied. I felt like Ol’ Whatsisface ’fessin’ up to Oprah, only without all that annoying money and fame.

Maybe it was spending an afternoon with my old college cuates, but I was reminded of a “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” cartoon by Gilbert Shelton.

The road to hell, etc..

Freewheelin’ Franklin wants to borrow Phineas’s car to go buy a couple pounds of weed, but he’s sold it and bought a bicycle. So Phineas offers to pedal him out to Country Cowfreak’s place to make the buy.

On the way home they decide to take an illegal shortcut via the freeway, and the law takes an interest. No problem. Says Franklin: “First, I’ll snort a whole buncha cocaine … now,. you steer while I pedal.”

For the punchline, you can read the whole strip here.

Soaring with the pigs

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments
Wonder Wart-Hog, president of the United States? Hey, we’ve had worse.

Gilbert Shelton saw this coming.

You may remember him as the creator of “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,” if you ever knew his work at all (he wasn’t in the Sunday funnies section of the Muthalode Morning Mishap when you were a sprout).

I first saw Shelton’s stuff in Texas, back in the Sixties, when as an aspiring young motorhead I stumbled across his “Wonder Wart-Hog” strip in Pete Millar’s Drag Cartoons.

Even then I was a comics/superhero fiend, and dug satires of the genre, like “Captain Klutz,” which Don Martin created for Mad magazine. So naturally I loved the Hog of Steel and his alter ego, deuce reporter Philbert Desanex (a “deuce reporter” sitting at the opposite end of the pay scale from an “ace”).

Shelton wasn’t just another funny fella. He was also a student of American history and politics, and often aimed his pen at same in his work (see “Give Me Liberty: A Revised History of the American Revolution,” from 1976).

But man, he really hit his stride with “Wonder Wart-Hog and the Nurds of November.” A cartoon collection bearing that title was published in 1980, and the titular strip included the following:

  • A stony-broke, hungry, unemployed journalist (Desanex).
  • A Supreme Court that ruled the First Amendment was “a typographical error.”
  • Assassinations and a discussion of the presidential line of succession (through the secretary of the Treasury, anyway).
  • The country, having run through 13 presidents on one day, being managed as a trust by the board of directors of Gloptron, Inc., “an immense multinational cartel.”
  • A presidential primary contest, in which Desanex secures the nominations of both the Democratic and Republican parties (OK, so that may seem a little far-fetched).
  • Gloptron’s attempt to assassinate Desanex (foiled by the Hog of Steel).
  • Gloptron’s queering of the weather on Election Day, hoping to keep all the voters home. It didn’t work: Desanex wins the popular vote.
  • Gloptron’s zombies overturn the popular vote via the Electoral College and the coup is buried on page 67 of the next day’s newspaper (“Well, after all, it is Gloptron’s newspaper, Mr. Desanex,” explains an aide.
  • Desanex takes his case back to the people, calling for a constitutional convention on New Year’s Eve to rewrite that hallowed document and dispose of the Electoral College.
  • With predictable results, it being New Year’s Eve:

By the way, the splash panel is a fakeout. In the cartoon, the pig doesn’t win the presidency. Adolf Hitler does — seems he didn’t die in that bunker after all, having taken it on the lam after first getting his skull and teeth surgically removed to mislead his enemies.

And, after an extended rant against — well, pretty much everything and everyone, promising the convention “a strong, decisive leader who can bring back law and order and restore the nation’s dignity in the eyes of the world … purge the population of misfits, get our armed forces into shape and declare war on everybody who won’t toe the line!” — the new dictator of the USA orders an invasion of Mexico “on the pretext that the Mexicans had been secretly invading the United States for years.”

Any of this sounding familiar to you?

• Editor’s note: The headline comes from (of course) Hunter S. Thompson, who in “The Great Shark Hunt” rewrote that old saw, “You can’t wallow with the pigs at night and then soar with the eagles in the morning,” which came up in a half-remembered conversation at a Colorado bar in which a construction worker told a bartender why he shouldn’t have another drink.

Wrote HST:

No, I thought, that geek in Colorado had it all wrong. The real problem is how to wallow with the eagles at night and then soar with the pigs in the morning.

Post this, yo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 22 Comments
A snippet of the Ann Telnaes cartoon that the WaPo found objectionable. | © Ann Telnaes

Salud to cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who quit The Washington Post after a cartoon critical of Management — and by Management, I mean Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Mickey Fuckin’ Mouse, who are all managing to affix their chapped lips to the Pestilence-Erect’s ass at once — got croaked by the WaPo’s editorial-page bots.

At her Substack HQ, Telnaes explains:

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Ho, ho. “Just a cartoonist.” Telnaes knows, as I do, that a sharp pen can puncture a gasbag as thoroughly as a sword, and encourages onlookers to snicker at the well-deserved deflation.

As Boss Tweed once said after getting righteously stuck by cartoonist Thomas Nast:

“Let’s stop those damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me — my constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures.”

I kinda wish I still had a WaPo subscription to cancel. Mebbe I’ll sign back up so I can cancel the fucker again.

See Mike Peterson at The Daily Cartoonist for more about Telnaes and her stellar work.