The History of Rock and Roll

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Everyone wants to feign short term memory loss about all that weed they smoked in college, but no one smokes that much weed.

When I see Facebook pictures of some of the people I went to high school and college with holding their children, looking quite responsible and PTA-friendly, it makes me snicker. I remember what you did! You were crazy in the ’90s! And now you have to look your kids in the eye and tell them not to do the exact same things you had so much fun doing? How?

So this is a long-running joke I have with The Man, and it’s what we actually do, every time the subject comes up, whether we’re listening to old music, watching old movies, or reading current events. History of a brilliant career, et cetera, et cetera, “but then they took too much heroin and died.” I’m absolutely sure these kids will never, ever take heroin. Hooray!

For this comic, I attempted to draw 13 celebrities, most of whom came out looking more or less like themselves. In panel 3, on the left, is Nancy Reagan, the First Lady who famously implored the nation’s youth to “Just say no” to drugs while simultaneously working to ensure that the President of the United States never made any important decisions without first consulting a psychic.

To her right is Bristol Palin, the world’s most fertile argument against abstinence only education.

The dead music and theatrical personalities in panel 4 are Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, Charlie Parker, and Billie Holliday. They didn’t all actually die of heroin overdoses, but they arguably all took too much heroin and they all died. If I had more space, I would have also drawn Dee Dee Ramone, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cory Monteith, at least.

Finally, in panel 8, Keith Richards, who has taken all the psychoactive substances known to science and lived a long, productive, successful life.

Buzzy Bee Mandala

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Bees: not shy about anything at all. 

I very much like bees. That is all there is to say about that. The colors are nice too.

Been working on a longer comic all week. Took quite a while to nail the script down and hours to do the lettering, even though the original idea was about two sentences long. It needed fleshing out. I typically do the lettering first, but not always; the tighter the artwork needs to be, the more important it is to get the words in beforehand, or you might end up without enough space for the text. The artwork is going to be pretty complicated, because I need to draw a lot of famous people, and obviously, it’s harder to draw famous people because they have to be recognizable as specific humans rather than just being circles with dots for eyes and a parenthesis for a mouth.

It’s a funny, one, too. I hope. I’ve never done a funny one this complicated.

So I should probably go work on it instead of on this, since hardly anyone ever reads this blog on Mondays anyway.

A Career in the Arts!

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The Unicorn of Creativity supports this message. So does the Moth of Poverty. Your parents are just disappointed.

I say “get older” because I’m not sure “growing up” is something that is compatible with the creative life. At least, it’s been a couple decades now and I don’t seem to be doing it, at least not in the sense that my parents used the term. Maybe other creative types have had better luck, but I’m pretty sure that we’re all just big kids going through the motions of putting on pants in the morning and driving cars.

This comic isn’t 100% representative of my life, because I did try to have a career in my 30s, and after the novelty of having a lot of money wore off, I hated every second of it, and it wasn’t like I needed so much money anyway. It just felt like squandering my creativity. Even now when I get desperate and take the little freelance jobs that still come to me sometimes, I feel guilty.

Anyway….

I’m really digging this very web aesthetic of drawing black and white designs with small but meaningful hints of color. A lot of web artists seem to employ this style, and it’s pretty effective. Berk Breathed has been using it in the new Bloom County strips, for example. I hope it’s apparent that panels 1-3 feature colorful butterflies while in panel 4 you see a gray moth. The comic still works if that’s not apparent, but it has a nicer balance if you see that.

The really important part is that you know that mystic unicorn is always right behind you, whispering in your ear: You have made all the right choices. If you can hear her, just keep skipping through that flowery meadow. Tra la la.

Pleading Insanity: An Artist’s Defense

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And that’s just what comes out of my head. Don’t even ask about what I’m keeping inside.

This comes out of two things. One is that, knowing my tendency to second guess myself, I try to force myself go with the first thing and then worry about it until given reason to stop. So, when I drew yesterday’s comic, the thought crossed my mind that something that came to me in a dream might not be a good idea in the waking world, but I went with it anyway and then spent all night worrying that it was too dark, too grotesque, too confusing. And then people related to it anyway. (That’s supposed to be panel 2 from yesterday’s comic in panel 3 of today’s comic but it’s probably too small to see.)

The other thing on my mind was a dark comedy essay I wrote about 8 years ago for a pretty successful blog the Rabbit, the Bear, and I, and some other people used to have, until everyone drifted away and stopped posting. And we were getting pretty good traffic, too. Eventually, we stopped paying for the domain. For some reason, I thought the posts would revert back to Blogger, but that is apparently impossible. Someone is sitting on our URL and the same name on Blogger and I can’t figure out how to repost the articles even though I can see them and edit them when I’m logged in.

So, at the risk of exposing myself to utter ridicule, I’ll reproduce it here, but keep in mind that it’s super dark, and super sophomoric, and super sarcastic, and that I do not condone drowning children or making light of mental illness, and that I know this will not work (especially not now). I’m actually kind of embarrassed just thinking about it. But maybe I’m second guessing myself. Seriously, I wrote this in 2008. I’ve grown since then. Please don’t judge me too harshly if you don’t see the humor. I would not do well in prison.

The Devil Made Me Do It: Pleading the Insanity Defense or How to Get Away with Murder

****Disclaimer: if you are a complete moron, this is a comedy article. Please do not commit murder, and if you do, don’t tell the cops that Dragon told you how. And clear your browser cache.****

You can’t simply kill your enemies and claim to be cleansing the world of demons. Park Dietz, or an even funnier-looking forensic psychologist, will explain that you are a liar. The McNaughton defense is based on whether you comprehend the wrongness of your actions. Consider Jeffrey Dahmer, who was obviously batshit crazy, but still knew it was wrong to drill holes in his lovers’ heads. Dietz saw that Dahmer got drunk to overcome his guilt. Also, Dahmer lied to the cops prior to his arrest. Lying to the cops is a sure sign you know you’re breaking the law. If you want to plead insanity, you’ve got to tell the truth about your actions. In this scenario, the only thing you can lie about is your insanity.

But it’s not even so simple as that. If you make 200k a year, own a big house, lead a glamorous life, and off your annoying mother-in-law, it’s going to be pretty hard to argue that you really believed she was an alien. You’ve got to set up your insanity defense in advance. The first thing to do, if you want to get away with it, is worry friends, family, and coworkers.

Early stage schizophrenia is simple to emulate. Laugh at inappropriate times, like funerals and board meetings, or cry at inappropriate times. Deny your actions when accosted. Get paranoid for no reason and make groundless accusations of those around you. Allude to vague suspicions that you are being watched or have enemies. Don’t overdo it. Act generally normal and just bust out with these little personality tics a few times a week. You don’t want to end up committed before you commit your big crime. You want people to have nagging worries in the back of their heads, stuff they can tearfully recall at your trial, adding, “If only we had recognized the signs.”

Step two is a little crime. A really little crime. Something likely to make News of the Weird and set people to nervous laughter, something even the judge will agree to cover up. For instance, obtain a small dead animal. Remove your clothes. Walk naked through a public place clutching your small, dead animal. You will be arrested. Provided you are not rushing a fraternity or a member of Greenpeace or PETA, you will be declared mentally ill. Take it further by insisting your dead animal is a living child, or an accordion, or a letter of commendation from the president, and refuse to relinquish it until you are granted protection from the Pope, or Steven Spielberg, or your trash collector.

You will be rewarded with court-ordered psychiatric treatment. It’s free, and it’s likely to be a short stint! The downside is those psychotropic drugs really slow you down, and your state mental health facility is not the Bellagio. The food is crap and you have to share a room. But no one said it would be easy. You’re on the right track. The moment you start taking anti-psychotic medication, drop the schizophrenia act. Admit you were out of your head. Claim you’ve been under a lot of stress and you just want your life back. Agree with everything the doctors say. Soon, you will be free, at which time you can flush your meds down the toilet.

Now you are ready to commit a real crime. Don’t overthink. Premeditated murder does not result in a verdict of insanity. Careful planning indicates sanity. It’s got to appear spur-of-the-moment. Consider common household implements as weapons. Fit murder into the routine of your life.

Do not, at any time, act surreptitiously. If you are found to be hiding anything, you’re disqualified. If the jury knows you bought a new hammer and hid it on your boss’s bookcase, you can’t pretend something came over you just before you bash his head in after hours. You’re better off bludgeoning him with his own Blackberry during your weekly sit-down in a glass-walled conference room. Smile at your coworkers as you do so. If you have to drown your kids, do it in the bathtub with your cousin downstairs. Don’t lock them in a station wagon and push it into the lake in the middle of the night and claim, “A black guy did it.” Not only will you look like a cold-blooded killer, you’ll look like a racist. The jury will not sympathize.

Finally, let’s say you’ve committed the act. Don’t cover it up! This is the most important part. If you cover it up, this is evidence that you knew it was wrong. The best thing you can do is stay with the body of your victim until the police arrive. Confess immediately, with a big smile. Bonus points if you do the deed in front of a cop. That makes you look really insane

The Things You Carry (a comic from my subconscious)

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It also teaches you a lot about balance.

This comic appeared to me, more or less fully formed, as an idea in a dream. No kidding. This scenario wasn’t the dream; it was an idea I had for the comic *in* the dream, which was a pretty normal dream about being back in college (at which time I wasn’t into cartooning). In the dream I wasn’t totally sure it was funny, but it seemed imperative to remember it and bring it back from the dream world. (I’m still not sure it was funny, but the few people I bounced it off of seemed to think it was worthy.) Originally, as I dreamed it, the punchline in panel 3 has the artist saying, “It’s OK, I guess,” but this feels better. Upon waking, I recalled that I had dreamed an idea for a comic, but I couldn’t remember what the comic was. A couple hours later, it came back to me while I was pinging Misses Kitty. So random.

It’s just about mortality, and the way the idea hangs more heavily on you the older you get. You watch your parents getting old, you have friends die of terrible diseases, your heroes start to die, and you can’t deny that you’re further from 15 than you are from 50, and that you too will, inevitably die. You can begin to carry around the weight of your own fragility wherever you go, if you’re not careful. It helps you make more careful choices about how to live, if you can focus on what you have left. But there comes a point where you start to understand the true meaning of being over the hill. You have an expiration date. You started some decades ago, and most surely, some decades hence, you will stop.

So you better draw a lot of comics while you still can.

2 Ways of Looking at Socialism

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Little known fact: Uncle Sam is a champion fencer, and can take down an unarmed banker with an epee blade in under 2 minutes. Well known fact: babies contribute nothing. 

I almost didn’t draw this comic today. I almost didn’t draw any comic today. For one thing, this is an illustration where my lack of advanced cartooning skills kills me, because this would be 10 times as powerful with better drawings. For another, it has been made clear to me that my views on democratic socialism, while widely shared among those with whom I went to school and my current friends, are pretty far from the mainstream, and downright offensive to some.

It’s confusing to me how people can own 3 mansions and 12 cars and not think about the less fortunate at any point in their lives. I personally earned about $300 last year, and I gave pretty much all of it to charity (I am a special case, obviously, living on The Man’s largesse, some of which I also gave to charity) in addition to having a regular volunteer job, which I’ve been doing for over 11 years. But apparently, there are some people who think it’s totally fine to stockpile vast resources they could never hope to use in 50 lifetimes and give nothing to the community while there are homeless, hungry kids on the other side of the tracks whose lives would be immeasurably improved with 1% of what the rich people don’t use.

If the American presidential election were held today from among the current candidates, but only the people I know on Facebook were voting, the tally would stand at something like 80% Sanders, 15% Clinton, 1% Trump, and 4% whoever else remained in the Republican clown car. But America is diverse, and apparently some people somewhere do not think Donald Trump is the most selfish, least responsible, sorriest excuse for a leader ever to take to the campaign trail. We’re talking about a guy who hates women, hates minorities, hates the poor (so already, this guy hates probably 85% of America), has bankrupted 4 of his own companies, spit on the media, and clearly has no understanding of what a person might be expected to do should that person be elected president. (Hint: the president has to answer questions about what he’s going to do with meaningful and honest statements; the president doesn’t get to skip important meetings because he doesn’t like the person moderating them.) We’re talking about a guy who claims he built an empire from nothing, a guy who considers a million dollar loan from his dad “nothing.” (I also read that, if he had just put that million in some kind of standard money market account, he would be 10 times as rich as he is now. This really isn’t a person you want making budget decisions. This isn’t a leader. It’s a taker.)

So, that’s my story. I just drew something that’s going to make me unpopular, but I’m standing behind it. Sharing is caring. Unchecked selfishness is sick. Regardless of who is elected president of America, I still believe in socialized medicine, fully funded public schools, the post office, the highway system, and having firefighters available to people of every income level, including no income at all. Anyway, as an artist, I’m compelled to tell the truth. Anyway, this is my blog, and if you don’t like it, you can go start your own blog and post original art and writing 5 days a week and send it out into the world for strangers to judge and see how that feels. (Hint: something like this.)

In panel 1, I made the worthless lowlife receiving the handout an artist, obviously. The arts are always the first thing to go. But when I was telling the Girl about FDR and the WPA the other day, the first thing that came to my mind was that there was funding for artists in the WPA. There are still great works of art, which you can see today, that were commissioned by the government. There was a time when the government paid lots of artists to create art, and that art elevated the country. That art inspired people who were beaten down and wanted to give up. And that was democratic socialism. If you visit national parks, many of the roads and improvements you use will have been forged by young workers hired by the WPA. You might think we don’t need art and parks, but I promise you, we do. Without art and parks, there isn’t much point to anything else.

In panel 2, I chose the communal table because this type of dining is very powerful. My mother was a big believer in large dinner parties, and I take it ever further. If you know how to cook, you can make a lot of food for a lot of people without having a lot of money. If there are people, I cook. It is always joyful to share food, no matter how little I have. This guy I know from Benin, who owns a local restaurant, once told me, “In my country, we say that if you share with your friends, you always have more food.” Maybe that sounds paradoxical, but in my experience, it’s 100% true. I feed people, and it inspires them to feed people, and everyone gets to eat. We don’t begrudge those who can’t contribute today. We know that if we give them something now, it will boost them up enough that they’ll contribute tomorrow.

And if they don’t, you know what? It’s still the right thing to do.

Fruit Salad Mandala

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Grapefruits and cherries. They’re grapefruit and cherries. Get your mind out of the gutter.

I have this dilemma regarding how political I want to go; in the last week, I’ve been involved in a few really interesting conversations about democratic socialism starting with randomly telling the Girl about FDR and the WPA. Then I made a throwaway comment–a joke, really–on someone’s Facebook page, and a mutual friend who I think is actually a poly sci prof or something like that challenged me to define socialism.

Man, I was actually afraid. Who wants to get spanked online by a guy who’s probably 10 years their junior but way further ahead in his career? I almost just copied the entry from the giant OED in my desk. (Aw, hell, who I am kidding? I just love pulling that thing out of my desk. It weighs about 50 pounds and comes with this crazy hemisphere magnifying glass.) But then I thought about what the word meant to me and wrote something kind of thoughtful and intelligent that wasn’t exactly about what “socialism” means, but about what it means to individuals, what it could mean under certain circumstances. And more-successful-than me professor guy gave it a like.

Anyway, it could also be a comic. It would have been super cool to have it ready now, just in time to kick off caucus season (ug) but those serious comics take the most time to lay out and I was getting punched in the guy by my monthly dudebro and also The Man had to play a klezmer concert for a mock Jewish wedding at a Hebrew school north of here, and that sounded more interesting than not attending a klezmer concert for a mock Jewish wedding. Maybe I can do it tomorrow. Although I might have a tattoo consultation tomorrow.

So many comics to read and write!

Amusing anecdote about people who don’t understand socialism:

In 2002 or 2003 I was standing in this interminable line at the Walgreen’s pharmacy counter. I don’t even think I was getting my own medication; it seems to me that I was picking something up for a friend, and this line was WAY past the toothpaste and didn’t seem to be moving at all. And there was a guy in front of–old white guy wispy white hair and a fierce voice–and he had opinions. Lots and lots of opinions.

Well, complaints, really. His medications were so expensive. His doctors were so expensive. He was getting ripped off on all his pills. Everyone was profiting off his misery. It was just terrible, terrible, everything cost so much, medical care cost so much money. This dude was telling me (well, everyone in the vicinity, but I was the person behind him so I was the most trapped) about how much his healthcare cost for like 10 minutes.

Finally he took a breath for air and looked at me expectantly.

“That’s why we need socialized medicine,” I said.

“Well, YOU’RE a COMMUNIST,” he replied, disgusted, and mercifully turned his back on me and shut up.

People are unclear on the concept.

Koala-T!

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I don’t see why we wouldn’t win. We meet all the koalifications.

The Man works for an aerospace manufacturing firm, in quality assurance. It’s a job, you know? Every year, the company holds a big picnic in the park, with a bouncing castle and water guns and games for the little kids. Hot dogs and hamburgers provided by the company, potluck for everything else, water balloons, temporary tattoos, that sort of thing. Very America. Much wholesome. In advance of the picnic, they print a commemorative shirt, designed by an employee. Whoever wins the design contest gets a little bonus, maybe $100.

So The Man had this idea, putting the koala in quality. The words are his, and the idea for the picture is his, but he doesn’t have the patience for drawing. He mentioned this concept about 6 months ago, and I said I could probably do it (I’m much better at Photoshop and the Wacom tablet than I was last year!) but we didn’t follow through. Yesterday, he mentioned that the design was due next week, so I did a little sketch. Today he mentioned that it was actually due tomorrow. That was fine, since I had the sketch and no comic anyway.

This is what I did today. I started by looking at how other cartoonists would depict the body of a koala giving a thumbs up. The Man was very clear that the koala must be giving a thumbs up. I was surprised to find that this is, apparently, a common theme, and there were many thumbs up koalas from which to choose. Then I looked at photographs of actual koalas, because most people who draw cartoon animals don’t seem to have ever seen that actual animal, and I like some degree of verisimilitude in my comics. Once I got the eyes, nose, and mouth satisfactorily blocked out and positioned, I just started grabbing colors from actual koala photos, and drawing tiny dots and lines to represent fur. Then I used the blur tool to floofify QA Koala. Somewhere along the line I noted that koalas do not, in fact, have tails and deleted the vestigial one that had appeared in my original reference image. You can’t trust cartoonists. Not about animal anatomy.

The Man was happy with the design but wanted it a bit darker, so I added a layer, grabbed a dark gray, set the opacity to 20%, covered the koala with this shade, and then cleaned up the edges. The Man came in again as I was finishing up the outline and said he could see that I was doing something, but he couldn’t tell what. “I’m making him floofier,” says I. The blur tool is great for cartoon fur.

I used fonts for the lettering instead of doing it by hand. The original version has the company name and “2016 company picnic” written at the top, but I took that out for this blog.

Whether or not we win (“When we win,” The Man said, assuming that no one else was going to top this) I’ll fix this design up a bit more and offer it on my website. Someone, somewhere, wants a Koala-T.

Check, Please

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I can also validate your parking if you like. But I can’t validate you as a human being. 

I predict that this comic will perform well across all platforms except for the ones where people celebrate their own lack of diversity and feel threatened when anyone questions their dominant paradigm. You know who you are. But amongst my friend, 99% of whom are academically trained lefties and front line civil rights activists, I expect a warm reception.

Or not. Who knows what people like? Not me.

I went to this bar last night. We were coming back from the Girl’s musical performance and I got a text from Misses Kitty that read, “queer munch now, 3 mins from your place.” There were no follow-up texts. Fortunately, I could read the secret bestie code and guessed that she wanted us to meet, and where, so we did, and found her sitting with about 20 people, maybe half of whom I recognized.

One woman called me over and said, “I can’t even tell you how I got there, but I was reading your blog.” But, as it eventuated, she hadn’t been reading my blog. She had been reading my old homepage, from about 10 years ago, so I’m actually really curious how she, or anyone else for that matter, could have ended up there, and also awed and amazed. She didn’t look familiar to me, but mentioned that we had met at a party about 3 years earlier. That’s pretty typical; The Man takes me to a lot of parties and I’m terrible at recognizing faces. Certainly, she hadn’t been searching for me when she stumbled upon my work, but rather clicked through and recognized me afterward.

She went on. “I’m Israeli, and I was reading your essay about Israel.”

The essay about Israel is 20 pages long, and I wrote it over 15 years ago, when I was a lot more sarcastic. “Oh, man, I hope you weren’t offended!” I said.

“No, I loved it!”

It’s nice to be recognized, and to know that people are actually reading. With pleasure. Even 15 years later. When I told the Rabbit this story, she told me about a friend of hers who write an essay 8 years ago that was suddenly picked up by a major media market this week. She was like, “Uh, OK.” But writing on the Internet is enduring. If it’s relevant, it doesn’t matter how old it is.

Which reminds me: I need to rehost some essays that I wrote for an old project that the Rabbit and the Bear and I did about 10 years ago, on a site that vanished because we stopped paying for it even though it was still getting 70+ hits a day when it hadn’t been updated in 3 years. You never know when someone’s going to need my extremely tongue-in-cheek but also technically accurate guide to pleading the insanity defense for murder, or my rant about Internet trolls.

 

The Evolution of Gaming

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Well, at least it keeps those pesky kids off my lawn.

In case you do not hang out with adolescent people, you might not be aware that this is a thing. Kids with perfectly good video game systems–multiple systems with a nearly limitless number of games available across a variety of platforms and devices–will spend hours watching strangers on the Internet playing games they could be playing themselves. This would be a hard thing to understand in the ’80s, but I guess now there are so many video games available that you get tired and worn out of playing video games? So you watch other kids playing video games to take a break from playing video games?

Maybe it’s just a testament to how amazing video game graphics and story lines have become, but it also strikes me as really passive and sort of disturbing.

Kids today have to have other kids do their playing for them.

::shakes fist relentlessly at sky and hobbles back to the nursing home to resume being old::