Two weeks or so ago, NPR had a feature on the morning show about some fellow who sells custom poetry the way caricature artists sell caricatures. He sits at some farmers market/craft fair place and people give him a few bucks whereupon he takes their names and a random fact or two about them and […]
One of the recurring gags in the underestimated surrealist comedy, “Green Acres,” was that, just as an apparent need arose, hustler and conman Mr. Haney would appear on the doorstep with a solution.As noted in today’s The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, Mr. Haney’s truck has gone high tech, thanks to Google and our willingness […]
It was said that, if you sat at the Moulin Rouge long enough, everyone in the world would eventually pass by. Not, obviously, a literal statement. Nor is it literally true that, if you visit justthefirstframe.com, you will see the first frame of every webcomic on the Internet.But there are a lot of them there, […]
In Big Nate, Nate has decided to cash in on the market for romance novels by writing a bodice-ripper set in the War of 1812.By coincidence, yesterday I got to see the printer’s dummy for my historical novel, aimed at middle-school kids like Nate, which is also set in the War of 1812. And I […]
I like Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal a lot, but this one touched off mostly memories of how much this wasn’t my experience. That wouldn’t have seemed as striking except that, for some reason I can’t identify, I’ve gone through a sequence of dreams in the last week or so that involved old girlfriends. Nothing erotic, mind […]
There have been a lot of political cartoons on the topic of a web ad from the Obama campaign in which Bill Clinton discusses the decision to go after bin Laden in Pakistan. I like John Branch’s take because it goes beyond the immediate and addresses the overall topic.First, here’s the ad, which I hadn’t […]
I think this is the first time I’ve revisited a story arc, except for occasionally featuring an update at the bottom of the posting. First time I’ve gone there twice for a full post.But the chocolate milk arc at Deflocked has taken some twists and turns and, while I already did a mini-update a few […]
Matt Wuerker on the inability of the media to focus on any but the low-hanging, sparkly fruit.Granted, the GSA scandal is easy coverage, since there’s no possible justification for the wretched excess involved, and I suspect that, if they had gone to Seattle, stayed in penthouse suites and gorged on Kobe beef and caviar while […]
One of the issues in comics, as in TV sitcoms, is how you work with the basic concept over an extended period without going stale.I mention TV because I heard an interview with Garry Marshall on Weekend Edition yesterday, and Scott Simon asked him to comment on how Henry Winkler’s character took over on “Happy Days.”I might […]
Having just gone off on hackneyed media images of kids, I should dock Jeff Danziger for this depiction of lazy slackers, but I’m gonna give him a pass on a ruling of mutual satiric sarcasm.His defense is the jolly promises of the nice man in the truck. If he can joke about the jobs, he […]
Okay, check this out: It’s almost as if Marshall Ramsey actually bothered to find out what “Hunger Games” was about before trying to work it into a cartoon!At this point, that comes as a double delight.First of all, it’s been an annoyance, since the blockbuster movie opened, to see lazy cartoonists, as well as some […]
Today’s Pajama Diaries – timed for “Take Your Son or Daughter or Other Underaged Dependent To Work Day” — brought a smile, coming as it did after a sourball article on the topic, which I read yesterday but now can’t find because it had been linked on Facebook, which means it has drifted away into the […]
ND Mazin is a well-established cartoonist in South Africa but new to me and possibly new to you. However, he is just launching a new version of an old strip, Azaniamania, which makes it a good time to jump on and see where it’s going. (This is one time when clicking on the strip to […]
Today, Joe Martin’s Willie & Ethel delivers an unintentional spot-on response to Slate’s … um … let me look it up … “Farhad Manjoo.”I’ve been a fan of Willie and Ethel for decades. I never heard of Farhad Manjoo until he wrote a commentary in Slate condemning the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding a prize […]
When I first looked at today’s Rhymes with Orange, I thought it was going to be a riff on excessive government spending, tied in to the Secret Service scandal (such as it is) and the GSA scandal (which I’m tired of).There actually are secret government cafeterias, and the food there is reportedly rather above the […]