Androcles and the Text Message

Bizarro is brought to you today by Talking Laundry.

I'm sure a lot of readers don't remember the story of Androcles and the lion, or, if you went to an average American public school, never learned it, so here is a summary: A runaway slave removes a thorn from a lion's paw, then years later is not eaten by said lion because he remembered the favor.

Now, suddenly, the bartender joke becomes oh so poignant and humorous. Let us chuckle together, shall we?

The moral of the story is, if you want to be a super rich cartoonist, start drawing cartoons that anyone can immediately appreciate, even hillbillies. (Alas, will the parade of reasons I'm not rich never end?)

Here's one that any boob with a cell phone and a Facebook page can get. That includes just about ever boob in the country, including me. Let the riches begin!

Furless Snakes

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Dangers of Farsightedness.

Here's a pithy little cartoon about a homeless snake. The kind of snake I've drawn here is more like a constrictor, which I don't think actually care for pits, but drawing a tiny viper didn't seem right for the composition. I don't actually know much about snakes so feel free to educate me in the comments.

Also, I appear in the cartoon as the overly-hip hipster coming around the corner. Not my best (or most flattering) self portrait, but it works as another homage to Hitchcock.

Hey, here's something fun: I'm going to be doing some stage comedy and hosting at a movie premiere in LA soon. If you're in the area, come see me. The movie is a documentary about the cruelty of the fur industry, a subject I care a lot about, and both CHNW and I appear in the movie as interviewees. I haven't seen it yet, so I have no idea how we come off, but I'm hoping it is somewhere on the embarrassment scale below "devastating."

Below is the invitation poster. Read it, memorize it, print it out, then eat it. We can't afford to have this sort of thing fall into the wrong hands. Here's where all the cool kids are getting their tickets.

Click it to make it bigger and clearer. But then, you knew that.

The Problem With Shoes

Reality Sux

Bizarro is brought today to you by Colored People.

I was among the zagillions of people who saw the Fantasy Blue People World movie in 3-D and really enjoyed it. I can't say I enjoyed it so much I want to get my ears surgically altered, grow a ponytail and paint myself blue, but the world they created, when experienced in 3-D, was, as the kids say, awesome. I'm not sure how much I would have liked it in 2-D.

The story was nice, too, as I recall.

Which begs the question posed in this cartoon: why don't we have 2D glasses that make reality seem less real? I'd wear them while in line at the DMV. (For foreign readers of this blog, that's the Department of Motor Vehicles, where we stand in line for hours waiting for the person behind the counter to tell us we have forgotten one crucial element of the six forms of I.D. necessary to attain a driver's license.)

Of course, the subtext of this cartoon is that the sort of people who are most adamantly attracted to films such as this are those least attracted to reality. But god bless those kinds of fans, without them, there would be no comics conventions.

Gaga for Gaga

(To view Lady Gaga's family in expanded glory, click on her belt buckle.)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Shrinking Violets.

If you don't know who Lady Gaga is you won't understand this cartoon. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm not sure why I know who Lady Gaga is, I'm not a fan, but I do and I saw an opportunity for a fun cartoon so I took it. In my career, I'm sort of required to know about relatively unsatisfying pop trends in the same way that I'm required to understand and use Facebook and Twitter. It's not necessarily how I prefer to spend my time, but it's part of my job.

Here's a bit of groovy news about my good friend and valued colleague, Wayno: he has an online art exhibit going that you might want to peruse. This is not a show of his single-panel cartoons, the ideas for which he occasionally shares with me for Bizarro, but some of his musician portraits. Check it out and buy some prints for your own bare nekked walls. It feels good to support the Friends of Bizarro and it might help Wayno move from his current domicile to a permanent abode.

And here's one last bit of dynamic news: I've been declared an American treasure and recommended for a Kennedy Center Honor! OMG, can this really be happening? Please leave a comment, so mine won't be so lonely.

Can't Miss This

ENTERTAINMENT ALERT!

If you're in the northeast, come to Woodstock Sanctuary next Saturday, May 29th for a concert on the farm with Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders) and Welsh songwriter, JP Jones.

It will be fun and cool and awesome and all the money goes to the sanctuary. I'll be there along with CHNW and my whole posse of closest pals. We can chat and pretend to be friends and in such an intimate setting, you might also get to meet Chrissie, because, let's face it, you always wanted to!

If you do drop by, be sure to introduce yourself and say you read my blog. I'll fawn over you real good!

Tickets and info.

Gay Cowboys

Bizarro is brought to you today by Flamenco Segway.

Here's a fun little ditty about a topic I've discussed here before. Among groups known for being homophobic are "cowboy types," whatever that means exactly. I was raised in Oklahoma and Texas and can vouch for the accuracy of this stereotype. In fact, when I was a teenager in Tulsa, I was often accused by strangers of being gay simply because I did not dress like a local hick. (I leaned more toward the British punk rockers at the time.)

But viewed objectively, one can't argue that cowboy clothing is unusually feminine: pearl buttons, embroidered shirts (frequently of flowers), fringe, scarves, pants with the butt and crotch cut out (chaps), high heel boots with pointy toes (often with embossed flowers and swirls), big shiny belt buckles with more flowers and swirls on belts with yet more embossed flowers and swirls and dangling handguns (the ultimate phallic symbol), flamboyant hats that make Truman Capote's seem macho by comparison.

Perhaps getting in touch with my own feminine side, I wear a lot of western shirts, though not the rest of the garb. I'm a fan of fancy, vintage cowboy shirts and have a collection of about two dozen. As a matter of fact, I'd really love to get hold of one of those outlandish suits that country western performers used to wear at the Grand Ole Opry, but I'm not holding my breath. I can't afford a new one and finding an old one that fits and is in good shape is a long shot at best. It's not the sort of thing you come across on Craigslist.

It is a common belief that those who complain most about gays are most likely to be closeted gays themselves, just as those who champion family values are the most likely to be caught with an underage prostitute. Maybe Brokeback Mountain is more common than we know.