Prison

Bizarro is brought to you today by Large Modern Window Company

Who doesn't enjoy a nice cut of meat? Well, I don't since I became vegan eight years ago, but it's still fun to make jokes about the names of the various corpse chunks. I figured film buffs and people in "the industry" might enjoy this cartoon the most.

Our dusty archive comic for today is from 11 days before the turn of the century. A couple of people mentioned that they liked my older, more surreal comics, so I intentionally found bit of surrealism for today's post. Now that I've released these desperate criminals, don't worry about running into them on the street. They're only about an inch and a half tall; just give them a good stomp and toss them into a recycling bin.

If you haven't yet read my previous post about the dandy goings-on at Woodstock Sanctuary, please do. It's dandy.

Fun For You and Me

Here are some things I wanted to tell you about my side project: Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary.

We have another dandy concert coming up at the farm. A few weeks back, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders was there, this time it's Sean Lennon (spawn of John and Yoko) and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, who call themselves Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger. The farm is about 2 hours north of NYC, just outside of Woodstock, NY, easy to get to by bus from Port Authority, easy to find by car or helicopter.

These concerts are extremely intimate, only a couple of hundred tickets are allowed to be sold, so it's a great way to see an artist up-close while relaxing on the lawn. Other notable artists are opening the show, check out info and tickets here. CHNW and I hope to see you there!

Next, each year various reader-voted awards are given out by VegNews magazine, for whom I used to write a monthly column. I'd like to encourage you to go online and vote for Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary as "best animal sanctuary" or whatever the category is called. You have to vote for at least 50% of the categories for your vote to count, so here are a few more nominees that are supporters of our efforts at WFAS if you'd like to help out with them, too. Vote here.

Look for Girlie Girl Army, The Discerning Brute, Crazy Sexy Life, MooShoes, Vegan Treats, Blossom Restaurant, Arbonne Cosmetics, Organic Nectars, Isa Chandra Moskowitz (Post Punk Kitchen), Sunflour Baking Company (cookies) and Mercy For Animals in other categories. Hope I didn't forget anyone but I bet I did.

Thanks, blogolians!

Beauty Through Boredom

Bizarro is brought to you today by Dubious Travel.

Day two of my Journey into the Bizarro Archives.

The first cartoon shown here is from a few days ago and I like it. So did a woman who wrote to me to say her husband is very funny and she looks like hell as a result. Sorry to hear that and congratulations. I once read that most women rank humor and intelligence above looks and money when it comes to choosing a mate. This is the one and only reason I have been successful with attractive women, for I am no George Clooney in either looks or money.

The next cartoon is from the late 1900s. This was drawn at a time when I was on my "Mooch Book Tour," one that was funded entirely by my readers. I visited around 15 cities on donated plane tickets, stayed with Bizarro readers who had volunteered to drive me around, feed me and let me stay at their house. Some had nice guest rooms, others put me on the couch on in their child's room. (sans toddler) At one house, I slept in a pink bedroom with Little Mermaid sheets. I wrote a book about it, which is long out of print but I still have a box or two of them. If you want one, I'll sell them for $15 each, signed. Just a little way to clear my closet space and make some cigar money.

You may notice the hirsute man at the back of the line. That is a self-portrait from the period. To add to the impact, I've posted here a publicity photo from '95 as well. I painted the big pink sign and cut a hole in it for my head. I thought is was funny.

That concludes today's trip down memory lane. I hope nobody got car sick.

Click!

Bizarro is brought to you today by Camera Phone Self-Portraits

CHNW and I are big fans of the cell phone camera self-portrait. Well, it's CHNW mostly, she can't resist taking dozens of pics of us doing nothing. She does it everywhere: on the street, on the motorcycle, on vacation, sitting on the couch watching TV, hiding the bodies of our enemies in the backyard. I often remind her that one of these photos could come back to bite us in the ass one day, but she will not relent.

She takes photos of lots of others things, as well. She has I-don't-know-how-many cameras and uses them relentlessly. I must admit she's got a great eye, many of her photos are really beautiful.

On the other end of the spectrum, something that is the opposite of beautiful is any of my cartoons from my first couple of years of Bizarro. Posted here is one from my very first year, maybe even the first couple of months. The joke is "meh," the art is horrendous, the border is as thick and chunky as Tex-Mex salsa, the lettering is some nondescript psuedo-comic book-looking crap. And what was with that signature? Was I trying to replicate an auto parts logo?

Quite honestly, I didn't know what I was doing. It does, however, show my affinity for deadpan comments and hats, even then.

I decided recently to randomly pull things like this out of my archives to share with you on each blog post. Hope you enjoy it.


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Food?

(click the lettuce to make the image bigger)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Suspicious "Food"

Today's offering, which ran in papers last Sunday, is a Jack and the Beanstalk spin off. Magic beans aren't always a good thing; who needs a four ton head of lettuce in their yard? Imagine the size of the bunnies it would attract.

Drawing the lettuce reminded me a lot of my days as a commercial illustrator. I worked for many years in a small commercial art studio in Dallas and we specialized in line drawings of products, mostly food. Some of our regular clients were Frito Lay, Armour Meats, Pepsi and American Airlines. AA had us draw planes, of course, not food. It was not glamorous work but it was good, consistent money in those days.

Most of what we did was photorealistic stipple drawings like the image I've posted here. This was not for a client but was a promotional image we did for the studio, which was called "Cat Pak." Get it? It's food in the shape of a cat. I wasn't vegan then, so drawing a dead fish as food did not conflict with my personal ethics. This is a bad copy of the original but was the best I could find today. The original was not so "gloppy" looking. Gloppy is an advertising term used to describe things that are, I don't know, gloppy-looking.

In the first ten years of Bizarro, from 1985 to 1995, the feature didn't make enough money to support my family so I worked full time as an illustrator and did all my cartooning at nights and on weekends. It was a grind.

Tiny Footsteps

Bizarro is brought to you today by Man-Eating Bird.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, my favorite cartoons are those that only make sense after thorough inspection. In this one, at first the reader assumes the situation is normal but on second look sees that the waiter has very short legs and is actually standing on the table. This sort of thing makes me smile every time.

If you enjoyed this cartoon 3/16ths as much as I enjoyed drawing it, then you had 12/23rds more fun than someone who didn't see it at all because they were eaten by an elk the day before it was published. It's the little things in life that make it all worthwhile.

Even I'm Confused

Bizarro is brought to you today by Unclear Signage.

I got a lot of questions about the beer cartoon, primarily because it is rather opaque and not particularly well done. Some people tried to make it a complete sentence – "I bean my mug" – others were unsure what it was in the first place – "I (rock? bean?) my coffee."

It doesn't make a sentence, it's just that I replaced the usual heart with a kidney to refer to how quickly beer goes through you. I know, it doesn't really make much sense. I may have been drunk when I drew this one.

The next cartoon was one I wondered if people would understand but I didn't get any mail from confused readers after all. I'm still guessing some people just thought the guy was exasperated because the printer was out of ink. But I intended to show that he was "low" on ink, the way a person might get "high" on something. The way I originally drew this was rejected because it was felt that if I showed someone drinking, eating, or inhaling an ink cartridge, some kid would try it and die and I'd be accused of corrupting the public. If you promise not to try this because I'm telling you right now it might kill you, I'll show you the original image.

That's all for today, have to walk the dog now.