Chalk Art

Today's Bizarro cartoon is brought to you by the Lascaux, France Chamber of Commerce.

Perhaps not one of my best comics ever, but it was done during a time a couple months ago when I was having a lot of personal problems and my head was a mess, so I think it's perfectly acceptable. I mentioned this "rough patch" on a few earlier blogs and a lot of you wrote to me with support, which was very appreciated. The worst thing about being a cartoonist (and I fully admit there are not many bad things about this job and I feel quadruply blessed to be making a living at it) is trying to come up with material when you're suffering. Whether you've got double-barreled flu, your dog just died, or your wife ran off with a transvestite, sitting down to be funny on days like that is like a cold water enema.

But back to the subject at hand, I'm a fan of cave paintings. They are among the earliest examples of the human compulsion to create. Though they are primitive by definition, they are, in my opinion, among the most sophisticated efforts at animal renderings ever created. The creators of these works understood so much more about their ecosystem than you or I could ever hope to. They were up to their eyeballs in it, it crawled into their beds at night, it lived in their hair. Knowledge of the flora and fauna they lived among was a matter of life or death.

And we have Animal Planet.

If future archaeologists find only one piece of art that I have drawn about my life, I hope it's the bottle of scotch and cigar that I drew with chalk on the sidewalk in front of my building. Some loves last forever.

Goth Godfather

Bizarro is brought to you today by Alice Cooper.

I have many shortcomings and one of the worst is that I do not know as much as I perhaps could about the history of "goth" style. Through tears of embarrassment and shame over this sad fact, I will say that I believe Alice Cooper was its godfather. Not in the traditional I-will-see-to-the-child's-religious-upbringing sense of the word, but in the sense that he was the first to popularize the look we now call "goth."

When I was a teenager in the late 1900s, Alice was all the rage. Back then, everything about him was outrageous: he was a boy but went by a girl's name – intentionally – the black circles around his eyes and downward-diving stripes from the corners of his black lips, disheveled, dyed-black hair and black clothing was so cool we could barely stand it. (female name, goth fashion, rock 'n roll: sound familiar?) Why hadn't we thought of celebrating Halloween all year round before? Who cared?– we were just glad we had finally been enlightened. Or, endarkened, as the case may be.

For years there was a rumor that Alice Cooper was the same guy who had played "Eddie Haskell" on the 1950s TV series, "Leave it to Beaver." (Historical note: this show was titled in a more naive time, and was not attempting to reference female genitalia.) They did look similar, (Eddie and Alice) but the rumor was eventually dispelled when Ken Osmond, the actual guy who played Haskell, began appearing on talk shows and such, reclaiming a little fame. Rumor had it he had become an L.A. cop, pretty much the opposite image of Alice Cooper in those days.

I like the way this cartoon came out. I tried to capture the godmother as a cross between the chubby, jolly, old, granny godmothers of Disney's Sleeping Beauty, and a goth teen. I'm happy with the result, hope you are, too.

Cheap Holiday Laughs

(Click the cartoon and make it HUGER!)
Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Where The Hell Was I Yesterday?

The five or six of you who check into this blog every day (my favorite people in the world, by the way! Even more precious than my own children!) will have noticed that I did not post yesterday. Of those five or six, three or four were likely up all night with the local authorities, searching the woods for me, calling their contacts in the Middle East to see if I had been kidnapped by terrorists. Sorry to have inconvenienced you, my precious blog readers. I shall endeavor not to do it again.

Truth is, I woke up late, ran some errands, went to a memorial service for a friend, had some dinner, came home late and just didn't feel up to posting so belatedly. Nothing more than an average dose of real life for real people. Thanks for your concern and, yes, I remembered to pick up my crazy pills from the CVS on 17th.

I dig the cartoon above. It was a collaborative effort between myself (duh) and a smarty pants I know in Florida, name of Mark Brandt. His original notion was about the Italian vacation on the cheap, using real towns in the south. I added the recession angle, the old-time advertisement map style, prices, etc.

Below is the title panel I created for it, which not all papers that carry the Sunday Bizarro use. I love satirizing product labels for some reason.

If you don't have an Italian/English dictionary at your elbow, "Villa Torta" more-or-less means "Pie House." Get it?! Get it?!
One last bit: Here is the cartoon I missed posting yesterday. It is Francesco's last of the week, though he did a Sunday cartoon for me that will print on August 24.

Because I'm an advocate for the abolition of animal slavery of all kinds, I love, love, love this cartoon. I used to be critical of some people's tendency to anthropomorphize animals. But the more scientists learn about the nature of other species, the more they discover similarities to humans in areas like emotions and sentience. Now I believe that we do not anthropomorphize them enough. Currently, I won't do or subsidize doing anything to any animal that I wouldn't do to a human toddler.

Love this one, Ces, thanks for making me laugh.

Wal-Pigs

Todays' Bizarro is brought to you by the United States of America Corporation.

This cartoon by Francesco (Dr. Bling, to his posse), isn't one that is meant to make you laugh out loud, but makes a great point in an amusing way. I like it a lot because I hate companies like Wal-Mart, and the general "corporatization" of America.

The Neo Cons began handing the country over to corporations in a huge way in 2002, though it has been a growing trend for decades. Corporations are by definition, amoral. Morals are something humans have (ideally), a corporation is a non-human entity the sole purpose of which is to make money. Making money is not always a bad thing, we all do it, but when a corporation can make bigger profits by abusing workers, animals, the earth, your health, it is almost its obligation to do so. While executives make record profits, pollution goes up, worker's rights and wages go down (or overseas), public health suffers, and the legal rights of citizens to defend themselves against the monolith are diminished.

With their limitless coffers, corporations continue to influence government to legislate in their favor, and the problem gets worse. They all but "buy" election results by putting their huge resources behind candidates who will give them their way. Before long, the corporation IS the government. Next thing you know, the Three Little Pigs are losing their house to crooked mortgage practices and you're in jail as a terrorist for taking a picture of a facility where animals are being abused for profit.

Damn, another blog complaining about the government instead of making you laugh. Sorry kids. Try this.

Snap, Crackle, Ernie

Today's Bizarro cartoon is brought to you by Francesco Marciuliano. "Imagining harmless childhood icons in drag since 1978."

On Francesco's blog (or "Franky Baby," as I like to call him), he mentions that this gag would have worked better if he had used Snap, Crackle and Pop from the Rice Krispies packaging. I would agree with that, they are probably more readily recognized than the Keebler Elves, but it still works. On Francesco's blog (or "The Cesco Kid," as I call him), many readers admitted to thinking these guys were the Rice Krispies guys. For those of you laboring similarly, they are not. They are from this company.

In short (since we're talking about elves) I tend to like humor that brings happy, fictional characters from childhood into the real world. Watching Mickey Mouse cope with the gritty, fragile, maelstrom of adult human life, or Ernie the Keebler elf struggling with gender confusion tickles the bad boy in me.

Conversely, I'm also tickled by this. Perhaps I need a shrink.

Cracker Debator

Today's Bizarro was brought to you by Godfish Baked Snack Crackers. "Just like those Goldfish crackers, but omnipotent!" (Now in new chocolate flavor!)

This is the infamous Evangelical Goldfish Cracker cartoon that so many people have referenced in the blog comments of the past few days. I love this one, too.

Some have said that this cartoon is backwards, that creationists believe we came from "somewhere" (God) and evolutionists believe we popped up from "nowhere" (spontaneous life). But evolutionists argue that it is creationists who believe we popped up from nowhere (created "as is" by God) and evolutionists who believe we developed slowly from a logical process of chemistry (evolution). Funny how that works either way, depending on your point of view.

Psychology studies have shown that people tend to make facts bend to their belief system, rather than the other way around. Humans do this naturally, it's nothing to be ashamed of, but it is something we should be aware of. Scientists emphatically try to look at facts with an open mind before forming theories, and even they sometimes get it backwards.

A group of Palestinians and Israelis were shown the same TV news report about their endless struggle, then interviewed. Each person thought the news report was unconscionably biased against their own side. We see the same thing in American politics. The Dems think McCain is getting a free pass from the press, the Reps think Obama is getting a free ride.

My belief is that you have to throw out your own opinion about anything from time to time, and look at the facts with new eyes. I like to pretend I'm from another planet and I've just arrived here for the first time. As I study the myriad life forms, would I conclude they were the result of a slow chemical process or a supreme being? If I studied human political history, would I side with conservatives or liberals? Studying mammals, would I think that humans were a benign force or a mutant malignancy? Looking at the Olsen twins, would I imprison or euthanize them?

Use your own filter to decide which cracker has a better grip on reality. But while doing so, try not to think of this.

Saving the Day

Today's Bizarro is made possible by Mr. and Mrs. Marciuliano.

This cartoon represents day two of the vacation week I took, my first in 23 years of syndication. The week off, during which Francesco Marciuliano wrote and drew cartoons for Bizarro in my stead, actually happened five weeks ago – that's the lead time on daily cartoons.

I was having some serious personal issues that were bringing me down, plus I had a trip to South Dakota with the in-laws coming up and between the two, I was at my wit's end. One day, I found myself standing on the ledge outside of my building with a handful of sleeping pills and a gun in my mouth.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Gotham City, mold-mannered Francesco Marciuliano ("Ces" to his friends) sat quietly at his drawing table sketching naked Smurfs when a radio news report caught his eye. "Why, that's my friend Dan Piraro on that ledge!" shouted Ces. "I've got to do something (that could benefit my career!)"

Grabbing a cape on his way out the door, Francesco raced into the subway station and hopped an express train to Brooklyn. A mere one hour and 49 minutes later he was standing at the foot of my building shouting up at me through a bullhorn, "Dan, it's me, Ces! You don't have to end it like this! There's another way! There's gas fumes, carbon monoxide, asphyxiation, who knows how many more!"

Suddenly it hit me to ask him to do a week of cartoons for me so I could regroup and he not only stepped up to the plate, but licked it clean. So you not only have Ces to thank for a week's entertainment, but also for my ability to return to my former glory in full stride.

Thank you, Francesco Marciuliano, for a job well done! You are this week's Cartoonist Suicide Prevention Operative!