MySpace MyDog

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by Unique Pets for Unusual People.

This cartoon isn't about hating MySpace, but I do, with a passion, so that's what I'm going to rant about.

I was talked into getting a MySpace page few years ago by a PR person who felt it was a good way to market comedy shows and books and such. She was right, people have had success with that, but I found that web site to be so badly designed, counter intuitive, and unfathomably annoying in all respects, that I gave it up within weeks. The thing operates like a video game with no rules or plot, designed by a drunken toddler.

A business partner of mine now monitors my MySpace page. It is the only element of the vast Bizarro empire that I don't look at myself, so don't write to me there unless you want to hear from my pal, Rey.

I know that people of all ages are into MySpace, but let's face it, it's mostly for kids and 20-somethings. It isn't meant for adults to understand, much the way gangsta rap isn't meant for suburban whites.

If I may be immodest for a moment (do I dare?), what I really like most about this cartoon is the dog's face on the left. I usually draw dogs more like the one on the right, but I decided to get all artsy-fartsy this time and try a different type. I'm very happy with the way the pug turned out.

One last note: I once knew a middle-aged man who was dating a girl in her early 20s. He found himself asking her why she hadn't put his picture on her MySpace page. If you find yourself in this situation, not having your picture on her MySpace page may not be your biggest problem.

Smelly Horses

Proceeds from today's Bizarro will be donated to Horses Against Gravity, a 501c3 organization.

I suspect that a lot of people under a certain age will not have gotten this joke. I never know for sure, so when I consider a gag like this one I have to decide whether I want to use it or not. Usually I decide to go for it, as I've learned over that years that my readers usually enjoy a challenge and don't mind not getting all the gags.

This one isn't really a challenge, though, it's just a reference to a TV commercial for Aqua Velva aftershave which was ubiquitous in the 60s and 70s. As I recall, the commercial was basically just attractive women getting all gooey over a guy who walks by at a party, office, or bar and smells good. The tag line was, "There's just something about an Aqua Velva man."



And that "something" was, since Aqua Velva was a cheap drugstore aftershave, that he wasn't a man who spent much on his grooming. So if thriftiness turns you on, you'd go for him in a big way. You might also dig his Sears leisure suit and Payless vinyl shoes. (As an ethical vegan, I don't wear leather shoes either, but then I'm sort of a cheapskate, too.)

Not that it has anything to do with this cartoon, really, but it seems that most little girls have a thing for horses. I can only assume adult women like horses, too, but I'm not sure. I'll resist making any comments about having something strong and silent between their legs (well, no, I guess I didn't resist making that comment) but I do wonder what the reason is. Is it their beauty, their power, their long, luxurious, style-able hair? That also describes Fabio, and he scares the crap out of all the little girls I know.

As for aftershave, I'm not a person who enjoys synthetic smells so I don't wear any of that smelly stuff. I prefer to be natural, so after I shower, I rub my body with one of my favorite natural scents.

Blogging About Not Blogging blah blah blah...

Yeah, it's going to be a while more before this blog resumes regular posting. Among other joys, I've been summoned for jury duty next week.

In the meantime, enjoy my review tweets in the sidebar or at my Twitter feed. (Over 1000 review tweets and growing!)

Special Offer!

(Hey, boys and girls! Click the cartoon above and see how big it gets!)

If you've been dying to get this image on a T-shirt and simultaneously help out a worthy cause, here is your chance! A cool new company who gives the profits from this shirt to Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, and is ludicrously concerned with ethical manufacturing is offering it NOW. Yes, you read that correctly, N-O-W.

http://www.eco-gear.ca/eco-gear-shop/EcoWear-AlienRescue-GT01.html

Here's how they describe their thing:
"Incredible ecogear makes the most earthfriendly tee shirt in the world. Made from 100% recycled fibres, the ecogear tee uses only organic inks or water based inks free of PVCs and pthalates.

In keeping with their corporate mantra of planet, people and animals, incredible ecogear is the first apparel brand to work directly with non profits and environmental groups by dedicating special tees to nominated groups."

Do it! You need the good karma.

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.