God & Family

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One day I was tweeting something and I thought it might be fun to open up a new Twitter account under the name "God" and tweet stuff like this. The name had already been taken, of course, probably about 18 seconds after Twitter was invented. I don't follow God on Twitter so I can't say what he/she is using it for. Other examples of what I might have tweeted as God:

Just cured a guy of leprosy, gave about 7 million other people cancer.

I could stop wars anytime I want but without cable, what would I watch?

Dave, if you're going to cheat on your wife, I'm going to introduce her to a hot trainer at the gym.

Hurricane Katrina wasn't about the iniquities of New Orleans. I was trying to teach you how to build a decent levee.

No prayers this weekend, please, I'm taking some time off.

My ancient cartoon for the day is from February of 1996. I've done a number of satires of Family Circus over the years, as have lots of other cartoonists, and I should mention that Bil Keane is a great sport about it. The first time I did it, he called me the next day (scaring me to death) and asked for the original art for his collection. I traded it to him for a Sunday panel of FC, one in which the dead grandpa ghost appears. Bil even used my name in his cartoon one time. If my archives were arranged in a way that I could find anything specific, I'd post it here. It was a picture of Billy and Jeffy talking to each other with their dad in the background listening. Billy says, "The Piraro's dad wears gold chains and an earring, all our dad wears is glasses and deodorant."

I have never worn a gold chain in my life, but I do have earrings. Still, it was fun to be a part of Family Circus.

Music, Animals, Lawn

This past Saturday evening was our Sean Lennon concert at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. It was "far out," as the kids say.

Sean's band is called The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger and consists of him and his lady friend, Charlotte Kemp Muhl. Sean plays guitar and sings, Charlotte plays just about everything else in the world and sings, too. The surprising thing is that in spite of being a gorgeous model, she's actually really good. Guitar, bass, accordion, dingy dongy bell thing, and banjo, she adds to each song like a pro. And her voice is nice, too. Even more surprising is that Sean started teaching her to play music just two years ago.

The two of them were delightful people, not stuck up or diva-ish or snotty or privileged or arrogant or hairy like warthogs or gooey like those toys you used to get out of gumball machines that stick to the wall when you throw them, then slowly crawl downward. They were friendly and smart and cool. Such a pleasure.

The music was great, too. Sean's voice is lovely, occasionally reminiscent of his father's – which has a heartbreaking quality that is unavoidable to those of us who enjoyed his music during his lifetime – but is overall his own, and his songs are melodic with the kind of clever turn-of-phrase lyrics I've always associated with the name "Lennon." TGSTT has an acoustic album coming out in the fall, I'll be pimping it on this blog. If it's as nice as what I heard on the lawn at the sanctuary this weekend, it'll be worth pointing at your ears.

Afterward, in the farmhouse, I found out that Sean is a big fan of cartoons and a very talented artist himself. He and Charlotte do all the graphics for the band themselves and Sean does a fair amount of freehand drawing that is pretty impressive. He dreamed of being a cartoonist but became a musician, I dreamed of being a musician but became a cartoonist; the perfect basis for party chat.

Next month we're having a Moby concert at the farm, hope some of you local folks can make it.