Dan Piraro's Blog, page 11

Dog Judge Voyeur

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I got some interesting mail on the dog cartoon. A handful of people wrote to me and said how much they liked this cartoon, two of whom were professional cartoonists. This surprised me a bit, I didn't think it was all that clever, just sort of a funny visual. One site, The Comics Curmudgeon, one of my favorite daily reads and one that makes its bread by skewering cartoons, posted it just because they liked it. I secretly always wanted to be on that site but not for the eviscerating reasons that cartoons usually end up there. It was a dream come true.

Even more surprising was an email from someone who normally loves my work but hated this one because it was "cruel." Perhaps they did not realize it is only a cartoon man, no "real" people got hurt.

This brings us to Casual Friday. I've never worked in an office with a dress code and have always pitied those who do. It's particularly ridiculous when you have to wear something completely outside the norm, like a choir robe. Would people show less respect for someone in a suit? The British really go to town with this tradition, dressing their judges up like old women. Even their lawyers (which they have another name for; "chips" is it?) have to wear wigs and doilies. Try as I might, I cannot understand this kind of behaviour. (spelled the British way.) For consistency's sake, they should also make the defendants dress up in costumes. Perhaps something more amusing to break up all that black and grey. I'd like to suggest a duck costume since if things don't go well, they may be going "up the river."

Today's ancient offering is about history, science, voyeurism and religion. Here in NYC, people regularly spy on each other with binoculars and telescopes. It's just a given when so many of us live so closely together in high-rise buildings. You get used to it and don't think anything about it after a while. When I first came to NYC, my future wife, CHNW, used to routinely walk around her apartment at night in various stages of undress. I asked her why she didn't close her blinds and she said, quite innocently, "What's the point? The only thing across the street is a rectory full of priests." (Not to be confused with a rectum full...)

I shudder to think how many crises of faith she instigated as those poor souls struggled to maintain their commitment to celibacy. Except for the gay or pedophile ones, of course.

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LITERARY DEATH MATCH

If you've not been to a Literary Death Match event, you should go, they're lots of fun. A number of professional authors get up and read a short passage from one of their works, then three semi-celebrity judges comment on their work, their performance and whatever else comes to mind.

One such event is taking place on October 8th in NYC and I'll be the judge handling "whatever else comes to mind." The point is comedy and the result is funny. Be there, enjoy it, talk about it for the rest of your life.

Where: Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, (between Bleecker and Houston) map
When: Doors open at 7 pm, show starts at 7:30 (sharp), afterparty at Von (on Bleecker)

Cost: $10 at the door, $7 pre-order.

(Super Secret P.S.: if you come to the event and whisper the password into the bouncer's ear, I'll give you a free package of Bizarro Trading Cards!) Password: Lick my neck

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WILL FRANKEN THIS WEEKEND!

San Francisco Area peeps, do not forget to go see Will Franken this Friday and Saturday night at The Purple Onion. You will not regret your actions and I will offer this personal, iron-clad guarantee: If you don't think he is one of the most brilliant performers you've ever seen, I will fully refund your sense of doubt by shouting, "YES HE IS!!"

Click here for the full story and more info. Tickets at the door only.

Angel Horse English

Bizarro is brought to you today by Great Abs.

After more than 25 years as a daily cartoonist and over 9000 published cartoons, I find that I sometimes copy myself. This angel cartoon is one such occasion. When I wrote it a few weeks ago, I thought it was completely original, but a few days after it was submitted I was digging through old archives, gathering super hero cartoons for my next book, and saw an old Bizarro with the identical concept. If I'd thought to write down the date, I could have shown it to you here.

Instead, I'll have to use what I call "language" to describe it: A couple of angels in Heaven are looking at another angel who is upside-down, his head and shoulders buried in the clouds. His halo is above his feet, his robe is falling down, but not far enough to expose his underpants (which would be considered pornographic by daily funny pages standards.) One of the two onlookers says, "In life, he was a performance artist."

I was shocked to find that I had ripped myself off so closely without even knowing it; thank god it was one of my own gags and not someone else's. I've done that on a couple of occasions, too, and felt like a quantity of feces.

And now a horse-in-a-bar joke. This is one of those weird cartoons that doesn't relate much to real life, but to me, much of the humor is in the look on the horse's face. I put a lot of effort into getting just the right attitude and expression on my characters, I hope you, the reader, notice and appreciate that. Some do, some don't, that's the way the cartoon cookie crumbles.

I got out of the habit of posting older cartoons for a while, but I enjoy it and so do many readers (perhaps you are one of those?) so I'm back to it today. I've always enjoyed this take on the cliche of the guy whose wife doesn't understand him. In fact, this guy could have been me.

When I was 20, I traveled through Europe with a backpack and a train pass and while in Milan, I met a beautiful Romanian woman who was a few years older than I. We spent many weekends visiting museums and parks together and I developed a huge crush on her and would have been stupid enough to marry her and take her back home with me if she'd been willing. Thankfully she wasn't. She spoke five or six languages fluently, but English was not one of them. We communicated by means of a bizarre combination of the hundred-or-so English words she knew and the hundred-or-so Italian words in my vocabulary. The rest was pantomime and pictographs. It was terribly romantic but I can only imagine what calamity would have ensued if she'd come back to the U.S. with me, learned English, and we had found out what each other were really like.

I dodged that bullet, but caught many others throughout my foolish, youthful romantic escapades. But how many of us escape life without a few romantic bullet wounds? As somebody once said: Better to have loved and to have been ripped apart over and over again by the machine gun of ill-advised sexual choices than to have never loved at all. Amen, brother.

Elevator Toast Music

Bizarro is brought to you today by Friendly Mailboxes.

Thanks is due today to Brian Levy of somewhere, U.S.A., for sending me an email last summer suggesting I do a cartoon about that thing where people push the
Next up is the melba toast factory, another collaboration with my good friend, Wayno. He correctly points out on his blog that smaller bread and toasters would be both more realistic and funnier. I agree completely, but err on the side of safety in these matters because in many markets, my cartoons print the size of a business card. I'm not kidding. It's a wonder anybody bothers to read comics in those kinds of papers.

Part of the problem is that newspapers aren't doing well financially and need to reduce the amount of space they use on things that cost money (comics, columnists, games) as opposed to make money (advertising), and another part is that most cartoonists don't draw in a manner that needs to be viewed any larger than a postage stamp, so newspapers don't think much of shrinking the comics.

In other news: The benefit concert last weekend at Woodstock Sanctuary went really well. Moby did a charming and intimate acoustic set with a couple of really talented singers, and Kelli Scarr was typically brilliant as the opening act. To conclude the evening, we showed the avante gard film, The Red Balloon, as Moby joined Mercury Rev Clear Light Ensemble improvising music to the images. It was trippy, dude.

Today's trivia: At Woodstock sanctuary, we have a huge, white, bushy, deaf cat named Moby, after the whale. Moby, the singer, is also named after the whale because he is related to Herman Melville. Moby the singer, is also white but not huge, bushy or deaf.

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

(click image for biggerer view)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Trios.

I was pleased when I came up with this take on the famous "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" adage, but didn't think much of it beyond that. I didn't predict that it would be as popular as it turned out to be; I got quite a lot of emails about it. I guess many of us are weary of seeing everyone buried in electronic devices constantly. Cops say that a person wearing headphones is more likely to be victimized by a r...

Eternal Life?

Bizarro is brought to you today by Reclaimed Souls.

To my surprise, there were quite a few readers who didn't understand this cartoon. I didn't get into a lengthy discussion with them so I don't know if it was because they are so unfamiliar with recycling that they don't recognize the triangle symbol, or if their minds were so anthropocentric that they could not make the leap between reincarnation/eternal life and recycling.

This cartoon idea came from my dandy buddy, Richard Cabeza, who has co...

Woodstock Concert

It's a day of SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS. Apparently.

We have another of our stellar, outdoor, under the sky, above the ground, on the lawn, intimate concerts coming up this weekend at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. CHNW and I hope to see you there!

Yo, check it. Word to your mother.













All proceeds go to feed and care for the sanctuary animals.

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

By far the most talented and unusual comic genius I know is performing in San Francisco in about 10 days. I highly recommend you go see his show if you're in that area, or highly recommend it to your Bay Area friends. This guy does not disappoint and every one of his shows is a unique experience. He's some kind of strange performance art/comedian/philosopher/philatelist hybrid. He defies description. I'm not kidding.

WILL FRANKEN RISES FROM THE ASHES
TWO NIGHTS ONLY
The...

Radar Nudity

Bizarro is brought to you today by Naked Hikers.

I'm not sure how I feel about this air traffic control cartoon. It's completely unrealistic, of course, the dude at the radar would know that something was wrong long before it got to this point. But I suppose the visual is sort of fun, the big dot on the screen then the big dot on the plane's nose. Whatever. A cartoon-a-day for over 25 years, they can't all be classics.

This Adam and Eve cartoon from 2000 is a bit more fun, I believe. When I was...