Dan Piraro's Blog, page 8

Great Book Recommendation

Another friend of mine has published the absolutely quintessential book about Looney Toons. It's called (look at picture above and read title) and it's a big, hardback book with an unbelievable amount of pull-out stuff inside. It's like every other page is a gift pack of some sort. There are envelopes with stickers or posters or old scripts inside. There are tear-out valentines cards, a catalog of ACME products, a pop-up graphic dealy bobber, postcards, a wearable mask, all kinds of stuff. No kidding, look at these action shots...

Here is an old comic book reproduction within the book. You can leave it there or rip it out and run around the house with it:













Here are some script pages reproductions inside an envelope that's stuck in the book:


















The whole book is very much an insider's look at the process and legend of all those decades of great cartoons with never-before-published production sketches and all kinds of stuff that makes the nerd in you get all twitchy. If you or someone on your gift list is a cartoon fan, he/she/you/they/it will love this dang thing.

I'm not kidding. If I was, I would be honest about it.

Here's a place to buy it. (I get no kickback, I just like the book and the author)


.

Book Suggestion

Here's another bit of business I've been meaning to get to: A good buddy of mine has released his first book of cartoons and I'd like all of you to buy 100 copies and convince a 100 of your friends to do the same. If he doesn't sell enough books, his wife will make him quit cartooning and go back to being a small child working in an illegal shoe factory in the 3rd world.

So click this link and get to it! We've got a little boy to save!

THIS IS ALSO A LINK TO THE BOOK. WHAT A GREAT HOLIDAY GIFT THIS WOULD BE!


.

VeganMoFo

Here's a link to a month-long blogosphere event called VeganMoFo. Thought some of my herbivore buddies might like it.

http://veganmofo.wordpress.com/

.

TALK TOO MUCH

[image error]















I recently did an interview with The Comics Journal and they have posted the first of three parts here:

http://www.tcj.com/interviews/a-conversation-with-bizarro-cartoonist-dan-piraro-part-one-of-three/

Good lord, I talk a lot. They say that in Part 2 I talk about "why comic strips have gotten so bad." I hope I didn't name names.



.

THE BIG TULSA SHOW!

(Click the poster above for more bigness!)

Folks, it's finally happened! My performing career has reached such a fever pitch that I will be headlining at the Tulsa Elks Lodge! Can anything stop me now?

I'll be in Tulsa for two different types of show, on two subsequent nights, this is the second one, as closer inspection of this blog will show. The show the night before will be at Philbrook Art Museum, and different than this one. Click here.

This Elks show is different in these ways:
1. MORE and different stand-up comedy and cartoons. And some slightly more adult humor.
2. A special V.I.P party beforehand, for people with a few extra bucks (to charity) and a misguided desire to meet me in person in a smaller room.
3. MORE songs than on the previous night, with talented backup musicians. NONE have EVER been performed in public.*
4. ALL the money goes to charity. You can spend a few bucks, have a great time, then pretend you went out of your way to do something nice for someone!
5. You will want to attend BOTH shows, compare and contrast.

Come and see me, laugh, meet me, get some signed cartoon books for holiday gifts, take pictures, create a memory that will last for an undetermined amount of time. This year, I'm looking forward to spending the week before Thanksgiving with YOU!

Ticket info here.

*Except one



.

THE BIG TULSA TALK!

As you can see from the poster above (click it to see it huge and legibly) I'll be appearing at Philbrook Museum of Art in my hometown of Tulsa soon! I'll be doing a bit of a hybrid sort of presentation with some stand-up comedy, lots of my favorite cartoons on the big screen, a discussion of my fine art, and an overview of my 25-year career as a cartoonist. And, most exciting and terrifying of all, I'll be performing a few of my original songs with talented musicians. Not comedy songs – songs about death and depression and hard drinking and sin. It will be FUN!

The next night I'll be doing a different kind of show, also in Tulsa, see the next post for that info. You'll want to be at BOTH of them! Trust me.

I'll be answering questions and signing books and whatever afterward, so this is your big chance to rub elbows with me and pretend I'm a celebrity. I'll help by dressing funny, like celebrities usually do. We can take a picture together and you can use it on your Christmas card. (No Hanukkah cards, please.*)

For more info, go to the Philbrook web site. http://www.philbrook.org/

*Kidding, of course. You can put me on whatever card you want.**

**Just a small sampling of some of the sort of politically incorrect humor I am likely to employ!

Halloween, Idiots, Teeth

Bizarro is brought to you today by Teeth.

I hope everyone had a dandy Halloween weekend. CHNW and I stayed home and watched scary movies. If you ever want to see a movie that will absolutely make your blood run cold and afraid to be alone after dark for the rest of your life, find one other than 1959's House on Haunted Hill, starring Vincent Price. If, on the other hand, you want to get stoned and laugh your buttocks off, this might be just the right choice.

I love old movies (and new movies, too, I'm not some weird gay guy still living with his mother, after all) and it always amazes me what passed for scary in olden times. Part of my problem is probably that I don't believe in anything supernatural – ghosts, demons, magic, spirits, etc. – so I never fall for those kinds of stories. The only movies I find "scary" are films about murderers or whatever. Things that could actually happen to me. I can't bear slasher or torture movies at all.

When I was a teenager, however, it was different. During my brief few years as a fundamentalist "teen for Jesus" type, I firmly believed in the devil and demons, so movies like The Exorcist scared the crap out of me. Almost as much as the prospect of President Sarah Palin does now, for instance. Oh yeah, it's election day, I have to go vote. You should go vote, too, unless you're
Let the angry comments begin!

By the way, the "idiot" joke above was a collaboration between me and my good friend, Wayno. Here's his post on how it morphed as we discussed it.

Halloween

Bizarro is brought to you today by Pumpkin
Abuse.

It is Halloween weekend and if I were a 10-year-old child I'd be getting my costume ready for trick-or-treating. But since I am ancient and my sciatica is acting up, I'll probably stay in with my nurse and have her rub liniment on my lower back. Did I mention my nurse is a 24-year-old student from Sweden?

A few years ago, I started doing "Scariest Halloween Costumes of (year)" Sunday cartoons and have kept that tradition. Here today are all of them since 2007 when I began.

(click the cartoon images for a biggerer view)
As you can see, the first one is graphically fairly simple in comparison to what I did in later years. In this one I referred to global warming, the lead toys from China scandal, NFL quarterback Michael Vick's dog fighting problems, more about the environment with the over-zealous breeders, and the consistently abhorrent anti-role models, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Strangely, I got the most hate mail about the population crisis. Many fundamentalist Christians took exception to my contradiction of their lord's instructions to "be fruitful and multiply." I still contend He was talking about practicing your math skills.

In '08, an election year, I touched on the collapsing economy and blamed it on the Republicans, which everyone but a die-hard Republican would agree with. I also hit the TV writer's strike, which has pretty much been forgotten by now. I expected hate mail about the drunken elephant and got some.

2009 brought the term "Zombie bank" into the popular lexicon, which was a natural for this. It was also the year Kanye West made an ass of himself at the MTV awards (or whatever it was), Michael Jackson died, and Fox and it's minions funded and organized the faux grass-roots protests about health care reform. I got hate mail about the health care reform aspect on this one, of course.

This year's cartoon does not touch on political events at all, though there were plenty of easy targets. The Fox News funded and organized, faux grass-roots Tea Baggers would have been an obvious choice but American politics have become so incredible incendiary and stupid that I no longer bother to editorialize. (Except here on this blog.) I've decided that such things do nothing to change anyone's mind and amid the current epidemic of idiocy, I might get tarred and feathered or lynched. Still, I think the three topics I chose are funny, especially the little Jesse James Nazi kid with his toy chopper bike. Although Jay Leno stealing candy from a baby makes me smile, too. I can't imagine what hate mail I could get from this one but I'm often surprised. I'll keep you updated.

Have fun on Halloween this year and be safe. Unless being safe ruins your fun, in which case you should just go for it. What's a few less humans on a crowded planet?

Italian Spiderman

I posted this video on this blog a couple of years ago but it definitely bears repeating. Enjoy.

Pow Sex Tights

Bizarro is brought to you today by Ovum Racists.

Two super hero cartoons today, because I'm still in the super hero mode to load up my new book of Bizarro super hero cartoons coming out next spring, which I've talked about enough on this blog to make me vomit. Why do I keep talking about it? I don't know, maybe I'm hoping that it will sell more than a dozen copies and break all previous records for Bizarro books.

As much as it makes my gout flare up to admit it, I was a kid back in the late '60s when the original Batman TV show aired. If you've never seen it, do so. It was a gem. It was The Simpsons of its day in the sense that it ran in prime time, had big ratings, and was so quirky that celebrities were lining up to do cameos on it. But that's not important right now. What's important is that they had several corny fight scenes in each show, during which a giant "Pow!" or "Zok!" or "Bap!" was written across the screen in big comic book lettering. Just like in this cartoon, which is why I like it. Now you can stop wondering.

And what a great segue it was to have the word "wondering" in that last sentence. Because now we will talk about Wonder Woman. Wow. What a babe. In the late 60s, porn was not readily available to young boys such as myself, so Wonder Woman comic books were the object of my desires and fantasies. Oh, to be tied up by her magic lasso and...perhaps I'll leave the details for another blog, one about embarrassing personal sexual fantasies involving fictional Amazonian cartoon characters.

So here is Wonder Woman shopping for threads and it brings to mind another cartoon I did about super hero fashion, fresh from the dank archives of Bizarro International Headquarters.

Have a super day.