Last night I watched The Big Year, a comedy about competitive bird watchers. It’s a premise I would have thought absurd except I’ve been around such people. In addition to cartooning I teach natural history and lead nature walks, and I would rather get between a mama bear and her cub than get between a bird and birders trying to add to their Life Lists. Full disclosure, I don’t keep a Life List. Continue reading
Category Archives: humor
Overlooked Cartoons
The relaunching of my website has been in a word, disastrous.
To humans the new web design is nicer to look at than my old site and much easier to use, but Google hates it.
What happens when Google hates your site? Continue reading
Shakespeare’s Monkey
I just sent my second tweet:
“An infinite # of monkeys & typewriters will produce the works of Shakespeare. The rest produce Captcha nonsense to show you’re human.”
My Life Has Gone To The Puppies
I just sent my first tweet:
License Accident Cartoon 6708
Get this cartoon on mugs, magnets, T-shirts & other stuff @ CafePress
“The advantage of getting a puppy at 57 is your bladder holds about as much as a puppy’s, so housebreaking is easier.”
On March 29th, my old dog Sammy died of complications due to surgery for cancer. I was pretty devastated. My parents were visiting, and Dad said he’d buy me a puppy for my upcoming birthday. Oh how I longed to hear those words when I was a child, but I told him, no thanks because I always take in older dogs no one wants.
One Hour of Cartooning Down, 9,999 To Go
How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 11
If you’ve tried all the techniques I’ve mentioned, and still can’t come up with funny ideas, don’t give up immediately. Like other muscles, the humor muscle takes time and practice to build. I had a five-year-plan when I quit my secure well-paying government job and started cartooning full-time in 1981. Continue reading
Trade Journal Cartoons
How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 10
Gag-cartoonists call the big magazines most have heard of The Majors. That’s where everyone wants to be published. I don’t know how many Majors there are now. Maybe fifty.
The odds that someone starting out will have a cartoon selected from the first batch of cartoons she’s drawn is – well, I don’t know what the odds are, but I believe the odds of winning the lottery are better.
There are hundreds of other magazines and trade journals to submit to, though.
Gag Writing While Doing the Mundane
How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 9
In an earlier post I said that I draw very few cartoons about things that happen to me. That isn’t to say I don’t get ideas while going about my daily life. Here are some ideas I generated on a shopping trip, along with my thought process and what was happening when I came up with them.
Motor homes going 40 MPH are the bane of coastal Oregonians’ existence. I’m stuck behind one of the most enormous ones I ever seen. It’s so enormous, I’m amazed it doesn’t have a “Wide Load” sign on it. What’s the opposite of a wide load? Continue reading
My Pets Help me Write Animal Cartoons
How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 8
Previously I said I rarely draw cartoons about things from my life. Drawing about my pets is an exception to that rule.
How can you look at a cat with its head in a toilet and not laugh, Continue reading
Fairy Tale Cartoon Characters who Lived UnHappily Ever After
How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 7
Like the historical characters I wrote about yesterday, horror movies and fairy tale cartoon characters come with back stories readers are familiar with, and like historical characters I usually have them dealing with life in today’s world.
Stick a bureaucrat into almost any fairy tale, and you’ve probably got the makings of a cartoon. The Princess and the Bureaucrat? Continue reading
Creating History Cartoons Even if You Flunked History
How to Become a Slightly Warped Cartoonist: Part 6
I draw very few cartoons about things that happen to me. In fact, if you want to drive me nuts, whenever something funny happens say, “I bet you’ll draw about this,”
Most funny things that happen to you are funny only in context. Have you ever tried to describe an incident where at the time it happened everyone involved was laughing hysterically, but the people you’re telling the anecdote to look confused, not amused? That’s what I call an ”I guess you had to be there” moment. Continue reading