The Player

Bizarro is brought to you today by Cat Zombies.

As a teen, I worked as a busboy in a restaurant with a piano bar. I was fascinated by the old drunks that sat around the piano every night "singing" to the show tunes coughed up by Morey, who wore a tux and had a phony smile cemented to his face. At the time I was in a band, a typical teenage rock star wannabe, and felt sorry for Morey. I imagined that when he was my age, he dreamed of throngs of appreciative music lovers at Carnegie Hall, or a theater on Broadway. He likely taught music lessons to dopey kids during the day to make ends meet.

Making a living as a musician is a nearly impossible task and most people give it up eventually and get a "real" job, maybe play in a hobby band at night. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, music is one of those things you do because you love it.

After a few years of playing weekend nights around the Southwest, I gave up my band to concentrate on becoming a cartoonist. It worked out well for me, I beat the odds with a lot of luck and a bit of hard work and have thanked my lucky stars ever since. I still love music, however, and though I was the singer and never learned to play anything, I still long to be in a hobby band. I recently started to learn to play guitar for reals, as the kids say. It's monstrously fun and I wonder why I didn't do this years ago.

The guitar in the cartoon is fashioned after my own Gibson ES-137. It is tied for my favorite inanimate object that I own, the other being my '82 Vespa. The thought of drunks resting their cocktails on it (my guitar, not my scooter) as they blather out the words to "That's Entertainment" (the one by Schwartz and Dietz, not by The Jam) makes me cringe.

You're welcome to rest your drinks on my Vespa, however. It's waterproof.