More Snake!

Snakemommy wrote back and provided me with this scintillating video of Louise the Burmese Python jumping through a hoop, just like in the cartoon. If you missed the beginning of this story, check out my previous post! Thanks, Snakemommy!



She also reminded me that this was Louise's second appearance on my blog. Here is the first.

Catasrophe Update

For those of you who have not read the account of my beloved wife, CHNW, getting hit by an anonymous Taxi last Friday night in NYC, click here to catch up on the story.

Now that you're caught up, I just wanted to say thanks to all the quadrillions of you who have left nice comments, sent Facebook messages or emails, or used the pathetically old-fashioned telephone system to wish her well. She appreciates it and is doing great.

Here now are a few pics of the healing process. Photo number one is of us in the hospital. CHNW loves to take pictures of herself looking at all ridiculous, be it from bad hair, a funny wig or hat, silly sunglasses, or after she has bounced her head off the street. So this first picture is taken by her camera and her own hands, at the height of the festival of medical bills. I popped into the pic with my extra-big-deluxe-executive lip, which I pull out of storage any time there is a worthy "poor baby" situation, for which this certainly qualified.

Picture two was taken at home the following day as she lay in her luxurious four-poster bed, ringing a tiny bell every few minutes to summon me to help her because she was "dizzy" or "weak." What a big baby. Sometimes I had to get her a glass of water, sometimes a cup of soup, which entailed my peeling the paper lid off of a cardboard container and pouring hot water into it. You can't believe how hard it is to walk into the next room with one of those things without spilling it. Meanwhile, I had to make my own breakfast, lunch and dinner for two solid days! Now I know how Civil War nurses must have felt. No thank you, Clara Barton!*

She took this picture partly because she thought that the purple of the "boxer's eye" really set off the blue of the unmolested one. I couldn't agree more, that one side of her face has never looked lovlier.

Finally, here she is as she looks today, up and around and getting her own damn soup. It's great to have her back. The cool thing about CHNW's bruising is that because she has a mechanical heart valve (from a past medical problem, not the cab), she takes a blood thinner every day. This does weird things to her bruises and the resulting kaleidoscope of colors and shapes is breathtaking. It will change many times over the next few weeks, like an over-decorated house in the suburbs of Wichita, perfect for the holiday season.

What you may not be able to fully appreciate from this picture, though, is that her eye has a distinct oval of black and purple around it, the sort you might expect a first-year movie makeup student to do on their first attempt. If I were the instructor, I'd recommend a little less makeup and a little more blending. But what's really horrific is that just today she is beginning to develop a large circle of chartreuse around it, reaching all the way down to her jaw line. In the coming days it will get even more pronounced and promises to be positively Halloweeny. I'll keep you updated.

For those of you who have recommended litigation, rest assured that we have a close friend who is a very successful personal injury lawyer and he will be leading the charge against the ironically named, TLC. (Taxi and Limousine Commission) We don't want to retire to South America, just get the med bills paid and around $80,000 for my own pain and suffering while having to play nursemaid.

















*Note to those of you who do not know me personally: I'm not as big a jackass as I portray myself here. I've been taking good care of her and have not said a peep about being put out. I'm sure being a Civil War nurse was more difficult than what I've been dealing with. The amputations without anesthesia alone were probably a major buzzkill.


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SUNDAY PUNNIES

(To see this picture get big, click on Vincent's Nose)

I usually post cartoons on this blog a week after they've appeared in the paper, but today's cartoon is LIVE. Yes, unbelievable as it may be, the cartoon you see here is the exact one that appears in papers all over the world right this second! Thank you, Thomas Edison!

This Sunday Punny is #8 in the series (click here to see earlier ones!) If YOU have a pun that is original and interesting, leave it in the comments section of this blog and you may see it in the next edition of Bizarro's Sunday Punnies! You may notice that in the bottom right corner of each of these frames is the name of the reader who sent in the pun. At this very moment, George, Devine and Barry are being carried through their neighborhoods on the shoulders of worshiping crowds to be crowned as supreme ruler of all they survey for life. This could be your future if you've got an interesting pun!

And thanks to George, Barry and Devine for making this particular Sunday so golldarn special!

Robots, Statues, Music

Bizarro is brought to you today by The Big Ugly.

This was an eventful weekend in my area. The National Cartoonists Society had their annual convention and awards ceremony just across the river from NYC, someplace called Jersey City. I've never been there myself, but I hear it is gorgeous.

I am told I won their biggest award, "Cartoonist of the Year" and am grateful for the honor. (Yes, I was told I was grateful for the honor, and I actually was.) The statue, which I have come to affectionately call "The Big Ugly," was designed in the early 1900s by Rube Goldberg, and is named The Reuben after him. Pictured below the blue link above is the one with Al Jaffee's name on it, from a couple of years ago.

Instead of attending this year's convention, which I've been to almost yearly since 1995, I was at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in upstate NY for a benefit concert given by Chrissie Hynde and JP Jones. It was a phenomenal experience; beautiful scenery, terrific music and good friends in a very intimate setting out on the lawn.













The musicians set up on a deck overlooking a large lawn and played songs from their new album, set to be released in August. I love Hynde's voice and JP Jones' voice blends terrifically well with it. I haven't heard the album, but if it was a good as the set we heard, you'll want to pick it up. By the way, that isn't the head of a cow/giraffe hybrid in the background, that's a costume used at the recent Veggie Pride Parade in NYC a few weeks back.













From behind the musicians you can see what an intimate gathering it was. We were only allowed 250 guests because of local ordinances (any more than that and you have to hire cops and that seriously cramps my party style, dude) but we had many hundreds more inquire about the show. We could easily have sold 500 tickets. The guitarist at left is from Liverpool and an amazing player, I was jealous, wish I could remember his name. Patrick M-something. JP is in the middle. His legs aren't actually 14 inches long, it's just the way it looks in this picture. He's actually completely normal.

Thanks so much to all the people who have been leaving "congrats" messages on my Facebook page and the comments sections of my blog posts, and to all of you who've sent emails. I can't answer them all personally, but they are all read and appreciated.

My editor at King Features and good friend, Brendan Burford, accepted the award for me. He asked me for an acceptance speech to read but I'm not one to write a lot down in those situations, so I gave him this:

"Dan Piraro would have been here tonight except that he was killed this afternoon when he lit a cigar near an open bottle of scotch while having sex with Ashley on his motorcycle. At least he died doing the four things he loved most."

Brendan said it was well received.

Crash Talk

Bizarro is brought to you today by Cops on Break.

Lately I've been depending on my good friend and talented colleague, Wayno, to help me with cartoons. My schedule has been a mess lately, as I've mentioned here previously, and without some writing help I'd be a basket case. CHNW and I swapped houses with some friends in Maui a few weeks back (which had been planned before I knew just how busy my schedule was going to be), then my daughter got married in Texas*, then I had a stand-up gig and a business meeting in Los Angeles. All told, I was home for just three days of the past four weeks. Fun and exciting, but grueling. By far, the worst thing about syndicated cartooning is having to work 365 days a year for years on end – over 25 for me so far.

Here are a couple of Wayno's gags from the past week. I like the Starbucks one because I don't like Starbuck's coffee – it tastes like burnt grill scrapings to me – but I drink it when there is nothing else available. I fully recognize the insanity of drinking something you hate just because it is all you can find, but the need for a strong, hot drink in the morning trumps my tastebud's preferences. I also suspect that any company as large as Starbuck's can't be doing the planet any favors, but I could be wrong about that. When it comes to corporations, I say, "guilty until proven innocent."

This next joke is an obvious pun which may have even been done before but I like the angle and the visual. "Crash," as an expression meaning "to sleep," probably came from the hardcore drug culture reference to coming down hard from a high. It amuses me that even mainstream America has embraced this word to mean sleeping in general. A middle-aged fundamentalist preacher and his wife visiting Branson, Missouri would think nothing of saying "we were so tired we went back to our hotel and crashed."

That's not to say that middle-aged fundamentalist preachers aren't using hardcore drugs, of course, but you get the idea.

*This photo was taken by a super talented photographer you can find here.

Wrong Size Sandwich

(click the images to see them LARGE)

Bizarro is brought to you today by Liza Minelli.

Here's another post with a two-fer, to make up some ground on the cartoons I didn't post while away. I really like cartoons like "Clown Mistakes," ones that are outside the usual formula of one-panel comics. More like a chart or diagram than a scene, my hero, B. Kliban was a genius at this kind of joke and the first person I ever saw employ this style.

Lots of readers really loved the sandwich joke, one even said it was the "best Bizarro ever." Normally I'd be happy about such a compliment, but I confess I didn't write this joke. It was given to me by my colleague, Wayno, who was kind enough to help me get ahead while trying to prepare for my lengthy trip away. Several of the jokes that printed last week and this were by Wayno. You can see them all on his blog. Many thanks, amigo!

Still catching up, must run.

Missing Link

As many a commentator noted, the first link in the previous blog about the caveman cartoon was not working. I've fixed it, so the "missing link" is back.

Thanks, Bizarrozzi!

The Doo, My Old Band

A friend of mine from the old days posted a video of my band from 1981 on Facebook. Steve Dirkx played with The Telefones, a legendary Dallas band from the same period, and used to film other bands with his 8mm hand-held camera, without sound. He then added another recording of one of our songs to this film, which is why the actions don't always match the sound. I'm singing through one of the guitar solos, for instance.

It brings back lots of good memories, thought some of you might enjoy it. I happy to say this is a song I wrote, though most of our songs were written by my best friend and guitarist, Mark Veale. He's the one on the video drinking the beer during the show. Others:
Lead guitar: Craig Means
Bass: Colin Marsh
Drums: Myron Blakely

Rock n' Roll...

Whap Goes the Weasel

Bizarro today is brought to you by Carnivorous Cabbage.

One more cartoon from my friend and colleague, Wayno of Pittsburgh. I like his gags and have featured a small handful in Bizarro over the past few months, with his permission, of course.

I like the contradictory image of a guy using a "carrot on a stick," not to entice, but to intimidate. If you want to see more of what Wayno has been up to, he has asked me to direct you to his FacialBook page.

In other news, a reader in Scandinavia has permanently scarred his body with one of my bits of artwork and I wish to thank him for sending the photos below. I am always honored when this happens, and would like to publicly state here and now that anyone who indelibly disfigures their body with artwork from Bizarro will get a personal sympathy card from yours truly. Other, more egoistic cartoonists might offer currency, jewels, or merchandise, but I am a humble man.

Smelly Sexy

Bizarro is brought to you today by King Tut.

This cartoon is simple wordplay, yes, but it makes me smile. It was dreamed up by my cartoonist, stand-up comic, long-time friend, Mike Capozzola.

What struck me as odd when I was drawing this cartoon is the way "pharaoh" is spelled, which I had never really noticed before I had to letter it by hand. How did the second "a" get thrown in there ahead of the "o?" I'm a fan of etymology (and also entomology, but that's a topic for a different post) but I don't know why this strange spelling exists. Usually, a foreign word that comes from a language with a different alphabet, like a Chinese word, for instance, is likely to be spelled phonetically in English. But that would mean that the word was originally pronounced "fay-ray-oh." Maybe that's the case, I don't know, or maybe it didn't come from the original Egyptian word. I could look it up, but it would cut into my leisure time.

Apparently, chemical compatibility is a huge indicator for sexual attraction. In other words, whether you're aware of it or not, you like the way your lover smells. I have experienced this myself on a few occasions (in my bachelor days) when a woman I was attracted to became instantly less attractive when I kissed her. It wasn't that she wasn't a good kisser, but something about the visceral experience of being that close was unappealing.

I knew a redneck guy from Oklahoma years ago who believed so ardently in the idea that women react sexually to a man's pheromones, that he would not bath regularly, confident that his B.O. would help him score. No, I'm not kidding. He even recommended this technique to his teenage sons.

But who am I to judge? Perhaps in his remote corner of Oklahoma, it worked.

For those of you keeping scorecards at home, I'm feeling much better today. The soupy, black miasma of depression left me midway through last evening and I'm normal again. Then I had a very good session with my therapist this morning which helped me to get a better grip on my issues and their effect on my will to live. I'm also extremely appreciative of all the comments readers have left on this blog, and supportive emails I've gotten since yesterday. This blog is sometimes as good a therapy as my visits to my shrink, and considerably cheaper.

You've made me feel like a pretty girl at the prom, and I thank you.

Injuns and Igloos

Bizarro is made possible by the Dick Cheney Institute for Early Childhood Development.

I am back at Bizarro International Headquarters again after a roaring weekend of insanity in Hollywood with my cartoonist colleagues. To those of you who expressed support and disappointment in my seventh consecutive loss of The Reuben Award, thanks a ton. Meanwhile, back in the real world, here are two cartoons since I'm a little behind on posting.

While writing cartoons one day it occurred to me that except for their size, pyramids and igloos look like they are two different models in the same line. Like the sample drawings you'd get in a container of Lincoln Logs. And voila, here's the cartoon. Now I need to do a companion piece about pyramids at the North Pole.

The Indian cartoon below is completely surreal, but I combined Godzilla and the Old West once before and liked the effect, so I tried it again. I confess I did not research the Indians, though, and it was pointed out that I got a few things wrong. The ground looks like the Southwest but Cherokees inhabited the middle-Southeast, and I'm told something about their costumes is wrong. I usually try to avoid mistakes like this but I was likely in a hurry when designing it and maybe even tripping on mushrooms. (CHNW and I are not very diligent housekeepers and have mushrooms and other things growing in our carpets. I sometimes trip over them, causing me to draw the wrong costume within a given context.)

But still, Godzilla and Indians! Hahahahahahahah!!!











(Click these cartoons to make them bigger and funnier)

Emergency

PLEASE HELP US!!!

Sorry to alarm you with this picture of your favorite cartoonist (let me have my fantasies) and his CHNW being mauled by a polar bear, but I felt the need to make a dramatic point. Read on, but relax, I assure you we were in no danger in the picture above.

I rarely ask anything of you but I'd like to ask you to help out CHNW and me today. As some of you know, we are founding board members of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. It's expensive to rescue animals, what with all the night drops over enemy territory, ninja outfits, Navy Seal sharpshooters, etc., and charity dollars are way down in this currently creepy economy.

But here is the good news: a rich dude has promised he would match all the funds we could raise throughout May! We're as happy as a circus tiger with a trainer's arm in his mouth and are pushing hard to get some bucks to come in THIS MONTH. Please toss us a little (or a lot) something, every little bit helps and every dollar will be doubled! I can personally vouch that we're not rich, we work hard, and every penny goes to helping animals and the environment. For reals.

(NOTE: Some words in the text above have been italicized for your ease in picking out the important bits.)

Le Chick Cam

Please enjoy this live cam from Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary responsibly.

As happens frequently this time of year we received a call from a school teacher looking for a home for 5 just-hatched chicks -- the living, breathing result of a classroom project. As cute as these fuzzballs are, they will grow into larger hens and roosters who have a lot of space and care requirements, and can live for over a decade.

If you're a parent or student who hears of an upcoming hatching project, please encourage that teacher to consider more humane alternatives to hatching.

In the meantime, they're ridiculously cute, so during daytime hours EST you can see them live:


Financial times are tough for us all and even worse for charities. But for only a few bucks a month you can help these homeys get by. Anyone who donates to their care automatically becomes my BFF. For reals. Awesome. Dude.

BTW: that's a child's teddy bear in the cage, not roadkill.

Ash Wednesday

Since today is Ash Wednesday, I thought I'd post a short, special tribute to my ex-girlfriend and wife, Ashley, a.k.a. CHNW, whom I commonly call, "Ash."

Here she is wearing a coat that has bunny ears on the hood. She has related to non-human animals in a special way since early childhood and cannot seem to break the habit. (Anyone who makes a bestiality comment gets voted off the island.)

Here she is with a rescued fawn at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. The momma doe was killed by a car so we took in the fawn for a few days until we could find a wildlife rehabilitator. The fawn was fond of sucking on Ash's earlobe for comfort, which Ashley enjoyed, too. What a nice lady.

Here, she is very excited about a rescued calf at Woodstock, whom we named Dylan. He was found tied up inside a dark barn and was destined to be veal. That was a few years ago, now he is all grown up and the size of a Cadillac Escalade. He still comes to the fence when Ash calls him, and clearly has affection for her. She can no longer get inside the pasture with him, however, for he could accidentally crush her skull with a twitch of his upper lip. Did I mention he is large?

Here is the obligatory Ashley with chicken and donkey shot. This kind of thing tends to happen to her a lot, this time it was at Leilani Farm Sanctuary in Maui. Keen observers will notice there are two donkeys in this picture, one is pushing his nose into Ashley's butt. Who can blame him?

Here she is sharing a guava with said butt-muncher.

Speaking of butts, in this photo, Ash cleverly displays the world's largest nut, which comes from a palm tree of some sort. Since it is somewhat difficult to discern the nut from Ashley's own booty, I have included a picture of myself with said nut for proportion.















To conclude this special Ash Wednesday edition I offer this picture of Ash in a medieval helmet. This took place a couple of years ago in an Italian museum which does not employ enough guards to prevent this sort of thing.






(Special thanks to my buddy, Richard Cabeza, who's also married to an "Ash" and who reminded me of this special day.)

Still Not Dead

Many of you who read this blog have wished me well regarding the personal struggles I have mentioned lately. (shown, at left, singing the blues)

I really appreciate it, it means a lot to know you're thinking of me. Some have suggested chemical solutions – from anti-depressants to pot – thanks for those, too. I am on anti-depressants, have been since '96, and repeated efforts to live without them have failed. I'm not a big believer in pharmaceuticals and hate the industry, but it looks as if I'm a customer for life. Could be worse.

The problems I am experiencing are of a nature that I won't share in detail here, although I'd love to because I'm a real blabbermouth when it comes to my emotions (I have a strong feminine side in that way, and I'm Italian, known for our sentimentality.) But for all involved, it would be best if I leave it vague.

But whatever the cause, suffice to say that things are looking up and I'm feeling better. Life is a series of peaks and valleys and I'm happy to have this particular valley mostly behind me.
If the automobile of my heart runs out of gas on the way up the next peak and begins to roll back toward that valley, I'll hurl myself from the car and crawl.
If the pants leg of my insecurity gets caught on the side mirror, I'll rip my pants off and crawl bare-assed.
If an avalanche of childhood memories comes my way, I'll hop up and down like a Mario Brothers' character and dodge the boulders.
If the grizzly bear of self doubt grabs me and starts dragging me back toward the valley, I'll shove my anti-depressants into his mouth until he chills.

I'm not going back to that damned valley, do you understand?!

Thanks for reading.