Saturday, March 16, 2024

Late For the Apocalypse

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno


 I only take a drink on two occasions—when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.
Brendan Behan

It's the weekend of that annual holiday of public urination and viridescent projectile vomiting.

Since St. Patrick is celebrated for ridding Ireland of "snakes" (code for non-Christians), there's supposedly a church-authorized pause in Lenten sacrifice for believers to get blind drunk in his honor. 

Irish culture is vibrant and involves much more than the frat party that's as close as many people get. That reminds me that I ought to revisit Brendan Behan's autobiographical novel Borstal Boy.

The holiday does, however, provide rich fodder for cartoonists.



Today's pipe pic is taken directly from one of this week's Bizarro panels.


Leprechauns are often depicted smoking inverted clay pipes, and according to a cursory web search, people might do that for several reasons: It's more easily lit in rain and winds, and the rain doesn't extinguish the tobacco. Of course, it would have to be tightly packed.



With that bit of knowledge in our heads, let's check out all six of this week's Bizarro cartoons.



An online expert informed me that the horseman's helmet wasn't "historically accurate." I'm still processing that one.


He's going to need a bigger net.


MacD is on to the workings of the Deep Farm.


Nutrias are notoriously uncooperative witnesses.


This is what happens when people are forced to return to the office.


The tickling sensation is the body absorbing antioxidants.


Pot o' Cartoon Gold

As a break from Lent, here's a feast of Saint Patrick's Day gags from the past, including a couple of old WaynoVision panels.










If you observe the holiday, please celebrate responsibly. I'll be here at home and may partake of a Guinness or two.

See you next week with more shenanigans.



Bonus Track

The Undertones: "Teenage Kicks"
Originally 45 released in 1978 by Good Vibrations Records


Legendary BBC disk jockey John Peel said "Teenage Kicks" was his favorite song of all time. It's a choice that's hard to argue with.


A Whole Lotta Bizarro



  

Saturday, March 09, 2024

Absurd is the Word

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno


Oh, tell me what could be
Holier than absurdity
Neil Innes

Neil Innes (1944-2019) was recognized here in the States (if at all) for his collaboration with the Monty Python troupe, or for being a member of The Rutles, an alternate universe parody of The Beatles. In addition to playing Ron Nasty, the John Lennon surrogate, he wrote all of the Rutles' music, which sounded Beatlesque without copying their songs.

In Britain, he was beloved as a member of the wonderfully absurd Bonzo Dog Band, where he served as co-leader with the quintessential English eccentric Vivian Stanshall (1943-1995). Side note: any article about Stanshall must refer to him as a "quintessential English eccentric."

I first encountered the band during high school, when I bought the double LP History of the Bonzos, which I'd been looking at and wondering about during frequent visits to a downtown Pittsburgh record store. I unwrapped it and pored over the booklet inside the record's gatefold sleeve on the bus ride home. After listening to it several times, I became a lifelong fan, collecting every LP and 45 I could find.

Innes released his first solo album, How Sweet to Be an Idiot, in 1973. I listen to How Sweet more often than any of the Bonzos' records, as much as I love them. The couplet quoted at the top of this entry comes from his song "Immortal Invisible." I interpret the lyric's meaning as stressing the importance of having a sense of absurdity rather than exhibiting absurdity, which can be positive or negative. 

Recognizing the absurd, especially in oneself, is a rare gift. Innes had that gift and he used it to celebrate human behavior at its best and call it out at its worst. His work remains rewarding and continues to reveal truths in a humorous, deeply human way.

I listened to How Sweet to Be an Idiot while drawing this week, and it sounded sweeter than ever, providing a respite from the horrific absurdity so frequently displayed by human beings.



Today's pipe pic is an antique postcard showing a rock formation on a mountainside near Napa California.


According to the Napa Valley Historical Society, someone added the metal pipe in 1911. A sharp-eyed Bizarro reader named Nancy found and reported the image to Bizarro Studios. We tip our hats to Nancy for her contribution to the blog. 



We hope the latest Bizarro cartoons added a bit of positive absurdity to your world.



We finally figured out what that word means.


Every profession has its hazards.


Wednesday's panel was a rare one containing no Secret Symbols. I'd placed one or two in different locations but couldn't come up with an arrangement that didn't interfere with the joke.


This gag is more than a little late. The organization I allude to implemented this strategy more than forty years ago. Nowadays their fascist ambitions are at center stage. In retrospect, it's my least favorite gag of the week, and it generated some hateful and wrongheaded comments.


Fortunately, I had a cartoon I'm quite happy with for Friday's slot; one of those delayed-reaction jokes.


We opened and closed the week with bits of wordplay, so at least this batch had some symmetry.


In this early sketch, I notice that the character on the left resembles Pee-Wee Herman. That was unintentional, but seeing it brought a smile to your cartoonist's face.

That's the latest from the Little Shop of Humor in Hollywood Gardens, PA. I hope you enjoyed my words and pictures. More of this sort of thing will await you in seven days.



Bonus Track

Neil Innes: "Immortal Invisible"
From The Innes Book of Records
BBC2 Television, 1979


Six years after the song's initial release, Innes made a video for it.


Bizarro Bonanza



  

Saturday, March 02, 2024

Doctor Snow

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno


Rock 'n' Roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty, and utter reservation.
Greil Marcus

I recently read Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010, collecting dozens of pieces over nearly four hundred pages. Marcus is one of my favorite cultural critics focused on popular music. His Dylan book is exhaustive (and almost exhausting), following the continual reinvention of the Bard of Hibbing, while documenting the writer's evolution.

There's not much one can add to the quote from Marcus's 1975 book Mystery Train, so let's move on to our current pipe pic.



Bizarro reader Kathleen H. found this oddball image on Facebook and sent it our way.


It appears to be a carved watermelon person smoking a carrot pipe. I've been unable to find the original source, but I like it enough to share it here.


While writing this post, I realized that the photo reminds me of the idiosyncratic folk musician Michael Hurley, although I don't recall ever seeing him smoking a pipe.

Thanks to Kathleen for spotting this gem. 



No watermelons were harmed in making this week's Bizarro cartoons, and here's the proof.



If nothing else, a miner's helmet with a blazer and necktie is a unique fashion statement.


I would've toasted them.


I flipped the image for the strip version, so the word balloon and caption box both appeared on the right edge of the layout. For no reason, I changed the name tag from "Jeff" to "Spud."


Treehouse arrest is better than being a jailbird.


Our Leap Day gag is a riff on a familiar film scene and the latest addition to my growing pile of snowfolk cartoons.


In this apocalyptic vision, humans even wiped out Bizarro's Secret Symbols; a true nightmare scenario.


To compensate for the cockroach gag, our last one of the week contains a rare two-in-one Secret Symbol.

Thanks for stopping by and checking things out. We'll be back next week with another fistful of chuckles for you.



Bonus Track

Baba Brooks Orchestra: "Watermelon Man Ska"
R&B Discs UK, 1963



A unique take on Herbie Hancock's classic composition.


Whole Lotta Bizarro



  

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Keep on Shovelin'

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno


When I’m writing the first draft I’m constantly reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.
Jordan Peele

As with nearly all quotes found on the internet, I share the above with the caveat that it's attributed to Jordan Peele. I hope it's something he actually said. In any case, it's a valid characterization of the creative process, applicable to art of any kind. 

Most of my cartoons begin as scrawled text or a scribbled thumbnail in a sketchbook. I might use a word other than "sand" to describe what I'm shoveling into a box, but the point is that it's important to get something down on paper as a starting point.

Moving beyond that blank expanse is the key.

I chose this quotation and intro because a Substack subscriber recently asked about my process for creating six new cartoons every week. Later today, I'll respond with details and examples in my newsletter.

Thanks to Jordan Peele for the quote, and while we're at it, for his inventive, sharp, and super creepy horror films.



Today's pipe pic is a 1957 print ad from a Carmel, California newspaper.


Thanks to my pal Candi S for this amusing piece of cartoon pipe ephemera.



Zooming forward from 1957, here are the most recent Bizarro cartoons.



Since we had a canine pipe pic, it seems appropriate to kick off the week with a feline gag.


Some people pursue their art despite having a noncreative upbringing. Hats off to those who rebelled. 


We predict the next advancement in machine learning will be Artificial Indolence.


I was reminded of a childhood toy when drawing the unhappy customer.


I subsequently learned that long after my days of Play-Doh use. Hasbro introduced a variation called the Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop:


The name is off-putting, and the GIF is even worse. Plus, I am now unable to get that weird smell out of my mind's nose.


That'll teach Management to force workers back into the office.


I recently re-established contact with a friend whom I had not seen in many years. I closed an email with, "Hope we have a chance to get together and tell each other we haven't aged a bit." 

I thought that might work as a panel, so I appropriated it from myself. Sometimes a gag arises from everyday conversation or correspondence.

That's the latest output from Bizarro Studios North. I hope you enjoyed at least some of the gags.

Drop by next week for yet another batch of cartoon fun.



Bonus Track

The Impressions: "Keep on Pushing"
From the album Keep on Pushing
ABC-Paramount Records, 1964


Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions offer beautiful words of encouragement.


Bonus Clip


A tip of the old porkpie to Steve D for this amusing excerpt from Leave It to Beaver. I was hoping that Ward might have done a sketch of Gus the Fireman, portrayed by character actor and native Pittsburgher Burt Mustin (1884-1977)



Buckets of Bizarro