The Amazing Race!

I never grow tired of this show.

Season 6 was a little hard to watch with the infamous Jonathan and Victoria. But then season 7 was probably my favorite one yet. (This photo is from season 7 and the most deserving winners ever).

The last one, with family teams, was just "ok" in my opinion. Thankfully, they are back to couples again. Some people are turned off by the show because they have never watched it from the beginning...you have to watch from the beginning!

Tonight-- 9:00(eastern)--CBS! It should be a good one!

This afternoon I rented Walk The Line. I wanted to see that in the theater and never got a chance. Usually I wait until evening to go to Blockbuster, and all the new releases are gone. This one is brand shiny new, not a single scratch.

I also bought myself, for the first time, a French Press coffee. It was REALLY good! We have a nice coffee shop, but the coffee there is not that great, so it was a really nice discovery.

it's a long shot... but I need to keep trying

Most cartoonists dream of getting a cartoon published in the New Yorker. The New Yorker receives 3,000 cartoon submissions a week. Payment is $575 and up for one cartoon.

The New Yorker's cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, submitted ten cartoons a week for two years before he finally sold one in 1977.

I sent them seven cartoons about four years ago. I got this rejection slip in exactly a week. Somehow having my first New Yorker rejection slip made me feel like I had entered the club of real cartoonists.

"The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands." Psalm 19:1

Memoirs... Our first apartment

Our first apartment had an apartment supervisor named Mrs. Bell. She was a short little lady, I'd say in her seventies, very small with tiny feet. She lived on the second floor. This woman was very meticulous in enforcing apartment rules. "No pets, and no letting any friends' pets in here! No Christmas trees! Christmas trees are a fire hazard!" We had some Christmas lights up which she spotted, and she was very concerned they may burn the place down.

Whenever we'd get a package and we were not home, Mrs. Bell would hold it for us. She'd leave this message on our answering machine, (imagine your best old lady voice) "Geooorge, I got a package for ya!" Then later she'd come to our door with it, with her signature "shave and a haircut" knock. I'd open the door and get a lecture because I didn't say, "Who is it?!" You always have to say "Who is it?" You can never be too careful!

My most memorable conversation with Mrs. Bell is this...

Mrs. Bell: Yesterday afternoon a girl down the hall tried to KILL herself! She slit her wrists!

Me: Really? That's TERRIBLE!

Mrs. Bell: I know! She got blood all over the CARPET! Now I have to call the cleaners!

zee verst problem in zee verld

These drawings are from my college days.

It does not matter what subject is being taught in any particular college class, the professor is going to go off on a tangent on his or her favorite off-the-subject topic. This German-born professor of mine loved to get all riled up about people who don't speak English properly. (The class was not German or English, it was philosophy.)

Whenever anyone says "centered around" instead of "centered on" I think of him... if he could have arrested people and thrown them in jail for saying that, he would have.

I am positive I drew these outside of class. My assigned seat was front and center, right under his nose, and he was a very intimidating man. I doubt I ever doodled once in that class.

I'm sure this will remind some of you of similar college professor stories... feel free to share.

lotto winners in disguise

"Nobody will know who I am as long as I'm wearing this HAT and SUNGLASSES... oh yeah, my name is emblazened on the front of this gigantic check... "

Doesn't everyone eat shitake mushrooms?

Do you ever get that cashier who likes to make a comment about every item you're purchasing?

(Here is my rough rendering of ours). This is one to avoid if you don't feel like standing in line all day. As she scans the items she tries to strike up conversations based on what you're buying. Here she was going on about Sponge Bob because the cartoon was on the back of a box of cereal. (Those aren't three chins, it's a turtleneck).

Now this second cashier just loves me. Every time I buy my mushrooms she can't remember what kind they are. Use your imagination and fill out the thought bubble... what she really thinks about me. She always has her hair in that very tight bun. My favorite is the pin they are required to wear, it says, "Happy To Serve You."

I'll have you all know these mushrooms are delicious!
:-)

doodles continued

I'm too busy too blog much today. I'm also not feeling very well. Here are some more doodles.

doodles

I don't have a lot on my mind today. Here are some more doodles.

quote of the day

"Work expands to fill the time available for its completion; the thing to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in direct ratio with the time to be spent in its completion."

--Parkinson's Law


This quote describes the month of February for me. I have a few things due by the end of the month. If I had enough pressure on me, I probably could have finished them all in a week.

Every day I drink real Japanese green tea, and I make it in this Bodum tea pot. A few cups has about as much caffeine as coffee, except green tea has a lot of health benefits.

This is my smiley dog. He likes to eat my cookies.

New Jersey Backyard

I drew this view out of my nephews' bedroom window while visiting my sister-in-law and her family in New Jersey. The neighbors had every item they could cram into their little fenced-in backyard... deck with umbrella, hot tub, trampoline, swingset, swimming pool, a couple of trees and a shed. And they also had two big dogs running around on the grass that was left.

I thought it could be a cartoon, in a neighborhood like this, to have one person jumping on their trampoline, go over the fence and land in the neighbor's pool. It's probably already been done in one of those slapstick Tim Allen movies.

Winter Games

I sold this cartoon last year as a holiday card.
It ended up not being printed.

misc.

I've been working on a project that has some fairy tale characters in it, so I've been doodling all these crazy little characters. They are all just randomly doodled all over regular copy paper, and they will end up tossed in a drawer somewhere. I thought these were worth saving.












another doodle...people in commercials who take Aleve, or Centrum Silver are always doing Tai Chi, or whatever that is, in a park somewhere. "Thanks Aleve!"


Yesterday I needed a break so I made this little igloo inspired by Nerdine. She says that in Norway they make little igloos out of snowballs and put candles inside of them, so I had to try it. I'm sure my neighbor was watching me out her window, thinking "what's that looney toon neighbor of mine doing playing in the snow?" Especially when I started lighting matches and taking pictures, she must think I'm nuts.

check this out

A new kind of paper airplane... Try this, it works! Just print and follow these instructions:


Here is my airplane.

I got this from a book called A Kick in the Seat of the Pants,which is the sequel to A Whack on the Side of the Head.

I'm still reading through A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. This book is full of helpful advice on thinking creatively, not just for artists, for anyone.

The last time I was reading this book I was in Starbucks. The combination of the book and the coffee helped me come up with some really good ideas, some cartoons I have sold. That was despite the fact that in that particular Starbucks some kids work there who play awful music, and play it way too loud, not conductive to reading or coffee drinking.

Anyway, try making this airplane, it works and it's cool!

Here's another one...

Sunday Challenge

Whoever is first to answer this correctly wins.

doodles by George

Here are some doodles by George. These particular doodles are very rare, because he is always doodling either cars or karate men.

This is a doodle of something going in one ear and out the other... "go wash your....blah blah blah..."


He sent this to me at camp when I was a counselor. This is me with all my little campers.


I guess this is him wearing a PSD T-shirt (Parson's School of Design).


Happy Valentine's Day... or maybe this is anti-valentine's day?





Here we are together. Now everyone can see what I look like now, so in your minds I am not perpetually a sixteen year old with a mullet.

some camp memories

When I was a teen I worked at a camp in the summers. I worked in the kitchen for a while, and then I was a counselor.


I'm on the left here with my 80's hair, next to my friend Susanna, who was my friend for many years, and now I have completely lost track of her.


This guy who's holding a turkey had a lot of outdoor survival skills. After seeing firsthand his ability to capture his own food, I can see he wouldn't have a problem living in the forest.

One night he came to our cabin holding this turkey. He had seen a flock of turkeys running by, and took off after them, chased them in the dark through the woods, and finally caught this one with his bare hands. He was all scraped up with a bloody nose. After I took this picture he let the turkey go.

(the point of catching a turkey that night, I don't know... maybe he was raised by wolves... he saw them running and had to chase them).

notes from a safe driving class

George and I voluntarily took a "safe driving" class to keep our insurance lower. These are my notes. The woman saying "That would not be pleasant" was the instructor. She wanted a lot of class participation, and once she got people going, I found the conversation becoming quite amusing.

People started getting all worked up about how everyone ELSE is such a bad driver. "They get worse every day! Have you noticed?!? It wasn't like this years ago!"



We had to watch a video of reinactments of bad driving. Some old guy says to the cop, "Then this CLOWN pulls out in front of me..."

I quickly drew this picture of a clown driving a car. George could not stop laughing so he scribbled out the clown. I had to draw a new one.

more shameless eavesdropping

Grocery shopping is more fun if you watch other people and listen in on their conversations. Sometimes when I'm in line I'll whip out my sketchbook and write down my observations. I know there is a cartoon in here somewhere.

I sketched this quickly while in line after observing a couple in the toothpaste isle.

wife: "What part of TOOTHPASTE don't you understand?!"

husband: "There it is."

wife: "I like change. I like something DIFFERENT. Maybe I don't, unlike YOU, like using the same toothpaste every single day!"


The last conversation I overheard at the grocery store was pretty good...

cashier: "Did you find everything ok?"

woman in front of us in line: "NO! THEY DON'T HAVE THE FLAVOR SLIMFAST BARS I LIKE! I got this OTHER flavor!"

Cashier scans the bars. Woman now quickly rips open the box, and starts eating a bar. "Darn it all!!! They'er not HALF as good!" meanwhile cashier keeps saying "oh oooh, oooh..." Like "Why oh why did I ask?!?"

is this really necessary?!

Are you guys having a killer time?

press play!

my space

I think most of you have already done this, but I was inspired by Meow to post a picture of my office.


BEFORE:
This is what my office looked like before we bought our house.









AFTER:





I thought the green walls might be overpowering when I was painting them, but now that all the stuff is in here, I think they look pretty cool.



George put these IKEA lights on the ceiling.




There's tons of IKEA stuff in here.

These are IKEA magnet boards, great for getting little things off my desk.


Those are IKEA curtains and that's an IKEA mobile hanging from the ceiling. The shelves are not IKEA. They are bending like crazy.

Supersize Me

Last night we rented Supersize Me from Blockbuster.

To the disgust of his vegan girlfriend, and risking his own health and life, director Morgan Spurlock goes on an all-McDonald's diet for 30 days as an experiment to see how it will affect his health. Pretty stupid on his part, yet quite educational for the rest of us.

Even though I avoid fast food unless I have no other choice on a road trip, this film has fully convinced me never to eat McDonald's or at any other large chain fast food place again. I would recommend this to everyone, and don't skip the extras, especially the interview with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation.

please keep our grass clean

Out of all the lovely pictures we took at the Botanical Garden in Montreal, this is the one I'm posting on my blog.

I laughed when I saw this sign because at first glance it looked like it says "don't poop on the grass." Upon further examination those little brown droppings are rusty screws. I still think it looks funny though.