Rules for Tourists

Those of us who live in DC are always thankful when we see tourists in our hometown. With no actual industry beyond the manufacture of laws, DC is pretty much dependent on tourism for our local economy. Who else would buy those ugly DC-themed knicknacks, T-shirts & gewgaws? Not me, brother, that's for sure. But sometimes tourists have to be gently instructed in some of our local folkways and customs, like not feeding Supreme Court Justices if they come up to your bus and bang on the windows when you're sightseeing on Capitol Hill. The most important tip in this cartoon is the one about standing to your right on Metro escalators. Clog up the escalator with your fanny-pack-wearing family and there'll be trouble from impatient commuters, and I ain't kiddin'.

The dated reference in this cartoon is to Lawrence Small, the deposed head of the Smithsonian. He worked a cushy exclusive contractl with the Showtime cable TV company, among other deals that raised eyebrows, and I think he pocketed some objects from the American History Museum, though I may be just making that up.

Not Too Much Fun in the Sun

We plan to head to the beach next week, specifically Duck NC, more specifically several large beachfront houses in Duck because I think there are about 300 of us. As I mentioned before, I don't get along well with actual sunlight like I used to, so I wear a hat that's more like an awning plus a radiation-proof shirt and tinfoil pants whenever I hit the beach. And I stay in the shady part of the beachhouse deck anyway so why do I even step outside? Fresh air, I guess, plus the view's nice.

But I hope this will prove helpful to other solar-challenged beachgoers. It's from a few years back, when Angelina Jolie had her last baby, so for that reference please substitute the plural, babies, and feel free to make up your own celebrity baby names to make it more up to date. Pip & Oopsie works for me.

Your DC Children's TV Show Host Round-Up

Though I was born in Baltimore, I grew up in and around DC. And one of the things that struck me as a child about the Capital of the Free World was the number and complexity of local TV kid's shows. These are the ones I remember best, though I'm sure I'm leaving some off the list (hello, Pick Temple).

The local TV newsman/broadcasting-personality who puts on a silly costume and stands in front of a cardboard set to introduce ancient cartoons and Three Stooges shorts is something kids today just don't have access to and I think they're the poorer for it. These shows were central to our daily routine and the local stations put a lot of love and work into them. Well, some. When you only have six or so channels available on your TV then each one has a more distinict personality, and these shows were a large part of it.

When I was about seven I got to be on Ranger Hal (I was wearing a kilt; long story) and, instantly if briefly, my status in the neighborhood shot up. I remember one kid asking me if I got to meet Felix the Cat, whose cartoons were a fixture on Ranger Hal, and I had to let him down gently as to Felix the Cat's incorporeality. I don't think he believed me.

And I think appearing on these shows probably did the TV newsman/broadcasting-persornality a lot of good too. If someone like say, I don't know, Bill O'Reilly had a half-dozen seasons in a clown wig and giant bowtie back early in his career he might be more grounded today.

The Inadvertant Adventures of Danders

This is from '04. It's the first of several series where the classroom guinea pig, Mr. Danders, would get out of his cage, usually by accident, and wander off school property. My favorite bit about this one is that in each episode Danders assumes a new identity. This'll be in the Cul de Sac book, along with a few other series, so consider this a sneak peek.

The Totoro Forest Project

Anybody who loves the work of Hayao Miyazaki should know about the Totoro Forest Project. It's an international charity organized by several hard-working Pixar animators. In their own words, the aim of the Totoro Forest "is to save Sayama Forest, also known as Totoro Forest in Japan. Have you watched the movie "My Neighbor Totoro"? This wonderful forest is where Miyazaki came up with the idea for Totoro. Miyazaki has been actively working towards the preservation of this urban forest, which has been in danger of the city's urban development, for many years now." Co-organizer/animator Enrico Casarosa talks about it on his blog

To that end, the TFP has organized an auction of especially created work by over 200 international artists, cartoonists and animators, as well as a gallery show and the publication of a book. Animators are the most energetic and indefatigable people out there, which may explain why their drawings move so much. I'm practically inert in comparison, yet they asked me to do a drawing for the Project, the only direction given was to draw my own Totoro. And it couldn't be Miyasaki's, so no tracing.

Well, I love My Neighbor Totoro, it's the most human-scaled of all of Miyazaki's movies, and little Mei is one of my favorite characters. I stole some from her when creating Alice (though I'm not sure they'd get along well; Mei is a lot more selfless than Alice). Here's my Totoro that I drew for the Totoro Forest Project


So please go poke around on the Totoro Forest Project site, there are some lovely things to see. And if you see one you'd like to hang on your wall consider bidding at the auction. All the info is at the site, or soon will be.

Lost Continent

Here's something for a hot July day. It's from the Post Magazine of a year or two ago. I redid it as a daily too, but I like this one. All those tube slides and ladders & gantries and stuff was fun to draw, and Dill's dreamy fantasizing between Alice's insisent practicality was fun to write.

Today's Poor Almanack

This grew out of an article in Thursday's Post about suggestions for improving DC's "monumental core" from a panel of urban planning experts. Mostly they wanted to get rid of the ugly tangle of freeways that snake around the Jefferson Memorial and the Kennedy Center, but they also proposed extending the Mall in various directions and cutting a canal across East Potomac Park. It all sounds good to me but I doubt any of it'll ever get done. In other news, the Capitol Visitor's Center is scheduled to open sometime soon, a little later than the original opening date of Bush's Second Inaugural.

Unused Obamas

These are two sketches from a New Yorker job that didn't work out. The story was about Obama in Chicago and it didn't boil down to a single image too easily. So they went with a photograph, and who can blame them?

The first one is just Obama bestriding the city like a colossus, pretty standard stuff.



But the second one, if it'd worked, would've been more interesting. It's supposed to be the big Picasso in the middle of Dailey Plaza transformed into an Obama caricature. It needs more work, but it's an idea.



Update: this would've run in the same issue as Barry Blitt's instantly-infamous Obama cover. I think mine might have looked a little puny in comparison.

The Late Gentleman from North Carolina

Several times I've started the sentence "I don't wish to speak ill of the dead, but..." and then been at a loss as to how to continue. So I'll just say, Here's a sketch and a painting of Jesse Helms I did about 14 years ago for Mother Jones. I like the sketch more than the painting, which is egg-tempera & oil on board, a Renaissance technique I was trying to learn. It seemed perversly fitting to do a Cro-Magnon man in Renaissance Man style. I also started one in the style of a religious icon, with (dutch) gold leaf and everything, but I never finished it. But now I don't feel the need to, so I guess I've moved on.


This is scanned off a magazine tearsheet, but it's pretty close to the original. I gave the original to my friend Nick, whose uncle once ran against Helms, because it gave me the creeps.

Today's Poor Almanack

Thanks for this must go to faithful correspondent Here Today Gone Tomorrow, who requested a cartoon about the miles of temporary fencing along the George Washington Parkway. The GW Parkway runs along the Potomac on the Virginia side. It's a wonderfully scenic drive, running from the Beltway to Mount Vernon, and every Fourth of July its length that affords a good view of DC is jam-packed with fireworks watchers. To keep the fireworks watchers from blundering onto the busy Parkway the Park Service puts up temporary fences.
I was tickled to see a large photo on the front of today's Metro section of a stiltwalking neighborhood parade Uncle Sam. Just hope he didn't get stuck up there.

Frog Mortality

Today Mark Heath's Spot the Frog makes his last apperance in the newspapers, and the world becomes a sadder place. For the last few weeks Spot went meta when the tiny, mostly-amphibious cast discovered a pair of 3-D glasses and, looking through them, began to discern a larger world beyond the confines of their panels. It was an elegant, funny and darkly philosophical way to end a fine strip, and it's one I'll miss.
An updated note: comics.com is now running the earliest strips from their archive. After you look at the last Spot, jump to the first ones and watch Spot jump five full years into the past.

Happy Fourth of July

Especially if you missed Canada Day. I hear last Monday was National Self-Absorption Day, but I didn't notice it because I was too busy (insert self-absorbed joke of you own devising here).

This is the Otterloop family celebrating the 4th in 2004, and if you've been reading this week's daily strips you'll see they did it much the same way this year. Our old neighborhood in Gaithersburg had the small-child-on-a-bike parade, with all the attending parents and a fire truck that hung around until a local fireworks accident would call it to duty. And some guy on stilts would always show up wearing an Uncle Sam hat. I never saw him any other time, so he was probably a ringer brought in from outside the neighborhood to enliven the parade.

This year we're going down to the Mall in DC for the first time in years to watch the fireworks and visit the Folk Life Festival. And probably visit at least one museum too when it starts to rain.

Nature! Run!

I just did a sketch for a Cul de Sac about Petey being attacked by a flower, and this Almanac came to mind. Please pass this along to any kids you know, just in case.

Gas Pump Etiquette

I hope everyone finds this helpful in these uncertain times.This Almanac was from a year or more ago, so things've been distressing at the pump for a while. Like I have to tell you that. But I do wonder about the employee who changes the prices on the gas station sign. Does he do it late, under cover of darkness? It can't be a happy task and it's likely dangerous if done too publicly.
The enjoyable part of this cartoon is that I like drawing cars, or at least what pass for cars in the cartoons I draw. Editorial cartoonist Mike Lester, who can draw anything, passed along an insight into drawing cartoons from Arnold Roth; he draws not a car but his idea of a car, and so never has to go looking at reference photos or any of that nonsense. That's where the freedom of a cartoonist lies, in creating his or her anti-platonic ideal, and that's why I secretly pity those who draw realistically, because they're stuck with reality. I used to try that and it's too hard.

Car Trip!

Like most people trapped in a car for an extended period, we listen to books on CD during our car trips. We've done all of Harry Potter, the Hobbit, some Jane Austen (my wife's favorite), some Terry Pratchett (the Wee Free Men was especially good) and a hilarious series for girls from England called the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson. And we'll sometimes toss in a musical, most often Monty Python & the Holy Grail, the Producers, Sweeny Todd and Candide (if my daughters become antisocial misfits it may be traceable to these). In years gone by we went through lots of Sesame Street and Disney and an inscrutable series called "Dinosaur Mysteries", over and over and over.
When I was a kid we were lucky if we could get a station on the car radio that lasted for more than ten miles.

Lightning Bugs

As Cul de Sac has been featuring lightning bugs this week this old Almanac seemed timely. And as you can see, lightning bugs are pretty controversial, perhaps the most controversial bioluminescent insect around these days. Like, are they called "lightning bugs" or "fireflies", and is that a matter of regional nomenclature or what? My email correspondent cartoonist Teresa Dowlatshahi first raised this question and I don't know the answer. Around the part of Maryland, DC & Virginia that I've lived in it's always been "lightning bugs", which sounds more impressively oxymoronic though less poetic than "fireflies". To settle which is correct I've started another pointless poll on the right of this page. Though considering that the last poll, about putting CdS in the daily Wash Post, was barely launched before the Post did just that makes me think that maybe these polls are more powerful than I'd assumed.

Some Charlotte Family History

If you were to turn 180 degrees from the multiple-Charlotte sign in the photo posted below, you would see this. It's the greenspace with the outdoor performance of Romeo and Juliet, behind which is a fountain with three large sculpted fish. The red brick building behind the fountain is part of St. Peter's Catholic Church. In the 1930s that building was the Catholic Home, an orphanage, and for a time my Mom and her two sisters lived there, in the dormitory in the attic.


If you were to step slightly back now, and to your right, you'd see this. It's the Westin Hotel next to the Convention Center, where I stayed. The gabled roof below it is the old Catholic Home. My Mom's life had enough drama and coincidence to fill a novel by Dickens, but it also had a good deal of comedy in it. I think she'd be tickled to know I visited her old neighborhood 70 years later and stayed in a fancy hotel, and saw some Shakespeare right outside her old window.

Home Again

I'm back from Charlotte, North Carolina, Center of the Known World and Home to the Friendliest Comics Convention Hosts in the Known Universe. The sign above was one of several in a charming literary-themed park near the hotel where we wandered on Saturday evening. My daughter's name is Charlotte, so I took this photo to show her how widespread her influence is.

There was a free outdoor performance of Romeo & Juliet on the greenspace in the center of the park, and at the park's edge, on College Street in front of the Convention Center, there was a parade of fancy cars from the car show that had shared the Center with HeroesCon. If you stood in the right spot you could watch and enjoy both, though comprehend neither.

We got home yesterday to a sudden storm with a vivid double rainbow, and the news that Cul de Sac is now in the Wash Post every day, in the spot where the late & lamented Single and Looking once stood.

More TK once I catch up on stuff.

Greetings from Charlotte NC

This is being posted from Prof. Craig Fischer's hotel computer in Charlotte NC, the Queen City of the South. Not much to say, except thank you to the dozen or so people who showed up to hear me bloviate at the panel on Friday. I'd do a shout out by name, but I might miss somebody and I'd feel bad. HeroesCon has been a hoot, and the people running it are excellent hosts. More TK, as they say in newspaperese.

Last Minute Bits

I'll be away till Monday night, so youall have fun, and please leave a joke, riddle or amusing anecdote in the comments section. Then if you still need entertainment go visit one of the nice links I've arranged for you in the right hand column. And if you feel you need to preorder a Cul de Sac book, please avail yourself of the link also to your right. Those who do will note an interesting addition to the Editorial Review section of the Amazon page; the book's complete foreword by Mr. Bill Watterson. Made me blush so hard I got a nosebleed.

And while I'm away check in at Heroescon just to see if any fresh embarrassing photos show up.