Balm for Elephants

This ran right after the 2006 elections. With one small edit it works just fine for today. I hope to use it again in the future too.

44

Well dang, I feel good. At about 11 pm my wife popped open a tiny novelty bottle of champagne that's been in the fridge for 4 months and my older daughter finally went up to bed. Now I've gotta draw an Obama for the New Yorker, 'cause it's due tomorrow morning. Some things never change. But other things do.

Today's Poor Almanack

Here's today's Poor Almanack. Later I'll put up a similar one from four years ago when circumstances were similar. Hope this is helpful if you, like me, haven't yet voted.


And here's the one from four years ago, when passions were a little different if no less intense. At least the Voter Hostess changed her hair.

Three Scary Stories

My Halloween gift to you; three tales of terror for you to tell as you sit around the glow of your monitor. As Count Floyd would say, Pretty scary, huh, kids?

Poe and the Duck

Something for the season, sorta.

Thank you,

AV Club. I apologize for making fun of you kids in high school.

Halloween

The Sunday strip that ran today is a reworked version of a Post Magazine strip of two years ago. Yet more evidence of laziness, I'd say. What I really wanted was another chance to draw Alice's oblivious self-absorption and that explosion of candy. And Dad's ghoulish face looming out from behind the tree. That's what Halloween is all about.

Saturday's Almanack

Here's yesterdays. I'd done a few of these Treat Giving Guides before, but this is the most up-to-date and useful, at least for the next 5 to 8 days.

Saturday Night at the Writer's Center

Tomorrow night the Writer's Center in Bethesda MD is holding a panel discussion called Political Cartooning in an Election Year at 7:30. On the panel will be King Kevin Kallaugher , Master Matt Wuerker and me . Kal and Matt will present an informative, dazzling multi-media tour of recent politics, a landscape right out of Hieronymous Bosch for sure. I'll mostly defer to them, as they're far more experienced, wiser and slightly older than me. And I don't know how to work a powerpoint thing, so I'll do a chalk talk.
And afterwards we're all heading over to the Tastee Diner, so the waitress can call us Honey and bring us a plate of scrapple and eggs.

Bark the Vote

This is a cover for the Comic Book section of Nickelodeon Magazine. I'd probably vote for dogs, as they'd more likely have the good of the pack in mind, whereas cats would think only of themselves. Yet somehow the rodents keep getting into office.
There, that's my political thought for the day.

(The patriotic dog in the upper left corner is by the great Sam Henderson.)

Hello, Sailor!

This is from this very week's New Yorker, drawn for a story about how over the years Gov. Palin may have actually been courting those very inside-the-Beltway elites she so professes to despise. Shocking, shocking. Go read it.

The Great Divide

This was done about four years ago for the Wash Post Mag. The differences between Maryland and Virginia (the suburban parts around DC anyway) are many yet ineffable; everybody knows them but nobody can quite define them. And the Post Mag had wanted to do an issue exploring them, but it never happened, so I stepped into the breach just to muddy the waters.
I grew up in the outer Maryland suburbs, but I've lived in the inner Virginia suburbs for 16 years. So you think I'd be an expert, but as it is I still think of DC as being to my south, when it's directly east. On the other hand I don't get lost in VA like I used to, but going back to the first hand I don't leave the house often enough to have a chance to get lost.
Those of you familiar with the area will notice that Arlington is actually over about an inch to the right from what's indicated on the map. Everything else is entirely accurate.

My Personal Commintment to Recycling, or, Today's Poor Almanack

Above is today's Poor Almanack. It's a pretty bald-faced steal from one I did eight years ago when there were some undecided voters who needed help. That one is below.


And four years ago, under similar circumstances, I did another one, also meant to help undecided voters. I guess indecisive voters are just an ongoing problem.


Though I can't help but note that the indecisive voter guy who's featured in the two top cartoons sure seems decisive enough in his choice of loud-checked jackets. And I have to admit that the original cartoon of eight years ago has the strongest finish in the yard sign joke. Maybe I'll use that again in four years, when we're due for another spate of Undecided Voters

Metro Games

In these purse-tightening times it behooves us to make our own fun. This is for all you commuters out there killing some time on the Metro each day. Anybody who wants to organize a team, please let me know.

Media Darling, or, More Than You Need to Know

I talked to that nice Zack Smith at Newsarama , and that nice Amanda Hess at the DC City Paper . And they went and published it.

How Things Work

It's been a while, so here are three drawings that describe How Things Work. I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of these, as I don't have a clue how anything works. It's all string theory or donut theory or little magic homunculi pulling levers to me.

The first is The Government. This was for a Dave Barry article in the Post Magazine.

The next is The Senate, and it was for the New Yorker, back when a group of senators was threatening the "nuclear option". They may be better behaved now.

The last is Everything Else. It was for a NYer piece on conspiracies and how they comfort the idiots who believe in them.

There now, hope it's all clear. I'm working on one on The Economy, so you won't have to worry about that any more.

Unseen New Yorker

This was done two or three weeks ago for a piece in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell, a book review, that will likely never run. The book dealt with a long-time head of Goldman Sachs who'd grown up poor in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood and started at the firm as an assistant janitor while in his mid-teens. He'd gone on to be a titan of finance, deal-maker & adviser to presidents, and Gladwell's take was that outsiders can often do things within the system that others can't, and hence do well. One of his counter-intuitive pieces, and it was interesting.

Well, Wall Street looks different now, and the piece may now be too out-dated to run without a lot of revisions, which is too bad. But here's the drawing to go with it, selected for finish from 3 roughs, and tweaked some. At SPX last weekend I talked to two artists who do New Yorker illustrations, Joost Swarte and Istvan Banyai, and we wept over drawings we'd done for them that because of circumstances will never see print. That collection of rejected NYer cartoons "The Rejection Collection" needs a counterpart for illustration work. Maybe call it "The Refuseum".

Two More Days of Poetic Inspiration-

Before your poetic licence expires! Michael Cavna's Comic Riffs blog is offering a signed copy of the Cul de Sac book to the winning Cul de Sac poem! See here for details!

Saturday's Almanack

In case ya need such a thing. I got one for ya.

Autodrivelalia

This is one I've wanted to draw for a while now, but I couldn't figure out quite how to do it, or if it'd be something that anyone would recognize. A daily strip about daily lives is obviously dealing with the quotidian, the mundane and homely, and the hard part can be teasing out the unexpected, unnoticed and weird from all that day-to-day stuff without making it unrecognizable.
That was unnecessary exposition to lead into a personal admission: I make silly noises when I'm driving, sometimes silly faces, too. And I don't think I'm alone in this (Hi, Paul!). I once heard a radio announcer say that on the way to work every morning he'd sing the Modern Major General patter song from Pirates of Penzance, just to loosen up his face and get his tongue going. He at least had some reason to do it, but me, I just babble, sing, talk in accents, parrot radio commercials, even do bbrrrm bbrrrm car sounds. It doesn't affect my driving, on the contrary, I'm sure it makes me more alert and speeds up my reflexes.
There, I've said it and I'm proud.