I'm on a list serve for alternative political cartoonists. One of our crew wrote that he felt a need for the so called alties to organize in some fashion to pressure juries to give prizes to alternative cartoonists. Of course, in order to write a letter to said juries, one needed to define the terms regarding what comprises your mainstream cartoonist as opposed to those who call themselves alternative. This becamse a sticky wicket. Who are the guys winning the prizes? Are they retro cartoonists, classic cartoonists, cross-hatchers, MacNelly clones, noodleheads, what?
Anyhow, it all seems pretty stupid to me. Alternative cartoonists are supposed to be giving the finger to the man. Maybe a good definition of a mainstream cartoonist is that it's a guy who wins prizes.
I've been an editorial cartoonist for a long time. If there's one thing I've learned from hanging out with others of my kind is that nothing gets a political cartoonist hotter under the collar than a good debate about prizes. Interjecting this preoccupation into the bright eyed world of alternative cartooning smacks of dead wrongness. But that's my humble opinon.
As you can tell from my deep interest in list serv discussion, a good chunk of my day yesterday was also spent on the computer. Fortunately, I figured out why my sites were down. It had to do with the fact that I had changed the directory to which one of my domain names pointed. I put up a temporary fix and at some time in the near future, I'll put in something permanent. Right now, I"m all computered out.
Today is my good friend, Cheryl's birthday. I've been receiviing emails from her husband, Joey, for the past two weeks reminding me of the event so there was no way I could pass up the chance of posting a cartoon in her honor on this particular day. So have a great day, Cheryl!
One of my websites went belly up so I spent yesterday fixing it. Like these things do, one thing led to another and I discovered that I never re- uploaded all the stuff which had been decimated when the NCS closed down my original site--one that I'd maintained for about eight years.
What agony. Basically, I had to go through eight years worth of old html files, check all the links, note missing files, then organize them so they could fit with my current websites. It was about as bad as going through the attic, but without the dust. There's one set of files...a Christmas Lovecraft thing I did...which always seems to disappear mysteriously. I remember having had to hunt down the original files once before.
What began as a planned hour of wrangling ended up taking most of the afternoon and a good chunk of the evening. It still isn't perfect, and I'll need to put in a few more hours. However, I now have most of the archives up and running off of my Striporama website. It's quite nice to be able to access that stuff once again. What's more, since I've been doing this web stuff for so long, you can get quite lost among the various and sundry files. An unsuspecting web surfer can wander there aimlessly among a library of totally silly stuff for hours, a thought which very mush appeals to me. There's really no rhyme or reason for the site. I've never planned it as a sales tool, just a place where I could park my cartoons.
Websites are living things and need care and attention the same way a Tomogochi does (remember those...you'd get a little digital animal who would die unless you fed him regularly). Well, maybe a Tomogochi isn't a living thing, but you get the point. Maybe the digital realm is replacing Toto for me. Nah. Computers don't puke and piss on the rug, although the aftermath of a crashed web site can be just as bad, if not worse.
I took a train into NYC today and treated myself to the exhibit of Steig drawings presently on display at the Jewish Museum. I have a particular fondness for his small fry cartoons. Steig himself destroyed whichever ones of these he could get his hands on because it represented his pre-chi chi work. To me, they were like the Calvin and Hobbes of their day. Boys being boys.
Steig is most famous for being the guy who wrote and drew Shrek. I have the book somewhere in the house. I bought it off of ebay as part of a book lot. By the way, buying books that way has caused me to amass quite a Dilbert collection (It's always something like "Arno, Hokinson, Price, Best of New Yorker, Conrad Politiical cartoons and Dilbert" or something along those lines. Every lot of cartoon books automatically includes at least one Dilbert). But now I digress.
Among the collection of letter on display, was one written to Steig by the infamous Frederick Wertham, dated 1942. He just gushed about Steig's work, how it perfectly depicted human emotions. In fact, Wertham suggested naming this type of drawing "Steig Syndrome". I kid you not. Wertham was the psychiatrist who lambasted Batman for being homosexual. Right next to the Wertham letter was one written by Henry Miller, also exhultant over Steig's work. Who ever put this show together definitely had a perverse sense of humor.
Steig himself was a follower of Wilhelm Reich who invented an orgone energy accumulator. It was a device-a large box, in fact- which channeled sexual energy, a device for which Reich was sent to prison. I guess someone took offense that it really didn't work. Steig stood by him nonetheless. Steig was no slouch in the romance department. He had four wives.
A friend of mine mentioned that Jules Feiffer just had one of his children's books optioned by Disney. I think Feiffer might be in his eighties. It just makes you go, wow. It would have been nice if Shrek had been optioned during Steig's lifetime. Maybe if he'd stayed away from that orgone energy accumulator.
Man, it's different around here without a dog. It's the first time in almost twenty years that we haven't been greeted by a friendly wagging tail and a wet nose.
The impetus is to go out and find a replacement, but that's impossible. Nothing can replace our little Toto. We're going to give ourselves some time to get used to life without dogs.
In a way, we're feeling like real empty nesters. The weirdest thought is that we never have to rush home for any reason. It feels kind of upside down and sideways. I kind of like it.
Well, we're into a week of goth Scout Pokemon parodies. This is because I spent the last few days with my Pokemon crazy six year old niece.
The basic premise of the Pokemon is that there are these animals held captive in these round balls by trainers who apparently spend their time teaching these cute little animals to destroy each other. My own perverse mind turned to the recent Michael Vicks conviction for keeping dogs on his premises for the purposes of using them to fight. Surely, pit bulls aren't equipped with super gut exploding sound waves or huge lightning bolts which spew from their eyes, but there's no denying that in many uncomfortable ways the sport of Pokemon contests hark back to your garden variety dog fight.
You wonder what kind of nation sends a guy to jail for the very thing that millions of kids tune in to watch on a daily basis.
All I can say is I'm glad Pokemon originated in Japan. If watching Pokemon turns a generation of kids into blood thirsty animal abusers, we'll just blame the Japanese, maybe even drop another bomb on them just for good measure.
My almost six year old niece Lola and her four year old brother Boris just spent three days here with their Aunt Elena. The kids had a blast. I hauled out all the toys from my kids which I've stored in the attic and they all went to town. My son Ted brought over all four seasons of the Teen Titans and we had a Teen Titan festival. Boris spent a good deal of his time on top of the pool table with Ted's old muscle men, although by the end of his stay, the muscle men had been replaced by legos.
I had forgotten how exhausting children are. The old phrase "are we there yet"...think of it as a daily state of existence for most parents. My brother thanked me profusely when he came to get them. For the first time in years, the house was quiet for him and Ann. WHen you have kids, you forget simple pleasures like total silence. For me, though, three days of kids is a big treat. I know it's temporary, so it really doesn't matter whether the entire living room floor is covered with plastic superheroes.
They've been gone all of two hours, and I miss them already.
Anyhow, today's Goth Scout cartoon is drawn by my niece, Lola. Her original cartoon is this one, attached to the blog. I changed the words to make it an official Goth Scout cartoon, replete with two hip cultural references. Lola is crazy about Pokemon, so while the kids were here, we took breaks between Teen Titans DVD's to watch Pokemon cartoons. I kind of like them myself. The cartoon comes from an incident during which time I actually had a few moments to myself thanks to my son Ted. Lola caught me drawing a Goth Scout cartoon. She liked it, even though she didn't get the gag. I asked her if she wanted to draw one, and she got very excited. We went and even colored it on the computer.
If she saw I'd changed the words, she might get upset, so I'm posting the original. I doubt she'll be looking at the blog, however. It's not one of the places surfed by my brother, alas.
I listen to these guys a lot because there's a ton of their stuff on Youtube and comes with lyrics, sometimes the German, sometimes with English translations (my favorite).
The kid in this band must be like eleven in this video. This video is great because it reminds me of a few junior high school parties I went to. Nothing ever changes.
In honor of my son, Andrew's, twenty-fourth birthday, I'm posting a video that he and his roommate put together. Doozy's the one with the beard.
Not only is this Doozy's birthday, but it's his first day back at work after the lo-ong writer's strike. Talk about timing. Nothing I can do on his birthday can compare to that.
This week's cartoons star the spirit of German Schlager in the guise of Howard Carpendale. Well, here's Howard. I don't know why I'm drawing him in a baby blue tuxedo. He's more known for the outrageous neckware he sports. Anyhow, our Flying Monkey, Bilokur, has developed a crush on Howard. It's the week of Valentine's Day.
I don't know why the singers of Howard's generation are referred to as Schlager. Hitparaders might be a good translation. Ha! Like I know anything at all about translating German!
In my vain attempt to learn German, I have come across a number of zehr geil videos. I may not be doing so well learning the language, but I'm having a ball listening to German popular music.
Today it seemed as dark a day as you can get without tornadoes messing up the landscape.
I dropped Toto dog off at the vet's for her x-ray and ultrasound at around 8 a.m. About four hours later, the vet called with the news: complete heart failure. Yes, I could give her medicine which might make her comfortable. It would make her pee more often. The prognosis in any case was poor. I picked her up with a complete sense of doom. A lady in the waiting room stroked her head. I told her the dog was dying. She asked me Toto's age. I said fourteen. Then she blurted out that her own dog was thirteen. I saw concern in her face but not for my situation. She was thinking about her own dog. Isn't that how we all are...relating distant eventss to our own potential little tragedies. I mentioned our other dog lasted til seventeen, to make her feel a little better, a little more hopeful. I said with this dog, we were simply unlucky and then I left.
Naturally, this situation called for a family powow. I talked to all the kids save one. Ted spent the day trying to audition for Last Comic Standing. I didn't quite feel it was an appropriate time to tell him the family dog had just been put on death row.
Lydia had the biggest problem. She last saw the dog in September when all was fine. Back then, toto dog still humped the pillows in the den, ran after geese on the golf course, and gnawed on bones the size of her head. It's a far cry from the bloated animal parked on the round chair across from the television.
Julia, who had just visited this past weekend, was philosophical. It would be best not to let Toto suffer. To tell you the truth, I'd been tending towards euthanasia for a couple of weeks now. It was for Julia's sake that I shelled out the big bucks to have my own gut feeling confirmed by expensive pictures of Toto's insides. My gut feeling suddenly had been awarded the veterinarian stamp of approval. Julia can see that her mother isn't simply a blood thirsty dog murderer but a caring sensitive pet owner.
I don't know when I'll be making the appointment. Soon, I think.
Our dog Toto is a fourteen year old Cairn terrier who has recently developed a very serious heart murmur. As a result, she's become a real pain in the behind. I think she figures that since she's ill, she can be a princess...I mean more of a princess than usual. For one thing, she refuses to eat dog food. She'll gobble up scraps, but put the Pedigree in the bowl and she'll cough at it for a moment or two before turning around to trot off to her favorite sleepy spot, the round chair in the den.
She coughs a lot these days. Pull her leash on, she coughs. After a long drink of water, she coughs. When I try to walk her, she coughs as if to tell me, hey, lady, WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME? KILL ME?
I finally gave in and scheduled an x-ray and sonogram for her. I figure for the four hundred dollars it's going to cost, I'll learn how much longer she's got. Actually, that's not the reason I'm taking her. It's because the vet refuses to give her any medicine unless I consent to the pictures. I don't know, I think some morphine could be administered no matter what, but that's not the medicine they're talking about.
Besides Toto, I'm kind of sitting on an old age powder keg here, with any number of age related health events lying in wait. My mother's not doing so well. Her husband likewise. My brother just saw them and reported back that Leo is applying makeup to his face to hide some bruises from a fall he took. And then there's my ninety one year old Aunt living outside of Chicago. About twice a year I have a conversation with her caregiver. I can't talk to my aunt because she's stone deaf. Last year, every two weeks it seemed she was back in the hospital for heart problems. Since they inserted a stent, she's been doing a lot better. And there are Rod's parents. Happily, at 94, his father still comes to work three days a week. I'd like to think the guy will last another twenty years. But realistically...who the heck knows.
Toto was fine this past summer. Something happened over Christmas which has brought us to this point. It really makes me sad thinking of losing her, but then again she's just a dog. But the more I try to convince myself that she's just a dog, the more hollow I feel. There's something else here. The passing of an era, the whittling away of a family, the feeling that in the end, it's the end that really matters.
Well, anyhow, I'm jumping the gun here. We'll get the x-ray results tomorrow and go from there.
This is a picture I copied from the second volume of Albert Shaw's Cartoon History of Lincoln, the volume about his year of election.
I wish someone would make a movie of 1860, of the Democratic convention in Charleston and the sad, unstoppable impetus towards war. The South was pretty full of itself. Shaw includes this quote by Senator John Hammond of South Carolina: "I firmly believe that the slave-holdiing South is now the controlling power of the world--that no other power would face us in hostility. Cotton, rice, tobacco, and naval stores command the world; and we have sense to know it, and are sufficiantly Teutonic to carry it out successfully. The North without us would be a motherless calf, bleating about, and die of mange and starvation."
That the cartoon is of a negro rather than a white Southern plantation owner is quite telling. Inasmuch as the Senator Hammond puffed himself out, the truth of Southern economic power depended on black slaves. They were the bulwark, the anchor, the raison d'etre of Southern power. The quote made me think of Hitler. His basic economic theory was the same. Slave labor makes for good economic sense.
I haven't quite studied it, but I assume that this also must be the point at which Andrew Jackson's star faded. His spirit had been the driving force behind Democratic power even after his death in 1845. You find him in cartoons posthumously not infrequently. During the Nulllification crisis, it was his "Our federal Union: IT MUST BE PRESERVED!" which along with the threat of military intervention kept the country from falling apart way back in 1830. It's hard for us today to grasp the enormity of Jackson's influence during the antebellum period of American politics. But that all went by the wayside as the Southern States asserted their independence.
It had sadly come to the point where for the South, preserving the union had very little economic benefit. Lop off the north, and the world is your oyster. At least, according to Senator John H. Hammond of South Carolina. The North, meanwhile, had been waiting since the ascendency of Andrew Jackson for an excuse to smack the South upside the head, regardless of the institution of slavery.
Elena Steier is a cartoonist whose work has appeared nationally on ESPN Monday Night Football and Nickelodeon Magazine. In addition, she has had syndicated strips, editorial cartoons and freelance illustrations appearing in various and sundry publications. Elena's self-published book, The Vampire Bed and Breakfast continues to be sporadically published while her Goth Scouts comic strip appears online daily except weekends on the Humorous Maximus website. Elena is currently happily middle-aged with grown children and a husband with whom she has shared a life for more than thirty years.
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