I've been toying with doing commission work. People have asked me occasionally over the years, and I've done a few things--illustrations for a newspaper article, posters--but when I began this comic strip odyssey, the plan was to just do the strip. It's not that I don't like to draw to serve other people's ideas; it's just that I have a hard time coming up with cartoons for a particular subject. The stuff I do comes from various places: a road sign I see, a funny cartoon by someone else that inspires a new idea, misreading an ad and getting a joke out of what-if-it actually-said-what-I-thought-it-said; but it's almost never based on a premeditated subject: "now I will come up with a strip about babies," for example.
I did come up with an idea for next Sunday's comic which will be based on the show I'm currently rehearsing with a community theater group. I'd been brainstorming for a couple of months, and finally found one that works. I still don't know if it's as funny as some that I've just pulled out the air, but it is a good idea that came from working hard to do something on a particular subject.
Someone wrote me recently that I should ask readers what they do, what they watch, and what they'd like to see in a cartoon. This smacks of cartoons-for-hire to me and goes against my inherently lazy nature, but it would set up a nice challenge. I'd like to see how well I can directly serve the desires of my readers. So go ahead and send me your occupations, your hobbies, your advertising needs, and I'll see what, if anything, I come up with. You can e-mail me at dsmith-weiss@qlowntown.com, or reply in the Comments section of this blog.
I have every strip planned through May 2010, but when I get an idea I really like, I bump some planned strip to May and put the new one in earlier. I've also found that ideas that I wrote down months ago might not seem funny enough when they finally come up in the rotation, so they get dumped for a new concept...so your subject may appear sooner than that.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Conan
Interesting: Conan the Barbarian is also known as Conan the Cimmerian, making my cartoon yesterday titled "Conan the Seminarian" an even better joke than I originally thought! I had originally planned on "Conan the Librarian" as a title and concept, but as I began to draw it, I wondered if I'd seen it somewhere else. Sure enough, it's an old gag. So I looked for something else that sounded similar to "Barbarian" that would be unlikely for Conan to do. "Contrarian" seemed too hard to draw clearly. I suppose I could've drawn him singing with the Beach Boys and called it "Conan the Barbara Annian", but no.
I was happy that I drew a pretty good Ahnuld-like character on the first try. I hate to re-draw; it seems that each time, you lose a little of the freedom of the original. As it is, I always feel that the final inked drawing loses a little vitality from the initial pencil sketch. I hope as the years go by, the pencil and pen versions become more and more alike.
I was happy that I drew a pretty good Ahnuld-like character on the first try. I hate to re-draw; it seems that each time, you lose a little of the freedom of the original. As it is, I always feel that the final inked drawing loses a little vitality from the initial pencil sketch. I hope as the years go by, the pencil and pen versions become more and more alike.
Oops!
Yesterday's cartoon, which would have been titled "Today's Cartoon" when it was sent to email subscribers, didn't get uploaded two days ago, so Today's Cartoon for yesterday never got emailed yesterday. I'd hoped to email it today, so the cartoon that was supposed to be Today's
Cartoon yesterday would have effectively been mailed tomorrow, relative to when it was supposed to go out. Confused?
All it means is that the system doesn't provide a way to manually email the daily cartoon. If I miss the deadline, it ain't gonna happen. Of course, once the strip is in newspapers, I'll be providing them three to four weeks in advance, so no little glitches like this will occur. Imagine if cartoonists were only a day ahead on providing cartoons to papers: there might be days when there'd be blank spaces on the comics page, then other days when there'd be extra pages. Wouldn't work.
That's a big reason the strip isn't in any newspapers yet. The time spent on getting the calendar ready, drawing the strip, and doing the other stuff that fills up my daily life makes it hard to get four to six weeks ahead. I also tend to do more coloring and adding textures, photos, and other background stuff to the cartoons to make them interesting--and to entertain myself.
My big "gimmick" that I'd planned from the start for this strip was to use words as textures in the background. For example, the "Kathy" strip on 5/18/09 featured grass along the bottom that was made from the words GRASSGRASSGRASS running along the bottom. Today's strip (meaning today's, on October 22nd) has the words WOODWOODWOOD as a texture on the bar top. I was going to use a photo of real wood grain, but I've done that before, and the words, while a little time-consuming, are fun to use. I worry that they won't be legible on small monitors, but they're there for some people at least, and it amuses me.
That reminds me: I have an old Beatles cartoon that I drew years ago that I should've used on 9/9/09. It's kind of outdated, except when the Beatles are in the news--as they were that day with the release on all their CDs, remastered. I could've used 99999999 as a texture! (If you don't get the reference, it's to Revolution 9 on the White Album.)
Once the site is opened up to your comments--that's coming on a future update of the site--we can see how many people, if any, are noticing the worded textures. In the meantime, feel free to comment here on the blog. Of course, the blog will get a makeover at some point, too, to make it more interesting to look at. But for now, I'm concentrating on the calendar, website changes, the play for which I'm in rehearsals, the house I'm designing, and trying to get ahead on the daily cartoons...so we don't have another yesterday/today/tomorrow occurrence.
Hey, the Beatles released an album in the US years ago called "Yesterday..and Today", and did songs called "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow Never Knows"--so this rambling blog actually all ties together!
Cartoon yesterday would have effectively been mailed tomorrow, relative to when it was supposed to go out. Confused?
All it means is that the system doesn't provide a way to manually email the daily cartoon. If I miss the deadline, it ain't gonna happen. Of course, once the strip is in newspapers, I'll be providing them three to four weeks in advance, so no little glitches like this will occur. Imagine if cartoonists were only a day ahead on providing cartoons to papers: there might be days when there'd be blank spaces on the comics page, then other days when there'd be extra pages. Wouldn't work.
That's a big reason the strip isn't in any newspapers yet. The time spent on getting the calendar ready, drawing the strip, and doing the other stuff that fills up my daily life makes it hard to get four to six weeks ahead. I also tend to do more coloring and adding textures, photos, and other background stuff to the cartoons to make them interesting--and to entertain myself.
My big "gimmick" that I'd planned from the start for this strip was to use words as textures in the background. For example, the "Kathy" strip on 5/18/09 featured grass along the bottom that was made from the words GRASSGRASSGRASS running along the bottom. Today's strip (meaning today's, on October 22nd) has the words WOODWOODWOOD as a texture on the bar top. I was going to use a photo of real wood grain, but I've done that before, and the words, while a little time-consuming, are fun to use. I worry that they won't be legible on small monitors, but they're there for some people at least, and it amuses me.
That reminds me: I have an old Beatles cartoon that I drew years ago that I should've used on 9/9/09. It's kind of outdated, except when the Beatles are in the news--as they were that day with the release on all their CDs, remastered. I could've used 99999999 as a texture! (If you don't get the reference, it's to Revolution 9 on the White Album.)
Once the site is opened up to your comments--that's coming on a future update of the site--we can see how many people, if any, are noticing the worded textures. In the meantime, feel free to comment here on the blog. Of course, the blog will get a makeover at some point, too, to make it more interesting to look at. But for now, I'm concentrating on the calendar, website changes, the play for which I'm in rehearsals, the house I'm designing, and trying to get ahead on the daily cartoons...so we don't have another yesterday/today/tomorrow occurrence.
Hey, the Beatles released an album in the US years ago called "Yesterday..and Today", and did songs called "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow Never Knows"--so this rambling blog actually all ties together!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Coulrophobia
Yes, there is a word for an excessive or irrational fear of clowns: coulrophobia. I figured there must be a word for it, so I looked it up. Sure enough. Coulrophobia.
I was getting my teeth cleaned today, and the hygienist told me she'd checked out the site a few times, but that she doesn't like clowns. Now, disliking and fearing are different things, but the issue is the same: there are people who don't want to read the strip simply because it's about clowns. I suppose it's no different than someone not wanting to read Garfield because he or she hates cats, or not wanting to watch Yogi Bear cartoons because he/she is afraid of bears. But it's frustrating. I decided to do a strip about clowns because no one else was doing that. And I decided to make them everyday people--that is, put them in offices, factories, shops, rather than in a circus--because I wanted to use them simply as a vehicle for humor. The whole "life is a circus" metaphor.
Yes, they live in tents (which have framed doors and windows, not canvas flaps), but that's a play on our world if it were inhabited by clowns, just like the stone houses and real-pig garbage disposals in the Flintstones. Maybe if these people got to know the strip, they'd feel better. I do plan at some point to start using the same characters and give them names, but that requires drawing them the same each time, and that seems like a bit of a burden. No one ever said Gary Larson should have the same cast of characters!...although I'll concede that there was frequently the familiar cow, fat kid with glasses, fat woman with glasses, etc. Anyway, maybe having a familiar clown named Rupert or Elvis or whatever will enable coulrophobics to embrace (figuratively, not literally!) the denizens of QlownTown.
Hey, maybe I could actually cure some clown-haters or -fearers by exposing them to clowns that they might see as often as, or even more frequently than, their favorite uncle Howie. Familiarity breeds contentment, sometimes. Therapy through the funnies.
In the meantime, if you're telling anyone about QlownTown and they say, "Oh, but I hate/am afraid of clowns", explain to them that these guys are a harmless vehicle for delivering the same off-the-wall, insightful, literate humor that other cartoonists--some of whom may be among his or her favorites--do. Once they start appearing in newspapers, they'll frequently be in black and white anyway. Maybe that will be less threatening or offensive. But it's the 21st century. Isn't it about time we accepted all people of color...even if it's just makeup?
I was getting my teeth cleaned today, and the hygienist told me she'd checked out the site a few times, but that she doesn't like clowns. Now, disliking and fearing are different things, but the issue is the same: there are people who don't want to read the strip simply because it's about clowns. I suppose it's no different than someone not wanting to read Garfield because he or she hates cats, or not wanting to watch Yogi Bear cartoons because he/she is afraid of bears. But it's frustrating. I decided to do a strip about clowns because no one else was doing that. And I decided to make them everyday people--that is, put them in offices, factories, shops, rather than in a circus--because I wanted to use them simply as a vehicle for humor. The whole "life is a circus" metaphor.
Yes, they live in tents (which have framed doors and windows, not canvas flaps), but that's a play on our world if it were inhabited by clowns, just like the stone houses and real-pig garbage disposals in the Flintstones. Maybe if these people got to know the strip, they'd feel better. I do plan at some point to start using the same characters and give them names, but that requires drawing them the same each time, and that seems like a bit of a burden. No one ever said Gary Larson should have the same cast of characters!...although I'll concede that there was frequently the familiar cow, fat kid with glasses, fat woman with glasses, etc. Anyway, maybe having a familiar clown named Rupert or Elvis or whatever will enable coulrophobics to embrace (figuratively, not literally!) the denizens of QlownTown.
Hey, maybe I could actually cure some clown-haters or -fearers by exposing them to clowns that they might see as often as, or even more frequently than, their favorite uncle Howie. Familiarity breeds contentment, sometimes. Therapy through the funnies.
In the meantime, if you're telling anyone about QlownTown and they say, "Oh, but I hate/am afraid of clowns", explain to them that these guys are a harmless vehicle for delivering the same off-the-wall, insightful, literate humor that other cartoonists--some of whom may be among his or her favorites--do. Once they start appearing in newspapers, they'll frequently be in black and white anyway. Maybe that will be less threatening or offensive. But it's the 21st century. Isn't it about time we accepted all people of color...even if it's just makeup?
Monday, October 12, 2009
Normal
I was talking with Sarah, my web czar, about one of the most popular items in the QlownTown store, the "Find the normal guy" poster. It's a full-color version of the teal-and-aqua background that appears on the QT website. There is one person in the whole thing who isn't a clown--he is clearly an "average" person with no makeup or silly clothes. The object, as the title suggests, is to find that person, a la "Where's Waldo?", in the midst of a coven of clowns. (An embarrassment of clowns? A buffoonery? This may be fodder for a future blog...)
Now, Sarah writes a lot in her blog about labels, expectations, assumptions. As soon as I said "normal" I realized that it might seem like one of those labels people apply that is, at best, a judgment. I explained that within the context of QlownTown, "normal" was not so much a subjective label as a way to differentiate one from a clown. Sarah didn't seem to be concerned anyway, but it did strike me that I had used the word normal without thinking about its implications.
I try to avoid using the word normal unless I'm sure that it applies to an irrefutable truth. For instance, a round orange is normal; a square orange would not be normal. I've seen some that are grown in boxes so they're square, and they look pretty cool, but I wouldn't consider them normal. As used on the poster, "normal" is arguably a bad thing---he certainly doesn't fit in. And it's also a satirical or irreverent use of the word. If you accept that you're in QlownTown, you should realize that the normally non-normal is normal, and the word normal becomes something else.
The potential for someone to mistake the word on the poster as a judgment is part of the adventure that is political correctness. And despite the fact that yes, there are times when being PC can go over the line, it's generally a good idea to try to be super-aware of what a word or phrase will mean to others. A friend once said, "Political correctness is just common sense." So is that statement. If "Redskins" was originally a pejorative term for American Indians, they certainly have the right now to be offended by the name of the Washington football team. How one resolves that issue after decades of established usage is not a simple issue, but being annoyed by the hassle of dealing with it doesn't make it a non-issue.
We take small steps. Our local high school football team is the Tomahawks. They used to do a chopping hatchet move and chant "woo-woo-woo-woo" in pseudo-Indian, and that's a easy thing to get rid of. (I haven't been to a game in several years, but I hope and assume that the "war chant" has been dropped.) They're usually referred to as the 'Hawks, and maybe someday the name will be officially changed.
But back to normal. I bet no one has looked at that and said, "Who is he to judge who's normal?". This preemptive essay on the use may be stirring up something that no one ever thought about. My urge to address it once I thought about it, however, was the same reaction most sensitve people would have.
It's normal.
Now, Sarah writes a lot in her blog about labels, expectations, assumptions. As soon as I said "normal" I realized that it might seem like one of those labels people apply that is, at best, a judgment. I explained that within the context of QlownTown, "normal" was not so much a subjective label as a way to differentiate one from a clown. Sarah didn't seem to be concerned anyway, but it did strike me that I had used the word normal without thinking about its implications.
I try to avoid using the word normal unless I'm sure that it applies to an irrefutable truth. For instance, a round orange is normal; a square orange would not be normal. I've seen some that are grown in boxes so they're square, and they look pretty cool, but I wouldn't consider them normal. As used on the poster, "normal" is arguably a bad thing---he certainly doesn't fit in. And it's also a satirical or irreverent use of the word. If you accept that you're in QlownTown, you should realize that the normally non-normal is normal, and the word normal becomes something else.
The potential for someone to mistake the word on the poster as a judgment is part of the adventure that is political correctness. And despite the fact that yes, there are times when being PC can go over the line, it's generally a good idea to try to be super-aware of what a word or phrase will mean to others. A friend once said, "Political correctness is just common sense." So is that statement. If "Redskins" was originally a pejorative term for American Indians, they certainly have the right now to be offended by the name of the Washington football team. How one resolves that issue after decades of established usage is not a simple issue, but being annoyed by the hassle of dealing with it doesn't make it a non-issue.
We take small steps. Our local high school football team is the Tomahawks. They used to do a chopping hatchet move and chant "woo-woo-woo-woo" in pseudo-Indian, and that's a easy thing to get rid of. (I haven't been to a game in several years, but I hope and assume that the "war chant" has been dropped.) They're usually referred to as the 'Hawks, and maybe someday the name will be officially changed.
But back to normal. I bet no one has looked at that and said, "Who is he to judge who's normal?". This preemptive essay on the use may be stirring up something that no one ever thought about. My urge to address it once I thought about it, however, was the same reaction most sensitve people would have.
It's normal.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Criticizing fellow cartoonists
This is a touchy subject. Some cartoonists are very outspoken about whose work they don't respect. Bill Griffith, for example, who draws the comic strip "Zippy", has said he hates Dilbert, that it isn't funny at all. Whenever I think about criticizing anyone else's work, though, I always think, "What if I'm at some gathering and I meet the person whose work I've trashed?" How do you say hi to that person without feeling awkward? And what if they've read what you said and bring it up?
Now, I don't worry about retaliation. If I say something bad about your work and you come back with a similar criticism, it may be just retribution, or you may have never liked my stuff anyway and just decided to speak up because I did. It might hurt, but it doesn't make my opinion of what I do any different. I may even take some of the criticism to heart and try to make improvements. But I'm concerned about turning off readers who like QlownTown but may decide they don't like it if they don't like my opinions. I'm wussy that way.
Having said all that, I do confess a personal dislike for cutesy cartoons that don't really have a strong punchline. Family Circus often features cute jokes that don't make me laugh. I know I do the occasional clunker myself, but an abundance of unfunny comics makes me wish they'd work harder. Polls evidently show that that's one of the most popular strips, so what can I say? But cute without clever just seems like a greeting card. Likewise, "Rose is Rose" is one of the best-drawn strips out there and so I read it every day, but it traffics in a sweet, cute style of humor when I think the brilliant artwork deserves smarter stuff. Again, popularity 1, me 0...ah, what do I know?
There are also a couple of pet strips I could name that never make me laugh, yet they've been around for years. I recently decided that I do like Garfield, however. I've read a lot of criticism about how it's the same five or six gags all the time, but I still laugh out loud occasionally. In today's strip, Odie starts to drown in his own drool, a surrealistic sight that could only make sense in a cartoon.
And I think Dilbert is always funny, almost always very funny, and deserves the popularity it enjoys. So my own tastes do sometimes mesh with the prevailing view.
I hope that when I'm at the Reuben awards (the comics industry "Academy Awards") someday, either accepting an award or wishing I'd at least been nominated and wondering how I even got invited, that anyone I've mentioned will forgive me, shake my hand, and say something nicer than "Congratulations. But just so you know, your stuff makes me barf."
Now, I don't worry about retaliation. If I say something bad about your work and you come back with a similar criticism, it may be just retribution, or you may have never liked my stuff anyway and just decided to speak up because I did. It might hurt, but it doesn't make my opinion of what I do any different. I may even take some of the criticism to heart and try to make improvements. But I'm concerned about turning off readers who like QlownTown but may decide they don't like it if they don't like my opinions. I'm wussy that way.
Having said all that, I do confess a personal dislike for cutesy cartoons that don't really have a strong punchline. Family Circus often features cute jokes that don't make me laugh. I know I do the occasional clunker myself, but an abundance of unfunny comics makes me wish they'd work harder. Polls evidently show that that's one of the most popular strips, so what can I say? But cute without clever just seems like a greeting card. Likewise, "Rose is Rose" is one of the best-drawn strips out there and so I read it every day, but it traffics in a sweet, cute style of humor when I think the brilliant artwork deserves smarter stuff. Again, popularity 1, me 0...ah, what do I know?
There are also a couple of pet strips I could name that never make me laugh, yet they've been around for years. I recently decided that I do like Garfield, however. I've read a lot of criticism about how it's the same five or six gags all the time, but I still laugh out loud occasionally. In today's strip, Odie starts to drown in his own drool, a surrealistic sight that could only make sense in a cartoon.
And I think Dilbert is always funny, almost always very funny, and deserves the popularity it enjoys. So my own tastes do sometimes mesh with the prevailing view.
I hope that when I'm at the Reuben awards (the comics industry "Academy Awards") someday, either accepting an award or wishing I'd at least been nominated and wondering how I even got invited, that anyone I've mentioned will forgive me, shake my hand, and say something nicer than "Congratulations. But just so you know, your stuff makes me barf."
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Synchronicity
What a coincidence! Mark Parisi, who draws "Off the Mark", did a cartoon today about the Mona Lisa, the same day I did one! Different punchlines, and I think both were very funny, so no harm done.
What I find happens more often is that another cartoonist will draw the same idea I'm planning to do later. Mike Peters has been an especially frustrating guy in this respect. He did about a half dozen strips that I had planned on over the months that I was waiting for the site to launch. "The Hatchback of Notre Dame;" a puppet complaining that his parents/puppeteer were "too manipulative;" and the list goes on. It's no one's fault; two people just come up with the same brilliant idea at the same time! (For awhile, however, I harbored a secret suspicion that someone was finding out about my ideas and sending them to Mike...even though I've never met him.)
As I've said here before, I have every day's cartoon planned through the beginning of next May. I figure that one or two of those ideas, of which I may have conceived a year or more earlier, will appear in a similar form in someone else's strip before I get to use them. So goes the cartoon world. I did manage to convert the "manipulation" cartoon into one where the puppet says, "I've had it up to here"---which was funny, but not as good as the manipulation gag. Sometimes reworking the original idea can be funnier, though--today's cartoon was supposed to feature Leonardo da Vinci with his shirt sticking out of his zipper. While I pondered how to draw that without making it look obscene (I was thinking a plaid or checked shirt), I decided to check online to see what he would have worn. "Flowing robes" was the answer, so I switched to toilet paper stuck to his shoe, which I think is funnier anyway--especially since they didn't have toilets back then. At least not the white porcelain type I show in the next room.
I have a Picasso cartoon planned, and every time I see a Picasso appear in the comics (which isn't often), I think I should get going and put mine out quick. But then some other idea might get bumped and be done by someone else first, so I can't really stress about it. There are enough jokes to go around--I just hate it when one of the really good ones gets snapped up by someone else first. Today, we did 'em at the same time, and they were different takes on the subject--proof that create(ive) minds think alike.
What I find happens more often is that another cartoonist will draw the same idea I'm planning to do later. Mike Peters has been an especially frustrating guy in this respect. He did about a half dozen strips that I had planned on over the months that I was waiting for the site to launch. "The Hatchback of Notre Dame;" a puppet complaining that his parents/puppeteer were "too manipulative;" and the list goes on. It's no one's fault; two people just come up with the same brilliant idea at the same time! (For awhile, however, I harbored a secret suspicion that someone was finding out about my ideas and sending them to Mike...even though I've never met him.)
As I've said here before, I have every day's cartoon planned through the beginning of next May. I figure that one or two of those ideas, of which I may have conceived a year or more earlier, will appear in a similar form in someone else's strip before I get to use them. So goes the cartoon world. I did manage to convert the "manipulation" cartoon into one where the puppet says, "I've had it up to here"---which was funny, but not as good as the manipulation gag. Sometimes reworking the original idea can be funnier, though--today's cartoon was supposed to feature Leonardo da Vinci with his shirt sticking out of his zipper. While I pondered how to draw that without making it look obscene (I was thinking a plaid or checked shirt), I decided to check online to see what he would have worn. "Flowing robes" was the answer, so I switched to toilet paper stuck to his shoe, which I think is funnier anyway--especially since they didn't have toilets back then. At least not the white porcelain type I show in the next room.
I have a Picasso cartoon planned, and every time I see a Picasso appear in the comics (which isn't often), I think I should get going and put mine out quick. But then some other idea might get bumped and be done by someone else first, so I can't really stress about it. There are enough jokes to go around--I just hate it when one of the really good ones gets snapped up by someone else first. Today, we did 'em at the same time, and they were different takes on the subject--proof that create(ive) minds think alike.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Airlines
I got back from a trip to California a couple of weeks ago, and was struck, as I always am when I fly, by how impractical the off-loading procedure is on an airplane. Obviously, first class gets off first--that's a given. But why is it that the masses at the back of Coach have to wait as each row, one-by-one, gets their carry-ons down from the overhead bins, working from front to back? I would propose several steps to improve getting off the plane.
1) Anyone who has a connecting flight for which they only have, say, a half an hour to meet, would be allowed off first. This could be verified by the flight attendants so no one cheats--the rest of the passengers could spend the extra time this might take getting their luggage down. It's the airline's fault that these people have a tight schedule anyway, so they should be responsible for making it easier for those passengers. I have actually missed a connecting flight because I had to wait for the plane to unload, and I'm annoyed that the airlines don't inform their flight attendants when someone has a short layover and have them call those people to the front of the plane first.
2) Anyone who had no carry-ons or has their luggage already in hand would be allowed off next. Again, no cheating: if you have to get it out of the overhead, you don't get in on this round--even if you're quick.
3) Next, anyone who gets their luggage down during the previous two steps would be allowed off. These would generally be people on the aisle, but they might be traveling with others whose luggage they could also retrieve. And no standing in the aisle while you gather your belongings; remember, this is a courtesy system, and you should stay the hell out of the way.
4) Last would be the remaining passengers: this group would not be delaying people who were in a hurry or were more organized than they. There is invariably a jam where someone who has sat in their seat for the first several minutes of unloading sees that it is his or her row's "turn" and finally gets out, moves into the aisle, blocking the way, and proceeds to get his/her overhead stuff down while the rest of the passengers wait.
I suspect that plane disembarkations that take twenty minutes to a half an hour could be reduced to fifteen minutes or less via this method. Why no one at any airline has ever instituted this is a mystery. They must know that travelers experience a lot of frustration with air travel. Wouldn't this be a simple, no cost way to improve that experience? And in doing so, an airline would help to foment good manners and create a positive public image in the process; sort of a Please-treat-each-other-with-respect-because-we-do" message.
I have no power to change this. The one means at my disposal to perhaps spread the word a little, besides this blog, is that I can do a cartoon about it. I don't have one in mind yet, but there will be one. Oh yeah, count on it.
And if nothing ever changes, at least I can say I got a strip out of my frustration. Maybe, when that comic comes out, you could print copies and leave them all over airplanes. Sort of a change-by-cartoon campaign.
1) Anyone who has a connecting flight for which they only have, say, a half an hour to meet, would be allowed off first. This could be verified by the flight attendants so no one cheats--the rest of the passengers could spend the extra time this might take getting their luggage down. It's the airline's fault that these people have a tight schedule anyway, so they should be responsible for making it easier for those passengers. I have actually missed a connecting flight because I had to wait for the plane to unload, and I'm annoyed that the airlines don't inform their flight attendants when someone has a short layover and have them call those people to the front of the plane first.
2) Anyone who had no carry-ons or has their luggage already in hand would be allowed off next. Again, no cheating: if you have to get it out of the overhead, you don't get in on this round--even if you're quick.
3) Next, anyone who gets their luggage down during the previous two steps would be allowed off. These would generally be people on the aisle, but they might be traveling with others whose luggage they could also retrieve. And no standing in the aisle while you gather your belongings; remember, this is a courtesy system, and you should stay the hell out of the way.
4) Last would be the remaining passengers: this group would not be delaying people who were in a hurry or were more organized than they. There is invariably a jam where someone who has sat in their seat for the first several minutes of unloading sees that it is his or her row's "turn" and finally gets out, moves into the aisle, blocking the way, and proceeds to get his/her overhead stuff down while the rest of the passengers wait.
I suspect that plane disembarkations that take twenty minutes to a half an hour could be reduced to fifteen minutes or less via this method. Why no one at any airline has ever instituted this is a mystery. They must know that travelers experience a lot of frustration with air travel. Wouldn't this be a simple, no cost way to improve that experience? And in doing so, an airline would help to foment good manners and create a positive public image in the process; sort of a Please-treat-each-other-with-respect-because-we-do" message.
I have no power to change this. The one means at my disposal to perhaps spread the word a little, besides this blog, is that I can do a cartoon about it. I don't have one in mind yet, but there will be one. Oh yeah, count on it.
And if nothing ever changes, at least I can say I got a strip out of my frustration. Maybe, when that comic comes out, you could print copies and leave them all over airplanes. Sort of a change-by-cartoon campaign.
Friday, October 2, 2009
New things
Wow! What an exciting phone call! I just got off the phone with my new net guru, Sarah. She and I will be making lots of changes, big and small, to QlownTown in the coming months. And QlownTown will be living on its third server in less than a year soon, but it takes time to move an entire town.
One idea Sarah threw out was: do I put photos or cartoons of myself on the website and/or blog, instead of the cartoon character who now appears there? (We're planning to put up more than one image of me.) I said that one possible advantage of cartoons is that no one can see how old I am, or what color, orientation, weight, show size or astrological sign I am. (Okay, I admit you can't tell a person's astrological sign from a photo--unless they're wearing a big "Leo" medallion.) You can believe that I'm whatever you'd like: a twenty-two-year-old bearded artist type, or a fat, nearsighted old man with a kindly demeanor, or a voluptuous Lithuanian woman who happens to have a man's name and would be the perfect life partner for you. Whatever category suits your idea of someone you'd like.
A photo, of course, puts a human face to the person who appears sometimes erudite, sometimes offbeat, and occasionally just silly/stupid through the comics he writes and draws. And, I could take a bunch of photos at once and be done with it, in less time than it takes to draw multiple cartoons.
There's also the option of posting a photo, but changing it every few months to a photo of someone else so you never know who's the real I*...but that would just be messing with people with whom I want to make a connection. There's a part of me that wants to do the strip with no boundaries, to say "damn" when the cartoon character is saying "damn", instead of writing #%@!...but I really like the idea of welcoming almost everyone and alienating almost no one. I hope to do it while avoiding cutesy, heartwarming, gee-life-is-really-like-that-isn't-it cartoons (names will not be named here, but there are daily strips that require no clever thought to conceive that are getting too much space in newspapers); but I want to build a community of people who visit the strip, or whom the strip visits via email, on a regular basis. People who like the strip will generally assume they'd like me if they met me, so what do I present to them?
I ask you: as a reader of the strip [if you're not, go check out the website right now; I can wait while you do], what do you think you'd prefer?
* That's the erudite part of me, not using "me".
One idea Sarah threw out was: do I put photos or cartoons of myself on the website and/or blog, instead of the cartoon character who now appears there? (We're planning to put up more than one image of me.) I said that one possible advantage of cartoons is that no one can see how old I am, or what color, orientation, weight, show size or astrological sign I am. (Okay, I admit you can't tell a person's astrological sign from a photo--unless they're wearing a big "Leo" medallion.) You can believe that I'm whatever you'd like: a twenty-two-year-old bearded artist type, or a fat, nearsighted old man with a kindly demeanor, or a voluptuous Lithuanian woman who happens to have a man's name and would be the perfect life partner for you. Whatever category suits your idea of someone you'd like.
A photo, of course, puts a human face to the person who appears sometimes erudite, sometimes offbeat, and occasionally just silly/stupid through the comics he writes and draws. And, I could take a bunch of photos at once and be done with it, in less time than it takes to draw multiple cartoons.
There's also the option of posting a photo, but changing it every few months to a photo of someone else so you never know who's the real I*...but that would just be messing with people with whom I want to make a connection. There's a part of me that wants to do the strip with no boundaries, to say "damn" when the cartoon character is saying "damn", instead of writing #%@!...but I really like the idea of welcoming almost everyone and alienating almost no one. I hope to do it while avoiding cutesy, heartwarming, gee-life-is-really-like-that-isn't-it cartoons (names will not be named here, but there are daily strips that require no clever thought to conceive that are getting too much space in newspapers); but I want to build a community of people who visit the strip, or whom the strip visits via email, on a regular basis. People who like the strip will generally assume they'd like me if they met me, so what do I present to them?
I ask you: as a reader of the strip [if you're not, go check out the website right now; I can wait while you do], what do you think you'd prefer?
* That's the erudite part of me, not using "me".
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