I decided this past weekend would be "Other People" weekend. I'd agreed to help other people on various projects, so on Friday, I decided not to do anything on the comic strip and instead did some planning for my cousin Norm's new deck, and then did drawings for a passive solar collector and an efficient house framing technique and sent them off to Re-Member, a group that I've worked with on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Saturday, Norm rented a two-man hole digger, which has a gas engine with four long handles coming out the sides. A heavy (80 lbs.? 100 lbs.? By the end of the day, it feels like a thousand.) steel auger hangs down from there and spins into the soil. You each hold two handles and assume that the auger will just dig into the earth easily. Not when there are lots of rocks! It got caught repeatedly under the edge of rocks, at which point we'd have to wiggle it back and forth and try with all our might to lift it out when it was finally freed. It would buck and toss us around when it hit an immovable object, and sometimes we'd see a big rock coming to the surface and then it would just disappear back into the hole, followed quickly by a yank on the handles. To get down to the required four-foot depth, you also need to add a (heavy) extension rod between the auger and the engine, making it even more top-heavy and harder to lift. By the end of the day, I had three broken blisters on my palms and a number of bruises and scrapes on one arm from when I backed into a hole and fell down and the machine came down on top of me. We were both sweaty, exhausted, tired, sore...yet had a sense of accomplishment. Good times!
When I got home and into the shower, my hands hurt so much that I washed almost my entire body using just my little shaving brush, because I could grip that with my fingertips and not get too much soap into the raw blisters. I shampooed using my fingertips, because the mint shampoo that normally makes my scalp tingle wonderfully also made the blisters tingle horribly.
Waking up sore on Sunday, I went over to my son and daughter-in-law's house to help them and her dad wire and re-frame their kitchen. As long as I was concentrating on doing something I felt fine, but if I stopped to rest, I'd notice how painful my hands and arms and pretty much everything was. So, on a day that I had thought I would ideally liked to have sat around doing nothing, I was grateful for a chance to work at something distracting. And at the end, I had a real sense of accomplishment.
Today I'm still sore, but my hands are not in constant pain and I don't have a half a box of Band-Aids on anymore. The cartoons may look a little amateurish for the next week or so (yes, even more so than usual!), as I am working with something more akin to a lobster claw than a human hand right now. (Oh--I also forgot to put on sunscreen or wear a hat on Saturday, but somehow avoided even a mild sunburn. I guess that's some sort of good karma payoff.)
Once the pain wears off, I'm sure I'll figure out a way to get a funny cartoon out of all this. And Norm has already sent me a funny clown cartoon by another cartoonist off of which I may be able to spin another idea. So two days of hard work could result in two strips. That's almost like working on QlownTown for the two days I didn't!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Ideas
I just put up a new comment on my Facebook page: "I wish I had a frigate, because it's a friggin' nice day". After posting it, I envisioned a cartoon featuring an old British Navy commodore on his poop deck saying "What a friggin' nice day".
This is something I encounter on a pretty frequent basis: If I--or someone else--says something funny, should I save it for a QlownTown cartoon? Do I jot down every funny thing I encounter?
No. I recognize that while I've made a choice to do this comic strip, I can't expect to save all the humor I encounter in life for the strip. I've already cataloged every strip I'll be doing through the end of 2009, anyway---so I don't have to stress about ideas. (At least not yet; we'll see how I am a year or five from now.)
Some things that I hear are very funny in the context of what's happening, anyway, not funny enough for a one-shot cartoon. [The strip may evolve over time into a more situational strip like For Better or For Worse or Monty, but I really like the punch of a self-contained comic. You don't need to know Mr. Binkles (yes, there will be regular characters in QlownTown soon, and they will have names) to laugh when smoke comes out of his stovepipe hat when he's grilling burgers, or know the two bears with clothes strewn about the forest floor around them who comment that "that was a grisly encounter".] Some things in my life are very funny and I/we laugh out loud, but they're a part of life and belong to me, not to my website. Real life is for living, not doing one's job all the time.
I'll admit that sometimes, when I come up with something that really tickles the person I'm talking to (or vice versa), I'll pull out my trusty phone/PDA/camera/jet pack and jot down the idea; but more often than not, I come up with ideas as a regular practice, as part of my workday. I sit at my desk, read the paper and online stuff, and sketch out ideas as they hit me. After all, who can complain about thinking up humorous stuff being part of your job?
So, for now at least, the frigate/friggin' joke will just remain a Facebook comment. Now, in a year or five from now...
This is something I encounter on a pretty frequent basis: If I--or someone else--says something funny, should I save it for a QlownTown cartoon? Do I jot down every funny thing I encounter?
No. I recognize that while I've made a choice to do this comic strip, I can't expect to save all the humor I encounter in life for the strip. I've already cataloged every strip I'll be doing through the end of 2009, anyway---so I don't have to stress about ideas. (At least not yet; we'll see how I am a year or five from now.)
Some things that I hear are very funny in the context of what's happening, anyway, not funny enough for a one-shot cartoon. [The strip may evolve over time into a more situational strip like For Better or For Worse or Monty, but I really like the punch of a self-contained comic. You don't need to know Mr. Binkles (yes, there will be regular characters in QlownTown soon, and they will have names) to laugh when smoke comes out of his stovepipe hat when he's grilling burgers, or know the two bears with clothes strewn about the forest floor around them who comment that "that was a grisly encounter".] Some things in my life are very funny and I/we laugh out loud, but they're a part of life and belong to me, not to my website. Real life is for living, not doing one's job all the time.
I'll admit that sometimes, when I come up with something that really tickles the person I'm talking to (or vice versa), I'll pull out my trusty phone/PDA/camera/jet pack and jot down the idea; but more often than not, I come up with ideas as a regular practice, as part of my workday. I sit at my desk, read the paper and online stuff, and sketch out ideas as they hit me. After all, who can complain about thinking up humorous stuff being part of your job?
So, for now at least, the frigate/friggin' joke will just remain a Facebook comment. Now, in a year or five from now...
Monday, May 11, 2009
Optimism
I recently commented on Facebook that I was finding it difficult to write a totally optimistic song without sounding maudlin or corny. For every Walking On Sunshine or Shiny Happy People, there are a dozen Afternoon Delights or Everything Is Beautifuls. A friend asked if that was because I was a "cynical old fart". I replied that indeed I was; but another friend corrected me. Point well taken. Yes, I am actually an overly optimistic optimist.
It's appropriate than I've wound up drawing cartoons. I'm better at coming up with a funny moment than an ongoing tale of tragedy and woe. If I had to come up with ongoing storylines all the time, I'd go crazy. The first real storyline that I'm planning for QlownTown involves a trip by some of the characters to work on a Indian reservation. It will deal will injustice, poverty and frustration, yet I plan to end every day's strip with a humorous moment. It may be humor born of sarcasm over a ridiculously wrong policy or a bitter humor that informs (one hopes) while it amuses, but I think I can find those funny moments in the pain that appears overwhelming from the outside. Even in my conscious goal of teaching people about the things I earned working on "The Rez" for a week, there's a conscious goal to amuse in the process. There's the old saying, "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar". (Of course, the two together make a nice vinaigrette, and I hope that's how the series turns out.)
It's appropriate than I've wound up drawing cartoons. I'm better at coming up with a funny moment than an ongoing tale of tragedy and woe. If I had to come up with ongoing storylines all the time, I'd go crazy. The first real storyline that I'm planning for QlownTown involves a trip by some of the characters to work on a Indian reservation. It will deal will injustice, poverty and frustration, yet I plan to end every day's strip with a humorous moment. It may be humor born of sarcasm over a ridiculously wrong policy or a bitter humor that informs (one hopes) while it amuses, but I think I can find those funny moments in the pain that appears overwhelming from the outside. Even in my conscious goal of teaching people about the things I earned working on "The Rez" for a week, there's a conscious goal to amuse in the process. There's the old saying, "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar". (Of course, the two together make a nice vinaigrette, and I hope that's how the series turns out.)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Mission trip[
I just returned from a week on the Oglala Lakota Indian Reservation on South Dakota. It was a week of eye-opening lessons. The standard questions like "Why don't they just move away?" or "Why don't they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?" become ridiculous when you've seen the conditions there. A combination of spiritual beliefs (isn't America supposed to promise freedom of religion?) and severe poverty exacerbates the problems. The US has violated every treaty it ever signed with the Indians, and yet we wonder why they can't dig themselves out of the rut we've put them in. We guaranteed to protect them--a compromise since we took away their lands just because we wanted them. There are no easy answers, but there are steps that can be taken. I'll try to educate anyone who will listen a bit over the next year...through blogs and, I hope, through cartoons.
The organization we worked with, Re-Member, is doing great work. A large part of that is to educate volunteers so we can spread the word. It was fun to watch people who were skeptical and who nonetheless took the trip with us change their attitude as they learned more.
Re-Member is also educating the people on the Rez to realize that some outsiders try to do right by them. Unfortunately, we're still in the minority on that. In a nation with a black president, increasingly equal treatment of women, and forward-moving attitudes on civil unions and/or same-sex marriage, we still treat the people who were here before us worse than we treat our pets. These are not "noble Indians", nor are they lazy. They are people, like you or me, who are in a financial morass not of their making.
Let's hope that we can correct this in this century.
The organization we worked with, Re-Member, is doing great work. A large part of that is to educate volunteers so we can spread the word. It was fun to watch people who were skeptical and who nonetheless took the trip with us change their attitude as they learned more.
Re-Member is also educating the people on the Rez to realize that some outsiders try to do right by them. Unfortunately, we're still in the minority on that. In a nation with a black president, increasingly equal treatment of women, and forward-moving attitudes on civil unions and/or same-sex marriage, we still treat the people who were here before us worse than we treat our pets. These are not "noble Indians", nor are they lazy. They are people, like you or me, who are in a financial morass not of their making.
Let's hope that we can correct this in this century.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Grey's Anatomy
Okay, I admit it. I like Grey's Anatomy. Critics complain that it's sometimes exasperating, too soap-opera-ish, too unrealistic. But what I like, and I realized it last night, is the slow process by which characters grow and learn to accept each other. This part of the show is realistic. A self-centered, obnoxious person in real life doesn't suddenly become lovable and understanding. He or she may soften and become less rigid as time goes by, but there's always the seed of what they were at their core.
Last night, Meredith, the somewhat damaged, fragile title character who has a half-sister, Lexie, whom she didn't even know about for years, last night told Lexie, "You're my sister. You're in my wedding (party)." It took about two TV seasons for her to come around from resenting, hating and ignoring this woman for having their father around all the years she was growing up (he had left Meredith and her mother when she was young and started a whole new family) to actually bonding with her as a sister. It was a true Kodak moment. (For those too young to know what this is, look it up.)
I realize, as I reread the previous paragraphs, that it sounds like a muddled, silly soap opera. And I suppose it is. But it's also frequently funny, making me laugh at the same time I'm moved by a tragic turn of events. The nature of a dramatic TV show based on characters more than situations is such that those characters will go through more, and bigger, changes than regular people. It almost unavoidable over multiple seasons. Most of us don't have interesting enough lives to adapt into a year-after-year TV show. But the enjoyable thing in a series is when those little a-ha or uplifting moments occur when you don't expect them. In an episode in which two friends of 20 years were feuding, a doctor held a dying six-year-old in her arms for hours while the father was off trying to raise money for a hopeless shot at a cure instead of being with his child, a father cut off a trust fund for his daughter because she announced she was gay--and happy, and a doctor with a 5% chance of beating terminal cancer plunged into the depths of chemo therapy, my favorite moment was when a very flawed woman accepted her sister as if it had always been thus. A simple moment topped all the drama.
Lest I seem too much of a softie, however, I also like The Office and 30 Rock, two shows that largely revel in the absence of true, heartfelt emotions.
Last night, Meredith, the somewhat damaged, fragile title character who has a half-sister, Lexie, whom she didn't even know about for years, last night told Lexie, "You're my sister. You're in my wedding (party)." It took about two TV seasons for her to come around from resenting, hating and ignoring this woman for having their father around all the years she was growing up (he had left Meredith and her mother when she was young and started a whole new family) to actually bonding with her as a sister. It was a true Kodak moment. (For those too young to know what this is, look it up.)
I realize, as I reread the previous paragraphs, that it sounds like a muddled, silly soap opera. And I suppose it is. But it's also frequently funny, making me laugh at the same time I'm moved by a tragic turn of events. The nature of a dramatic TV show based on characters more than situations is such that those characters will go through more, and bigger, changes than regular people. It almost unavoidable over multiple seasons. Most of us don't have interesting enough lives to adapt into a year-after-year TV show. But the enjoyable thing in a series is when those little a-ha or uplifting moments occur when you don't expect them. In an episode in which two friends of 20 years were feuding, a doctor held a dying six-year-old in her arms for hours while the father was off trying to raise money for a hopeless shot at a cure instead of being with his child, a father cut off a trust fund for his daughter because she announced she was gay--and happy, and a doctor with a 5% chance of beating terminal cancer plunged into the depths of chemo therapy, my favorite moment was when a very flawed woman accepted her sister as if it had always been thus. A simple moment topped all the drama.
Lest I seem too much of a softie, however, I also like The Office and 30 Rock, two shows that largely revel in the absence of true, heartfelt emotions.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Earth Day
Well, it's here. One of my favorite days of the year. Partly because it's in the spring, and partly because it's meaning more to more people now than it has for years.
I remember the first one, around 1970. A lot of my classmates walked miles to school instead of driving or riding. It made a difference, but just for that one day. A lot of those same people grew up to buy large, gas-guzzling cars, move into big, poorly-insulated houses, and generally ignore the idea of caring for the environment. Too bad people didn't care about building better cars and buildings 'way back when the topic was raised so long ago. Think of the hundreds of thousands of houses that have built to what would now be sub-code standards, and the millions of gallons of extra gas used that have helped raise the current price of gas and pollute the planet.
Still, it's finally fashionable to care. One good thing I've read is that part of the stimulus plan will include making improvements to existing homes to make them more energy efficient. This is a case where creating jobs has multiple good effects: people get work and income, others save money, and the planet will be cleaner in the long run, which benefits us all. And people like me don't get quite so cranky.
So, on Earth Day, do something extra special and helpful that you wouldn't normally do. If you only do it one day, it makes a difference. And if it makes you think the next time, it could make a difference for a long time.
I remember the first one, around 1970. A lot of my classmates walked miles to school instead of driving or riding. It made a difference, but just for that one day. A lot of those same people grew up to buy large, gas-guzzling cars, move into big, poorly-insulated houses, and generally ignore the idea of caring for the environment. Too bad people didn't care about building better cars and buildings 'way back when the topic was raised so long ago. Think of the hundreds of thousands of houses that have built to what would now be sub-code standards, and the millions of gallons of extra gas used that have helped raise the current price of gas and pollute the planet.
Still, it's finally fashionable to care. One good thing I've read is that part of the stimulus plan will include making improvements to existing homes to make them more energy efficient. This is a case where creating jobs has multiple good effects: people get work and income, others save money, and the planet will be cleaner in the long run, which benefits us all. And people like me don't get quite so cranky.
So, on Earth Day, do something extra special and helpful that you wouldn't normally do. If you only do it one day, it makes a difference. And if it makes you think the next time, it could make a difference for a long time.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Overlap
I finished acting in a local play this weekend. Rehearsals, memorizing and set building consumed a lot of my time. And, of course, we had to go out for food and drinks after each show! The weekend's performances were well-received, but there generally follows a Monday letdown. This year, however, I have next week's trip to South Dakota to work on the Pine Ridge reservation to look forward to, so there's the excitement and anticipation of that to counteract any potential letdown. That, and the need to draw and prep more cartoons to make up for the lost week of very little drawing, scanning and coloring. I work several weeks ahead, but falling behind now will mean I'm behind several weeks down the line. So I don't have to worry about this week being a downer--just another exciting week. After a week where the play was the thing, it's nice to get back to concentrating on this bunch of clowns! (Not to imply that the actors and techies were a bunch of clowns--they also wore makeup, but they were all professional and skilled. Well, the actors wore makeup, not the technicians, except the women might have, but that would be normal makeup---never mind.)
Since several QlownTown subscribers who will also be going on the trip won't get to see next week's cartoons--there's no internet on the res--I'll print copies and post them daily on a bulletin board there for those who are used to reading them every morning (except for the last few days and some last week, as our server undergoes updating and repairs). It'll be fun to be physically posting these cartoons in real time, since they're usually posted electronically several weeks ahead and go out automatically with no control or effort on my part. Sometimes, someone will tell me in person that they liked that day's cartoon, and I have to ask them what it was; there's a slight disconnect between me and the current strip. Next week, I'll deal with my own cartoons in the same time frame as my readers.
Since several QlownTown subscribers who will also be going on the trip won't get to see next week's cartoons--there's no internet on the res--I'll print copies and post them daily on a bulletin board there for those who are used to reading them every morning (except for the last few days and some last week, as our server undergoes updating and repairs). It'll be fun to be physically posting these cartoons in real time, since they're usually posted electronically several weeks ahead and go out automatically with no control or effort on my part. Sometimes, someone will tell me in person that they liked that day's cartoon, and I have to ask them what it was; there's a slight disconnect between me and the current strip. Next week, I'll deal with my own cartoons in the same time frame as my readers.
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