Reduced for Quick Sale

This week's Bizarro offerings kicked off with a look at discontinued items that might be found at the local market.

We toyed with and discarded a few other slightly-off products, and we might revisit this idea in a future panel. My Wacky Packages influences are showing.

Over the years, a few Bizarro comics have referred to the very real disorder known as restless leg syndrome, or RLS. In fact, my collaborator, Dan Piraro, once said to a reader:

I’ve had RLS for a couple of decades and it has driven me nuts. I’ve always found that humor is the best way for me to deal with life’s disappointments or miseries and so I do cartoons about them.

There's no doubt a psychological term describing this practice by artists to exercise some type of retaliatory control over their particular afflictions. Insomnia is something of a recurring theme in my own work, since I'm very familiar with its maddening and harmful effects. If I can get readers (and myself) to laugh at it, it seems less powerful.

On Wednesday, we took silly approach to comment on the sensible practice of mindfulness. As I understand it, mindful eating involves slowing down and paying attention to the experience of enjoying food, and being aware of the body telling us when our hunger has been satisfied. The opposite would presumably be "mindless eating," which we've all probably done. Of course, a character in one of our cartoons would stretch the concept to its illogical extreme.

Thursday's cartoon provided a peek into the cutthroat world of sports team mascottery. It's not all plush costumes and silly dances.

Everybody experiences an earworm now and then. Or, in this case, maybe it's an ear-krill.

A good investment advisor understand the customer's tolerance for risk, but some impose their own preferences.

Please be sure to check out Dan Piraro's weekly blog for another perspective on the week's cartoons, and to admire his latest Sunday page.

Bonus Track




I first heard this song on a 45 rpm single I'd plucked from a box marked "Weird & Misc" at a record fair. It became an instant favorite. I've never found much biographical information on McKay, and as far as I can tell, he only released one LP, Reap the Wild Winds (RCA Records, 1955), which included this track.

McKay played several instruments, including saxophone, oboe, English horn, flute, and bassoon, which is featured prominently on several of the LP's selections.

The style could be described as "eccentric jazz." The bassoon gives much of the album a strange, playful quality. Some of the selections are reminiscent of the unpredictable, zigzagging arrangements Carl Stalling did for classic Warner Brothers animated cartoons from 1936 to 1958.

Maybe the best description was on that box at the record fair, and Stuart McKay just played "weird miscellaneous" music.