Left-Handed Compliment

'Tis the week before Christmas, and we've been busy making cartoons for next March, while dealing with a small deluge of those unexpected obstacles and difficulties that periodically enter everyone's lives. We're all okay here, but this post might end up briefer than usual. Of course, I'm just getting started, so who knows?

This week's pipe pic is a dramatic portrait of the great Art Carney.

Carney (1918-2003) was a brilliant comedic actor, probably best known for his long-running portrayal of sewer worker Ed Norton on various incarnations of Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners TV series. 

 

A favorite moment in one Honeymooners episode had Norton mentioning that it was payday, and some of the workers were gambling with dice, followed by the immortal line "You might call it a floating crap game." 

Historical Note: "Floating crap game" was a slang expression of the era describing illegal gambling that moved from place to place in order to avoid discovery by the authorities.

Carney also made several records singing in character as Ed Norton. They're all enjoyable and recommended to connoisseurs of unusual music.

Now, let's take a look at what floated out of our studio over the past six days.

We eased into the week with an avian pun.

 

This scenario is cruel, even for The Reaper. It's a reference to the familiar quote, "[I]n this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." It's usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who did indeed use it in a letter in 1789, though a version also appeared in literature as early as 1716.

 

Wednesday's panel illustrates an unintended consequence of the demise of print, although being smacked with an iPad is no picnic, either.

 

 

Before composing the full-scale musical, Andrew Lloyd Weber presented this bagatelle.

 

This is actually part of a larger cognitive study to determine why it takes three citizens of this city to identify its most prominent resident.

 

I was rather pleased to have written an autocorrect gag that wasn't already done by my colleague Mark Parisi, who frequently builds jokes around everyone's technological nemesis in his award-winning comic, Off the Mark.

That's the latest from Bizarro Studios North. For a lengthier (and probably more entertaining) recap of these panels, visit Dan Piraro's blog, where you can also see his latest Bizarro Sunday page. His panoramic art on Sundays is always stunning.

Front Runner

Although 2021 isn't quite over, we have a strong contender for the first annual Know-It-All of the Year award, based on an email responding to this cartoon from last Friday.

The note is reproduced in full below, with the writer's name and city removed. We assure you that this is authentic.

In your cartoon of Dec. 10, 2021, which appeared in [local paper], I'd like to point out that most all string instruments (violins, guitars, banjos, etc.) are played with the LEFT hand on what is called the fingerboard, (the long, slender piece of wood that the strings rest on) and the right hand does the strumming. Probably only a musician would notice that the parrot/eagle should have had the neck of the guitar pointed to the right side of the cartoon, so his LEFT wing would be pressing the fingerboard and the right wing would have done the strumming.

I've played in college and community orchestras since 1968. While I play oboe (not a string instrument), I did teach elementary strings and band over my 30-year career. Just wanted to let you know, if you venture into future musical cartoons.

We at Bizarro Studios stand up to acknowledge and salute the correspondent's snotty blend of indignation and condescension. We'd like to give special mention mention to their wholesale erasure of Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Dick Dale, Elliot Easton, Tony Iommi, Slim Whitman, Albert King, Dave Wakeling, and all other southpaw guitarists and bass players.

Perhaps the writer taught music at a Catholic school, where left-handed students' sinister tendencies were beaten out of them with those long slender pieces of wood used to measure things.

Bonus Track

Dr. Isaiah Ross
"Feel So Good"

Dr. Ross (1925-1993) was an American blues musician and one-man band, who played harmonica, drums, and (left-handed) guitar, in addition to singing. His 1954 recording of "The Boogie Disease" on Sun Records includes the memorable lyric, "I may get better, but I'll never get well."

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