Showing posts with label Mortality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mortality. Show all posts

Saturday, August 01, 2026

Don't Blink Or You'll Miss it

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend, Dan Piraro, created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno 

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Alan Watts


Change affects us daily in one way or another. Over the past week, we learned that our favorite local music venue, owned by people who have become our friends, is closing its doors in a few weeks after fifteen years of hard work, excellent wines, and unwavering support of musicians. 

The co-owners issued a public statement, reading in part:
Although this is painful and heartbreaking for all of us, we remain eternally grateful for the love and support the community and the scene have bestowed upon us.

We stand in awe of the level of talent that has graced our stages over the years, and we implore everyone to continue to support them wherever they perform.

Please also let this serve as a call to action to do everything you can to support your local independent music venues, especially those that support and host local music. These rooms are the lifeblood of this art form, and they desperately need your patronage.

And though our stages may go dark, the memories will burn bright in our hearts forever.

I had the pleasure of performing there many times over the years, and enjoyed hearing countless wonderful musicians as a patron of the club. Even so, we now wish we had gone more often.

I believe that our friends who have run the business will come through this huge change all right, but we'll all feel the loss of a great place to gather for music and friendship for a long time.

Alan Watts makes sense when he suggests plunging into change to make sense of it.

It's also a good idea to remember that nothing we care about will last forever, and neither will we, so let's appreciate what we have while we have it (and while we're still around).

I found this meta image of a pipe smoking another pipe, but must also credit Bizarro reader Stuart VR for leading me to it.

Stuart sent me Craigslist ad for a pipe with a bowl modeled after a Star Wars character. It was crafted by a famous Turkish pipemaker, Sadik Yanik, and I posted that photo in June.

Naturally, I had to find Yanik's webpage, and spent a ridiculous amount of time browsing the selections, where I spotted the Popeye model.

So, we offer another tip of the Bizarro porkpie to Stuart for sending me down a Meerschaum rabbit hole a few months ago.

When I'm not wasting time scrolling through photos of cartoon character heads, I write and draw Bizarro. Here's the latest six-pack o' laffs.

The software may not be intelligent, but it certainly mimics human behavior.

July 20 through 25 was Crash Test Dummy week. It resulted from an intense writing session where the gags about dummies poured out of my head. I couldn't draw them fast enough, and my sketchbook pages are almost indecipherable. Rather than a normal gag-writing day, it felt more like a possession.

I ended up drafting a total of ten crash test gags. I used six last week, the above this week, and I have one more in the pipeline. The remaining two weren't strong enough to use, but I'll share them in my Substack newsletter.

It's a reserved preserve.

This panel includes a rare variant Secret Symbol: The Invoited Boid.

Thank you, Jerome "Curly" Howard.

My understanding is that Elsa Lanchester's real (red-auburn) hair was teased up and augmented for the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein film. I almost colored this panel in gray tones, but decided against it. The other character is my version of the wonderful Teri Garr as Ilsa in Mel Brooks's 1974 Young Frankenstein. Caricature isn't my strongest suit, but I was relatively happy with the likenesses of both actors.

These gents have seen too many Daffy Duck cartoons.

Shameless Commercialism
Just a reminder that the Comics Kingdom Summer Shop has a full selection of new and old Bizarro T-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, and other items, which help keep your cartoonist in caffeine.

Bonus Track

Daevid Allen: "Stoned Innocent Frankenstein"
from Bananamoon
BYG Records LP, 1971 


I'm an unashamed fan of the goofy 1970s psychedelic-space-hippie recordings of Daevid Allen (1938-2015) and his band/family/collective, Gong. Friday's cartoon reminded me of this tune from early in his career. 

I'm also quite fond of this quote on mortality from Daevid Allen:
I can only hope that during this journey, I have somehow contributed to the happiness in the lives of a few other fellow humans.


 

5 comments:
Labels: , , , , ,

Saturday, July 11, 2026

Gone With the Steam

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday-through-Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend, Dan Piraro, created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno 

Greetings from the sunny climes of Hollywood Gardens, PA. 

Your cartoonist's schedule is heavily loaded this week and weekend, so we're going with a to-the-point blog entry today, starting with a vintage magazine ad as our pipe pic.
I stumbled upon this image while searching for something else on eBay. I discovered a seller who lists hundreds of tiny advertisements clipped from old magazines. One wonders if this person found an untapped market or just has a weird hobby.

Maybe one day, Bizarro cartoons snipped from newspapers will be offered for auction. Until then, you can read the latest batch in digital form.

The week kicked off with the latest in our floating sheet-ghost series. Although the art is sparse, every time I do one of these, I spend more time than I expected to on the drawing.

European starlings have lived in North America since the late 1800s, but this particular bird still embraces its roots.

Some sophisticated members of this species are less prone to laughing out loud compared to their unevolved cousins.

Focus groups thought the user instructions were "a little preachy."

Going down with the ship may have been a preferable option.

The cargo pockets come in handy at BYOB restaurants.

Thanks for stopping by. We do this thing every Saturday. If you'd like to be notified when there's a new post, you can subscribe to my free Substack newsletter, where you'll also see a teaser from an upcoming cartoon, samples of my pre-Bizarro art, and whatever else I can jam in there.

Fresh Fashions


The Comics Kingdom Summer Shop has been stocked with an assortment of Bizarro T-shirts, coffee mugs, water bottles, and insulated tumblers. Here's one of our understated Secret Symbol shirts for a sophisticated look.

Bonus Track

Golems of the Red Planet: "Hadrial"
from Masada Surf, 2026


Masada Surf has been in heavy rotation here at Bizarro Studios North. Here's all you need to know, from the band themselves:
GOLEMS OF THE RED PLANET is a 3rd wave surf exploration of John Zorn's MASADA songbooks. But let's back up... In l992-l993, composer John Zorn began composing a series of short melodies written in modes found in Ashkenazi Jewish music - a project he called MASADA. Now, over 25 years later, Zorn has composed 613 of these little ditties - the number of commandments found in the Torah. Each of these compositions is written on half a sheet of staff paper (no more than five staves) and written to be performed by any instrumentation. These pieces have been performed by genres as diverse as piano jazz, string quartet, hardcore, all female acapella, salsa, afrobeat, and many more .... but never SURF! And as many of us know, the best surf music uses middle-eastern scales. So we're exploring this vast songbook of new Jewish music and exploring it in a 3rd wave surf context - in the vein of bands like Man or Astro-Man? or Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. Shalom, motherfuckers!

I'm thrilled to share their music with you and looking forward to seeing them live at the end of the month.



 

6 comments:
Labels: , , ,

Saturday, May 16, 2026

The Dummy Trilogy

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend, Dan Piraro, created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno 

You gotta have a hood for your engine. Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can’t escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

Don van Vliet a/k/a Captain Beefheart

from his "Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing."


As someone who regularly wears a hat, the good Captain's advice caught my eye. When performing as part of a musical combo, I invariably wore a hat, and we all tried to look sharp onstage. 

The lid didn't make me a better instrumentalist (I've always been an advanced beginner at best) or singer, but dressing for gigs helped us focus. It put us into a more professional frame of mind and showed respect for our listeners.

Appearances can't make up for a lackluster performance, but optics can get the audience on the band's side before a note is played.

Beefheart was in good company. Thelonious Monk's advice for musicians included the note:

What should we wear tonight? Sharp as possible!


This intro doesn't have much to do with the blog's blog's cartoon content, but is offered as an amuse-bouche before the main course.

Our pipe pic of the week is an ancient magazine ad for the Freeman pipe.


The tagline, "A Clean Smoke for Clean People," is intriguing. Was it a coded message? And, really, how clean can you be when you're smoking a pipe?

I didn't wear a hat while drawing this week's Bizarro panels, but did put one on whenever I left the house.

For another two bucks a month, you can go ad-free.

Years ago, an acquaintance I ran into at a coffee shop looked across the table and said to me, "You have small wrists for a man." I don't remember how (or if) I replied, but that interaction bubbled up in my mind as I sketched a customer at a palm reader.

As my cartoon partner, Dan Piraro, recently said about another gag, "The brain is a labyrinth with a mind of its own."

In case you ever wondered what a near-death experience is like for a ventriloquist dummy, this is my best guess.

...apparently, that experience was very near.

When writing this week's batch back in February, the "Out of Dummy Experience" came to me first, followed by this one involving a ghost dummy and a ventriloquist medium. I decided there should be a funeral gag to link them, resulting in a midweek sort-of narrative.

The ghost is my favorite of the three, and like the first one, it has layers of weirdness.

The Greek gods all went by multiple titles, or epithets. Zeus had many dozens, including Zeus Ceraunius (of the Thunderbolt), Zeus Labrandeus (the Furious), and Zeus Palamnaeus (Punisher of Murderers), so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine Zeus Corrector Orthographiae.

Come by again next Saturday for more cartoons and commentary, and don't forget to put a hood on your engine.

Bonus Track

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band:
"I Love You, You Big Dummy"
from Lick My Decals Off, Baby
Straight Records (1970)


When Lick My Decals Off was recorded, the Magic Band included Art Tripp on drums and percussion, after a stint with the Mothers of Invention. Tripp also went by the names Ted Cactus, Ed Marimba, and "Artie with the Green Mustache." 

He was born in Akron, Ohio, grew up in Pittsburgh, and attended high school within walking distance of Bizarro Studios North. Our local recreation center still bears a plaque thanking Tripp's father for his financial support.

After retiring from music in the late 1970s, Tripp became a chiropractor. In a 2022 interview, he said, "With the possible exception of the movie business, the business of pop music is the most rotten there is."


10 comments:
Labels: , , ,

Saturday, March 28, 2026

My Back Pages

This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend, Dan Piraro, created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.

Wayno 

The earth cannot move without music. The earth moves in a certain rhythm, a certain sound, a certain note. When the music stops, the earth will stop, and everything upon it will die.

Sun Ra, Space is the Place


Sun Ra was one of the most prolific recording artists of all time. He released more than 100 albums in his lifetime. That's a conservative estimate. I have around forty Sun Ra discs in my music library, and I revisit them regularly.

Ra left the earthly plane in 1993 at age 79, and multi-instrumentalist Marshall Allen, who will soon be 102, continues to lead the Sun Ra Arkestra. 

I usually listen to music while working, and I believe that live music is beneficial to one's well-being, so Sun Ra's words resonate with me. 

This month, I attended three terrific musical performances. On March 3, I saw Jonathan Richman, and more recently, two great shows at a favorite venue, The Original Pittsburgh Winery: The Town Pants, a Celtic/Roots/Rock band from Canada, and the Rebirth Brass Band from New Orleans.

After spending a good part of my adult life in loud clubs, in the audience, and sometimes onstage, I now have some hearing loss. It's not bad enough to require hearing aids, but I'm protective of what remains. Jonathan Richman's show was minimally amplified, so I didn't wear hearing protection that night.

I have earplugs with three sets of filters for different levels of noise reduction. At the Town Pants show, I realized I was wearing the strongest filters, which I used when running a snow blower. The show sounded a bit muffled, but we still had a great time.

Do yourself a favor and check out some live music. Even if it's not something you'd normally listen to at home, it's always worthwhile to hear accomplished players who do it every day.

Today's pipe pic is a portrait of Chinese cartoonist Hua Junwu, whom I learned about from Richard G's informative blog, Who's Out There?


A digital version of Chinese Satire and Humor, a collection of Hua's cartoons, is available here. 

The cartoons I've seen are funny and satirical, and it seems his sharp humor was tempered by a friendly drawing style and beautiful brushwork.

Many of his cartoons are wordless with only a short title, and they translate well. Big thanks to Richard for introducing me to Hua's work.


This week's Bizarro gags might look rather odd, in part because there are almost no Secret Symbols. In early January, the symbols took a week of sick leave, and they're almost totally absent in this batch. Since then, they've been working at full strength.

This one reminds me of my days at a series of normal office jobs.

If the art looks different, it's because I did this week's gags in 2011, when I filled in for Dan Piraro as guest cartoonist. I inked with a heavier line than I do today. At that time, I was also assisting Dan by coloring his black-and-white art, and I used his more elaborate shading technique.

When the Secret Symbols were fighting off that virus, they passed it on to me—we work in a small studio space—and while I recovered, we pulled this batch of gags out of the storage unit.

Fifteen years ago, felonious fashion was a thing.

The Bunny of Exuberance was the last symbol to be knocked out by the illness. Apparently, an all-carrot diet provided some immunity.

I don't think I'd cram as many words into one panel today, and I hope I wouldn't be as snarky.


Clowns in one of my gags? Shocking.


This wasn't meant as a political statement in 2011. I'm not sure how it will be received today, but the online comments will let us know soon enough.


Thanks for indulging me while I recovered three months ago. We'll be back next week with new, improved gags, and the usual complement of Secret Symbols.

Bonus Track

Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns
"Would You Believe It? (I have a Cold)"
Ace Records single, 1959


This is a lesser-known Huey Smith song, with a great vocal by Bobby Marchan.


10 comments:
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)