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.
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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)
He was born in Akron, Ohio, grew up in Pittsburgh, and attended high school withiun 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."
Bounteous Bunches of Bizarro Booshwah
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