"Tom the Dancing Bug" just won the 2009 AAN Award for the Best Cartoon in Alternative Newsweeklies.
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June 2009
June 30, 2009
June 25, 2009
This week's comic
I'm only sorry I didn't have room to add one more WWII soldier in the rag tag group:
"Ghost" Caan.
June 17, 2009
Totes!
Now that actor Ed Helms is a big movie star, I can reveal the even more important truth about him -- you can blame and/or credit him as the actual originator of the word "totes," now ubiquitously used as a shortened version of "totally."
Years ago, I attended a performance of Prime Time Kalan, a small weekly live comedy show hosted by the prodigiously talented Elliott Kalan. In that show, Elliott interviewed Ed Helms, who at the time was a co-worker of Elliott's at The Daily Show (Ed was a correspondent, Elliott was a segment producer, and is now a writer).
One of Elliott's incisive questions was about the word "totes," which apparently Ed used around the office all the time, but which Elliott (and I) had never heard before. It had become infectious, and Elliott asked where it came from. Ed explained that it was something he started with some friends, and that wherever he used the word, it caught on.
I never heard the word again for some time, but a couple of years ago I started hearing it dropped in conversations, and then in the media, and now you totes can't get away from it.
Now, I'm no lexicologist, and it's possible that Ed actually heard the word before he started using it and misremembers originating it -- or maybe he's a bald-faced liar. But I think Ed is not only a very funny guy, and a superb comedic actor, but he's also the inventor of a wonderful word that has brought color and a mischievous sense of fun to the conversations of millions of Americans (particularly middle school girls), not to mention saving us valuable time and energy by reducing the syllables of an often-used word by 67%.
Do I salute Ed Helms? Totes.
June 11, 2009
This week's comic -- Judge Scalia!
How will Judge Scalia react to a newcomer on the Supreme Court?
You'll be so shocked at the answer, you just might launch into a balletic dance.
June 10, 2009
June 07, 2009
MoCCA Madness
Had a great time at MoCCA yesterday... many thanks to those who came by to say hi, and even drop a few bucks on a sketch to help the museum. Here's a picture I found on the web of myself and the immensely talented Dan (Bizarro) Piraro at our sketching table.
The highlight for me was the panel on Humbug, the 1950s comic book / magazine that's just been lavishly reprinted by Fantagraphics. Two of the five core players (and co-owners), Arnold Roth and Al Jaffee spoke, and they were in fine form, absolutely cracking up the audience from start to finish. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
New books? Among them, Brendan Burford has a new Syncopated anthology out...
And Brian McFadden just released this beaut last Tuesday. His comic strip Big Fat Whale is hilarious...
Great to see lots of friends there, unfortunately for too short a time, including cartooning power couple Mikhaela Reid and Masheka Wood, from whom I got a great minicomic, "So You've Been Laid Off."
June 04, 2009
MoCCA Art Fest Appearance
On this Saturday, June 6, from 1pm to 2pm, I'll be at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival doing sketches to raise money for the Museum.
I'll also bring a copy of my first book, titled simply "Tom the Dancing Bug," which I'll sell to (and sketch in for) the highest bidder during that time (bidding starts at $20). This book is long out of print, and has become quite expensive.
So stop by, say hello, buy a sketch (I'll draw anything you want, subject to the parameters of good taste and propriety), and/or put in a bid on the book.
Hope to see you there!
MoCCA Art Fest
69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Avenue, between 25th and 26th Streets
June 6th and 7th, 11am-6pm
$10 per day
$15 per weekend
MoCCA Members: $10 per weekend
June 03, 2009
This week's comic: Jon & Kate
I think this is the only time a comic came out of a blog post; after writing this post of a few days ago, I thought there may be a comic in my take on this Jon & Kate Plus Eight thing, and wrote this up.
I think I treaded a very fine line here, and I truly hope I didn’t cross it. I wanted the comic to humorously point out how this show, which had become very popular with children (and was marketed to them), had unexpectedly taken a dark turn. When you’ve got a reality children’s show, reality can take it to places inappropriate for children.
But I worry that I crossed the line into making fun of this family’s actual circumstances, which of course isn’t funny at all. I remain willfully ignorant of the specific allegations and accusations between Kate and Jon, so my extrapolations on marital and family difficulties are intended to be generic. And I intentionally didn’t depict any specific kids, but rather just drew a brood of eight kids of roughly the correct ages. So I hope I made choices that made my goal clear.
MoCCA ART FEST
This weekend, in New York City: The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art's annual Art Fest. I'll be there at a certain time (TBA), signing and sketching to raise funds for the museum. More info posted here later.