Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, March 19, 2007

I know. I know. Again with the Michigan budget woes! But this week’s comic is a simple plea with a simple explanation: Perhaps Michigan leaders might take a look around to other, more successful Midwestern states (and apparently all of them are in fact more successful) to see what they are doing. Just pandering to beleaguered Michiganians with tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts seems a medieval solution to a modern problem. Brave Republicans (that is, ones no longer seeking public office) have been speaking out on this.

But this all might be crazy talk. I mean, hey, who’s the barber here?

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, March 12, 2007

I was born in 1963, so technically I’m a Baby Boomer, but I’ve never thought of myself as a Baby Boomer. In fact, I find a lot of Baby Boomerish things annoying. Maybe it’s my contrarian nature, I dunno, but they are an awfully large group of people who tend to see their lives and experiences as unique and special and, well, better than everybody else’s.

For proof I give you the movie The Big Chill. If you don’t remember it, here’s a link, but it’s about a group of University of Michigan graduates from the late 1960s who gather again some 15 years later when one of group commits suicide, and they deal with all that has changed between them and what hasn’t.

A decent movie. I liked it. Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Kline. Funny bits. I found Glenn Close to be kinda creepy (even before Fatal Attraction days), but nothing I couldn’t look past. What I didn’t like was other people (Baby Boomers) telling me that it was a freakin’ fantastic movie with the best music ever in the whole world. Good Lord, when The Big Chill came out in 1983 you couldn’t go to a college party without hearing “Big Chill music”! It was crazy. I mean, I could appreciate Motown, but I just couldn’t relate to it as the music of my youth. What about my music? My movie? My Big Chill?

Well a few years ago worker-mates and I did lunch and movie over at my friend Monty’s house and I saw the film Grosse Point Blank. It shares Big Chill’s “reacquainting old friends” theme, but here it’s Grosse Point, Michigan high school, and graduates are returning for their 10 year anniversary party. John Cusack is a professional hit-man who yearns to get back with his old girlfriend, Minnie Driver. Joan Cusack, Dan Aykroyd, Alan Arkin. Brilliant! And the music: the Clash, the Specials, Violent Femmes is brilliant, too.

Now I’m not saying that one film is better than the other. I’m telling you: acting, plot, humor, music, every category — Grosse Pointe Blank is a much better movie. Go ahead and argue with me, but you can’t deny the absolute greatness. It’s so obvious! It’s completely self-evident! It’s… oh, crap. Maybe I am a Baby Boomer….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, March 5, 2007

Man oh man oh man. It just keeps getting worse. (Or I suppose better, if you happen to be an editorial cartoonist with an ax to grind.)

A couple of weeks ago, several U.S Attorneys resigned (i.e., got sacked) by the Bush Administration’s Justice Department (i.e., Karl Rove). One happened to be from West Michigan, which allowed me to opine on the matter. At the time, I didn’t much know or care about the internal mechanics of why it happened. What caught me was the audacity of the official explanation: Poor performance.

Now poor performance is a completely legitimate excuse for firing somebody. In fact, I’d say it rates at the top with “stole all the money” and “is actively trying to kill co-workers.” No, my issue is that up until this point, poor performance has never seemed to be a problem with the Bush Administration. I don’t have time to list the lists, but for a case in point I give you Donald Rumsfeld. I can’t imagine a poorer performance as Secretary of Defense and yet the only reason he seemed to leave was avoid having to defend himself to a newly unfriendly Congress. Oy!

In the weeks since, the U.S. Attorney thing has only continued to blow up in several ways, all seeming to dovetail nicely with my original point. The cherry on top is that this happens to be Sunshine Week. (See my previous post.)

What more reason do you need to see how essential it is to keep a government open and information free?

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, February 26, 2007

When I first moved to West Michigan, Studio 28 in Wyoming was the premier theatre complex in the area, maybe the whole Midwest. With 20 screens and a central location on the main retail strip, 28th Street, Studio 28 was at the cusp of the megaplex boom.

But now, 20 years hence, new megaplexes have been built at new retail locations, and the glut of fresh screens is definitely hurting the former big dog. So in an effort to stay afloat, the owners petitioned the city of Wyoming to allow beer sales at the theatre. Part of this was to set themselves up to host banquets and events there. Makes sense. But mostly it’s about hoping that beer sales give them an edge on attracting movie goers. Wyoming, anxious to keep their shrinking retail business from further shrinkage, said okeydoke.

And this is the part of the story where we pass judgment. Go ahead. I did.

Done? Right. I actually had two judgment passes: First (as reflected in the comic), sharing a theatre with stupid people is bad enough, but stupid people with beer can’t help. Second, does the world really need another place to buy a $7 Budweiser? Yecch!

Confession: Not a week before I drew this, I sat in the State Theatre in Ann Arbor with my kids (because I had brought them there and bought their tickets) and watched three Beavis & Butthead cartoons roll across the screen. We were attending the Animation Show, a collection of recent animated features that otherwise don’t get widely seen. (The show itself had some very cool stuff!) Mike Judge, the creator of B&B, is one of the presenters, so I wasn’t surprised. It just wasn’t expected. They ran them as cartoons before the main show (like in olden days). Not a high point in my parenting career. Plus I was drunk. (Only the last bit isn’t actually true…)

And this is the part of the story where you get to pass judgment again. Go ahead, but this time, leave a comment….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, February 19, 2007

In this week’s edition, we find our cartoonist hero poking fun at …himself. Being that I work for a business publication in the great but beleaguered state of Michigan, you may have noticed that the decline of the American automobile industry has been an ongoing theme. The new bad news is that Chrysler is now in the dumpster and plans to layoff 10,000 or workers PDQ, many of them Michigan-based.

Maybe having grown up in Flint, the birthplace of General Motors, I am predisposed to empathy — I have noticed that I probably spend too much time romanticizing the past and lamenting the future. And while I do think some amount of feeling the melancholy is warranted, after awhile it can become, well, annoying.

At a certain point (and this would be a pretty good one) it’s time to concentrate efforts on building new ships and letting the old ones sail….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, February 12, 2007

No need to go into detail on this one. The Michigan state government is wrangling with yet another budget crisis: Projected revenue will fall short in the coming fiscal year, so it’s either cut services or raise taxes (or both). Something has got to give because the state simply cannot run a deficit. The federal government, however…

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, February 5, 2007

This comic came out the Monday after we here in West Michigan (and our town of Grandville in particular) were absolutely cur-rushed by an honest-to-God blizzard. Two feet of snow, blowing and drifting, negative temperatures, double-digit negative wind chills. It was nasty, sure. But despite my grousing about the time it took to remove all that snow from off and around the house and the fact that my feet (despite three plus pairs of socks) were perpetually cold, it really wasn’t that bad. In the end, I decided when I wanted to be inside and warm and away from the nastiness.

Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on the other hand — not so blessed. They are not only having to deal with levels of discomfort way, way beyond my drippy nose, but there are also the issues of being away from home, away from family, with an unclear mission, with mixed support, and — oh, yeah — all sorts of people constantly trying to kill them (with appalling success).

Which got me to thinking, what have we, the folks who aren’t in or around the military, done so far to sacrifice for these wars? (Yes, yes — beyond the deficit billions of our children’s tax money that has been spent.) Not much, really. And to be clear, by “sacrifice for the war,” I mean, “sacrifice to avoid war” and not “sacrifice so we can make more war.”

Specifically I’m thinking we need a serious, long-term, energy policy that slows and eventually stops the flow of money to countries and radicals that are funding wars against us. I’m talking about an effort beyond the scale of the one that put a man on the moon. What do we have to do to stop importing foreign oil? Gas taxes? Epic conservation efforts? Rethinking nuclear power? Serious public transportation? More funding for engineering schools? Hey, even if it means wearing four pairs of socks, wouldn’t it be worth the sacrifice?

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 29, 2007

Recently Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, did what companies of all flavors do: they announced a reorganization, consolidation, budgetary adjustment, fiscal refinement, monetary re-alignment. In other words, the sacked a whole bunch of people. And among the sackies were 2000 or so workers at a research and development center in Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is home to the main University of Michigan campus and as a college town has not had to deal so much with the massive layoffs that other Michigan towns have been experiencing for, oh, the past 25 years.

The news wasn’t shocking. Pfizer has been struggling of late; it will soon lose exclusive patents on some of its biggest money-makers and new products in their pipeline have been failing miserably. Still, when you’re Michigan and you’re doing your level best to transform into a state with professional, high-paying high-tech jobs, losing a significant hunk of scientific research paychecks is, as our Governor Granholm described it, “a punch in the gut.”

So the point of the comic was pretty much just to commiserate with that. Losing your job sucks, and unfortunately it’s a common experience in the modern work world — if not firsthand then at least having felt the whoosh of the swinging ax as it passed you by. You have to move on, of course. And not by trying to pass a law will fix everything because (and I don’t think I’m overusing the adverb here) that never, never, ever, never, ever works. No, I think it’s a dynamic mix of industry, government, and individuals facing the reality and working together on solutions. First step though is to acknowledge that it is, in fact, painful.

Unless, of course, there were a pill you could take. It’s a huge market. Perhaps Pfizer should look into that….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 22, 2007

A year ago, an independent bookstore opened in downtown Grand Rapids, River Bank Books. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago it closed. It was a bummer on several levels. First, you hate to see any bookstore close. Second, you’d like to see stores that aren’t part of mega-chains succeed. Third, things like bookstores make downtowns just that much nicer, and (whether it’s true or not) tend to be perceived as a bellwether of a city’s health.

I did, in fact, patronize the store. I didn’t go there as a destination, but it was nice to pop in while I was down there. I even bought some stuff, though obviously not enough.

So when I found out the news, I wanted to draw a comic about it because, you know, I wanted to call attention to the cause, and maybe help other downtown retailers and just sort of rally, um, support for the….

Okay. Honestly? I did, in fact, have some sympathies here, but my primary motivation for this week’s comic was my right thumbnail. A couple of days before deadline, I got my thumbnail bent back playing basketball. The nail luckily snapped back in place, but it was bruised halfway down and sore as hell. I couldn’t hold a pen without extending the thumb out, which was no good for detailed drawing. So I came up with this comic because it required limited drawing board work; I did most of it on the computer.

The thumb is all better now. So no smarty comments on next week’s comic about not being able to tell by the quality of the drawing….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 15, 2007

When people say, “That’s not fair” what they generally mean is that “Things didn’t go my way, and I’m not happy about it.” The natural response, then, is to invoke a convenient rule or regulation that seems vaguely objective in hopes of turning things back around their way. When this happens successfully, the first thing out of the mouths of people on the other side of the issue is, you guessed it, “That’s not fair.” And repeat. Just like the final step of shampoo bottle instructions. (Not that I’m terribly familiar with shampoo bottles.)

That’s the theme of this week’s comic. The particulars are kind of esoteric (and, frankly, not very interesting), but in general what happened was that Michigan Governor Granholm vetoed a bill that would have allowed Grand Rapids to do what it wanted to do (fund a sports authority to attract sporting events, like college basketball tournaments, high school state hockey finals, etc.). She did this mostly because Lansing complained that this was unfair. So, veto. Which caused Grand Rapids to complain that this was unfair. And repeat…