Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 19, 2009

How appropriate — no time to write about this because I’ve got to throw/shovel snow this afternoon….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 12, 2009

Again, just me trying so work up some “regionalism” anger and resentment. Reinforcing the fact that we are better than them. Isn’t this how all demagogues start?…

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 5, 2009

The Detroit Auto Show (or more exactly, the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall in Detroit) is traditionally the social highlight of the year for Michigan. It’s glitz, it’s glam, it’s ostentatious, it’s conspicuous, it’s over-the-top and out-the-door. Which is to say, it’s what Detroit is very much not. But several years ago after our engineering forefathers developed the mechanics and refined the production of the horseless carriage, they discovered what others had discovered about cigarettes and soap and beer and power tools: sex sell ’em.

So every year for a couple of weeks in otherwise dowdy January, Detroiters spiff up the joint to sell their shiny metal boxes. Beautiful autos, beautiful displays, beautiful people (who must be imported because they never seem to be at Red Wings games) — it’s just a huge party!

Well, up until this year anyway. With the current state of affairs, the posh life is not quite the image the auto industry wants to project. So as the champagne is left uncorked and the crème brulee in cold storage, we look to the Amish for a simpler approach. Which may be a mistake because I don’t think they buy cars….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, December 29, 2008

I tried not to do this comic. But it was Christmas week, and my brain wasn’t forthcoming with anything better. So I settled for the ol’ “year in review” default. By the time it was published I was sick, sick, sick of all the lists and lookings back that get passed off in late December as interesting. Frankly, I was a bit embarrassed with this effort. Reading it now — nine days into the New Year — it seems a little bit fresher. And it does have a monster. We all know from Sesame Street that there’s nothing cooler than a monster….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, December 22, 2008

This week’s comic actually has roots in my longstanding (and intense) dislike of the Dallas Cowboys. I know professional football has no direct application to my life. I know time I spend thinking about and watching professional football is time wasted. I know acting on negative feelings about professional football is like a double waste of time. Okay? I know all this. But when you’re seven years old and you arbitrarily pick the San Francisco 49ers as your favorite team, and for three consecutive years the Cowboys eliminate the 49ers from the playoff, well, it sort of gets into your DNA.

So the story here is that the AFL (Arena Football League), which is professional indoor football, announced that it is suspending its upcoming season. Essentially what happened is that several franchise owners who also own NFL franchises (like Jerry Jones, the Dallas Cowboys owner) are hurting. They are spending too much on their NFL teams and their NFL stadiums. (The new Dallas Cowboy stadium will cost beyond $1.1 billion and is way, way over-budget.) These NFL owners — instead of trying to run the AFL more efficiently — decided to cut losses and walk away. Grand Rapids is home to the Rampage, a franchise owned by the DeVos’s, who were very keen to play the season. In fact, it was thought that a deal had been worked out, but an 11th hour decision by the NFL owners ended up killing it.

So, yeah, I don’t know all the details. And maybe suspending the season was the prudent thing to do. But I do so very much despise the Cowboys. And Jerry Jones is a cheap-shot jerkface stupid stupidhead. And that’s just the way it is.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, December 15, 2008

Yeah, yeah… I know it’s kind of a short-cut to call on Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” for a December editorial comic. But, hey, at least give me credit for using one of the lesser known bits — near the beginning when the two do-gooder portly gentlemen pay Mr. Scrooge a visit on Christmas Eve taking donations for the poor. Scrooge seethes at the duel impertinence of interrupting his work and expecting alms for undeserving wretches. He draws them in with a cold but civil, “Are there no prisons?” The gentlemen are caught off guard but remain sincere and try to explain themselves further. Then Scrooge begins to cut them to pieces with a brutally sarcastic “And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?” eventually finishing them off with the more quoted, “If they would rather die… they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population,” which of course later comes back to haunt him …literally.

Part of my affection for these quotes is that around Christmastime my father, when asked for the smallest of favors — say, “can I borrow a dollar?” would reply in a bad English accent, “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” It made him laugh. And if I actually had a good reason, I generally got the dollar….

My favorite Scrooge: George C Scott, 1984. What’s yours?

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, December 8, 2008

What’s the expression? Happier than a pig in, um, filth? If you imagine editorial cartoonists as pigs (not difficult, is it?) and bad news as filth, then I’d say the expression fits pretty well. Generally doom and despair are more fertile grounds for cartooning ideas than sunshine and rainbows.

Lately (say the entire year 2008) there has been no lack of bad news and to a large extent, I’ve just been going along for the ride. In fact, it has been difficult for me to choose from among many ideas. That’s good, but when ideas come easy there’s a danger of falling into a pattern. So for this week’s comic, I made a concerted effort to find another side.

Turns out if you look hard enough (which is to say you quit reading and listening to the news for five minutes), there are some good economic things happening out there — and the vast majority are with small and medium sized companies who intend to come out of this recession in a better position.

There. Next week we’ll get back to what sucks….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, December 1, 2008

This comic was printed ahead of the recent “round 2” of the Detroit automakers coming to Washington seeking a loan from the federal government. But it’s pretty appropriate for today because after all the negotiations and compromises, the Senate killed the proposal.

You know what? Fine. Good. Whatever. I’m done with it. I’m done with Citicorp popping by for an afternoon visit and a quick $35 billion while our corporations get bitch slapped by a bunch of pompous windbags for several weeks and leave with nothing. I’m done with years and years of my taxes leaving my state and landing in the unnecessary military bases, stupid infrastructure projects, and hopelessly inept schools of other states (talkin’ about you, Alabama). I’m done with no value being placed on companies that actually make stuff while companies that do nothing but shift funds and skim profits are cheered and subsidized.

I’m done with the pretzel logic of key senators voting against a loan to automakers because they felt environmental provisions were too restrictive — or because they screwed up so badly on the Wall Street bailout — or they’re mad that the UAW doesn’t want to break the promises it made over the years to provide for its retirees. Wait. That last one kinda makes sense — over the years Congress has consistently shown a willingness to break promises it had made to provide for military veterans, right?….

Clearly it’s time for Michigan to secede from the union and join Canada. Why not? Along with getting cheap meds we can share our Yooper accents and hunting and fishing stories — it’d certainly be nice to be in a country that just might appreciate us. Only drawback I see is having to print French on one side of our Frosted Flake boxes. And in a few years as our globe warms and those Southern Senators get really, really thirsty, us Canadians can look down upon them from our Great Lakes and tell them to go suck on their dry garden hoses. But politely, because Canadians are very polite. That’d be nice, too….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, November 24, 2008

Hope your Thanksgiving was without, um, drama….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, November 17, 2008

Instead of trying to smith some additional words for this post, I’m much better off linking you to Mitch Albom’s column in the Sunday Detroit Free Press titled, “If I had the floor at the auto rescue talks.” And if you don’t feel like going there, here’s how it starts:

Good morning. First of all, before you ask, I flew commercial. Northwest Airlines. Had a bag of peanuts for breakfast. Of course, that’s Northwest, which just merged with Delta, a merger you, our government, approved — and one which, inevitably, will lead to big bonuses for their executives and higher costs for us. You seem to be OK with that kind of business.

Which makes me wonder why you’re so against our kind of business? The kind we do in Detroit. The kind that gets your fingernails dirty. The kind where people use hammers and drills, not keystrokes. The kind where you get paid for making something, not moving money around a board and skimming a percentage.