Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 24, 2010

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 17, 2010

One of the real treats of teenage children is having them list parenting techniques that they, as it turns out, really hated. For example, my kids never liked it when I locked them in the basement closet with all the spiders as punishment for refusing to steal cigarettes for me. Who knew they were so sensitive?… Um, right.

Actually the instances they tend to bring up are more on the subtle side. One technique that apparently was universally despised was my use of the term “standard disclaimer.” My kids were all both highly creative and somewhat dubious that I was capable of having good ideas. The net result being long, tedious delays before certain events. Sometimes Jane and I had time to indulge them; and sometimes (as all parents know) you just have to make things happen. Here’s how it worked:

Me: Okay, it’s time for bed. Let’s put these toys away.
Kid: But what if we want to play with them tomorrow.
Me: Then you can get them out tomorrow.
Kid: But what if I forget about the ones I want to play with.
Me: Put them on top.
Kid: But what if somebody moves them around and my favorite one falls to the bottom and gets crushed and turns to dust and floats —
Me: Standard disclaimer.

And with that the discussion was over. “Standard disclaimer” meant “all these scenarios, all the highly improbable eventualities you are spinning right now, they matter less than what we need to focus on. So we’re not going to discuss it further. Let’s go.”

Circling back around to this week’s comic: The Press is running a series of stories about the Grand River, the longest river in Michigan. Like many Midwestern waterways it was horribly polluted by the 1970s, but is in much better shape now. What happened? Well, as I hope you guessed, the correct answer was “C.” (You can’t just pick “B” because you’re a Charlton Heston fan — SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!) I’m old enough to remember that there were people who argued against the Clean Water Act and spun their highly improbable eventualities till somebody declared “standard disclaimer,” and it became law. It wasn’t a perfect law, certainly, but it was time to fix problems and make things happen.

Ugh. You know, sometimes I get to the end of these things and I think “what point was I trying to make?” Because I’m obviously torturing two ideas in a mighty attempt to get them to connect. Let’s go with this: If parents weren’t jerks sometimes then there wouldn’t be clean water.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 10, 2010

My friend Keith wrote me this nugget: “I’ll never understand the hard right. I mean, there are lots of places with weak governments and little regulation. They are called third world countries!”

Nicely done, Keith. (And by the way, no, it wasn’t Keith Olbermann.)

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, July 3, 2010

Riptides are always a summertime story in Michigan, surrounded as we are by massive lakes and miles of shoreline. Casinos continue to be a story as somebody always seems to think it’s a good idea to add just one more.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, June 26, 2010

When I was 8 or so, there was a family that moved into our neighborhood. They had a boy my age (I don’t remember his name), but his parents were much younger than mine. To broadly categorize his parents, I would say they were hippies. But that term brings with it some negative connotations, most of which I don’t think apply: I never witnessed them taking drugs or singing their virtues, they did not — to the best of recollection — add the word “man” to the end of every sentence, and they never publically wrestled naked in a mud puddle while listening to Hendrix. (I have a keen memory for “naked.”) Conversely, positive connotations don’t necessarily apply either: I don’t remember them being particularly open-minded, friendly, or willing to share their money.
 
No, they were more Sonny & Cher. Or more precisely, early 1970s Sonny & Cher: popular, hip, now, with clothing that had fringy material. They were, for the times, very cool parents. I cannot give specific evidence that this made them bad parents. They did have a “music” room that we were forbidden to enter. (It had shades, black-lights, a massive stereo, and lots and lots of velvet.) Ten points taken for that. But they also bought their kid a Mattel Vertibird and let us play with it on their kitchen counter. Ten points back for that.

Actually, my only problem with them was that they seemed so decidedly un-parental. That “coolness” thing (and maybe they were actually cool, I don’t know) just didn’t play for me. And it didn’t seem to play for their boy, either. Kids are perceptive like that — they pick up on these things. I decided then that I never wanted to be a cool parent. Nice, approachable, vaguely interesting: yes. Cutting edge of fashion, a friend first, stylish: definitely not.

This, then, was the feeling I tapped into for this week’s cartoon — the squeamishness of adults beyond a certain age trying to be and know cool. (So 10 points to me for knowing enough to look to my daughter’s iTunes library for a band to put on the young person’s shirt. And 10 points away for any sort of implication that Tegan & Sara are who I listen to in my velvet music room.)

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, June 19, 2010

 The backstory: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/06/questions_surrounding_hangar42.html

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, June 12, 2010

Sorry. Any extra time I had today for commenting was spent watching/listening to the USA getting robbed of a World Cup victory against Slovenia. I wonder how classy Maurice Edu and the ref are going to be about this one….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, June 5, 2010

West Michigan in general and Grand Rapids in particular has had some pretty remarkable success stories where private individuals and organizations have worked in tandem with various levels of government to produce successful results. A dandy example is Grand Rapids’ annual Festival of the Arts (or simply “Festival” as it’s known here). When I hear the “all government is bad” mantra of certain Tea Partiers prone to hyperbole, it seems like such a cop out and a disservice to those who have made it work.

So next year, if you’re feeling grouchy about government, you should really check out Festival. Nothing brightens your outlook like a summer street party with live music and food-on-a-stick.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Press, May 29, 2010

So this was my second shot at the May 29th cartoon. (Go here for the first and the back story.)

Spiked!

This was my first shot at the May 29th cartoon. There have been bills languishing in the Michigan legislature for some time addressing the issue of bullying in schools. Over 40 other states have passed anti-bully laws, so what’s holding Michigan back? I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let me tell you that these programs are not “pep rally, self-esteem-building, everybody wins a trophy” sort of affairs. They are, in fact, very much the opposite. They are the establishing of proper rules of behavior, real-life training for following the rules, and a challenge and expectation that everybody follows the rules. If you want a program that teaches children functional skills that will help them become sensible, responsible adults, you want an anti-bullying program in your school.

I know this firsthand because we have been blessed to have a program in the Grandville Public School system run by Christy Buck. (Christy is the woman in the comic, and, yes, I did check with her first.) Since I was more or less paraphrasing things I’ve heard her say, I thought it appropriate to draw her. Her program addresses bullying as part of a larger mental health initiative. Here’s a good overview article and a link to Christy’s organization, the Mental Health Foundation of West Michigan.

Now then, I wrote “first shot” because after submitting this cartoon, it got spiked (cartooning parlance for “decided against publishing”). I was disappointed, but it was absolutely understandable. I’m the guy who gets to smack the hornets nest, but it’s the editors who mostly have to deal with the angry hornets. And for this particular comic, there was real potential for unintentionally large swarms. In the end, it gave me a chance to draw a comic closer to the point I was trying make.

So what is it that’s holding Michigan back from anti-bullying legislation? I believe it be the Ewww! Factor. Sen. Alan Cropsey of DeWitt and other keepers of morality are leery of bill’s language. (For more details, here’s an article for that.) They are uncomfortable (and I believe that’s the appropriate word here, uncomfortable) with the possibility of a local school board picking up on the legislation and specifying homosexuality as a reason not to bully. (Of course Cropsey and others had no problem at all specifying homosexuality as a reason not to marry — in the Michigan frickin’ constitution!) So Cropsey may be a hypocrite, but I don’t think he’s a homophobe. The problem is that he, like many people, simply thinks too much about other people having sex.

Other people having sex (hetero, homo, and other variations we shall not enumerate) is disgusting. There are those who will tell you that it is beautiful and natural, but they are wrong. It is in fact nauseating, and the more you think about other people doing it, the more squeamish you’ll get and the more likely you will become fixated on preventing their nasty behavior. To the point where you will look completely past the larger good of something like anti-bullying legislation to stifle the remotest possibility of encouraging other people having …ewww! This is the Ewww! Factor.

Fortunately there’s an easy solution: Senator Cropsey, please stop thinking about other people having sex. There. That should do it.