Auchtoon!

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

Sometimes the comic I end up drawing isn’t the one I wanted to draw. I wish I could blame this on somebody — my editor, my parents, the Man. But the truth is, it’s me: there are times I simply can’t come up with a suitable idea for the topic I’m feeling particularly passionate about. I imagine it’s something like a songwriter wanting to pen a love song for his soul mate, but instead of, say, The Beatles “I Will” or Ben Folds “The Luckiest” he keeps ending up with “Macarthur Park.” (Now just try to get that train wreck of a song out of your head for the rest of the day.)
 
What I really wanted to draw about this week was a quote I read in a Newsweek excerpt from T.R. Reid’s new book, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. It was a fascinating article (and I’m hoping a fascinating book). The basic premise is that a country ends up with the heath care system that reflects the character of the country. So for example, Canadians make no excuses for having to wait a long time for nonemergency care. That’s how they limit costs. And they don’t mind so long as the rich and poor have to wait the same period. Canadians are thrifty and egalitarian (and care mostly about just staying warm). In Germany, health insurance (private, by the way there is no “public option” in Germany but care is universal) will pay for a week at a spa to deal with stress. The British think that’s incredibly stupid and do not pay for it. (Stiff upper lip, the Brits.)

We Americans, of course, have a higgledy-piggledy system where we all think that (because we are smarter than everybody else) we can end up ahead. Everybody thinks this. But everybody can’t end up ahead. There are extreme winners and extreme losers. There are clever advantages to this and cruel efficiencies. Let’s not judge. After all, it very much reflects our American character. (And the same approach has really worked out swell for our financial system, right?!) Ahem. Anyway, the quote that I got stuck on was this:

“The United States is the only developed country where medical bankruptcies can happen.”

Think about that. The only country in the developed world where surviving cancer can and does ruin people. By quitting a job to take care of a loved one or choosing an uncovered procedure or making unlucky decisions on insurance coverage, you can beat the cancer (or not) and then get to foreclose and start over. That doesn’t seem to me to fit with our American character. At least, it shouldn’t.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, September 28, 2009

Is it October already? Time again here in Michigan for our annual state budget shannanigans….

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Family magazine, September 2009

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, September 21, 2009

I wish I had more time to write about ArtPrize, because I’ve really enjoyed it so far. For those of you in and around West Michigan, it would be hard for you not to know about it. For those outside, here’s a quick primer:

ArtPrize is an international art competition, being held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The exhibition will be from September 23 to October 10, 2009. ArtPrize is unusual both for the size of the top prize ($250,000, combined with other prizes cummulatively amounting to half a million dollars), as well as for the method of judging entries. There is no juror. The artists negotiate a venue with local exhibitors, and the works will be voted on by the public using modern networking technology.

And really, it’s not much more than that, which to me is the charm. Some works have exceeded expectations, some have confounded, some have thrilled, some have puzzled, some have offended, some have inspired, some have, well, you get the idea. And that’s what the cartoon was trying to convey — there has been a wide range of reactions (maybe even to the same piece of art). But the point is that people are moving through the streets of Grand Rapids and having reactions.

Hmmm… That all sounded a little too artsy, didn’t it? How about this instead: When Jane and I visited Wednesday, I saw an enormous table and chairs that has been plunked on top of a bridge, people constantly walking into other people’s camera shots (really funny when it’s not happening to you), pictures of naked painted ladies, plus we got a free beer. AND I successfully parallel parked (on the first attempt) in a free, on-street spot. There. That sounds more like a good time, right?

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, September 14, 2009

I kind of make it seem like this actually happened. To the best of my knowledge, it didn’t. But it could have. And “could have” is all you need in the cartooning world. (Have you noticed that the world is becoming more and more cartoonish every day?)

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, September 7, 2009

Actually, the first metaphor that came to mind for this didn’t involve vampires. Rather, I thought of moles that occasionally attack my yard. Well, “attack” is perhaps needlessly inflammatory — I guess it’s really more of a herd migration. A slow, underground herd migration. Not very majestic, but let’s move on.

When the moles show up, there was a time I would try to battle them off with traps, poison pellets, castor oil, and occasional curses. I fought the good fight and had some minor victories, but — being unwilling resort to intense chemical warfare, the moles generally ate what they came to ate and then left. Now that’s how it goes. When the moles get tired, they leave. And we have so many dang trees, my yard has limited areas of mole-preferred feeding grounds so they aren’t around for long. But, that said,  it’s much easier to think of the recession in terms of vampires than moles (and much more fun to draw), so that’s the way I went.

Slightly off-topic, but still comics related. I read a blog called The Comics Curmudgeon. The blogger (bloggist?) is a guy name Josh Fruhlinger and the idea is that he reads newspaper cartoons so you don’t have to and explains what’s going on. Generally these are the older serial strips like Mary Worth, Apartment 3G, Mark Trail, etc. But he also opines on “funny” strips. And by “funny,” I mean “funny” (the quotation marks with the full intent of indicating the word has the opposite meaning). This is of course a recipe for the sort of snarky, tedious blog that drains the soul. But Josh is an excellent writer and actually pulls it off quite well.

The reason I tell you this is because I was another bout of “why in God’s name are there so many crappy comic strips still cluttering the newspaper pages when there are clearly infinitely better ones available (Frazz, Speed Bump, Pearl Before Swine, Cul de Sac, to name a few) to replace them?” Today’s entry — and the particular comic strips he chose — seemed to illustrate my thoughts.

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, August 31, 2009

The easiest crowd-pleasing editorial cartoon to draw is the one with a sketch of something horrible or stupid, then slap a “government” label on it. Yes! Stupid, horrible government! Always messing up EVERYTHING!!! Government dumb-heads! We mock you because you are stupid and horrible all of the time!!!

Which is fine for editorial cartoonists. We’re under deadlines, and we really can’t be expected to think up new ideas all the time, can we? But, you… you not-editorial cartoonists! When you default to an “all government is bad” diatribe, well, that’s just being intellectually lazy.

And while I would love to spend a couple paragraphs taking you to task, I have some work to do so I can pay all of my money in taxes to the stupid, horrible government! But I leave you with this classic from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, “What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?”

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Family magazine, August 2009

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, August 24, 2009

Mr. Fitzthrower is a surly toe-cramp of a man who figured out the answer to everything 30 years ago and is just aching for somebody to express a view remotely to the contrary so he can unleash the pack of nonsensical expletives he kennels in his soul. Ms. Pantybunches is a rigid scanning-electron-microscope of a woman whose senses are entirely narrowed to detect that which she might take offense for the sole purpose of delivering her case for said offense in such excruciating detail that your internal organs race to escape through your ear canals. They meet, fall in love, and wacky hijinks ensue.

Anyway, that’s my idea for the next great American sitcom. What’s yours?

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, August 17, 2009

As a young man barely out of my teens, I would often make the summer pilgrimage to Pennsylvania to visit relatives with my then girlfriend Jane. My only living male relative, my great Uncle Mike, would be keen for some guy time, so I would take him on a field trip. This meant revisiting old stomping grounds (read: bars) in the City of Reading. The one I remember best is the Walnut Tavern, at Ninth and Walnut, just up from the Ludens candy factory and kitty-corner to St. Paul’s Catholic Church.                               

Uncle Mike had actually lived for some time in a room adjacent to the Walnut Tavern, so he pretty much knew all the barflies. He seemed to hate them all, but he knew them. Anyway, picture this: an oppressively hot late morning in a stifling old city made of brick, me winding a borrowed Buick down the warren-like streets, holding up traffic to drop my 80 year-old uncle with bad knees off near the door and then finding a street spot near to parallel park(!), catching up with my uncle, entering the bar, the light disappearing, the air becoming hotter and denser, and the smell of old dust, latrine, and regrets filling my air cavities. Got that?

Uncle Mike and I would sit at the bar. You didn’t want to sit at a table. Those were taken by the young ne’re-do-wells using the pool tables, the “Porta Rickins,” as Uncle Mike called them. (I could never tell if they were in fact of Puerto Rican decent — it was much too hazy to make out facial features. Besides, I was advised not to make eye contact.) The bartender would never actually acknowledge me. My uncle would order whatever and the bartender would put whatever in front of me. Mostly it was Heinekens. My uncle was hell on Heinekens. He would dismiss all other beers (especially massed produced American beers) with a barely audible curse and a twitch of his cane, like a cat burying something nasty.

Now realize this is not yet noon, I was hungry for lunch, and I wasn’t much of a drinker. Things would start to get weird. Generally an old man would sit down at the other side and try to engage me in conversation — except not with actual words but with kind of words and indecipherable hand gestures followed with a laugh. I would laugh along and that seemed to make those guys happy. Eventually Uncle Mike would advise (loud enough for the guy to hear) that he was a crazy [expletive], and I shouldn’t pay any attention to him. Nobody ever seemed at all bothered by this. As the beer ran through me, I’d stumble off to the bathroom to try to regain my senses. This only made reality worse; the bathroom had not been cleaned since the Roosevelt administration (not sure which Roosevelt) and was certainly no place to linger.

But getting around to my point and this week’s comic: At 11:30 the Price Is Right would come on the TV above the bar at an obscenely high sound level. As the TV was the only light source, it was hard not to look at it. So to recap: It’s morning, I’m drunk, I can’t breath, I can’t see much, my uncle is telling me stories about awful things that he had experienced in life, I’m surrounded by lunatics and ruffians, and Bob Barker is frickin’ screaming at me to guess the price of canned peas. …Yep, not too different from the health care debate.