Weekly Dose of Dangle

Hae said that this week’s cartoon was the most depressing thing she’s ever seen. I kind of thought so too after I did it, but it was a reaction to all those new year’s top ten lists and year-in-review things. I decided to do one for the down and out. I thought it was a funny concept. I had to make it all up of course because I've been living comfortably, skiing and vacationing while you were huddled over your laptop in a doorway with a can of Sterno. MTK and Rosencrantz have been saying such things behind my back, how nice it must be to be a soft, old cartoonist. Well if it makes you feel any better the only way I can do it is by living beyond my means.

Anyway all that vacationing is behind me. It’s 2011! The ‘leven. I’ve got to clean the cobwebs out of my websites, rev up the promo machine, start shucking and jiving, tweeting every day, and being funny, funny, funny.

I sent out this year’s Troubletown calendar expecting a lot of intense blowback, but so far––hardly anything. Maybe it’s the silence of people unfriending me and unliking me. In case you haven’t gotten one, sorry, it’s an ass-a-month calendar dedicated to Sarah Palin. It’s all about ass, tacky and tasteless, and I cringe every time I put a stamp on one. I hope you folks get the spirit of it, because it wasn’t easy to find such sleaze. Give me your address if you want one.

Oscar is back in school. He’s such a grumpy kid (wonder where he gets that from) that we instituted a rule: at dinner everybody has to say one positive thing that happened to them that day. Oscar and I both started out by saying things like, “Today didn’t suck nearly as bad as I thought I would.” I think I said, “I lost four pounds instead of gaining more weight like I usually do.” Those aren’t positive statements. One’s therapist might ask why Oscar and I would answer the question that way? It reflects a certain world view. We’re working on it together.

I finished some exceedingly complex proposals to make whiteboard animation videos that took me days. The projects ended up being so expensive once I added all the production costs that the clients immediately bailed. Another client has paid me in advance to do some cartoons. In advance? Who pays for things in advance? How am I possibly going to do the work now, without the carrot? I honestly don’t know. I may take the money and disappear to Acapulco except it’s not that much.



Hae and I are making an effort to clean ourselves up and stop eating so much meat and garbage and sucking down booze and try to ease ourselves into a vegetarian lifestyle. It’s not one of those new year’s resolution things, I hate those. This is something that started in December, stopping during the holiday bacchanal, and is continuing now with a new sense of purpose. I am going to miss the barbeque grill and chomping all those carcinogen-coated ribs I make all summer long. I may still do it once during the summer, a rack of baby back pork ribs with my amazing sauce. Otherwise, pure vegetarian.

Looking forward to seeing Matt Taibbi’s article on John Boehner in Rolling Stone. I’ve been going down people’s blogrolls to dig up some new sources of information, the old ones are getting stale. Saw Time Bandits, which I wanted to love but I thought it sucked. I fell asleep actually. What else? I watched part of Nazis A Warning from History. In the first episode the Nazis are just a fledgling movement, considered a joke, Hitler is considered a clown. It’s exactly like the Tea Party.