Help a Brother Out?

I'm a regular columnist for VegNews magazine, writing a column in each issue about the humorous side of vegetarianism and veganism called "Plant-Based Piraro." Once each year, the magazine sponsors a vote for readers' favorite this-and-that.

If you want to help a great cause, go to this page and vote for the following two nominees in these two categories:
Best Animal Sanctuary....Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary
Best Column...Plant-Based Piraro (sample article from last year here)

You have to cycle through the categories to find those two, along the way you can vote for whatever you wish, of course, or nothing. Whatever suits you. At the end, they'll ask for your email address and name, if you provide it you'll be entered to win some prizes, but it isn't necessary if you prefer to remain anonymous.

Thanks, kids. You're "phat," "stoopid" and "sick."

DISTRESSING NEWS

I just found out that the Kansas City Star is running a comics poll, asking readers which features they should get rid of. That's cool, people do that all the time and I usually fare well. But in this case, they start by saying, here is a list of ten comics we think suck, pick your five least favorite so we can know which ones to kill.

Ouch. How the hell did Bizarro get on a list with B.C., Beetle Bailey, For Better or for Worse, Cathy, Mark Trail, Marmaduke, Real Life Adventures, Shoe, Wizard of Id? I'm really offended by this. Most of these features aren't even written or drawn by the original creators anymore.

Anyway, if you want to put in your 2 cents, one way or the other, here is the link:
http://www.kansascity.com/851/story/1266665.html

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Lip Brush With Fame

On occasion I get mistaken for Elvis Costello by people who don't really know what Elvis Costello looks like. They see glasses and a hat and figure I must be him. But now it will be an even more frequent nuisance, because Elvis is sporting a mustache. Damn that look-stealing limey. What next? A cigar?













He has even fashioned his hairline to look like mine, as evidenced in this photo of him doffing his hat at the end of Conan O'Brien's show last night.















For anyone interested in how to accurately tell the difference between myself and Costello in the wild, I offer this brief list of defining characteristics:

1. His hair is longer and wavy, mine is very short
2. The brims of his hats are larger than mine
3. His clothing is expensive, mine is mostly from resale shops and smells of cigars
4. He has Diana Krawl on his arm, I have CHNW (personally, I think I come out ahead on this one)
5. I am the one occasionally mistaken for Elvis Costello, he is the one never mistaken for me.

Farmy Fun

It's time again for the June Jamboree at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. It's this Saturday, only 2 1/2 hours north of NYC, you can get there cheaply and easily on Trailways from Port Authority on 42nd.

Lots of fun, very laid back, meet and hang out with other species, take pictures of your kid licking a pig's nose. You can't beat it for the price!

If you're still saying, "DAN, I WANT MORE INFO!," click here.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Bizarro is brought to you today by Poolside Parking.

Before I contracted Howard Hughes Syndrome and became a hermit, I used to go to a lot of comedy shows and small theater events in NYC. I saw some amazingly strange stage acts, some good, most terrible, but a few tremendously memorable.

One favorite along these lines is the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, a married couple and their young daughter who show slides they've collected from garage and estate sales while playing songs they've written about them. The kid plays the drums and sings while the dad sings, plays guitar or piano, and the mom operates the slide projector. They are not to be missed if you ever have the chance.

Another highlight is Corn Mo, a guy who plays accordian and other various keyboards and sings odd songs. His demeanor is outrageously sincere for a guy in an old tux with an accordian, like Jimi Hendrix with a squeeze box. Don't miss a chance to see him, either, he really rocks.

CHNW and I used to regularly go to various variety shows and comedy showcases with these kinds of acts and we also got to see a few of the SNL stars as they were coming up. We saw Fred Armisen do a hilarious sketch about self-defense back in '02 or '03 and chatted him up after. We sort of became friends (that is to say that we still chat when we run into each other and he knows my cartoon), before we knew he would be a famous comedy genius on TV. I love that about NYC. (We also saw an early stand-up routine by Tracy Morgan but it was standard stand-up, nothing in the category of the bell-ringer above.)

There are plenty of strange musical and comedy acts like this around NYC and that's why this cartoon appealed to me. The idea was sent by my friend, Derek Malo, and is, in my opinion, one of his better efforts. Because I use ideas by other people on occasion, one commentator on this blog accused Bizarro of becoming like Pluggers, which is a syndicated feature that uses suggestions from readers every day and prints their name and location in a box in the cartoon. The difference between what I do and Pluggers, I think, is that the jokes I choose by other people are actually good. I imagine that readers want a good cartoon, regardless of who wrote it, as opposed to a cartoon by me, whether it is any good or not. Maybe my ego just isn't lopsided enough.

Emergency

PLEASE HELP US!!!

Sorry to alarm you with this picture of your favorite cartoonist (let me have my fantasies) and his CHNW being mauled by a polar bear, but I felt the need to make a dramatic point. Read on, but relax, I assure you we were in no danger in the picture above.

I rarely ask anything of you but I'd like to ask you to help out CHNW and me today. As some of you know, we are founding board members of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. It's expensive to rescue animals, what with all the night drops over enemy territory, ninja outfits, Navy Seal sharpshooters, etc., and charity dollars are way down in this currently creepy economy.

But here is the good news: a rich dude has promised he would match all the funds we could raise throughout May! We're as happy as a circus tiger with a trainer's arm in his mouth and are pushing hard to get some bucks to come in THIS MONTH. Please toss us a little (or a lot) something, every little bit helps and every dollar will be doubled! I can personally vouch that we're not rich, we work hard, and every penny goes to helping animals and the environment. For reals.

(NOTE: Some words in the text above have been italicized for your ease in picking out the important bits.)

Please Get Some Help

Bizarro is brought to you today by Biker Chick.

I began consulting psychotherapists and counselors in my late twenties when I was beset with depression. I've always found therapy helpful in a crisis-by-crisis context, that is to say that I don't just go once a week for years on end no matter what is going on in my life, like Woody Allen or this pampered rich lady I know who actually just needs more attention for her trivial soap-opera-of-a-life than the public is willing to give her. I go when I'm having trouble with something specific like a breakup, a job change, etc., and continue until I've got a grip on it. That's how it works best for me.

My first therapist, the one treating me for depression all those years ago, taught me to monitor my feelings more closely, discern why I react a certain way to certain stimulus, and be more assertive in getting my own needs met. Then she died of cancer. I immediately sought the help of another therapist in dealing with my abandonment issues.

The most important thing about the process is to pick a therapist who is right for you. For those of you considering therapy for the first time, here are some tips about choosing one:

1. Once your therapist begins helping you help yourself, it is quite common to have very strong feelings for them. Some patients even believe they are in love. This is called "transference." For this reason, pick a therapist that you could not possibly imagine having sex with, no matter how drunk you were. If you're straight, pick someone of the same sex, if you're gay, choose someone of the opposite sex. If you've got "daddy issues," choose someone younger than you, etc. My current therapist is an avid fan of reality game shows, smells like damp Fritos, and dresses like a clown.

2.Therapy styles vary widely. Some offer advice and feedback, others sit silently for months and force you to do all the work, claiming the only way one can truly learn is to discover the answers for oneself. Choose the style that is right for you. If you are actually interested in solving your problems and moving on, someone who offers feedback might be best. If, on the other hand, you just want someone to listen to you whine, your friends and family have cut you off, and money is no object, the quiet kind may be just what the doctor ordered. My own opinion is that the quiet kind is little more than a very expensive bartender who serves no alcohol.

3. Run a background check on your therapist. If he or she has a record of extracting personal information from vulnerable people then posting it on a web site with hidden-camera videos of them using their tiny office bathroom, shy away. The legal case can drag on for years.

4. When speaking of your spouse, refrain from expressions like, "I want to kill her." They are required to report this to the authorities.

I hope you have found this list to be informative and that it helps you find help. If you're anything like me, you really need it.

Do These Shoes Make My Feet Look Big?

Bizarro is brought to you today by Unlikely Comedians.

At the risk of offending some of my readers, I will confess that I do not believe in "Bigfoot," "Sasquatch," "The Abominable Snowman," etc. There is simply not enough (or any) evidence beyond the personal accounts of woodsy folk tanked up on Bud.

I do not mean to say that I think it is alcohol that makes people see things in the woods, far from it. We all possess this very natural and useful tendency, no inebriation required. All mammals have evolved brains that see something where there is nothing, rather than nothing where there is something. It helps keep us alive. If you mistake a shadow for an intruder, no harm done, better safe than sorry. If you mistake an intruder for a shadow, you less likely to live long enough to reproduce this propensity for poor judgment.

So when we see something move in the wilderness, we have to make it into something. Our brain processes patterns and comes to conclusions, without our even trying. This alone explains the timeless, worldwide phenomenon of people seeing monsters in the woods, lakes, ocean, sky, snow. (It also explains our lust for conspiracy theories and our compulsion to invent gods. If we don't know the answer, we make one up to satisfy our minds. Without these answers, we go nuts. With an explanation, no matter how ridiculous, we are satisfied.)

If you're still not convinced there are no "Bigfoots" (Bigfeet?) ask yourself this: where are the bodies? How does this monkey-bear-human with size 29 shoes manage to hide not only itself and all of its kind from being adequately photographed, but its corpses, skeletons and fossils as well? We've found skeletons from mammoths and dinosaurs, for crying out loud, where are the giant skeleton feet of Bigfoot? And considering how many blood-thirsty apes of the human kind there are running around the wilderness wearing camo and waving guns, how is it none of these large, hirsuit, slow-moving targets have been shot? Hell, our species is infamous for shooting anything that moves and fairly regularly even shoots one another, which is why they wear those lovely orange vestments. So why are there no Bigheads proudly displayed on the walls of the dens of Alabama sportsmen?

Wait...now I'm beginning to see a pattern. Perhaps Bigfoots are smarter than we realize. Perhaps they dress in florescent orange camo, carry guns, drive off-road vehicles with gigantic tires and listen to Kenny Chesney. No wonder we've never photographed or captured one in the wild, they are living among us!

Apptitude for Driving

Bizarro is brought to you today by Future Serial Killers.

One of my business partners and closest friends habitually texts while he drives. He sends long paragraphs of information – some of it business related, some of it random musings – disjointed, short, sentences full of misspellings, all sorts of things. I have admonished him on numerous occasions and even refused to answer his texts when I know he is driving, but the habit is one he cannot seem to break.

I have tried to mentally prepare myself for the call I know will eventually come… "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Dan, but Buzz has had an accident." (No, his name isn't really "Buzz," but I call him that to tease him about his other strange [but less dangerous] habit of shaving his entire body daily. At least he doesn't do it while he drives. That I know of.)

Buzz is also hooked on iPhone apps, so this joke is entirely aimed at him. The only thing I didn't do was make the character resemble him. Buzz is so disturbing looking that it would have distracted from the joke and confused readers. Meet Buzz (unshaven).

So please – if you're a good person who contributes positively to the world, don't text and drive. The rest of you can do what you want, but please keep your car off my balcony.

Amazing Technology

Thanks to regular blog reader and NYC friend, Jezzka, for this notice.

God in Nature

This is a special posting about an unusual phenomenon called to my attention by a regular reader in Minnesota, whom I'll call "Charles."

It seems that on the day the cartoon below appeared in the paper, Charles saw the face of Jesus in it. He described this to me by email and asked if I'd done it intentionally. I politely told him no and that I couldn't figure out what he was talking about.

















He sent me this explanation but I still could not see it and was content to write him off as one of the legions of mentally unbalanced people who follow Bizarro.











Finally, just out of curiosity, I backed way off from the computer and took my glasses off. With the proper distance and blur it came into focus, so to speak.

Below is a version I've doctored with an orange outline which describes the shape I believe he saw. It's a fairly unconventional version of Jesus, but perhaps this is how our Minnesota friend sees him. Or, perhaps "He" just has a wacky side.




















Charles later told me that the morning he witnessed the divine vision he had a bad case of flu and was not wearing his glasses. I couldn't help but wonder how many times this has happened people reading Garfield or Apartment 3G.

Let this be a warning to us all about viewing the funny pages in poor health and without the proper optical aids.


For more images of the almighty, click on the words "God's wrath" in the previous post.
Many thanks to Chuck Strinz for bringing this to my attention. Check out his video production company, Back On The Mississippi and his current PBS project, Museums of Minnesota.

Le Chick Cam

Please enjoy this live cam from Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary responsibly.

As happens frequently this time of year we received a call from a school teacher looking for a home for 5 just-hatched chicks -- the living, breathing result of a classroom project. As cute as these fuzzballs are, they will grow into larger hens and roosters who have a lot of space and care requirements, and can live for over a decade.

If you're a parent or student who hears of an upcoming hatching project, please encourage that teacher to consider more humane alternatives to hatching.

In the meantime, they're ridiculously cute, so during daytime hours EST you can see them live:


Financial times are tough for us all and even worse for charities. But for only a few bucks a month you can help these homeys get by. Anyone who donates to their care automatically becomes my BFF. For reals. Awesome. Dude.

BTW: that's a child's teddy bear in the cage, not roadkill.

Nature's Candy

Bizarro is brought to you today by Fair Warning.

Simply put, some people care about their health, some don't. You can preach till you're blue in the face about health and nutrition to some folks and it just doesn't matter. That's fine, I don't really care if other people are healthy or not. I figure diet is just another type of natural selection.

If you happen to care about your health, however, what you eat is the single most important area of focus. Fill a Lamborghini with high quality fuel and you've got a race car. Fill it with corn syrup, it's up on blocks.

Most people know by now that corn syrup is bad for you. It's not because it's full of cancer-causing chemicals (like grilled chicken) as much as that it is incredibly fattening and it is in virtually all processed foods. Even stuff you might think is good for you.

Other things to eliminate from your diet or eat in moderation: nails, glass, burning coals, explosives, plastics, battery acid, batteries, animal protein, lead, mercury, urine, cyanide, turpentine, anything Rush Limbaugh eats, road signs, scissors.

I'm a vegan but I'm not a huge health nut. I enjoy the health benefits of a vegan diet, which are numerous, but I am vegan for ethical reasons (animal compassion, environment), not for my own health. I stay away from products with corn syrup because I like being thin, but it does not contain animal products, so it is technically vegan. Some people assume veganism is a starvation diet and we're all thin. Not true. I know plenty of vegans and they come in all sizes from shoestring to blimp. Soda pop, french fries, peanut butter – all vegan, all fattening.

True, vegans are less likely to be overweight than the average American who eats anything that tastes good, but that is more because they are already paying close attention to what they eat so they tend to eat healthier. Animal products are inherently more fattening than plant products, so you're already halfway there just by cutting those out.

A blog reader brought to my attention a commercial about corn syrup that has been parodied to humorous effect. Here is the original:



Here is one of the many spoofs (there are other good ones, too, check them all out):


Here is a boring but true video about corn syrup's actual health benefits and dangers:


DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against corn in it's natural state–it is good for you, in spite of what some carb-o-phobics will tell you. I am not making fun of Rush Limbaugh because he is fat–there are so many things wrong with him that I cannot possibly list them all here. I am not making fun of fat people in general, unless they are fans of Rush Limbaugh. If the videos above don't work, go to YouTube and search "corn syrup commercial." I eat french fries and peanut butter in moderation, they are two of my favorite things to put in my mouth.

Gumby and Goliath

(And the angel said, "Weep not over the smallness of the image, for ye must only click it and have faith.")

Bizarro is brought to you today by Drunken Shriners.

I didn't realize this was Spring Break for some people when I submitted this cartoon six weeks ago, but it's a fairly suitable image for it. Just change the waiter's line to, "Seniors?" This cartoon, however, is not about getting drunk, but melting in the sun because you're made of putty. Just so you know.

CHNW and I recently saw a pretty interesting documentary on Art Clokey, the guy who invented the Gumby and Pokey series. The story behind the development of the series was somewhat interesting but the strange twists that his personal life took are fascinating. I recommend it to anyone interested in human behavior. The film is called Gumby Dharma. Careful with that keyboard – if you accidentally order Dharma and Greg, my previous comments may not apply.

Clokey is also responsible for the Davey and Goliath series, animated shorts that are as difficult to turn away from as a train wreck and for all the same reasons. D&G has the same quirky, jerky animation techniques but adds an insufferably precious element of morality. If you're like me, it makes you squirm and giggle with embarassment for the producers who created it as you ask yourself incredulously, "who buys this crap?" But the documentary casts a whole new light on it.

If you've not seen Davey and Goliath, ask your doctor if watching Davey and Goliath is right for you.

(DISCLAIMER: As a child, I was a fan of Gumby and Pokey and do not wish them ill. By making fun of D&G, I am not making fun of Christianity or morals per se. Even when I was a devout Christian, I found D&G to be squirm worthy. Linking to a picture of a figurine of Jesus with children does not mean I hate children or your idea of Jesus. My use of the word "morality" in a humorous context does not mean I am ammoral. Your experiences while watching the aforementioned programs may be different from mine.)

Pi Day

(click the funny funny picture to make it bigger, clearer)

This special edition of Bizarro is brought to you by Pi.

Because today is March 14th (3/14), math nerds everywhere (like me) are celebrating Pi Day. Sometimes confused with Pie Day, which is on January 23rd, today's variety refers to the magical math number 3.1415blahblahblah, which is called "pi" by those of us in the know.

There are lots of things you can do with pi, like figure out something about a circle or time travel or something. It's been a while since I was in a math class, but I remember it was really useful.

For you history buffs, "pi" was first invented by the people who built Stonehenge, which is really just a bunch of them stuck together.

NYC COMEDY SHOW with ME!

For you readers who live in the New York City vicinity, I'll be emceeing a really terrific comedy show next week. It's a charity benefit we do every year and is usually a sellout, so get your tix now!

If you come to the show and tell me you found out about it from this blog, I'll give you a coupon for a 50% discount at any retail outlet of any kind in the 50 United States. Just tell them "Dan sent me," then wink.





















I know all these comedians and can vouch for their funniness. And I'm one hell of a funny emcee, so you can't miss with this ticket. It's the perfect pre-Valentine's date because scientists have proven in the laboratory that nothing gets people feeling sexy faster than comedy. So-o-o much better than staying at home and being surprised by burglars. Especially French ones.

More info here!

Scary World of Danger

Bizarro is brought to you today by Urban Health Hazards.

If your local paper prints its comics in color on weekdays as well as Sunday, you may have seen this cartoon in a different form. I was out of town and unable to send my own color files in time and so the syndicate used their usual coloring service to color a week's worth of Bizarros in mid-January. Many cartoonists opt to use this kind of service all the time, but I like my cartoons to look different, so I do them myself. Below is the cartoon as it appeared in such papers.

As you can see, these commercial services do a much simpler job on the comics than I like to do, hence the extra work I put in (without extra pay.) I think it's worth it.

I've long had a problem with America's tendency to want to make everything so safe that you can scarcely hurt yourself if you try. Product safety is a good thing, I don't want to buy a car that will explode into flames if I back into a lamppost at the mall. But in my humble and cranky opinion, putting railings and warning signs around everything from volcanoes to the Grand Canyon goes much too far toward defeating natural selection. I think if someone is dumb enough to climb down into an active volcano, or jump off a cliff into a raging river, they probably shouldn't live long enough to pass those genes on.

When I was in Hawaii recently, I crossed a bridge about 40 feet above a crashing river with huge boulders. There was a forbidding sign warning you that people have been injured or killed jumping off this bridge into the water. I didn't need this sign, neither would have you. Yet there were three young men in their 20s jumping off into the water. They seemed to be surviving, but then I didn't hang around all that long.

We're not the only country to indulge in this habit of protecting morons. I saw the same thing in Italy not long ago. This sign was warning tourists against the inherent dangers of using your umbrella improperly. Personally, I never use an umbrella in any way that is not recommended in the directions.

If you're going to post warning signs, I prefer this style.

Christmas Humor

My friend and colleague, J. C. Duffy, of The Fusco Brothers syndicated strip and New Yorker magazine cartoon fame, posted what I consider to be a funny cartoon and a clever poem last week. The cartoon is at right, seek ye here for the poem.

His other posts are quite amusing, as well. His blog is one of my few daily reads.

Fish Face

Bizarro is brought to you today by Solid Rhythm.

One of my favorite books as a student was To Kill a Mockingbird. The movie adaptation with Gregory Peck is great, too. A few weeks ago, a reader suggested the phrase "to mock a killingbird," without any firm idea of how to use it. I liked it and quickly came up with this caption and image for it.

Another reader wrote saying that he liked the cartoon but that eagles catch their prey facing the same direction as they're flying. That makes sense, I suppose, so I thanked him for his knowledge morsel.

I was inclined to draw the fish facing the same way as the bird, but reversed it in this case so that the caption would be on the right, which I liked better compositionally. But now that I look at it, it occurs to me that the fish isn't face backward or forward, his body is perpendicular to the eagle's. So they may be traveling the same direction as the fish when they nab them, but once in the air and they return their feet to their natural position, the fish faces sideways and it doesn't matter which way its head is facing.

These the are the kinds of things I spend too much time thinking about.

Some interesting stuff about the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee:
She was a tomboy and a childhood friend of Truman Capote, who was the opposite of a tomboy. (a tinagirl?)
She worked as a reservations agent for an airline until she was in her thirties.
After having published only a handful of articles, she quit her job and wrote her first novel.
It won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into an Academy Award winning film.
She traveled with Capote to Kansas when he was writing In Cold Blood, another great book.
Aside from a couple of short essays, she never published again.
Capote did very little publishing after In Cold Blood, and nothing of any real note.
Both Harper and Capote had prehensile tails.

For more information on Harper Lee and Truman Capote, speak with your village elders.

Book Suggestion

Fairly often, someone will write to me asking how to go about shifting to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. There is tons of info on the web for this, but a good friend of mine has produced a terrific book that has everything you'd need to get started and live the good life.

Both those who are leaning in this direction but have yet to make the leap and those who've been in the camp for a while can find an endless list of helpful resources in this book. Great for holiday gifts.

Buy it here.