Strange Week

Bizarro is brought to you today by Summer Weather.

I've been getting a lot of emails and blog comments in the last couple of days about the cartoons of July 10 and 11. I drew these five or six weeks ago and I suppose I was having an ambiguous week. Sometimes I get experimental in subject matter, or humor, or color scheme, and even if it doesn't work for everyone, I think it keeps the feature fresh. For me, at least, which I think is important. If I get bored, it will show.

This cartoon about the happy family means nothing more than what it looks like. It's just funny to me. "Let's get started!" doing what? I don't know. What do happy, perfect families do at home at night? I don't know anyone who had one, so I've no experience to draw from.

When I was a child, my own family looked very normal from the outside, the quintessential Ozzy-and-Harriet dreamworld. And even though we ate dinner together every night, then settled in to watch TV, it was not the utopia pictured above.

Night after night, we were forced to watch industrial training films from the linoleum industry over and over again. To make certain we were paying attention, my mother shot live rounds over our heads. Dad watched from a dog cage under the dining room table, barking and panting like a Golden Retriever. One of my sisters was born with gills and lived in an oil drum full of water. Her splashing would spot the TV screen with rainbow dots of magnifying liquid.

Maybe this cartoon was just therapy for me.

REGARDING YESTERDAY'S CARTOON: A few people have complained that suicide isn't funny. I agree, I lost a good friend to suicide. But humor of this kind is a uniquely human practice and serves a valuable purpose for us. To find humor in what scares or horrifies us gives us a psychological edge over the tragedy. This kind of humor has existed in human cultures for as long as we've been writing things down.

Some time ago, I promised a reader I would not picture suicide in my cartoons for the very reason that some of you were offended, and I've kept to that. But I think a cartoon such as this one is so far fetched and the reader is left to wonder/assume what has happened to the woman, that it does not strike the same chord. To me, anyway. One person accused me of being sexist because the cartoon insinuates that all men want when they come home from work is sex from their woman. This cartoon is not about what men want when they come home from work, but that if a man comes home from work and sees his partner's clothing spread seductively in a trail across the floor, 99% of them are going to think of sex. Either she is seducing him, or she has already seduced someone else. It's not insulting, its human nature.

Father's Day

(How big can you make this cartoon? Click the Wolverine's beer label and find out!)

Bizarro on this day is brang to youse by Power Urination.

Regular readers of this blog will recall that I posted this cartoon a few weeks ago beneath a link, but did not include the caption. (I'd link to that now, but I can't find it.) Anyway, I mentioned in that previous post that I thought it was regrettable that this cartoon would run on Father's Day, when it is about men who are estranged from their families. It was completely unintentional.

My Sunday cartoons are drawn about six weeks ahead, so sometime in mid-March I drew the cartoon, inked it, colored it, got it all ready to submit to King Features, then looked on my calendar to see what date was next. Turned out it was Father's Day but by that time it was too late to replace it with something less pointed.

So I'd like to apologize to any estranged fathers out there who found this cartoon to be painful. I got divorced in the mid-nineties when my daughters were 9 and 14, so I know it can be tough. On the bright side, it probably isn't a tough as being a huge, blue furry guy with a face like a baboon's ass. So count your blessings.

As for my own Father's Day, 2009 – My two daughters called and said, "HFD," I called my dad and said, "HFD," he said it back, then I went to work in my garden. For once, it only rained HALF the day, so it was a rousing success by recent standards and I enjoyed it thoroughly. No decorations, no gifts, no songs written for the occasion, no TV specials, no obligatory parties...my kind of holiday!

Muggers

Bizarro is brought to you today by Mug Shots.

I've never been mugged, but I'm sure it's a harrowing experience that would bother me for a long time. I've been in a couple of impromptu street scuffles in the past five years, just because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it's pretty awful. I didn't get anything more than a fat lip and a few bruises, fortunately, but it is not the sort of activity I'm anxious to get into again. Even though the stories are fun to tell later.

One was when my wife and I were freezing cold and looking for a cab late at night in NYC. We finally got one to stop and a drunk guy jumped into the cab ahead of us after I opened the door. The driver said, "No, I stopped for them." I said, "That's our cab." The drunk guy said, "I don't think so!" and continued to climb in. The only thing left outside the cab was his shin, so I gave it a good hard kick. I was wearing dress shoes, so it must have hurt a lot. He jumped out and came after me, shouting something like, "Did you just kick me, you motherf*cker?!" I took it as a rhetorical question and did not answer. In his inebriated state, I was able to dodge him as he pursued me around in circles. Meanwhile, CHNW jumped into the cab, I followed, and we took off. All's well that ends well.

The other time was in Rome when we were walking with another American couple down a busy shopping street on a sunny, Sunday afternoon. All of us are animal rights folks, so when we passed a fur store, CHNW and the female half of the other couple both spat on the sidewalk in front of it. We didn't know until we had walked another 25 feet down the street that the family that owns the store had seen us. Apparently, spitting in Italy is more serious than here.

Four people rushed out of the store – a couple in their 40s and a couple in their 70s – and we turned to confront them. With words, or so we thought. For a few seconds, the womenfolk were content to shout at each other in their native languages. But suddenly, up to the forefront rushed the 70-year-old man. Think Robert Deniro in Raging Bull, with white hair. Without warning, he punched our friend's wife right in the jaw and knocked her down. Unpleasantness ensued, including punching, kicking, scratching and screaming.

Fortunately, passersby pulled us apart after a couple of minutes and we all went our separate ways. None of our attackers spoke English, none of us spoke Italian, so we can only assume we were fighting about the same thing.

Before we spit on the sidewalk in front of any more Italian-owned fur stores, CHNW and I are going to take one of these self defense courses.

These are completely unexaggerated, true stories, by the way.

Smelly Sexy

Bizarro is brought to you today by King Tut.

This cartoon is simple wordplay, yes, but it makes me smile. It was dreamed up by my cartoonist, stand-up comic, long-time friend, Mike Capozzola.

What struck me as odd when I was drawing this cartoon is the way "pharaoh" is spelled, which I had never really noticed before I had to letter it by hand. How did the second "a" get thrown in there ahead of the "o?" I'm a fan of etymology (and also entomology, but that's a topic for a different post) but I don't know why this strange spelling exists. Usually, a foreign word that comes from a language with a different alphabet, like a Chinese word, for instance, is likely to be spelled phonetically in English. But that would mean that the word was originally pronounced "fay-ray-oh." Maybe that's the case, I don't know, or maybe it didn't come from the original Egyptian word. I could look it up, but it would cut into my leisure time.

Apparently, chemical compatibility is a huge indicator for sexual attraction. In other words, whether you're aware of it or not, you like the way your lover smells. I have experienced this myself on a few occasions (in my bachelor days) when a woman I was attracted to became instantly less attractive when I kissed her. It wasn't that she wasn't a good kisser, but something about the visceral experience of being that close was unappealing.

I knew a redneck guy from Oklahoma years ago who believed so ardently in the idea that women react sexually to a man's pheromones, that he would not bath regularly, confident that his B.O. would help him score. No, I'm not kidding. He even recommended this technique to his teenage sons.

But who am I to judge? Perhaps in his remote corner of Oklahoma, it worked.

For those of you keeping scorecards at home, I'm feeling much better today. The soupy, black miasma of depression left me midway through last evening and I'm normal again. Then I had a very good session with my therapist this morning which helped me to get a better grip on my issues and their effect on my will to live. I'm also extremely appreciative of all the comments readers have left on this blog, and supportive emails I've gotten since yesterday. This blog is sometimes as good a therapy as my visits to my shrink, and considerably cheaper.

You've made me feel like a pretty girl at the prom, and I thank you.

When Hairy Met Harry

Bizarro is brought to you today by Family Entertainment.

Not much to say about this cartoon today, feeling really low. If I was a twitterer, I could tweet, "feeling really low today." But I'm not, you're all I have.

A trusted friend (Julie) said I should get on the Twitter because it's a really easy way to advertise my comedy shows and stuff, and I'm sure she's right, but I just don't have the energy to get started. I have no interest in that sort of thing outside of the promotional value, to be honest, and as I said, I'm feeling low.

Just thought of something to say about this cartoon. I was channel surfing the other night and came across one of the early Bruce Lee movies – Way of the Dragon or Get in the Dragon or Dress Like a Dragon. Something like that. In the final fight scene, he's practicing his pajama arts on a young and shirtless Chuck Norris. This was before Chuck discovered body waxing because he was as covered with hair as the guy in the "after" part of my cartoon. No exaggeration. He had big, thick, hair epaulets on his shoulders.

I hope I'm better tomorrow. Damn this difficult life.

The Grindstone

Bizarro is brought to you today by Super Curvy Chicks.

Being a syndicated cartoonist means having to write and draw a joke each day, 365 days a year, without fail, for as many years as you have the job. I've been doing it since 1985, 24 1/2 years straight without a break. To get an idea of how difficult it is, try to think of an original idea that you think most people might find amusing, and repeat that process every day forever. Like tying balloons to a folding chair and floating over the Berlin Wall, it's harder than it looks.

Because of the difficulty of creating on such an unrelenting schedule, I sometimes get behind and have to rush to meet my deadline. In doing so, I occasionally make glaring mistakes, like my omission of the piano in this drawing.

My editor is supposed to catch things like that, but I guess she's under a lot of pressure, too.

Striped

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by My Favorite Novels.

True, some of us are predisposed to look heavier.

For instance, even though I am 6' 4" tall, my body type makes me look more like 5' 7". The illusion my body type creates is so complete that when you hold a tape measure up next to me, it even makes the tape measure look shorter. Again, around 5' 7" or so.

Fortunately, I also have a body type that makes me look thinner than I actually am. While I weigh around 225 lbs, I look like I don't weigh a pound over 140. Living as a big, tall man who looks like a small, thin man has both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantage: A bully picks a fight with me thinking I am a wimpy little dude but then I kick his ass like an ape on a luggage commercial.

Disadvantage: Women who respond to my personal ads have difficulty hiding their disappointment when they meet me the first time.

The point of all of this is that we all have our imperfections to bear. At least you're not covered with permanent horizontal stripes.

The Player

Bizarro is brought to you today by Cat Zombies.

As a teen, I worked as a busboy in a restaurant with a piano bar. I was fascinated by the old drunks that sat around the piano every night "singing" to the show tunes coughed up by Morey, who wore a tux and had a phony smile cemented to his face. At the time I was in a band, a typical teenage rock star wannabe, and felt sorry for Morey. I imagined that when he was my age, he dreamed of throngs of appreciative music lovers at Carnegie Hall, or a theater on Broadway. He likely taught music lessons to dopey kids during the day to make ends meet.

Making a living as a musician is a nearly impossible task and most people give it up eventually and get a "real" job, maybe play in a hobby band at night. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, music is one of those things you do because you love it.

After a few years of playing weekend nights around the Southwest, I gave up my band to concentrate on becoming a cartoonist. It worked out well for me, I beat the odds with a lot of luck and a bit of hard work and have thanked my lucky stars ever since. I still love music, however, and though I was the singer and never learned to play anything, I still long to be in a hobby band. I recently started to learn to play guitar for reals, as the kids say. It's monstrously fun and I wonder why I didn't do this years ago.

The guitar in the cartoon is fashioned after my own Gibson ES-137. It is tied for my favorite inanimate object that I own, the other being my '82 Vespa. The thought of drunks resting their cocktails on it (my guitar, not my scooter) as they blather out the words to "That's Entertainment" (the one by Schwartz and Dietz, not by The Jam) makes me cringe.

You're welcome to rest your drinks on my Vespa, however. It's waterproof.

My Monsterhood

Bizarro is brought to you today by Live Chick Cam.

When I do jokes about cosmetic surgery, people sometimes assume I am against it. Far from it. I am not only totally in favor of cosmetic surgery, it saved my life.

If you're not familiar with my breathtaking looks, have a glance at the photos at the top of this page. Most people think that nature blessed me with an incredibly fortunate combination of genes, but it is not true. In fact, not unlike Frankenstein's monster, I came into this world as a hideous beast that sent children and adults alike running in terror. As I got older, the problem only got worse. My parents feared I would be doomed to a life of solitude and failure.

Then everything changed one day when I was 17 years old. My mom and I were on our way to the grocery store (I was banned from the store because I made the other customers too sick to buy food, but I enjoyed the ride) when she ran over something that she thought was a dog. Mother screeched to a halt and jumped out of the car, as no one in my family could turn down free meat. But alas, it was not a dog we had hit but a man. A man who was under the car and still alive. A man who was the most gifted plastic surgeon in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

When I leaned down to look under the car all I could see was a dark lumpy shadow pinned beneath the transmission. From the darkness of that twisted shape came the words I will remember for as long as I live, "I can fix that."

One year later, the good doctor was walking with only the aid of a cane and I was a new man. Doors of opportunity that I never dreamed possible with my hideous former face were thrown open like sphincters at a colonoscopy convention. By the time I was 26, I was given a syndication contract for Bizarro based on my looks alone.

The rest is history.

Fighting For Fun

Today's Bizarro is brought to you by A Useless Degree in Marketing.

I am a fan of air hockey, regular hockey, and fighting, so this cartoon appeals to me in many ways. I like the general concept that since hockey leads to fights, if you're playing air hockey your fight would logically consist of trying to blow each other down. (The last word in that sentence is the most important.)

People who are not fans of hockey often question why there is so much fighting. It is not gratuitous, as is often surmised, it actually serves an important purpose. A good friend of mine some years ago came up with a theory about this that I've adhered to ever since: Hockey is arguably the most difficult sport in the world to play as it requires very high levels of disparate skills.

1. You must change direction quickly and constantly while standing on ice
2. You have knife blades strapped to your shoes
3. You must control a rock-hard disk moving at lightening speed on a slippery surface with a bent stick
4. You are being pushed and slammed into by other knife-shoe-wearers covered in armor traveling at very high speeds

It's sort of like combining surgery with dodge 'em cars. Just when you're about to suture that aorta closed, somebody slams into you from behind and ruins the whole thing. Again.

Doing all of this at once is very difficult and, by definition, very frustrating. Every now and then you have to blow off some steam. So the refs let the surgeons swing away at each other for a few seconds before they break them up. Then they send them each to a little room (penalty box) to think about what they've done or take a short nap.

Leaving the topic of hockey fights behind, I just noticed a grievous error in the art of this cartoon. The perspective on the hockey table is way off. The brown outside border of the table is more or less in line with itself, but the three black lines in the middle of the table are hideously askew. That's very unlike me to not notice and fix such a visual faux pas, but perhaps I was in a hurry or drunk. Or maybe one of my hockey pals was slamming me against the boards while I tried to work. Anything is possible at Bizarro International Headquarters.

Sad Stereotypes

Bizarro is brought to you today by Real Live Indians.

Me: "My name is Dan Piraro and I suffer from depression."
All: "Hello, Dan."
Group member: "You're not supposed to use your last name, this is Depression Anonymous."
Me: "You're not supposed to use quotation marks in a script format, either, so sue me."

Yes, I'm a long time taker of "crazy pills," thus called because they keep me from being crazy. As such, I know full well that anti-depressants do not make a person feel the way Melancholy Wolf appears to feel in this cartoon. In truth, they just make you feel normal. Normally happy, sad, or somewhere in between, depending on the circumstance.

I was quite the melancholy wolf for many years, with unpredictable bouts of utter hopelessness and despair, as well as unbridled anger, that would last from a few days to a few weeks. I went to shrinks, I read books, I exercised, I changed my diet, I changed my life – nothing worked. It was inexplicable.

Until one of my therapists bothered to "explic" it to me and asked me to try anti-depressants. I was very hesitant, being one of those tough guys who doesn't want a chemical solution to my problems. But I was so desperate I finally agreed and within a couple of weeks, I felt normal for the first time in my adult life. Melancholy Wolf's exuberance is representative of how I felt when the cloud first lifted. I just wish I hadn't waited until my late thirties to take the plunge.

Speaking of the Injuns in the cartoon above, I was in Indianapolis recently with some Native American comic artist colleagues and learned a lot about what sort of pop culture stereotypes bother them. I suspect this cartoon might fit into a few of those categories because I didn't bother to research it.

Not all American Indians wore braids, bone breastplates, feathers in their hair, fringe on their shirts and lived in teepees, yet that is commonly how they are depicted. Sorry, guys, didn't have time to look it up, deadlines loomed. I just went straight for the easy cliche, I hope I didn't get it completely wrong.

On a slightly different note, I'm a fan of Native American names. Not all of them are bucolic monikers about nature – like Soaring Eagle and Whispering Beaver – some are more expository. My favorite name, which was in a book of photos of Native Americans from around the turn of the 19th century, is Stabs By Mistake.

Following this method of naming, when CHNW and I were first married, I dubbed her grandmother, Stares At New Guy Like She Hates Him.