...more stuff...

Beard Baird

Odd, isn't it, for someone named after a razor blade to have such an aversion to shaving...

Historic Fort Wayne Battalion Drill

Some images taken at this week's light infantry drill at the Historic Fort Wayne (on the south side of Detroit on the Detroit River). We slept in barracks built in the 1840s and where real soldiers stayed before heading south during the Civil War. The fort was first built to protect the US from an attack by Canada. And it seems to have worked; they've never dared to try!

Yet.

For more information about the fort and its restoration work go to http://www.historicfortwaynecoalition.com

A page from my sketchbook...

Sure, you laugh (well, I hope you're laughing), but mark my words, the day is coming when we'll see such wretched excess as a disposable super-compact as the "spare" for the driver of an expensive Titanic SUV.

Maybe I should patent the idea instead of ridiculing it...

Family matters. A lot.

This cartoon is in honor of my dear old mom. She never lived to see her grandkids, but without a doubt she would have gone absolutely nuts over them. Like this dear lady, Ma would have framed each and every photograph and hung them all over the house. And anybody coming to the door would have had to come in and see them all! The Charles Chips man, Girl Scouts, Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses would have all quickly learned to avoid the homestead like the plague.

The Democratic Irrational Convention

This was reprinted in the weekend edition of USAToday. When I got to work on Monday, the principal of the grade school where I was janitor had hung a copy of the OpEd page on the bulletin board. Right next to the warning about the head lice outbreak. I had made the big time!

"I am not a crook!"

Boy, do I miss Dick Nixon. This was reprinted in the Woodrow Wilson Quarterly after he died (Nixon, not Wilson).

There's always a class clown. No matter the century.

I just wanted to show everyone that not all photographs taken at Civil War Reenactments are serious and bereft of joy. The young boy mugging at the camera in the earlier post's group picture is not alone.

At least, not when I am around.

A Ball and the Fall

A few recent photographs...

My esposita and I attended a Civil War-era formal ball last weekend in Lansing, MI. Just call us Red Adair and Ginger Rogers (I was told my dancing skills took the pressure off from everyone there). Karen made her gown. I didn't make my uniform. But I did dress myself.

The second photograph is from the 21st Michigan's end-of-the-season pre-Thanksgiving dinner. If you left click on the photograph, it will pop-up much, much larger. Reenactors oft times are told to give a Civil War Smile in having our likeness taken (which is no smile at all - the exposure time of the day was too long to hold such an expression)... so that explains the dour faces.

However, you will notice that there is a young man who must not have gotten the memo.

Jackson, Michigan 2007

Jackson, Michigan 2005

Camping is usual in tents...

...just to show everyone that I can do "serious" art... not just "foolishness"... like cartooning (to quote a teacher). As a Civil War Reenactor - a chaplain - I carry a digital camera, not a Springfield Musket. I like to think everyone around me is a little safer. This is of an Civil War Encampment at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, OH last month. I'll post a few now and again.

Admit it, you don't know what you want, do you?

Again, and I hate to admit this, but I've heard this one too. I hate going to the doctor as much - if not more - than I hate shopping. Maybe if the doctor's waiting room had a food court...

And the meeting of the "Procrastinators' Club" has been postponed to a later date...

You know, if I could see into the future, I wouldn't need to TiVo anything.

Shopping Maul

I hate to go to the mall. And I hate shopping. I get all anxious and irritated. It must be something like angoraphobia (fear of sweaters?). But I do just fine in airports. So my teenage daughters help by announcing flight departures and arrivals. While it makes me feel comfortable, I think it kind of creeps everybody else out. And I am okay with that. In fact, I enjoy shopping now. Sometimes I take my belt and shoes off and set them on the counter at Macy's and pretend I am going through Security. Oddly enough, Security usually comes.

Looking for Mr. Goodwrench

Again, much inspired by real life. How many of us have found ourselves trying to prove to the mechanic we aren't making it all up!? What do they think; we have some sort of automotive Munchausen Syndrome?

"Sit right back and you'll hear a tale..."

At the risk of sounding like an old geezer, but back in my day, we didn't have TV with non-stop infomercials on nearly every channel. Four channels (including PBS)... all with the common decency to stop broadcasting at the end of the day once they ran out of stuff. And we certainly didn't pay for it! Nor would we have sat and watched it.

What are you going to do with that baseball bat?

Inspired by my dog's mysteriously broken leg. The cats were all indoors, the dog outside, but I still have my suspicions. I am not so sure it wasn't because the dog couldn't repay a gambling debt. The cats cut no slack...

Special orders DO upset us...

I was once asked this. Honest. It must have really thrown them.

Another time while ordering at a sit-down joint, I was asked if I wanted lettuce, tomato and onion with my burger. I said, no - if I had wanted a salad, I would've ordered a salad. They didn't think I was very funny at all.

Sometimes, I ask them to hold the bun as well. Sue me; I like my hamburgers plain. Real plain. I thought I would keep it simple and so once just told the waitress to bring me my burger without anything on. I was invited to make my order a carry-out.

Microwave safe

Before I drew this, I tried to see if it was somewhat physically possible. Of course, that was when one of my then young grade school-aged daughters happened to come into the kitchen for something! I didn't even bother trying to explain.

Do you mind?

...I actually said this to someone at the "Y" one morning. For the life of me, I can't imagine why they were running with such cheerful intensity. But it was annoying.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

What was he thinking!?

Sweet Revenge of the Nerds

I've intentionaly missed all of my high school class reunions... but I do find myself wondering how those poor tormented geeky souls from the "TechElec Society" and the "Matheletes team" have fared over the years... and how their tormentors, the jocks, have turned out as well. Hopefully, it is a case of the "bottom rail on top dis time!"

This illustration accompanied an feature article on how the techno-geeks have seemingly de-throned the jocks as the campus' BMOC. It's nice to think that justice would be that swift, isn't it?

The All-You-Can-Eat Boo-Fay versus The Health Food Store

Admittedly, I tend to identify more with the guy on the left. While eating lunch, I oft times wonder what we are having for dinner... and over dinner, ponder breakfast...

"The Lion, the Witch and the Wart Hog"

I might not have known how to draw, but it sure looks like I knew my way around a drawer of Zip-a-Tone! (Circa 1980)

This, and the previous post, is at the request of Will Finn. "Earth Pig" is an old comic strip character of mine from my days in high school (1975ish)... and it followed me through my years at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Like many other young 'tooners, I had high hopes of my strip getting syndicated one day. But I and it just gleamed lots of rejection letters. The usual sob story. Then with the advent of adulthood and all its fixin's - bills, mortgages, children, et al. - I opted for the security of full-time graphic design and later of freelance cartoons and newspaper editorial cartoons... and put such iffy "consignment" stuff like this far away, deep in a trunk.

Much inspired by "Pogo" and the old "Shoe" comic strips... with a pinch of the Hundred Acre Wood thrown in. All set in a long forgotten ravine or a hollow (whose inspiration was Panther Hollow near the Pitt campus)... part idyllic woodland and part dump. Earth Pig was (is?) inspired in part by me... and is a clumsy wart hog of low esteem... a garbage man who lives in a pretty nice efficiency apartment under a stone bridge, built by the WPA in 1933. However, he, in his naiveness, thinks that keystone inscription must be his address: 1933 Wiley Post Avenue. Other characters included (and shown here) was his buddy Iwerks, a tree sloth who lived on the lightpost - perpetually decorated for Christmas. Iwerks (inspired by Will Finn - named after the great Ub Iwerks... the animator whose name sounds like a optician's office), liked living there fine except when he peed it would run down his neck. A common problem with tree sloths, so I am told, who move so seldom and so slowly that moss actually grows on them and colors them green. Iwerks was the doorman down at the E-Z Sleep Motel.

Chagrin was a door mouse who Earth Pig loved without return (much to his chagrin - get it?) ... based on a young hottie from Art School who wouldn't give me the time of day either (whom I later got even with - I married her! Ha! Twenty-eight years now in just a few weeks - so she is still paying!). Chagrin lived in one of those old one-time shiny silver house trailers and worked over at the White Lily Laundry. She told Earth Pig that she didn't date outside her species (I cannot tell you how many girls I heard that old chestnut from, boy!) Briffit was Earth Pig's loyal pooch (who starred once, literally, in a animated short for school, "Briffit in the Park". It was a project done by Will and hindered by me)... Boyd was a burned-out street bum of a kola bear (based on a talented druggie from art school). Flavia was a grumpy tapir inspired by a painting teacher at AiP... who was also, I always suspected, the inspiration first of Mama from the "Katzenzammer Kids".

Will, in his kindness, tells me that "Earth Pig" is still his favorite comic strip. Nice boy. Must not read the funny papers much...

By way of explanation of the previous post's heading... While at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I had a t-shirt made with the words "EARTH PIG" on the front. Walking through Market Square one day, I walked by a trio of Aqualungs sitting on a park bench (in hopes of eying little girls with bad intent, no doubt). As I passed - apparently a slow day for little girls - I heard each in turn cheerily yell out, as if they knew me or my creation: "Earth Pig!" "Eart' Pig!" "Erf Pid!"

Then, to my back, wearily from under one of old sot's breath a sad, yet gruff, "Dam' fool!"

Earth Pig! Earth Pig! Earth Pig! ... dam' fool...

Great Poe-tential!

Done recently for a feature story for the Ann Arbor (MI) News...

Some R&R needed for the R&D guys

... done for the Xerox Corporation...

"Well, then let's not tell mom, okay?"

"You're never too old to rock and roll, if you're too young to die"

Photo test...

The other post is a quick test for line drawings... this for photographs. But just a thought since I'm foolin' around here...

Ian Anderson, front man for Jethro Tull, turned 60 last month. The group's been around for almost four decades. Later is a current pic of Anderson. It seems that he has aged better than most rockers... yet remained tres cool and still innovative (as has his/their music). I see them in concert in London, ON right after this Thanksgiving... I saw them last in Binghamton, NY in October of 1975!

Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones played halftime at the Superbowl here in Detroit... Steven Tyler and Aerosmith in concert here just last week. Alice Cooper was just at the Michigan State Fair. All seem much much older than they actually are - and yet embarrassingly have tried to LOOK and perform their music and act like they did 30 or 35 or more years ago. All looking very much like my 80 year old dad did in his coffin - only with a long, jet black fright wig and mascara. Anderson has the sense not to still dress in tights and a codpiece and keep his hair and beard as long an as wild as he did when he was 25. Nor does he feel the need to.

Saddam it all!