AS WE FLIP THE CALENDAR PAGE, we do a lot of exhausting looks forward. But really, who the hell knows what might happen? The recent past, however, is filled with certainties. Death. Taxes. ‘Toons.
I took a look back at My Year in Hilarity: 2024, and laughed.
Who says you can’t tickle yourself?
From “Cartoonapalooza #9”:
MANY OF YOU HAVE ASKED: HOW DO I GET MY IDEAS FOR CARTOONS? Or maybe that question came from a voice in my head. Either way, I’ll tell you: Most of the time I’ll be innocently pursuing some other activity—bicycling, walking out to buy a Chicago-style hot dog (wait a minute…BRB), focusing on my actual work—when something ridiculous will occur to me: a pun on “bald eagles,” for instance….
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From “The Last Dance of the Plastic Shopping Bag”:
BECAUSE I LIVE IN A STATE (COLORADO) WHERE LEGISLATORS ACTUALLY TRY TO ACCOMPLISH THINGS, I personally had the opportunity to kill plastic-bags. My fellow voters agreed—doesn’t everybody hate those sad sacks?—and the statewide ban kicked in on January 1. Goodbye, and good riddance! Not long after the vote, a bag landed on a high branch in our neighbor’s towering ash tree, and I realized: Many loathsome things—the designated hitter, your Aunt Mildred’s oyster dressing, Newlywed Game reruns—never actually go away.
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From “Cartoonapalooza #12”:
MY iPAD OVERFLOWETH! Help me mop up the mess!
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From “Cartoonapalooza #15”:
I GAVE A SEMINAR AT NORTHWESTERN JOURNALISM SCHOOL last week, to educate the youngsters about the importance of headlines, subheds, captions. The first thing I told them: Go out and get fantastic jobs, and then hire me! We’ll see in a decade whether a) there are jobs for them, still; and b) if I live long enough to accept their assignments.
Good luck, journalists of the future! I need you!
Meanwhile, back in my office, I’ve been fiddling while the world burns.
From “Cartoonapalooza #11”:
AS I WRITE THIS, heavy wet snowflakes are cascading down from a murky winter sky, here in Colorado. Who doesn’t need a laugh, on a day like this one?
All contributions gratefully accepted. I’ll use them better than Act Blue did, I promise.
“The end is where we start from.”
—T. S. Eliot
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Death. Taxes. ‘Toons in the coming year, but you failed to tell the world what you'd order from Mom's food truck!
Nice. I live the plastic bag one on a daily basis. If I could climb those things would be gone, but as it is, I see them winter after winter.