Yes, these people are all real people, although they only looked like this in their imaginations. These are the game characters of Juan, Daniel, and Alice. (Not their real names.) They became the Wizard Onyx, Gryph the Eagleman, and Sunnyjias, the Cymryllian Sorceress. (Also not their real names.)
Chiron the Centaur and his class of Greek heroes, Achilles, Theseus, Jason, and Heracles.
Characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Ariel the sprite, Caliban the monster, Prospero (as played by the Stratfordian Bill,) Ferdinand, and Miranda.
David, Son of Jesse, plays his harp and sings for King Saul along with various other members of the court in Jerusalem.
On the Planet Dionysus in 5438 A.D. Jaak the Dion boy, Michael, son of the Imperial Planetologist, Franklin riding the raptor, and Hrroush the giant pink velociraptor.
Members of the Norwall Pirates, Dorin Dobbs, Francois Martin (in the clown paint,) Davalon the Telleron, and Tim Kellogg.
Here are images from the Monster Movie collection I keep as an obsessive-compulsive hoarding disorder style of thing. I thought I would present them as a collage since I am lazy today and want to save words for my novel project.
The scary thing is that people like me obsess about such nonsense, and collect so many silly, fantastic pictures of stuff and nonsense.
… I was born in the Eisenhower Administration to a family of loyal Eisenhower Republicans. Nevertheless, I am now a Liberal Democrat by virtue of still holding the same basic values.
… I sympathize over the troubles of your Great Leader with the spoiled-mango sheen and horse-food wig… but only as much as you sympathized with me when Hilary lost the election in 2016. Remember the happy dance you did while wiggling your butt in my face? I certainly do. How sad for you that your Glorious Person is indicted after being impeached twice and has committed crimes in the public eye that we all know he’s guilty of. Remember, “Lock her up!” in 2016? I do.
Gregg Abbott is a mean little man.
… I am a liberal, and I believe that word is not a bad word. It means I want to change the world to make it better. A conservative is someone who wants things to stay the same, supposedly because we have already found what works.
Ron DeSantis is meaner than his bully friend Gregg.
So, forgive me if I don’t understand why the governors of Texas and Florida want to CHANGE the laws to allow concealed carry without permits everywhere in the State for all gun users immediately after the shootings of school children in Uvalde, Texas and Tennessee?
… I also don’t understand why if someone acts in a way that is “WOKE,” it makes you so scared you need to pass laws against it? Really? Being awake to reality around you, especially if you and your children are black and could be beaten to death or shot to death by cops even if they aren’t white cops, is a bad thing? You want everybody who is not white, rich, and entitled to be asleep to reality? Easily fleeced and even destroyed because they are not awake to what’s going on? And don’t you need to be WOKE yourself if you are not also white, rich, and entitled? The powers that be don’t treat poor whites any better. They just lie to them more.
Dear MAGA Republicans, notice what part of their anatomy is pointed at you now. Not with malice. They are simply going forward into the future and leaving you behind.
…Don’t think I don’t sympathize with your current predicament. You need to KNOW I don’t. You got what you voted for. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, and Kevin McCarthy… You deserve everything they will do to you. I think you should change your politics because you are valuable human beings and don’t deserve to live in hatred and fear. But you believe in making your own choices and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. So, good luck with that.
This is an old re-purposed post from 2016 to kill some time so that this blog doesn’t kill me.
Life is hard here in the Kingdom of Paffoon where you labor hard at a labor of love and try to give birth to something eternal that ends up going nowhere… stacks of old writing litter my closets, and the prospects of being published grow dimmer and dimmer. My book Snow Babieshas a contract with a publisher, but, apparently they are not going to be able to publish it after all. I am at the very least going to have to find another publisher for the rest of my books, both finished manuscripts and works in progress.
I do intend to follow through and get published, though. I can no longer teach, but I feel a powerful force pushing me towards the sheer precipice of authordom. One way or another I am going to make it over the edge and plummet to the bottom of that cliff. I am compelled by the need to tell stories, and I have a captive audience every school day no longer.
I used to tell my classes that doing impossible things was like trying to pull chicken teeth with pliers. You know, impossible things like getting a book published or teaching a mostly Spanish-speaking student how to read in English… every-day-sort-of impossible things.
“But, Mr. B, chickens don’t have teeth,” some bright-eyed student would say after realizing that “chicken” was the English word for “pollo”.
“Exactly!” I would say. “That’s what makes it so challenging!”
And now I must put on my chicken-catching socks, find my tooth-pulling pliers, and get ready to make more novels happen. After a brief bout of consternation and depression, I actually feel a bit better about the whole fiasco. There are other publishers, and publishers seem to like my writing, even if they can’t publish it. And I have waited two years to get Snow Babies published, all apparently for nothing. It is time to stop wasting time. And maybe to stop repeating repetitions too.
I would like to here note that I now have 21 books published, all but one of which is self-published on Amazon and fully under my control. My other book, the award-winning novel from I-Universe, Catch a Falling Star, continues to be little-purchased and less read, though I discovered they pay all my royalties to my wife’s bank account. That was unexpected. Chicken teeth where they can’t be reached by me.
I finished reading the book Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett, while sitting in the waiting room as the dentist worked on the wires of my son’s braces in a nearby dentist’s chamber of horrors. The receptionist and secretary probably thought I was insane for incessantly chortling and making those other rude snorty noises you make when you don’t want to interrupt others with laughing, but can’t help it. What better way to wait in the cold chambers of dental anxiety than to read a funny, funny book about an assassin named Mr. Teatime who meant to slay the Hogfather, Terry Pratchett’s version of Santa Claus, by stealing children’s teeth from the tooth fairy and using them to control young minds and make them stop believing in the Hogfather, that giver of gifts on the sacred and festive Hogswatch Eve?
This story has an unusual hero. Death, that skeletal reaper of souls and talker in ALL CAPITOL LETTERS. Oh, and not just Death. His granddaughter Susan is along for the adventure. So Death puts on the red suit to make people believe in the Hogfather again while Susan tracks down the perpetrators of the tooth fairy plot.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are full of bizarre but highly developed characters who not only make you laugh, but make you think. The books can be fairly thick and full of complex ideas, and yet, the pages melt away as you read. And the people who can hear you laughing about the book will think you are absolutely crazy.
Life is screwy. God, if there is one, made it that way on purpose. You have to hand it to Him, his sense of humor is bizarre.
My 771-day streak of consecutive posts ended when, ironically, I set my posts to publish last Friday too early on Thursday evening to post on what counts as Friday according to WordPress. So, Thursday had four posts and Friday had none. That means for the second time I have put together a string of consecutive posts that lasted for more than two consecutive years. But both runs ended on a technicality that made me miss a random publishing day.
At our house the plumbing has turned into a collection of raging geysers, forcing us to have the water turned off 99.9% of the time. And I, being the only member of the family still in an upstairs bedroom, have had to cope with life that doesn’t include a working indoor toilet. I have to get by with a pee spot out in the yard by the composting bin, a plastic jug in the waterless upstairs bathroom for nighttime pee, and a daily trip to the nearest public bathroom in the Winco grocery store for the solid stuff. Daily showers evolved into weekly… then monthly… to now, probably, yearly showers.
I know you are probably thinking, “Why doesn’t the dummy just hire a plumber?”
I did.
The plumber charged me $250 dollars to re-determine with his plumbing snake (exactly like the one I bought at Home Depot and used myself unsuccessfully before I called a plumber) that the toilet couldn’t be unclogged without digging up the floor and replacing all the disintegrating 60-year-old pipes. He quoted me thousands of dollars worth of repairs I will never be able to afford until my next life, or the next life after that.
So, we have to live for a while without running water in the house. Funny one, God.
My last free-book promotion for the re-edited version of the Necromancer’s Apprentice ended its five-day run without giving away a single copy. Nobody wants to read my book, even for free.
I choose to laugh at the screwiness of my current situation. Life is a comic strip with a new joke panel every day. What better thing can I do than laugh at it all?
The marionette that was now Shandra and the marionette that was actually Mark were both standing on a stage made for marionettes. It was small, but ornate, with a woodland scene draped behind them.
“You are now Hansel and Gretel,” said Mr. Mephisto.
Shandra looked up at the puppeteer holding her control stick above her, and the female puppeteer holding the control stick for Mark. “And who are these dummies that seem to think they gonna make us do stuff with them strings they got attached to us?”
“Oh, they aren’t there to control the two of you. Trog and Trogina are the real puppets. They will just hold the strings to convince the audience that you two are puppets.”
“So, we can move and do whatever we want?” Shandra put her marionette hands on her hips and frowned at Mephisto while Trog moved the correct strings to fake that he was doing the controlling.
“You can go anywhere on stage as long as you are attached to the strings. If you mention something that you need in the story, it will appear on stage as if by the magic of a Troglet handing it to you or changing the scenery like a good stage manager.”
“And what if we say something that’s not on the script?” asked Mark, his voice sounding nervous with apparent stage fright.
“Oh, we are not using a script, Hansel, my boy. You will just make up the story as you go. You do basically know the story of Hansel and Gretel, right?”
“I gotta story to tell alright,” said Shandra, frowning even harder with her string-attached eyebrows.
“Good girl. That’s what we do here. Improv. And it all works out in the end one way or another.”
The theater was in a library on Webb Chapel Road. When Mr. Mephisto pulled back the curtains you could see the shelves of books, and the wooden chairs lined up in front of the puppet theater, and the space right down front that quickly filled up with snotty little brats that were younger than Shandra and Mark by a bit. Shandra grinned evilly.
Mr. Mephisto came over the speaker and said, “The Kids on Strings now present their version of Hansel and Gretel.”
“ Well, Hansel, we are kicked outta our home by an evil stepfather and have to find a way to feed our own selves.”
“Um, yeah, Gretel…” Mark answered tentatively.
“So, you know that old witch that has the house made of gingerbread and candy? The one who eats kids like us?”
“Uh, well… yes.”
“Let’s go eat her damn house. I like gingerbread, and I’m really very hungry.”
“Well, yeah. But what if the witch catches us?”
“You know how this story goes. We kill her evil backside… and her frontside too.”
The kids in the audience all laughed. The adults, however, were looking rather frowny.
The scenery changed. The Troglet dropped in the gingerbread witch house, which was actually made of cardboard and papier mache. Shandra winked at the crowd, smiled even bigger, and proceeded to chew the scenery to pieces with her wooden teeth.
Mark helped her make the house-eating scene look real as he greedily chewed up the witch’s house beside Shandra.
“Oh, no! Look out for the witch!” cried several kids in the audience. The witch puppet showed up on stage armed with what appeared to be a magic wand.
Shandra grinned at the witch as she said aloud, “Troglet, where is that goddam oven we get to bake her in?”
The oven appeared as if by magic, stage right.
The witch puppet seemed to be looking at Shandra imploringly, fear featured prominently in her bulging, round eyes.
Shandra boldly strode over to the witch, hoisted the villain over her puppet head, and gave Mark a sharp command. “Open that danged oven, so I can throw this witch in there!”
“Oh, no!” cried the witch, having already dropped her wand.
Shandra marched over and threw the puppet witch into what appeared to be a real fire. The witch broke free of her strings and started to crisp in the oven’s hot flames.
Immediately Shandra formed a new plan. She reached down and picked up the witch’s wand. She pointed it at the oven.
“I don’t want no gingerbread witch. I want to turn the witch into a statue of pure gold. Not puppet-show gold, but real, honest-to-god gold.”
The oven disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a golden statue of the witch. And, as the spotlight caused the golden statue to glitter, it appeared to be real gold.
The kids all laughed. The adults mostly applauded.
“That is real gold over there,” said Shandra, grinning at the crowd. “And I wanna use it to hire a hit man.”
“To kill somebody for real?” asked a black man in the back of the audience.
“Yes. You, any of you, know Poppa Dark?”
“The con man that maybe killed his stepdaughter?”
“That would be the one. Guilty as sin. He killed poor lovely Shandra and deserves to die. The statue, whatever the gold is worth, goes to anybody who can successfully make him dead.”
“Boy howdy, I don’t know about this!” said a white parent, grabbing her two kids from the front row.
“That is definitely not how the story goes,” someone else said.
“Won’t you all come back for our next show?” Shandra said with a grin. “It will be called How Poppa Dark Got What’s Coming to Him.”
The part of the library where the puppet show was located quickly emptied, and Mr. Mephisto drew the curtains closed.
Then the old devil man was standing in front of Shandra and Mark with a smile on his face.
“So, now you gonna punish us kids?”
“No, Shandra. That was perfect, just as it was.”
“You mean we didn’t mess up your evil little plans?”
“Of course not. That was precisely the introduction we needed in this case. Somebody will be getting the message soon.”
My 1967 Captain Action Steve Canyon action figure.
I have always been a deeply devoted fan of the Sunday funnies. And one of the reasons I read the comics religiously was the work of Milt Caniff. His comic strips, Terry and the Pirates, Male Call, and Steve Canyon set a standard for the age of action comics and adventure strips.
I read his comics in the 1960’s and 1970’s and always it was Steve Canyon. But this, of course, was not his first strip. I would discover in my college years the wonders of Terry and the Pirates. When Caniff started the strip before World War II, he set it in China, but actually knew nothing about China. So he did research. He learned about people who became oriental hereditary pirate families and organizations. He learned to draw authentic Chinese settings. His comedy relief characters, Connie and the Big Stoop, were rather racist parodies of Chinamen and were among the reasons that the original strip had to mature into his later work in Steve Canyon. But perhaps the most enduring character from the strip was the mysterious pirate leader known as the Dragon Lady.
Steve Canyon is a fascinating study in the comic arts. When he left the Terry and the Pirates strip in 1946, it went on without him. It was owned by the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News distribution syndicate, not Caniff himself. Steve Canyon would change that. He created it and owned it himself, making Caniff one of only two or three comics artists who actually owned their own creations. Canyon started out as a civilian pilot, but enlisted in the Air Force for the Korean War and would remain in the Air Force for the remainder of the strip. Some of the characters in the strip were based on real people. His long-time friend Charlie Russhon, a former photographer and Lieutenant in the Air Force who went on to be a technical adviser for James Bond films was the model for the character Charlie Vanilla, the man with the ice cream cone. Madame Lynx was based on the femme fatale spy character played by Illona Massey in the 1949 Marx Brothers’ movie Love Happy. Caniff designed Pipper the Piper after John Kennedy and Miss Mizzou after Marilyn Monroe.
I am not the only cartoonist who was taken with the work of Milt Caniff. The effects of his ground-breaking work can be seen to influence the works of comic artists like Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, John Romita Sr., and Doug Wildey. If you are anything like the comic book nut I am, than you are impressed by that list, even more so if I listed everyone he influenced. Milt Caniff was a cartoonists’ cartoonist. He was one of the founders of the National Cartoonists’ Society and served two terms as its president in 1948 and 1949. He is also a member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Rowan Atkinson is a genius comedian, and the character of Mr. Bean is the greatest work he has done, the best proof of his genius. As someone who works at humor and tries to get it right, I have to analyze and carefully study the work of the master. How does he do it? What does it all mean? And what can I learn from it?
Atkinson not only created the character, he co-wrote the entire television series and controls every aspect of the performance as the central character. Mr. Bean is the bumbling every-man, going through horrific troubles because of the cascade effect of simple little errors. We laugh at him because we have all been there. Tasting the hot sauce leads to a meltdown that causes chaos and disaster for the entire store. Overcoming fear of heights makes him the center of attention for the entire pool-house when can’t overcome the urge to use the diving board, and yet, can’t make himself jump off. We have all lived the nightmare of being trapped naked in the hotel hallway, locked out of our room, just when the hallway becomes crowded.
There is a certain charm to Mr. Bean. He is a childlike character, blissfully unaware of how much he doesn’t know about the complex society around him. He has a teddy bear that sleeps with him and comforts him. He lays out his supplies for the big exam, and he’s thought of practically everything he will possibly need, but basic physics fails him and makes the pencils keep rolling out of place.
Rowan Atkinson is a master of the art form because he has such tremendous control of his rubberized goofy face and manic body. He can drive his goofy little yellow car from a sofa mounted on top. He can change clothes while driving. Just watching him shave with an electric razor is a total hoot.
This is a picture of Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. It is NOT a picture of me.
It is mostly physical comedy, almost slapstick, and yet it is not the broad unfeeling poke-in-the-eye you get with the Three Stooges. Most of the real damage is done to himself, though pompous and deserving people are often near enough to get a helping of it smack in the face. A lot of it is practically pantomime, with hardly any real dialogue. Much of it, like the sword fight with the bumblebee using a butter knife, is simply silly.
The movie, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, extends the character by making him actually interact with other characters, though in his own inimitable Mr. Bean way. The limited dialogue thing is amplified by the fact that he is traveling in France and does not speak French. Still, he interacts with the boy he accidentally kidnaps, the girl who wants to be a movie star whom he helps in her quest by an accident at the Cannes Film Festival, and the movie director whom he almost kills but ends up saving his career with a hit home movie.
Mr. Bean makes the ridiculous an art form by helping us to laugh at ourselves as we are beset by all the little troubles of life that Bean magically floats through.
So, now I have told you why I love Rowan Atkinson as a comedian. He is a comedic genius. Of course, you knew that already, right?
Catch a Falling Star 
Milt Caniff
My 1967 Captain Action Steve Canyon action figure.
I have always been a deeply devoted fan of the Sunday funnies. And one of the reasons I read the comics religiously was the work of Milt Caniff. His comic strips, Terry and the Pirates, Male Call, and Steve Canyon set a standard for the age of action comics and adventure strips.
I read his comics in the 1960’s and 1970’s and always it was Steve Canyon. But this, of course, was not his first strip. I would discover in my college years the wonders of Terry and the Pirates. When Caniff started the strip before World War II, he set it in China, but actually knew nothing about China. So he did research. He learned about people who became oriental hereditary pirate families and organizations. He learned to draw authentic Chinese settings. His comedy relief characters, Connie and the Big Stoop, were rather racist parodies of Chinamen and were among the reasons that the original strip had to mature into his later work in Steve Canyon. But perhaps the most enduring character from the strip was the mysterious pirate leader known as the Dragon Lady.
Steve Canyon is a fascinating study in the comic arts. When he left the Terry and the Pirates strip in 1946, it went on without him. It was owned by the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News distribution syndicate, not Caniff himself. Steve Canyon would change that. He created it and owned it himself, making Caniff one of only two or three comics artists who actually owned their own creations. Canyon started out as a civilian pilot, but enlisted in the Air Force for the Korean War and would remain in the Air Force for the remainder of the strip. Some of the characters in the strip were based on real people. His long-time friend Charlie Russhon, a former photographer and Lieutenant in the Air Force who went on to be a technical adviser for James Bond films was the model for the character Charlie Vanilla, the man with the ice cream cone. Madame Lynx was based on the femme fatale spy character played by Illona Massey in the 1949 Marx Brothers’ movie Love Happy. Caniff designed Pipper the Piper after John Kennedy and Miss Mizzou after Marilyn Monroe.
I am not the only cartoonist who was taken with the work of Milt Caniff. The effects of his ground-breaking work can be seen to influence the works of comic artists like Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, John Romita Sr., and Doug Wildey. If you are anything like the comic book nut I am, than you are impressed by that list, even more so if I listed everyone he influenced. Milt Caniff was a cartoonists’ cartoonist. He was one of the founders of the National Cartoonists’ Society and served two terms as its president in 1948 and 1949. He is also a member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
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Tagged as comic art, comic strips, Milt Caniff, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates