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You mean I have to come up with a cartoon every day?

Yow! I’ve been sending ten or so ideas to the New Yorker every week since 1980.  I’m so used to the weekly routine after all this time that when I found out last week that I had been picked to do a daily cartoon for the New Yorker website I wondered if I could actually do it. Well, after my initial angst subsided I found I could and would. It’s a great change in the routine, actually, and has influenced my work habits in a good way. I discovered that perusing the web for current news and culture events to take off from had the additional benefit of producing ideas for my regular weekly batch as well.

So watch this space for the next 6 – 8 weeks to see my daily Daily Cartoon. I hope you enjoy them. Comments are welcome, pro or con.

Today’s cartoon is based on last week’s news about George Bush (Jr.)’s post-presidential foray into painting. You may have seen the examples of his art, which are mostly, if not all, portraits of world leaders past and present with whom he visited or conspired during his reign as Chief Executive. Whether intentional or not, his work didn’t flatter his subjects, including one painting of his dad, George Bush senior, and even a self-portrait. I began wondering how some of the people he painted might feel about his work and how they might express their ideas of the artist who had savaged them. The result is today’s Daily:

A Fine Mess of Music Cartoons

When I’m not doodling for the New Yorker or other fine publications everywhere, I’m playing music. I also do a semi-weekly newsletter for our band here in Saint Augustine (The Mood). For a while now, I’ve been including cartoons in the newsletter which relate to jazz and performing music in clubs, etc. I have an album of them on our Facebook Page. (So far, no-one there has decided that my drawings contain anything that conflicts with their high standards of decency.) You can see the album here. Enjoy!

Nipplegate’s Last Gasp?

Well, I think Nipplegate is over, and high time. Currently on the New Yorker website, you can hear the last gasps of it, along with some other cartoonist banter, featuring Bob Mankoff, Michael Agger, and Myself in a telephone interview recorded last week: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/09/out-loud-bob-mankoff.html.

Some say I should now move on to doing offensive cartoons of major religious figures, naturally with nipples exposed. That guy in France beat me to it, however. Besides which, I’d rather make people laugh than cause them to slaughter one another.

Dots!

Some of you may be aware of a recent flap over one of my New Yorker cartoons, which incited the ire of some folks over at Facebook, where the depiction of a woman’s nipples (Eve, in the garden of Eden) caused them to ban the NYer Facebook page for 24 hours. The cartoon that caused the banning showed a naked Adam and Eve, both with exposed nipples, which were represented in cartoon code by two strategically-placed dots. Dots!

(The many nipples displayed in the tree above them were apparently overlooked.)

Gosh, I feel just terrible about all this and am currently seeking therapy . It’s not going to be easy to shake my indecent urge to draw dots, but I’m trying!