Today is Election Day, 2012.  Be cool....

VOTE!

The Pay Off-- (finally)-- Sleeping With the Lights On

The Build Up - Part 4 (An Aside..."Oh, By the Way")

The Build Up - Part 3 (The Never Ending Support)

The Build Up - Part 2 (The Rain of Frogs)

The Build Up...

Sorry, Jupiter. The Traveling Sketch Pad Has No Time to Go to The Dog Park Today. This Will Have to Hold You.

Today the Traveling Sketch Pad Made a Wrong Turn in the Rain and Found Something Profound.

oops!

Wasn't going to draw today.  Too busy with other things.  Heavy rain slowing me down enough.  Many chores to do.  Then I stopped to buy vacuum cleaner bags, had to drive a weird way through a part of Hollywood with which I'm unfamiliar to avoid backing out of a parking lot over one of those tire wripper things (hate those,) made a wrong turn, discovered it was a right turn (a left actually,) and suddenly-- I spent an hour I'll never get back.  But the Traveling Sketch Pad has a responsibility to obey it's prime directive, to boldly go, and sketch, and sometimes sit around doing weird stuff in weird places for an hour where no man or woman hopefully may have sat around or sketched or just been weird before.  

Below is a GCOL first; a short video, the result of following said prime directive. 

This going and sketching, exploring, and sitting in parked cars in the rain, etc. Captain Kirk would understand.  I have a feeling that had I walked up those stairs I may have passed through a time portal and become able to observe myself in an alternate place and time screwing up things that in this dimension I haven't even become confused or bothered by yet.  Luckily we'll never know.  I had do get home and do my housework.  Also, I didn't have an umbrella.  No one in LA ever has an umbrella....   

The Traveling Sketch Book Last Evening Did the Ultra-Romantic Down Home Valentine's Day Dinner In the Time Honored Tradition of the Jews!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! Good luck with that.

This is a painting I made for my wife a few years back.  I always intended to do more to it.  It never seemed finished.  But maybe it is...

Coffee and Rain Today at Hollywood Cemetery. The Traveling Sketch Pad Visits a Favorite Memorial to a Pioneer of the Space Age.

One of the coolest stones in the park is the 

"Death Rocket."

 Carl has become famous for being the guy with a rocket for a headstone, but sadly I can find no info on his pioneering efforts in the graphic arts, a subject that interests me.   Oh well, fly on, Carl.   

Back to the car.  It's wet out there.  

Don't want to catch my death.

This Evening the Traveling Sketch Pad Got Interrupted in the Kitchen, resulting in the following short play entitled "The Annoying Telemarketer Always Rings Twice (Usually During Dinner)"

Fin.

Of course, if you could see with the eyes of Buddha, everything is one... (But that's a tall order.)

The Traveling Sketch Pad Today Goes On a Doctor Visit

 Chippie!  Remember to wash your hands!

Something has happened.  I can remember when newspaper delivery boys were older than me, and fast food counter personnel.  I understand why these days the people in those jobs look like kids.  It's 'cause they are.  But policemen?  Insurance salesmen?  The President?!  School teachers these days impress me as not much older than the children they daily claim to be educating.  Yet they're in such positions of authority.  And now this.  I can't help it.  It makes me uncomfortable to be given prescriptions for powerful pharmaceutical drugs by people who are too young to remember the Reagan administration.  

And another thing.  Had I known how long I'd be sitting in the waiting room today, I'd have brought oil paints.

Groundhog Day, Feb. 2, 2012 - journal entry

This morning as I drank coffee in the Hollywood Cemetery....

A Newt's Eye View....(when this first occurred to me, I thought it was a joke.)

Flying at Night... (......the director's Cut)

*"Pledge to the readers;" http://thegreatcartoonoflife.blogspot.com/2010/09/due-to-technical-difficulties.html   

Is it the New Year?  Martin Luther King Day (I miss that guy?)  Watching the Republican debates?  I know that, as a humble quasi-eleoendoprenic-godless-atheist-humanist-Buddhist monk, nothing is ever supposed to get under my skin or bother me.  Ever.  Maybe having stopped taking of all my prescription anti-depressant drugs cold turkey a few months ago has something to do with it (though I don't really think so.)  Maybe January is just a tough month no matter where you live, even LA-topia.  The burden of the whole myth of all the old stuff ending and so much great, "fresh" new stuff supposedly beginning can be a lot to bear.  

Of course, the best way to pass through any extreme difficulty (according to both Joseph Campbell and Captain James T. Kirk) is to dive into it, attack it, own it, wrestle it as though your life depended on it (because it does,) get it in a serious headlock and just hang on so tight that when the monster turns around to sink its fangs into you to finally kill you, you still just don't let go.  In fact, that's when you laugh in or spit in its face.  Fear and death are just illusion (as is life for that matter.)  The purpose of the well designed and properly functioning roller coaster is to create the impression that you're about to die.  But, of course, if you keep your cool until the end of the ride, the car comes to a stop, all becomes once more calm, and you step off safely having just gained an enormous thrill.  You then walk down the wooden gangplank back to solid pavement where Mommy and Daddy are smiling proudly, waiting for you.  You take their hands.  They say, "Wow!  You're brave!  How was it?!"  And together you all walk off to get a hotdog, away from the scary thing, feeling stronger, happier.  Then years pass.  If you're lucky, you and Mom and Dad are still holding hands, and smiling.  Then, as you're about to go get onto something else, something that looks like another much quieter, much "safer," little kiddie ride, you suddenly go "What?!" as you realize you're still on the giant roller coaster.  Well, I'll be damned.  Now that's a brilliantly designed ride!  You never got off.  And that's it. That's how it works.  The car's now approaching the top of the highest peak you've been to yet, the really scary, really big drop.  So hold on tight.  Happy New Year!  You're back. 

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GO NUDE FOR NEWT

Today, at the request of one of GCOL's biggest private supporters (financial and otherwise) and as a public service during this time of important decision making among the electorate (the Republicans that is) and at the $pecial reque$t of a certain political action group which by law remains completely "unaffiliated" and in no way coordinated with the Mitt Romney campaign, though they are legally within their right to to$$ major $$$ our way for our two cents (as per the ruling of our great and wise Supreme Court of these United States in the case which has come to be known as Citizens United) we have hereby been per$uaded to (very uncharacteristically for this webcomic) repeat an earlier post; our most gruesome, yet excruciatingly popular Newt Gingrich campaign poster.  

This iconic image, originally posted during the brief week or so when Newt (partly we believe due to the enormous influence of this revealing piece of political art) was momentarily "surging" in the polls,  (or maybe it was just his turn to be the up-horsie on the Republican Silly-Go-Round) lives on on the internet surfacing now in various erudite political and artistic venues.   Since its first appearance, Newt's had his ups and downs and accompanying attitudinal adjustments.  In less than a month we've seen him go from Negative Newt to Positive Newt, Naughty Newt to Nice Newt, and finally now back to Brutally Honest Newt, defender of truth in politics, and champion of transparency, the Newt who stands as a staunch bulwark against liars, lying, and lies (unless you include those told to wives who are incapacitated, hospitalized or otherwise distracted while you're in the process of pursuing your next romance.  But those don't really count, do they?)

Today, in honor of Newt's most recent defense of true transparency in politics, we feel his candidacy deserves another excruciatingly intimate look.

The Psycho Nextdoor

Happy New Year, all.  Maybe the New Year has me feeling nostalgic. Many of the first cartoons I did in "The Great Cartoon of LIfe," had a lot to do with how weird it was to live in Hollywood.  Today's post is kind of a throw back to that.  When I first moved out to LA from NYC, it was just like being in a Laurel and Hardy movie.  I lived in a true Hollywood bungalow on Beachwood Drive with a true LA psycho neighbor.  It was a wonderful time, and good too that I never got killed.