The new RNC chair

Will Michael Steele take the head of the RNC? As of this post it is still in doubt. What's not in doubt is that it would only be a symbolic nod from the GOP to the black voters of the country. There are no real planks in the grand old platform beneficial to minorities. Unless those minorities are CEOs or Wall Street bankers.
But then, Mr. Steele says the GOP is fine just the way it is. Sounds like a match made on eHarmony.

The End?

Reader's Digest is killing 280 jobs, ending it's 401K matching funding, and mandating time off. This all happened at Hustler magazine in the last two years so I have had time to get used to it and supplement the income in other areas. Lately it has been spreading throughout the whole economy and with large publishing concerns you used to think were immune to fluctuations like this.
The GOP says "more tax cuts": that's all they ever say isn't it and when you look at the country after eight years of their experiments it is plain that it did not work. So shut up and go sit in a corner.

I am not an eskeemo.

I spent the first half of the workday cleaning up after last night's snowstorm. Shoveled eleven or twelve inches of a snow and ice lasagna mix, consisting of five inches of snow them a half inch of ice and another six inches of snow on top of that. A nasty combination I assure you. Especially for us shovelers. A snow blower would be nice but I heard it could also be too much for those with that ice layer of frosting in between. It can mangle the blades and jam. I had my SnowBlazer ® shovel and cleaned a hundred foot car lane down our driveway by hand. I can use the exercise to work off the Christmas cookies I amassed along my waistline during the holidays. Didn't get any drawing done today. Did some Flash training though.

Collinstunes- Marcel Dadi playing Je Te Veux

Here's one of my favorite fingerstylists and a buddy of Chet's when he was alive (he died on Flight 800, a great loss for the world). I play this number too. Je te veux means, 'I want you.' BTW he is playing it on 'The Princess', possibly the world's most valuable guitar.

American Greetings picks up another card

This year I have begun selling some greeting cards to AG with the help of Ron Kanfi at Nobleworks. Just recently they picked up another of my 7 Dwarves cards; the 7D of Motherhood. I have a handful of other Dwarf themed cards and there seems to be an endless variety of subjects I could apply this formula to. I've done old age, menopause, work, midlife and pregnancy so far. Look for them in Targets, Walmarts or wherever AG and NW cards are sold.

The hits keep on comin'.

I learned today that Mad will go from a monthly to a quarterly schedule. A lot of cartoonists are going to miss the income. Also Time magazine has decided to cancel the Drawing Room cartoon page. How visionary. I nearly had a cartoon in there: made the final round in the edit but lost out. The feature only ran a couple of months. I don't think they were very serious in their interest in cartoons. Where will this madness end? A world devoid of cartoons? I shudder to think. Everyone loves cartoons. Why can't these publishers see that? 

This cartoon was one I sent to Mad but didn't get bought. Al Feldstein saw it at an NCS function at OSU and thought it was pretty funny.

Collinstunes

Here's a little number that I've been playing on my guitar recently. A sweet song performed by Chet Atkins and Steve Wariner called Sails.

Stationery Show On-line catalogue

Nobleworks has it's most recent catalogue available online for the stationery show coming up soon. My new super heroes line From Zero to Hero is a big part, gracing the covers front and back. This link will open up a neat application you can flip through to see a bunch of my other cartoons available in greeting cards as well. 

Catalogue

Founding Fathers

It's official. This cartoon I did in 2007 can now be retired from public service. It had a good run. It first appeared in Hustler (with a slightly different wording ie in place of the word 'frikkin') then with the help of my cousin Ron Klink, ex-congressman from PA, it made the rounds of email inboxes in Washington and beyond. It then caught the attention of a law firm in Philly that likes to collect cartoons for the halls of their offices. They wished to purchase the original art but since it was a digital painting I had to recreate it in tangible form along with some giclee prints for them. You get these types of cartoons once in a great while that seem to take on a life of their own and spread far and wide under their own steam. I have a had a few of those I am proud to say. 

BTW my website still offers signed, giclee prints of this in regular (family friendly, uses the phrase 'complete moron') and extra crispy (Hustler f-word) versions. $39.95 

Dan's On-line store 

Hey, my first commercial! 

Not only did we get our country back...

We got our website back too!

Whitehouse.gov

To a more peaceful time

Rush's anti-American progress wish for Obama's failure made me think of a time not too long ago when we didn't have to listen to similar shrill noises, ripping through our ear canals like a police whistle in a subway men's room. Perhaps by executive order for the good of the country, Ann C.'s and Rush L.'s jaws  should be wired shut for the first 100 days. It is a form of air pollution after all and lord knows Rush could stand to lose some weight, which a strictly liquid diet for that amount of time would achieve.  Or maybe when the country goes digital we could make Rush go analog. And while we're at it, would someone please put a dry cleaning bag over Sean Hannity's head? I mean the racket is awful!

Photo from the Inaugural Mall

A friend's daughter who works for the foreign service was there for the inauguration. She said it was quite crowded and cold but worth the effort to be a part of something so big. Here is a shot of the crowd and the jumbotrons. One memorable part: 

At one point I heard crowds of

laughter (which seemed incongruous for the words I was hearing!) and

looked up to see the close-up of a petulant-looking Bush, who seemed

personally put off by the speech.

Obama, Obama, Obama!

Today is the day I have waited for for eight years. Not just that a man of African descent is to take the leadership post of this nation, which is amazing, really, but that the man who stole an American election to become president has been supplanted. Don't kid yourself Fox News viewers, he did steal it with the help of the Supreme Court. You know it, I know it, and so does every American. The GOP muscled it's way through the election like a bully on a schoolyard. G.W. Boosh then took this nation down a path to get to where we are right now. Which is no place that a country this great should be. But the marvelous thing about this country is that it can heal itself with every election. True, this healing will take time, perhaps a generation to get back to where it was eight years ago but heal it will. Part of that healing lies in making sure a precedent is set. Making sure that future presidents will look back and see that breaking the law has it's consequences. Some say we should not mire ourselves in a divisive exercise of putting the very real criminals of this past administration in jail where they deserve to be. I say we can do both. We can look toward the future and at the same time prosecute the past. There are enough Americans to handle all the work it will take to restore our greatness once more. We are capable of doing both. If we allow the Bush law breakers to escape their just rewards then we are setting a precedent which will come back to haunt us at the very next opportunity. We owe it to the future to make sure this never happens again. Nixon escaped his formal punishment with the help of a Ford pardon and all those young neocons were given the example to build upon for their own stake in a Bush gang. They saw no need to worry that they would be caught or forced to account for their actions and they then proceeded to ravage America's good name for their own profit. I only hope that it will not take long before the architects of torture, financial ruin and brazen war mongering see their day in court. 

May God bless America once more.

I enter the blogosphere

Here I go. The last step in on-line evolutional development is possibly the blog. I entered the computer world for all intents and purposes around 2003. Not that long ago when I think about it. But I've come a long way in that time. Learning all the things that modern people know about what is essentially a box on your desk that somehow connects to the rest of the world. I know how to do many new and wondrous things related to cartooning which had before then seemed beyond the reach of this old world inkster. Desktop publishing is something I really want to get to doing in a serious way. Just scanning a cartoon was, in my mind a magical process that now is common place. The world changes and you had best keep pace. I am glad I did, though the reason I started this journey was one of the most difficult circumstances I have ever faced in my life. But that story is for another blog entry. For now it is enough to just take the first steps down a new path.