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So many shops, so little time. After all, St. Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. My better-half and I have made it a habit to buy each other funny gifts each year. To us, humor has been the glue of our existence, the bond that has held us together through the best and worst of times. We love to celebrate our 20 years, sometimes rocky, often pleasant, with a funny Valentine’s Day gift.

So I’ve scoured the Internet to decide what kinds of gifts we would exchange if we were other couples with different goals and dreams.

When in the mood, I can talk about my favorite Far Sides all night, Only several humorists influenced me greatly before Londons Times Cartoons became my pet prroject. Others who influenced me a great deal were the original cast members of Saturday Night Live, a former roommie in New York, Patrick Weathers (who also was a featured performer on SNL in the early 1980’s) Steven Wright, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Lucy, Rowan & Martin, Peter Sellers, and and I’m sure I could name a hundred more if I had time. One other cartoonist was the late great Charles Schulz, and they all influenced me in a different way.

So King Kong goes to Hong Kong to play Ping Pong, but dies having a sing song in a bar.

What do you put on his coffin?

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The Lid!

 :grin: 

Many think cartoonists become wealthy from newspaper syndication. They don’t. Newspapers only pay a few dollars per cartoon and the cartoonist splits that with the syndication firm. Not only that, of the hundreds of thousands of cartoons that are out there trying to make their way to newspaper print, only about .000000001% make it. One has a better chance of winning the lottery.

Cartoon money is made with hard goods such as mousepads and coasters and aprson, not newspapers. Sure there are a few bucks in newspapers but not a lot. It is noted that the late great Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame made about 80 million dollars in art licensing to every million he made in newspaper syndication. This is about the average. A lunch box deal is worth a lot more than the L.A. Times in the crazy business of cartooning.

There are as many ways to enter the field of stand-up comedy, cartooning, comedy acting, and writing as there are IPODS and accessories. Okay, maybe not quite that many, but a lot of paths.

A day does not go by that I don’t get asked how to get into the entertainment business. First of all, I am not in the entertainment business, that is, the way it is defined in the western world. I am a cartoonist and writer. I guess that entertains people so, non-technically it is the entertainment business. I still get asked for my autograph which is flattering, but I don’t seem to find myself on celluloid, tv, or movie marquis. And that’s all okay. I prefer making people laugh with my cartoons.

In today’s media, a cartoon is a piece of art, and usually humor is the “end game” . This usage dates from 1843 when England’s Punch magazine applied the term to satirical drawings in its pages, The anchor illustrator was the legendary John Leech. The first of these parodied the preparatory cartoons for grand historical frescoes in the then-new Palace of Westminster. The original title for these drawings was Mr Punch’s face is the letter Q and the new title “cartoon” was intended to be ironic, a reference to the pompous posturing of Westminster politicos.

Today’s single panel gag cartoons can be easily found on the Internet, magazines and newspapers, are usually single-panels with a caption immediately beneath and occasionally a speech/text balloon depicting the characters or a character talking. . Peter Arno of New Yorker Magazine fame, is consideredthe father of the modern gag cartoon. Arno, not one known for humility, often labeled himself that title. Gag cartoonists of note include Charles Addams, Gary Larson, Rick London, Dave Coverly, Leigh Rubin, and Charles Barsotti.

Salmon Rushdie and Marlin Brando have nothing on life over me, another poor fish swimming in the big pond o’ scum. We’ve haddock with life, living down on squid roe, reaching minnowpause, and for the main part, mentally eel.

So, what’s it all about, Algae? Since I’ve always marched to a different drum, you know, danced to a different tuna, and been a shad bit egocentric, people have tried desperately to save my sole. Holy mackerel, if I could count the times. Those bassturds. They just perch up on their high seahorse and talk down to me as if I’m pond scum.

I’d rather feel happy than crappie. I lived in the corporate shark eat dog world for many years. Sure I was an upwardly mobile guppie but a sad one.

I’d rather swim with the lawyers than sharks, this I know.

to shore.