The Sorensen Monologues

Yoko and Me

Not to imply fame by association or anything, but I’m interviewed in this new book about the intersection of politics and art, along with Pete Seeger, Yoko Ono, and the late Howard Zinn. I haven’t actually seen it yet, and lord knows what I actually said over the fabulous lunch the author Richard Klin and his photographer wife Lily Prince bought for me at Brasserie Les Halles on Park Avenue in Manhattan. I think there’s also a photo of me at the Forbidden Planet comic shop. The book sounds like a fascinating read, and I look forward to checking it out.

This Week’s Cartoon: “Nation Stunned By Display of Competence”

The killing of Bin Laden after ten years of bloody bungling made me think of  a conversation I had with a housemate of mine right after 9/11 — it may have been the night of the attacks. We were talking about what the U.S. should do. I said it would be cool of us to not respond dramatically; that instead, we should send in special teams to take down the perpetrators one by one. There would be no televised bombings to invite cycles of retribution — just quiet ninja-like justice. My housemate, a right-leaning Navy vet, favored more of a “wipe-Afghanistan-off-the-map” approach. Well, we know how that went.

I find myself  giving my cartoons Onion-esque titles lately. Not that they have a monopoly on fake newspaper headlines, but I don’t want to overdo it. With this one, it felt necessary.

Slowpoke Meets Rhymes With Orange

My week as guest cartoonist for Hilary Price’s “Rhymes With Orange” has begun! I’ve been a fan for years, and am honored to be entrusted with the strip. It’s one of the smarter ones you’ll find on the comics page these days. Check your daily newspaper or read it at the official RWO website.

Travel Article and Illo

As I mentioned earlier, I had another travel piece in The Oregonian. It’s mostly about skiing, but also contains other details, such as a naked posterior. You’ll just have to read to find out. The article is accompanied by what I believe is my first purely-digital illustration, a send-up of the old “Endless Summer” movie poster.

This was a fun project. I had Mr. Slowpoke don ski gear and stand in the backyard (in warm spring weather, of course) while I photographed him from different angles. After bringing the photos into Photoshop, I traced the figure outlines using my Wacom tablet, turning one of them into a female snowboarder. Added some shadows and the outline of Mt. Bachelor with the tablet, and voila!

After I’d started work on this, I discovered that the Warren Miller movie “Endless Winter” had a poster with a similar concept, which freaked me out for a moment, but it looks pretty different, and “Endless Summer” poster parodies are all over the internet. So I say it’s fair game.

Side Projects

Some freelance projects I’ve been working on will be bearing fruit in the week ahead. On Sunday, I’ll have another travel article in The Oregonian — not a comic this time, but a prose piece illustrated by me. And starting Monday, you’ll be able to read a week of Hilary Price’s “Rhymes With Orange” cartoons that I wrote and drew as a guest cartoonist so that Hilary could take a much-deserved vacation. I’ll be linking to these in the days ahead. But be on the lookout if you subscribe to the Oregonian, or a newspaper that carries Rhymes With Orange!

This Week’s Cartoon: “The Schools of 2020”

There was a brief moment last week, I think, when people were talking about public schools and the Wisconsin recalls. But that’s all kind of a hazy memory now. The news about bin Laden broke as I was past the point of no return, deadline-wise. I mean, I could have whipped out a totally badass eagle about to rip Osama to shreds, but that’s not how we roll at the House of  Slowpoke. Through sheer coincidence, however, I did manage to draw a military-type guy shooting a kid in the head. Not the best timing. Sorry about that.

OBL

I’m glad Osama’s dead, but I’m finding this whole thing anticlimactic. It’s not that I’m above feeling satisfaction when a mass murderer dies, but the point when I would have felt much emotion apparently passed long ago. Too many years of carnage — of countless Iraqi and Afghan civilians massacred, innocents tortured to death in secret prisons, young American soldiers blown up — weigh on me. I don’t blame people for celebrating this moment in history. I just don’t see it as a “game-changer” except, perhaps, politically.

Also, the really bad editorial cartoons starring fierce-looking eagles zooming in on bin Laden are starting to roll in. Don’t these people watch Colbert?

A Toast to Troubletown

I’ve been meaning to write about my friend and colleague Lloyd Dangle ending his altweekly strip Troubletown. Troubletown has been one of my favorite cartoons over the years, and this was its last week. I can attest to the fact that he’s a nice guy, too. We did a cartoon reading together once in Berkeley, and he totally saved my butt by borrowing a digital projector from a friend so I could show my Powerpoint slides. (Lloyd always used an old-fashioned slide carousel to avoid such predicaments.) He also let me stay in his son’s room at his house and cooked me a great dinner. Not only can he draw, but the man knows how to prepare an artichoke! We at Casa Slowpoke raise our drinking glasses high.

This Week’s Cartoon: “New Car Runs on Ignorance”

I was initially going to name the ignorance-powered car the Chevy Dolt, but then I Googled it to make sure it wasn’t an existing meme. As it turns out, a number of people opposed to electric cars and hybrids (and science in general) have christened the Volt the Dolt. I found some hilarious blog comments, such as this one:

Give me an old-fashioned car that runs on gas. I LIKE oil. Oil is good. Oil is the fuel of freedom. To hell with these stupid cars.

There’s also a persistent meme on the right that the battery for the Prius makes it less environmentally-friendly than a Hummer. Apparently some college student in Connecticut wrote an article for his school newspaper, it got picked up by Rush Limbaugh, and now it’s a golden nugget of contrarian wisdom, except that it isn’t true.

I learned yesterday to my chagrin that Tom Tomorrow did a similar cartoon in 2009, involving the harvesting of stupidity for power. But hey, in the internet age, that’s like two decades ago, right?

Another background tidbit: I drew this with a sprained thumb. It was literally a pain to ink. Can you tell? I went to the doctor yesterday, and it isn’t broken, thank goodness. Between my pulled back from a few weeks ago and my smashed thumb, I feel like a walking Three Stooges episode. I’m like all three stooges bundled into one.

Escape From Ronald Rump… Again

Matt’s latest cartoon has moved me to share a comic I drew seven years ago, the last time we went through a Donald Trump-oriented media frenzy (click for larger version).The corresponding blog post from April 27, 2004:

I sometimes watch late-night comedy shows while drawing the strip. One night recently, THREE shows in a row had interviews with Donald Trump or a sketch about Trump. When the networks want to ram something inane down our throats, they sure don’t hold back. No wonder a majority of Americans still think Iraq had something to do with 9-11, even though the White House once quietly admitted this was false (it was barely covered).

So, you see, this happens once every seven years. He’s like a PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS!

This Week’s Cartoon: “Zero-Sum Speech”

I’m out of town at the moment, so I will have to let this passage from the NYT article summarize the relevant issue for me:

To William Maurer, the lawyer opposing the Arizona mechanism, whenever “a privately financed candidate speaks above a certain amount, the government creates real penalties for them to have engaged in unfettered political expression.” That “speaks” was not a slip, but a reinforcement of the money-equals-speech notion.

The fundamental problem, he said, is “the government turning my speech into the vehicle by which my entire political message is undercut,” because the public funds triggered are a penalty that reduces the impact of the privately financed candidate’s spending and speech. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. made clear in the argument that he, too, sees triggered matching public funds as a limit on the privately financed candidate’s speech.

I am simply incapable of wrapping my mind around this interpretation of the First Amendment. To see the world this way, you literally have to have your brain screwed in backwards.

Stumptown Comics Fest

I’m going to be wandering around the con this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, and will be appearing on a panel Sunday at noon about the possibility of starting a NW chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. If you happen to be there, you are invited to bump into me as I drift about and say hello.