Music, Music, Music
Ron Carter, Kermit Ruffins, AC/BC, and more!
Greetings, Bizarro buds.
Summer is winding down here in Hollywood Gardens, PA, and we’re harvesting the last of our backyard tomatoes. This year’s champ was a variety called Mister Stripey.
It’s now about seven weeks until Halloween, followed by the presidential election a few days later. I’m not sure which is scarier.
My latest blog post is up, and I’ll warn readers that my intro this time around is somewhat political. I may be risking some “shut up and do your little jokes” comments, but certainly not from Bizarro’s community of comics lovers.
On the drawing board, it’s nearly Thanksgiving. In the next few days, I might be drawing a turkey or two. The batch I just finished featured pinball enthusiasts, a house of mirrors, hippies, cave folk, zombies, and a kid playing in the snow.
Looking Ahead & Looking Back
I recently learned that serious pinball players call themselves “pinheads.”
On Monday my Mac consultant came to the studio to do an annual tuneup and update on the work and home computers. I’m lucky to have someone who does this stuff every day, multiple times per day to keep our computers running smoothly. My guy makes sure everything is compatible, up-to-date, and conflict-free.
In anticipation of his visit, I decided to drag an old computer carton out of the attic, and was surprised that it still held the machine! Apple sold the Power Macintosh 8500/120 from August 1995 to February 1997. [Wikipedia] This was probably my second computer. There was a dial-up modem in the box too.
Cartoon/Music Crossovers
Legendary jazz musician Ron Carter recently put up one of my WaynoVision panels on his Facebook page. It was shared from Mr. Carter’s page a lot more than anything I’ve posted myself!
My friends at Meyer the Hatter in New Orleans posted a wonderful picture of the trumpeter, singer, and chef Kermit Ruffins with the t-shirt I designed for Sam Meyer’s hundredth birthday.
I’m doubly jazzed by these two images.
This Week in Bizarro History
Laffs From the Past
This caption isn’t exactly a pun, but whatever it is, I still think it’s a funny panel.
From last year, here’s yet another musical cartoon.
Cartoon Soundtrack
Wednesday’s Bizarro, which compared music streaming to homemade mixtapes, garnered warm, nostalgic comments from folks who remember spending countless hours recording music onto cassettes for friends and romantic partners.
In olden times, I made quite a few compilations of oddball music to trade with friends, and created custom inlay cards with detailed notes about all of the material, usually lettered by hand. I’ll share some of those covers in future newsletters.
In the meantime, here’s a digital mixtape I put together in 2009 for a comics podcast called Inkstuds. All of the music was digitized from records in my collection.
The “cover” image is one of my old paintings, Petrochemical Heaven.
Info about all of the music is available on my August 2, 2009 blog entry. I apologize for sending you offsite for the details, but it would’ve made this post ridiculously long!
From the Shelves
I own this 1959 Ukulele Ike album, though I only played it once. I do love the cover art by Xavier Atencio, who was a Disney animator and writer for decades. The caricature resembles both Cliff Edwards and Jiminy Cricket, and the background figures are delightful.
Thanks for subscribing to the blog and for reading Bizarro.
Keep those pipe pics, questions, and t-shirt modeling photos coming in!
See you next week.
With best wishes from your cartoonist,
Wayno
Way off topic but have you seen Shemp Howard in Salt Water Daffy? I have it recorded and haven't watched yet? Here is the IMDB. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185658/
Great comics as always. Love the terrapin one.
I have fond memories for mixtapes that I don’t have for commercial albums on tape. Partly because with albums being different lengths on each side of vinyl often you would have a big long gap at the end of a the tape version . And with fast forwarding it it would stretch the tape and ultimately distort the music on the other side. If you were good at mixtapes you would make sure you had music that exactly fitted both sides. I wasn’t good and I nearly always had music that cut out halfway through. But that was better than a long silent bit.
I’m one of the few people that still enjoys CDs and making my own playlist for my little iPods. Lots of music I like and I don’t have to pay Spotify and no ads!