rainy hippie hero primate fashions

A couple of weeks ago after encountering what seemed to be the 50th youth asking "Do you care about the environment?", I started thinking about an "Environmental Super Hero".

Having a completely silly mind, I had to come up with something ridiculous, of course:

Guardian Green (sounds so much more pompous than "Green Guardian").

GG was born on a commune and was raised in The Way Of The Hippie. He uses Super-Caring and Hippie Wizdom to defend nature against the onslaught of Evil Men.

Naturally, he needs to have an arch enemy; I came up with that too: Chimp Waxer.

Chimp Waxer is the alter-ego of Count Sergio de Vincenzo, Billionaire Fashion Magnate and world famous bon vivant. In the guise of Chimp Waxer, Vincenzo has implimented a mad plan to denude chimpanzees of all their hair. The Chimps, shamed by their nakedness will flock to the stylish Vincenzo line of clothing, thus expanding his market beyond the human race. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL-- The person known as Count Vincenzo is merely the physical proxy of a centuries old living brain, abiding in a bell jar hidden deep in Castle Vincenzo! Wow, crazy, huh?? Yes, the original Count has in fact been possesing the mind and bodies of descendants in each subsequent generation of Vincenzo, switching to a new body as the old one dies.

Yeah, I know there aren't enough chimps to make much of a market for fashionable blue jeans, but I said it was a MAD plan!

OK, now we have some rainy pics from my neighborhood taken last last Saturday

Bloated Extremist, Portal to Madness

Another old doodle. I think I got the idea for this after watching The Picture Of Dorian Gray.

Some Saturday shots from outside my domicile
This is back of a building in my neighborhood (Rogers Park). I do find alleys to be quite fascinating!
Could these dilapidated portals be doorways to some dark dimension, sealed to keep at bay whatever may seethe with hideous hunger and unspeakable desires on the other side? Tenuous barriers to some screaming personification of madness that lays just beyond the world of man?! Are a few rusting bolts the only thing that stands between us and a dominion of tentacled monstrosities?!!

Loping to Tartarus

I keep getting emails from one of those "Find Your Old Classmates" sites. I check it out on occassion, but am not a "Gold Member" (maybe Aluminum?), so my benefits are pretty much limited to getting listed on the site and having a "profile" (Lane Tech '79). One can have a photo of "now", and one from "then" -- so I did post a recent pic of myself, and for "Then" I put this:

Ha, Ha -- this is a drawing of Johnny Revolto: Man About Town an idea I had for a culture/restaurant critic. Golly -- I crack myself up!! Well, I may have actually looked something like that after sophomore foundry class...

Friday's Work day did not start out too well at all! I left home with plenty of time to get to the Metra station for the 3:05, or so I thought -- after half a block realized I'd left without my "reading glasses" (a weaker pair I use for reading), so ran back home to get those. Of course now I had to do some running to get to the station so as not to miss the train. Well, turned out the train was late anyway - pulled in about 3:17 -- no problem (not actually that unusual), can still get to work with time to spare! NO, WAIT. The conductor gets off the train and says there is some kind of fire down a ways south, and the train isn't going anywhere till all is clear.

Last time I had a major problem with the Metra, I got to work at 5:30 (I start work at 4:00), so I decided I'd better take the CTA to work (almost guaranteeing I'd be late, but at least it would only be 10 or 15 minutes). There's five blocks to go to the Lunt Entrance of the Morse Red Line station, so I start running (and I really don't do a lot of that!). Some kid on a skateboard yells after me "WHY ARE YOU RUNNING?!!" -- At that point I was just running to catch the traffic light, but from the sound of the kids voice, I think he thought the train was going to blow up or something. Well that'll be HIS big story to tell for the day. When I get to the train entrance, I'm greeted with this:

OF COURSEWell, it was just another block to go, but it did make me feel like Jack Lemon in The Out Of Towners.

This is the little stretch of Glenwood which was the last leg of this segment of my journey.

Train was just pulling into the station as I tripped on the last stair up to the platform. When a sat down on an available seat, I was pretty much drenched in sweat (very humid day!), and felt like everyone was staring at me (OK - only half the passengers were staring). The CTA Redline ride was it's usual beautiful experience: slow, dirty and noisy.

Clocked into work 10 minutes late, and got a comment about "whatever happened to MR. PUNCTUALITY?!" Ha, Ha -- Mr. Puntuality -- That's another story !

Oh, and while I was setting up my cart for work, I managed to both jam and cut a finger! Yes blood everywhere! Well, maybe not everywhere...

Yes, a perfect day.

Let's have another old doodle!!

People's Frankenstein, City in the Clouds

Here's another Raymondo's Jar of Spiders strip. This one features a character named Derleth, an employee of Grodius Inc, a company that does...um...Business...? --- i don't think anybody knows exactly what the company does... Anyway, whatever Derleth does for a living, he'd rather be a screenwriter, and here he is working on one of his projects in the wee hours of the morning

The strip also features The Baby-Headed Banker/Executive and The People's Frankenstein, a couple of creations I have used variations of in other cartoons.

Now here are some pics shot from the moving Metra train into downtown, 6/25/08

Sky Trump, Hippie Odyssey

Here are some pics from Tuesday. It's the still-under-construction Trump Tower. Apparently when it's complete, it will be the second tallest building in the country for like, 26 minutes (well, maybe a couple of years); that's when a couple of other taller buildings are scheduled to be finished. It's actually rather cool looking (and I'm not a big fan of a lot of these glass & steel behemoths), plus it replaces the hideously ugly Sun-Times building. So this is something I'd call "progress".

Hey, how about a Disturbing Clown picture?

WOW. Transporter malfunction, or what? Hmmm, yes -- They could remake THE FLY but instead of a fly, it's a wacky clown. You know those clowns: always up to some kind of hilarious shananigans!

OK, seriously now -- a while back, my supervisor at work was refering to the final day of service for a particular client; one of our guys would be making his "Last Trip" to the place. That phrase sounded like it could be the title of some late 1960s Hippie exploitation flick. I sat myself down and came up with this:

I can see Sgt. Joe Friday shaking his head and giving officer Bill Gannon a knowing look...

the Bronze Hand of Irving, Polydori Bosco

Was a busy day Tuesday. Took lots of pics as I walked around the Wacker - Michigan ave area after lunch and before work. After work I had an interesting encounter on my way to the Metra train; Took a different way to the station and then, well, something different happened... A woman struck up a conversation with me, and said that I was "really cute" and that I "could have my pick of women" -- Shortly after that, I was running as fast as I could

(ha, ha -- it really wasn't because of what she said... but is sure sounds funnier that way!)

Here we have the Wrigley Building (will it become the Snickers building??) and the Tribune Tower, among other things

Today (6/25/2008) is the 132nd anniversary of Custer's Last Stand, so here we have another example of my quickly drawn Post-It cartoons from years past. This one George is starring in a TV series about a Victorian era detective patterned on Sherlock Holmes (OK, ripping-off S. H.). I think I came up with this one so I could use the silly name "Polydori Bosco".

Team Ape Squad

Here's another WAY TOO SERIOUS cartoon. This one has elements from some earlier cartoons, including some characters from the RAYMONDO'S JAR OF SPIDERS strip. "Team Ape Squad" just seemed like a ridiculous progression from the kind of names corporation Big Brains would come with during some sort of skull session -- "Yeah, "team" has gotta be there, 'cause that sounds like something about working together... And "Squad", that sounds like, like, you know, um, a group with some kind of real purpose..."

Left click on the cartoon for a larger version.

Some photos from June 18th, taken as I walked around downtown before work

Hey, am I in The Future?? Where's George Jetson??

Concrete Clouds, Beat Bean

A building being demolished is kind of like cloud: It's only going to exist for a short time, changing it's shape continuously. and like a cloud, nothing else will look exactly as it does during any given moment of it's journey to oblivion.

I find something particularly spooky about the interior doorways. Never seen by the outside world until exposed at their moment of doom.

More old Doodles.

A while back I thought I'd draw a semi-slovenly guy standing outside of some place where he would possibly "hold court" with his cohorts; a place for Has-Been Hipsters and pseudo-intellectuals. I came up with the name The Keen Bean. Well, just did a web search and found there is a a real place by that name (don't know if it existed when I thought it up). Who would have thought that more than one person in the history of the world would have thought of using the words Keen and Bean together??

Speaking of Has-Been Hipsters...

Inflatable Pants, Suburban Decay

Over at a site for awful album covers, there is one featuring an artist named Heino (Since the title of the album, Liebe Mutter, is in German, I assume the fellow is German, or at least a star there, and perhaps elsewhere). For some reason, it struck me that Heino should not be limited to just a singing career, but also be featured in a series of childrens books, perhaps something along the lines of Curious George. This one is Heino and the Inflatable Pants

Saturday, I was up in Evanston for the Custer Fair. Got some shots of some fascinating Suburban Decay (ha - take that City Slickers!). This is I Dempster; I'd suppose there had once been a Metra stop there. There's something about crumbling stairways that seem particularly nightmarish. Perhaps Inflatable Pants could prove to be useful when encountering such an obstacle.

Across the street, another example of photogenic neglect.
A little later in the day, looking to the skies proved rewarding .

Bendy Fence, Odd Encounter

On Friday, I walked over to the corner of Clark & Touhy to drop a Netflix envelope in the box and buy a bag of bagels. I had my camera with me (typically, if I'm just heading to the corner, I don't bring the camera with me), so I figured I'd document yet another example of urban decay; This fence was just erected less than a year ago, and already it's been mauled, mangled & mutilated ( Didn't the Kirby Stone Four have a hit with a song by that title?). Of course, I may be mistaken, and this is actually a work of modern art. Yes, let's move it to Daley Plaza...

As I was concentrating on my camera (the batteries were running out of power, and it kept shutting off), I heard someone say "excuse me" and next thing I know, there is an exceptionally scruffy fellow standing right up against me and pushing past. He stopped right next to me, bent over to the side (looking almost like a person frozen in the middle of rolling a bowling ball) and held a cigarette lighter at knee level. He proceeded to "Flick His Bic"; He sparked the flint four times, but produced no flame (Where's Roald Dahl when you need him?). He then proceeded to cross the street, where in the middle of the crosswalk, he again performed his odd maneuver. Watching him continue north, I saw that he repeated this peculiar ritual every two-dozen feet or so. Thankfully, he would also periodically pull his pants back up.

This reminds me of one of my old cartoons. CAPTAIN HOBO & BUM-BOY . The Cap'n and his scurvy side-kick worked out of a secret base hidden deep under the Boxcar Willie Theater in Branson. I of course use the phrase "worked out" rather tongue-in-cheek, for you see, "work" is the last thing the Cap'n had on his mind. I've "re-purposed" the drawing of the Dynamic No-Do for a bunch of things since I originally created it, using it for greeting cards and stuff.