In honor of my 2008th visitor's visit yesterday, I present to you all my Teen Titans artwork previously featured here!






TODAY'S BOOK: "Betsy Dowdy's Ride", by Nell Wise Wechter ((c) 1960)

Labels: cartoon

"Hey hey, let's watch the lips sink!"
"I'm standing next to Norm Abrams! I'm touching Norm Abrams! I'M HOLDING NORM ABRAMS OVER MY HEAD!"
"Of course you do, but that's because you're insane!"
"Aw, nut-bunnies!"
"Brando."
"Crud-vapors."
"Laugh with me, laugh with me!"
"I've got a thuuuumbtack under my fanny."
"I'm gonna need some more rope."
"No, come closer. A little more. Closer still. Hold it right there!"
"I am not a weenie, you are the weenie!"
"Nobody was hurt in the previous scene--including me..."
"The mind boggles."
"That was cheap, shallow and driven solely by hormones. Works for me!!"
"If I want to drink myself into some papaya-induced hallucination that's my business."
"That your family?"
"We're the Idiotic Police. We've come to arrest you for being totally idiotic."
"Those Egyptians were some good builders. You can't even see the spackle."
"Dexter! What have me told you about going ptbpthpph?"
"Wow! I'll bet that used up half our animation budget."
"HUGGBEES!"
"The key to the show is Newman."
"If you look out your right windows, you will see: the right wing."
"This is a test of the emergency broadcast system."
"This is Ingmar, my mute butler. He's mute, ya know."
"Your not--peeved, are you?"
"Get her the perfume."
"I got a bowl! Good for me!"
"So she climbed up a tree and stayed there and ate cookies. She got huge! Huuuge!!... Got any cookies?"
"For this watch turns beavers into gold!"
"Take me to jail, please! A Klingon is after me!"
"Now somebody call me a lawyer!"
"There! That's the last of the cruddy exposition!"
"It got me another season, didn't it?"
"Make... him... talk."
"Let's wrestle!"
"I'll send you Spam!"
"Hey. Cut it out."
"I must succeed!"
"That's a can of hash and some coffee."
"NOOOO!! Not the boats!!!"
"Dat's what I call my Shriner car--my little putt-a-putt."
"Lord Smoked-Meats-And-Fishes is here!"
"Brick."
"And now you know... the rest of the backstory."
"See if she can light a candle with her nose."
"It's a catchy tune."
"...Because it had turned to wood!"
"Oh, you're a loon, are you? Tell me where you escaped from--I'll take you back."
"Darn the luck! Darn!"

Labels: random

Today, after one year, ten months and sixteen days of blogging, and a mere eight months and one day after the first thousand hits, Giant Boogers from Outer Space has gotten an additional one thousand hits and now stands at the big two-oh-oh-oh on the hit counter! So congratulations Mr. Whoever-You-Are from Kansas City, Missouri, US of A--you're the guy who pushed us over the top. We couldn't have done without you.
Nor, may we mention, could we have done it without you finding GBFOS's ass shot, along with three other visitors--including one each from Iran and Saudi Arabia, which raises some ve-e-ry in-ter-est-ing questions. Along the way the blog's "staying power" has risen nine seconds to 27 per hit.
With hits-per-day rising from 2.27 to 4.01 between milestones, I felt secure enough to slacken my rate of visiting my own site, deflating my contributions to the cause; now I guess only a hit or two a week come via me. Record numbers visited in June due to the explicable awardspace "controversy" (281, compared to the previous high of 111 of Feb. '08), and July kicked in a silver-medal effort with 154, mostly due to the inexplicable blowfish phenomenon.
Not counting spam, thirty-one more comments have been posted here (for an average of one every 2.39 posts , not yet counting this one, over the extra Roman-numeral-M), led with eight more by me, seven by the anonymous fellow with the nom de plume of Khaaan!, three more by Eric, two by Rickey Henderson (the only other repeat offender), and eleven by various others, including my buddy Yitzchak.
Along the way, I underwent an appendectomy, got printed in a bigger and better magazine, got an Honorable Mention in yet another TT art contest, got publicated in a one-off for a local newsletter, had a humor article published online, knew the pain of having my place of work vandalized (twice), visited the national military cemetery at Har Herzl for the first time, went to my first professional comedy show, finished my National Service, and turned 19.
On to the next thousand!!

TODAY'S BOOK: "Jake and the Kid", by W.O. Mitchell ((c) 1961)

Labels: the blog

1. A - 18,240,000,000 (0.04 seconds)
15. B - 3,520,000,000 (0.06 s)
8. C - 4,970,000,000 (0.11 s)
6. D - 6,050,000,000 (0.07 s)
4. E - 7,310,000,000 (0.13 s)
18. F - 3,090,000,000 (0.07 s)
23. G - 2,390,000,000 (0.04 s)
24. H - 2,220,000,000 (0.06 s)
2. I - 9,190,000,000 (0.16 s)
25. J - 2,090,000,000 (0.11 s)
21. K - 2,530,000,000 (0.12 s)
10. L - 4,430,000,000 (0.05 s)
7. M - 5,520,000,000 (0.09 s)
12. N - 4,150,000,000 (0.1 s)
9. O - 4,900,000,000 (0.12 s)
11. P - 4,380,000,000 (0.04 s)
26. Q - 1,890,000,000 (0.15 s)
19. R - 2,790,000,000 (0.05 s)
3. S - 8,020,000,000 (0.08 s)
5. T - 7,040,000,000 (0.14 s)
20. U - 2,630,000,000 (0.1 s)
14. V - 3,800,000,000 (0.07 s)
16. W - 3,410,000,000 (0.13 s)
13. X - 3,820,000,000 (0.12 s)
17. Y - 3,160,000,000 (0.13 s)
22. Z - 2,380,000,000 (0.15 s)


TODAY'S BOOK: "Call it Courage", by Armstrong Sperry ((c) 1940)

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.watch-movies.net Like a better version of Peekvid (which it replaces in the Links List), but only for full-length movies.

Labels: random

DOONESBURY

GARFIELD

PEANUTS
(not found)

Those are just four of the six strips I read daily. The other two were not yet started in 1989, but in (respectively) 1996 and 1997. Here are their appearances from today:

DILBERT

ZITS

Hope you enjoyed it; I sure have!

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Great Skinner Getaway", by Stephanie S. Tolan ((c) 1987)

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.jonathanpollard.org Let me put this succintly: if you do not think that Jonathan Pollard should be freed, you are Not My Friend.

Labels: birthday

There are plenty of Mets-related sites on the interwebs, that are connected with the "official" media coverage of them--MLB.com and Mets.com, and all the online newspapers. But there are four websites, personal and unoffiliated, that I consider ansolutely essential to my Web reading on the team. And each of them offers something different. Today, I shall categorize them by comparing each website to a certain player in Mets history.
Mets by the Numbers is like Rusty Staub. MBTN is the only one of the four websites that does not update daily, and deals with a more esoteric aspect of the game (namely, uniform numbers), but it's still a well-run crowd-pleaser. Le Grand Orange, meanwhile, was a fan favorite in any city he played, including New York, which brought him back as a sentimental choice in the twilight of his career. Due to the briefness of his tenure his overall impact on the team is lessened, but while with them, he did it well, he did it with style, and he did it while being adored by the fans. Go up to a Met fan of a certain age and say "Rusty Staub" and you'll be sure to elicit a grin.
Faith and Fear in Flushing is like Tom Seaver. No contest. Watching Seaver pitch or reading FAFIF gives you the same feeling: splendour, a joy at watching a master craftsman at work. (If you want, we'll throw prime Dwight Gooden into the metaphor, because it's a two-author blog, and we'll let Jason and Greg fight over who is who.)
Metstradamus is like Marv Throneberry. Now, bear me out on this one: I am in no way implying that Metstra is anywhere nearly as incompetent as his spiritual counterpart. But Marvelous Marv was lovably incompetent, famously so, and will elicit smiles from Met fans of any generation, bigger than those given by Staub. 'Damus, like Jason & Greg, is a blogger, but in contrast to them his blog is usually content with short, pungent, and extremely memorable posts, with lavishly Photoshopped images. It's like comparing a four-course dinner (when you're relaxing after a long day at work) to a nice juicy hot-dog-in-a-bun (when you're on the move and famished); or, to change the Met-aphor here to match blogs with pitchers, like Tug McGraw, the always-scrappy Met reliever who gave fans one of their favorite rallying cries: "Ya gotta believe!"
And to cap things off, what else could The Ultimate Mets Database be other than Casey Stengel? The Ol' Perfesser of baseball and the Online Professor of Mets minutiae are a match made in virtual heaven.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Jewish Mothers' Hall of Fame", by Fred A. Bernstein ((c) 1982)

Labels: baseball

green-lantern-butts-forever.blogspot.com Yeah, okay, laugh at the name and the fact that it's misspelled on the page header. But this is the blog that comes closest to my tastes in comic books--Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Green Lanterns and the JLI rule!--all run very nicely by a feisty middle-aged woman who prbably spends too much time looking at GL's derriere.
xkcd.com Probably the most famous, and possibly the best, webcomic in existence. Some strips mystify me but the rest makes up for it.
www.retrojunk.com Interested in '80s and '90s pop culture? This is the #1 site for you to visit. Who knows, maybe in a decade or two this decade will also be featured on it...
shiurtimes.com Only fair that my current illustration employers get a place in the Links List. Not for the non-Jewish.
www.jpost.com Replacing the horridly left-wing New York Times, it's The Jerusalem Post, Israel's leading English-language newspaper, and a darn fine one overall to boot. Honig, Glick, Toameh et al are a joy to read.

TODAY'S BOOK: "You Don't Have to Be in Who's Who to Know What's What", by Sam Levenson ((c) 1979)

Labels: random

Once again, the ShiurTimes has seen fit to include three of my cartoons in its latest issue, which kind of makes up for being excluded from their newest feature, a list of staff and contributors complete with mini-bios (it's on the last page, and at the bottom there's a Menachem G. Jerenberg-sized empty space. Win some, lose some.)


To get back the bodies of two soldiers, whose kidnapping (and murder, although that was unknown at the time) by Hizbullah launched the Second Lebanon War, Israel released some Palestinian prisoners, four Hizbullah terrorists, about 200 soldiers' bodies, and the linchpin of the deal: Samir Kuntar, one of the biggest scumbags in the Israeli prison system, who was welcomed back with massive celebrations.


Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is currently under scrutiny in six separate investigations, which must be some sort of record. The "Doc" is a caricature of Sigmund Freud.


Olmert called former political ally Tzipi Livni a "backstabbing liar" after she publicly called for him to be ousted from office. It takes one to know one, bub.


TOADY'S BOOK: "A Bundle of Sticks", by Pat Rhoads Mauser ((c) 1982)

Labels: cartoon

"Dress code, yes; uniform, no. Those are words to live by.
When life hands you lemons, make dishwashing fluid, hock it, buy artificial flavoring with the proceeds, and make lemonade.
Never give up! Unless, of course, the situation is completely hopeless.
There is a secret code running throughout this sentence, which is why this sentence is very long, length being a useful in hiding concealed messages and obtained via a non-paltry abundance of words, which comprise nouns, vowels, adjectives, and all those other boring stuff that you learned in school, a place that I royally detest (and hopefully you do too).
This is a matter that only those with the ability to ken will be able to wot of it.
Sure, Peter Piper may have picked that peck of pickled peppers, but does it happen to mention how much he paid for them? Well, it just so happens that Peter Piper paid a pair of pounds, plus a pitiful penny to pack them.
Some stuff is just plain dirtier than dirt, and that's why people don't step in it.
Do those meteoroligists ever take into account a storm's feeling when they downgrade it? Here's this fella (or gal), building itself up for the big time, pumping air fronts, lifting waves, making some noise, and all of a sudden it finds out it's not even a hurricane anymore! Nasty meteorologists.

TODAY'S BOOK: "The Contest Kid and the Big Prize", by Barbara Brooks Wallace ((c) 1977)

TODAY'S WEBSITE: www.cagle.com Political cartoonist Daryl Cagle runs this webpage, containing cartoons from top American (and occasional international) cartoonists on a variety of popular subjects, going back six years. Now you can relive all the hot-button topics you missed or still miss!"
--76th post, 10/24/07

Labels: reprint

It's a pun, geddit?


TODAY'S BOOK: "An Orphan in History", by Paul Cowan ((c) 1982)

Labels: picture