There may be this hidden, hate-filled community of online cartoonists, but if there are, I haven't found it yet. We're all generally pretty nice people, it turns out!
I have sometimes done cartoons that are hurtful to people - immature, spiteful stuff. Some are so self-indulgent, and some have just failed. I look back and sometimes cringe. But one regret as I get older is that I haven't been radical and wild enough.
There was a lot about the military that I thought was pretty silly, but these cartoons weren't meant to take a poke at anybody or anything. They were meant to make people laugh.
As a journalist, I interviewed people, and you begin to feel different rhythms in speech, and you can use those things to help carve out a character.
I think the greatest of people in society carved niches that represented the unique expression of their combinations of talents, and if everyone had the luxury of expressing the unique combinations of talents in this world, our society would be transformed overnight.
A lot of people say I look like a rock star or a designer punk. But I swear it's the job that has carved my face. It's the hours, the stress, and the pressure. It's not me trying to look like this.
Obviously, I carved out a pretty successful path and career for myself. But I'm kind of fascinated with, for lack of a better term, Renaissance men. And women. People who do a lot of different things.
Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.
In our community here in Boston, we have had a tremendous influx of Russian Jews and Haitians. We call these people immigrants. But they come for the same reasons that William Bradford and William Brewster and John Carver came.
I especially remember that on All Souls Day, when so many people wanted new monuments for the graves, our whole family pitched in. I did the lettering on the stones, my brother did the carving, and my sisters put the finishing touches on them, the gold leaf and all that.
Most people would rather stay home and watch Casablanca for the fourth time or the 10th time on Turner Classic Movies than go see Matrix 12 or whatever the hell the flavor of the month is.
In 1975, the collapse of a cascade of Chinese dams during a flood killed a hundred and seventy-one thousand people, but the event is rarely discussed, and the names of the victims are largely unrecorded today.
I've experienced first-hand the wonderful work organizations like J Bar J do for young people in Central Oregon and I am encouraged that the federal government is taking an active role in the Cascade Youth and Family Center.
You know, I think many people have the mistaken impression that Congress regulates Wall Street. In truth that's not the case. The real truth is that Wall Street regulates the Congress.
These are the same people who believe, in some cases, the federal government should not play any role in providing health care to our people or protecting the environment.
They are going to be playing Shaggy and Scooby-Doo for eons and eons, and they're going to forget Casey Kasem - unless they happen to step on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I'll be one of those guys people say, 'Who's that?' about. And someone else will say, 'He's just some guy who used to be on the radio.'
I trained with a guy by the name of Scott Casey. He actually worked with WWE back in the day, but he didn't become a big star. What I want to teach is what he taught me: that the smallest things are what people are really looking for.
Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.
Not only do I have to live, right, I have to get some cash for my troubles - it's a scary thing, and people need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.
I'm not one of those kind of people who does the observational 'Hey, don't you hate it when you're at the grocery store and the line's long and the cash register starts taking too long.' I don't really do that kind of stuff. I'm heavy on persona, and I do a lot of interacting with the audience.
