Comic Con 2011 Aftermath

It has now been a few weeks after San Diego Comic Con – a much needed recovery time after such a complete sensory overload, and now I can actually look into the big bag of swag that I collected. My bag has the cast of the television show “The Big Bang” and is big enough to carry a Great Dane puppy.  Inside are pounds of free magazines, faux tattoos, posters and other things thrust into my hands by silicone-chested muses, or other costumed barkers standing at the various booths.

Looking at my treasures I am struck once more by the nagging thought, “What did I actually do for the four days?” To remedy this quandary, I reflect on the events and the sights and sounds.

The first day is the actual day you go and get your passes that you went online and registered for in March; being a professional, I also have the advantage of going to “Preview Night,” but more on that later. The lines moves rather briskly compared to the regular folks who have been camping over night in the cold and grumbling of the homeless who are mad that their spot has been taken by someone who actually has a home with running water.  Once inside you are handed your large bag with the featured show(s), movies of the year blazoned on the side and the event book the size of a small phone directory.

As I said earlier I will be attending Preview Night; this event is not part of the regular convention experience, but for the professionals and their entourage, it is included. The regular folk can attend, but they do have to pay extra for the privilege, much like Governor Brown’s “Fire Protection” scheme. The concept of Preview Night is sort of a convention-lite – less crowds but still fulfilling. It is a 3-hour speed trial of the convention so that attendees can see where all the cool things are so they know where to park their bags and costumed forms for the four days. Also where you will be spending the hard earned cash they have been saving up since last convention to buy stuff that continue to fill up their rooms or apartments.  Fun Fact: some attendees save up between $1500 to $3000; think of all the Starbuck’s lattes that would buy.

It is the first day of the actual convention and the hunt for parking begins.  Seasoned attendees know that to obtain the best spot you must arrive several hours before the convention opens, say around 5:30 AM-ish is a good time.  If you have seen the show MonsterQuest: Search for the Yeti, that was easy compared to the search for parking during the convention.  If you  have missed the window for good parking then you will be driving around for hours and eventually settling for a spot two cities over, (helpful hint: bring water and plenty of snacks).

The opening of the convention is like the original opening of Ellis Island – with hordes of people from another reality, not another country crammed into the halls and balconies awaiting the opening of the doors.  There are Klingons, pirates, overweight Spartans and much, much more and some have actually showered too!

Once the doors have opened and you are pushed along inside it doesn’t look any different than Preview Night except that now there are more people and celebrities! One note should be mentioned that people are much ruder than on Preview Night – reminding me of my vacation in New York City, right down to the strangely dressed people. Now you are caught in the primal lemming urge to follow the person in front of you – all thoughts of the night before are lost in the mass exodus towards the free stuff.  I have learned over the twenty-five years I have been attending to follow the largest person I can find and let them cut a path throw the crowd.  Never follow a hot babe in costume, they are always stopped for pictures, also don’t follow any costumed person, some didn’t get the shower email.

As you weave in and out of each aisle you are accosted by free stuff and sometimes you stop for something really cool, (I collect old pulp novels from the 1950’s – and I read too). And if you are lucky you find a real treasure and pay five-times its original worth only to learn that if you had waited until the last day of the convention you could’ve gotten for its original price. But hey, its Comic Con and you don’t know if it’ll be there tomorrow!

But Comic Con isn’t just about buying stuff and taking pictures of people dressed up as – whatever, there are also panels and seminars, movie previews with the actors to answer questions and build up their audience base when the film comes out.  There are workshops on how to build your own Sandspeeder using things you find at Home Depot, or how to sew up costumes that are guaranteed to win you the awards at the Masquerade on Saturday night. See, it isn’t all just fun and going into debt, there are upsides to this too.

So I have separated my three treasured pulp novels, the autograph from Matt Smith and Karen Gillan from Doctor Who from the large pile of stuff I really don’t want, but the buxom women in the shiny skin tight outfit assured me I really wanted.  As I think back on those four days here is what comes to mind:

• Loud noises both human and electronic
• Silicone breasts in spandex
• Lots of stuff I cannot afford
• Natural breasts in corsets
• Rude people hyped on Red Bull
• People living their dream fantasies in a public place
• More breasts
• Celebrities charging for their autograph
• The fall of modern civilization through video games
• Breasts

Yup, that about covers it.  Well, I better fill out my registration for next year – maybe it will be different…

Cougar-Mania!

When a fellow male instructor told me that over the weekend he was attacked by a cougar, I was certain he did not mean a member of the genus puma, concola, Felidae family, but the new fad term given to an older woman seeking the sexual company of a younger man. Not that there is that much of a difference really.


The online Urban Dictionary defines a cougar as: An older woman who frequents clubs in order to score with a much younger man.

This to me seems to be a role reversal of the male goings on during the late Victorian/Edwardian social clubs in the heart of London. In such clubs men of wealth and means would cavort with young ladies. The difference being that they had to be kept behind closed doors - the men still had to keep some air of respectability. Today’s cougar however doesn’t need to stay behind closed doors. There are web sites where they can chat with one another, special Happy Hours at restaurants and bars, and even I suspect Cougar Cruises on many bays throughout the United States.

Now being a curious individual, always wanting to know more about the changing world around me, I wanted to find out more about this rising fad of sorts sweeping the nation and the talk show circuits. And after scanning the various web sites that cater to this growing group of female predators, for isn’t that what a cougar is really? And watching the various talk shows excerpts on www.hulu.com where known cougars were paid money to go on national television- specifically during the time period where would-be cougars are likely to be watching, to gain tips on how to become one, I have made the following observations.

Firstly, not all older women can be cougars, judging from the media and television anyway, only those that have money and are still reasonably attractive. However, as we have learned with men, loads of money cancels out looks 85% of the time. This is not to say that an unattractive older woman cannot be a cougar, it just means the type of younger male she will attract will not be Johnny Depp, more like Barney Rubble.

Now I did not come to this observation from a male chauvinistic perspective, this is from my extensive research, and watching those in the know; Oprah, Tyra, Maury and of course the true leaders of American morals - The View. From these I have learned that the conventions of the past are gone – no more hiding your desires in the backrooms, NO MORE! Get it out in the open where you can brag to your girlfriends that you are better than they are! But remember, men must still keep it in the backrooms because it is perverted and ugly when they do it.

Another point I was curious about concerns the age group of the perspective male consort. As we see in the news, having relations with males of the age from 16 to 13 years is illegal – spelled statutory rape, and would only land you on the cover of newspapers, MTV, VH1, TMZ, and paid offers of appearances on any of the shows listed above from my research. So therefore the conclusion to be drawn is that the proposed male must be of legal age and preferably with some facial hair. True that our Edwardian males would align themselves with ladies of 17 years, but those were also ladies who had no money and had many suitors, young and old, to pay for their lodgings. The play by Alexander Dumas Files “Lady of Camille” is a shining example of this sort of thing. The term for these ladies was courtesans.

Then I was struck by a thought, wasn’t there a name for men who dallied with women of a mature nature, and often were paid for their time with gifts and trinkets? I believe the term was gigolo. A gigolo is a male who wished to live a carefree life without any true means of support except for that of an older woman who had more money than he had. All he had to do was to be seen with her, make her feel young, and perform certain services – and yes, I mean that kind too. The point being that this man was looked down upon by society as being nothing more than a male prostitute. But with the new approved vogue of cougar-mania, this man now is no longer a cheap, ugly male hook…, sorry, gold digger, but a sympathetic male who sees a need within a certain sect of society and fills it, (see the perform part again if you missed it).

In conclusion, my hope is that with this new social double standard of the cougar-mania, and the world embracing this step backwards, and will allow the men who have long hidden their needs, can finally come out of the backrooms with THEIR sensitive young female consorts and march blissfully forward hand in hand into the new age of media moral approval and paid talk show profits.

Now if you’ll excuse me – Desperate Housewives is on.

An Animal's Point of View

It is a widely held opinion among the wildlife community that the human race must in fact really dislike the planet Earth. Now this may come as a shock to the human race at large, but it has been a real concern of the animal population since man came out of the trees and began to walk upright and started building civilizations. As far as the animals are concerned, Earth Abuse pretty much started with the establishment of cities, and man believing he is at the top of the food chain.


Now this has not been the case for all of man’s history, the Native Americans, certain African tribes and even the peoples of what has been termed, “backward” cultures, have learned to live with nature and the animals, taking only what they need and wasting nothing. But with the rise of modernization and technology, plus the added increase in fast food franchises, this has all gone by the wayside.

Now it should be stated that all of the human race are not at fault for this problem, in fact it is only a small section of the human population that is of the biggest concern, and if you who are reading this, and are not part of this section, then you can just sit back and laugh at those who are. The groups at fault are those that drive cars, live in environmentally controlled homes, and have cell phones and more than one computer in their environmentally controlled home. These are the people that the animal kingdom feels are the ones who have decided that their world should evolve into a large waste dump, and the quicker the better.

Have you Ever Thought About…

When a seagull dives down to gather food as has been their nature since they evolved from flying lizards, in the crisp and vastness of the ocean and becomes entangled in a plastic multi-looped death trap that is not of nature, but tossed overboard by a passing boat carrying party goers out for a cruise complete with alcoholic refreshments, then it is taken as writ that the seagull should take offense. Even the dolphin swimming behind the boat that swallowed the empty can and choked because his fellows can’t actually help him extract it, due largely to the lack of hands and arms to perform the Heimlich Maneuver.

Another such incident occurred when a young deer comes to a stream and lowers her graceful head to sip from a clear stream to taste only dish soap from a campsite where a family has just finished their meal and have cleaned the dishes in the stream just a few yards up from the dear, again one would see the animal kingdoms point. Also the fact that a bear happens to come by to help his friend the deer put stumbles over an empty cardboard carton filled with empty beer cans left by some college kids out for a quiet drink and “forgot” to take it with them, thus causing the bear to fall and injure himself.

Past Earth-to-Waste-Dump Achievements

Let us not overlook the other forms of human quick-destruction elements that have affected the animals:

• Deforestation – home loss for tree living animals, well as oxygen depletion for all life

• Toxic waste – one three eyed fish is a joke, but 6 million dead ones is not

• Air pollution – no it hasn’t gone away, it just not a big a fad problem as in the 60’s and 70’s

• Increase in human population- more people means more need to kill animals for McRibs

But the biggest and most frightening of all is EXTINCTION. This is the one that concerns the wildlife of Earth the most. To put it into terms humans can understand, one day your school or office is filled with all manner of ethnic mixing you can think of, can you picture that? Now let us say that the next day one section of the whole office, say the Asians, seemed to get less, and this continues to the next day, and the next. By week’s end all the Asian are gone; your best friend, your fiancé, your favorite hot girl at the coffee cart. Do you see that picture now? That is what it is like for the animal kingdom, fellow beings gone and never to return, not pretty is it?

Closing Thoughts

So when you see some trash left at a campsite, or along the side of the road while you drive by with your GPS telling you in that annoying HAL 9000 voice, how to drive and where to turn to find tasty McRibs, feel safe and secure in the knowledge that the quick path to planet-to-waste dump is moving ahead as planned. And if you are waiting for a bus or trolley and a bird just happens to leave a bit of waste on your shoulder, don’t get angry, he is just saying, “Thanks for nothing, Mr. High on the food chain.”

Going For Broke - Literally!

Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed. A poor mountaineer who barely…


No, wait a minute, that isn’t the right story.

Sorry, wrong book.

Ah here it is.

Hello and welcome to Prof. Bob’s Story Time. Today’s story is about how not remembering history will land you in a huge heap of cow poop.

Are you ready children? Good here we go.

A long time ago, in the country known as USA was a beautiful Golden Land known as California, where the people lived a golden life and whose gross income was that of a small emerging nation. In this Golden Land where the sun always shined and the young women walked around in what would amount to three sheets of Kleenex on strings, there was happiness everywhere you looked. There were strong industries that supplied jobs aplenty, top rated colleges and universities, nice tract houses with swimming pools, home of the movie stars and more wine than all the winos in both New York and Chicago could drink in a year. In other words a modern Eden, (remember the women in the Kleenex and strings?).

The Golden Land was so popular that ten thousand people moved there from the eastern part of the country each year to get away from the crime and cold weather that made everyone angry and mean towards their fellow men. In California everyone was tanned and smiling, at least that is what all the television shows and movies showed you, so why not believe them? They wouldn’t make stuff like that up would they?

Also in this land was a smaller subdivision of Magic called Disneyland, built by a man who sought only to bring family entertainment to all, but like so many great thinkers and dreamers, his land would fall into evil hands, who would subvert it for the sake of money and profit. But that is another story for a later time.

At the time this story begins the elected leader, or GOVERNOR of the Golden Land was Ronnie the Reagan, who had once been an actor in the movies and was very business savvy having run the Screen Actors Guild for many years, so he knew how to make the land better. To this end he had stored money collected from many forms of taxes to build an emergency fund in case of disasters or any bad things that might happen to the beautiful golden land. He had worked long and hard to make the land prosperous and free of federal aid. But his term was coming to the end, and the people looked towards choosing a new leader.

Now as with any mythical and magical place where there is happiness, beautiful beaches and those women dressed in next to nothing; there was evil lurking on the sparking California horizon. This evil had clothed itself in a guise of YOUTH and NEW HOPE. He was indeed a youthful fellow, but he was the son of the governor who had almost bankrupted the Golden Land many years before Ronnie the Reagan had taken office. This youth was known as Jerry the Brown Jr., (his father being Jerry the Brown Sr.). He was young well educated and raised in the Golden Land, he spoke well and except for the severe dark eyebrows that looked like they needed a weed-whacker to trim, he looked youthful. He was a child of the generation “Free Everything;” free love, free food, free mindedness, free, free, free. This point will come back later to haunt the people of the Golden Land.

Well, as you may have guessed he won the election and became the new Governor of California.

All seemed well until he actually started to do things, and then things went not so well. He decided he didn’t want the nice big Governor Mansion, so he sold it and moved into a luxury condo. Then he decided that the welfare regulations were too strict and made them easier for those in need. This backfired, because other states learned how easy it was to get on welfare, (the only real requirement was “are you breathing?”), and that you didn’t have to be a long term resident of the Golden Land to qualify. So they began sending their welfare dregs to the Golden Land so that heir states could boast lower welfare costs while California’s went up. Now the cost of welfare began to rise and those who actually had jobs were now paying more for those who didn’t want jobs from other states that had shown up asking for all the free money.

He started many other such programs, even waging a war on political corruption in the form of the dreaded magic paper called PROP 13, which didn’t stop the corruption, just moved it to another part of the state legislature. All these programs fell nicely into his free thinking stance he had said during his campaign. Slowly but surely while no one really was watching the reserve funds that were established by Ronnie the Reagan were almost gone. The media who had once been his friend, now referred to him as “Governor Moonbeam” because of his hippy attitude that was no longer youthful and new, just costly to the tax-payers.

Luckily for the people of the Golden Land his term ended, before the state had to file for Chapter 11.

Since his time many new Govenors were elected some good, some corrupt and one impeached, until a true hero came on the scene: The Govenorenaitor! He was big, he was strong, and he spoke broken English! He was the poor emigrant who made it big. He was an icon of the age, his presence moved mountains, if not, he would move them himself! He even married a member of the great royal house of Kennedy! He was the true symbol of the Golden Land!

He was a no-nonsense leader. He changed the rules for welfare it wouldn’t be bleed dry, he focused on balancing the budget to help save the Golden Land, but at every turn he was stymied by those who still followed the “Free for All” thinking who had survived from the Moonbeam times. He tried to fix the problem that had been laid on his really muscular shoulders. He was making headway, but it was slow moving at best.

Last night his reign ended. And now the darkness has returned…. Moonbeam is back! He isn’t youthful anymore, he isn’t new anymore, his forehead does look like the full moon though, and he still is preaching NEW HOPE.

But deep in the pile of papers he carries with him to the Governor Condo he once occupied decades before, there is one that is tri-folded neatly and crisply, almost lovingly like a cherished heirloom. In bold letters typed clearly under the title are the words: “Chapter 11 – The State of California.”

A New Resolution

Sorry I have been away so long from bloggong here, but I have had to expand my income to help the current administration pay for its $14 trillion debt it belives we need. So with my free time almost nothing and my ability to get any sleep, I will try to post new blessaies (term Taken from Stephen Fry), from now on - starting as soon as I get some sleep, grade papers, walk the dog and find an actual day off.

So for my followers, all four of you, keep the faith as I try to do better. For anyone who becomes a follower, GREAT! THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Now that being said, here is what you will see as you follow along; more observations and commentaries as I am now embarking on a writing career to finally finish my list of things to do before I croak. I am working on a short story for submission to a magazine, as well as to get on a writer for a online magazine, so if you know anyone who is looking PLEASE TELL ME... (sound of begging added here).

There will also as always be cartoons for each blessay as you have seen before since I am a cartoonist I love to illustrate my stuff to add a good right to the jaw, so enjoy those.

Well it is off to job #2, but I wanted to let you guys know I am still here.

P.S. I am going to add "Oprah" and "breasts"to key words to see if my viewing goes up - you just never know.

Obama: Year One

I did this cartoon after listening to President Obama's State of the Union

Your 15 Minutes Are Up!

I am beginning to think I must give the wrong impression to people, judging from the emails that I get in my inbox.

Aside from the ones telling me that I need to revitalize my “manhood,” reduce my home loan payments, and the never-ending ones from a rather scantily clad young woman named “Sparkle,” who wants very much to meet me online, I am concerned about the emails I get from people who actually know me!

This all came about one evening while I was checking my three email accounts, (yes, I need three email accounts, doesn’t everyone?), I spy one with a subject line that read; “You will love this!” Fearing that in is another email from Sparkle, I right mouse click the message to get the properties of the sender to make sure it is not from her, or a radical terrorist group whose method of bringing America to its knees is through corrupting Gmail accounts.

I see it is from one of my students, still vaguely apprehensive I open the message. The message simply states that said student saw this video and immediately thought of me.  Below the message is pasted a hyperlink in the familiar Bob Ross happy sky blue colored html-speak. I pause for a moment, considering if I should open this link or not, granted it did get past my security software, but then again can you really trust software that sounds like a drunken Scotsman…

I click the link and I am taken to the Mecca of the Damned – YouTube! There on the screen is a grainy pixilated video of a woman lip-syncing to Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” dressed like the pope. I am not saying I was offended, in fact I chuckled, and then asked forgiveness for my sins, but I thought why post this. I mean, her face was visible; she must want to get dates, go to college, get a high paying job, and to have a happy life, right? All of these things were now in jeopardy because she thought it was funny and felt that the world would be a better place by posting it on a site for the mentally challenged.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against YouTube in principle, on the contrary I can watch clips from shows and films I remember from my youth, it is a great place to watch movie trailers to see if I really want to spend the price of my monthly rent on dinner and a movie. What does disturb me is that it has become the repository for those people that have no life, a vidcam and the burning urge to share their sad existence with the entire world.

 I miss the old days, (the late seventies and eighties), where such people were confined to shows like Montel, Jerry Springer, and the founder of it all Phil Donahue. Shows which the media now fondly refer to as Reality Television, proving that the media does live in an alternate reality. The only great show that was worth watching at that time was the Gong Show, a sort of spastic version of American Idol. These shows allowed those people you wouldn’t invite to Christmas or your child’s birthday party to achieve their, as quoted by the late Andy Warhol “15 minutes of fame.”

What is even more interesting is that they were paid to debase themselves on national television, (back in the eighties the going rate was $2000 for appearance on Geraldo).Imagine that, you would be paid a large sum of money to destroy your credibility as a human being! No wonder those types of shows are still on today. In today’s sagging economy, you could make your house payment by say, launching your child in a hot air balloon… nah, who’d pull a dumb stunt like that.

Anyway back to the “YouTube: Mecca of the Damned”. This site is the godsend for the people who missed out on the whole Gong Show thing, or maybe they’re the children of those people, (shudder). With the use of a low cost camera or vidcam mounted to the monitor, anyone can upload whatever they want! You can see a man singing in the shower, a dog that farts the national anthem, or my favorite the little child telling mommy how it will kick a monster’s @$$! (The last one was given legitimacy by being shown on America’s Funniest Videos). That kid is probably being scouted by the WCF as we speak.

Now all this sounds funny and whimsical, but I don’t think that these people have fully thought out this whole thing. Yes, you could make your career break like Katy Perry, or you can kill your career, hope for employment, marriage, etc, just as easy. Just imagine if YouTube was around 1998, “Sherman set the Way-back machine…”

You are sitting in the congressional hearing; President Clinton sits at a microphone facing the speaker of The House:

Speaker: “Mr. President, these allegations of your involvement with the young woman Monica Lewinski. Are they true?

Clinton: “Define what you mean by involvement Mr. Speaker.”

Speaker: “Let me show you this video we found on YouTube…”

Clinton: “Shit.”

 My question to these people is, “Have you ever considered your acts of stupidity and juvenile exposition can be seen by anyone at anytime!”Moreover, it never goes away unless you remove it from the web, (but then again the damage is already done, so what is the point really). I have a friend who is in Human Resources for a major studio in Hollywood, and she told me that they now check applicant names on YouTube, MySpace and Twitter to see if the applicant is right for their studio or for right for an opening at the local sanitarium.

 And it is not only the professional sector checking these sites, it is also the colleges and universities as well. Did you ever stop to think the reason you were not accepted at that Ivy League school could be that funny video taken while stoned at your friend’s high school grad party may not have been a good thing?

My point is this, today’s youth have grown up in a world where the 15 minutes of fame, is the Holy Grail to the easy life and piles of money; and they are willing to risk it all to obtain it. Thanks to the  short-cut-to-graduation school system, (where history is the memorization of dates, not to show us how our actions affected our future); they don’t understand the long-term effects of their actions. What seems funny today is not going to be funny in a job market tomorrow, and where only the smart are employed in high paying jobs, while the rest are working at Starbucks for minimum wage.

Barista: “What can I get for you…?”

Customer: “Hey, aren’t you the girl in that video singing “I Kissed A Girl” dressed like the pope?”

Barista: “Shit.