MetzgerCartoons.com - News/Writing/Misc.

Cartoonist Survey on “David Wasting Paper” blog

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:54:45 -0800

I was recently interviewed by David Paccia for his Cartoonist Survey on his blog, David Wasting Paper. Over the past several months, David has interviewed more than 100 cartoonists, asking each one the same set of questions (about the favorite drawing tools, work environment, art background, etc.). You can read my answers to his questions here. Thanks David. I’m flattered to be a part of the survey.

If you’re into the nuts and bolts of cartooning, check out the archives on David’s site. Fun read.

Early morning running

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:58:55 -0800

I recently decided to start running in the morning instead of trying to run at night. For me, running at night during the winter rarely works out. After working all day, commuting and helping get our daughter ready for bed, I am exhausted. I’m a morning person, so I figured running before work is the best way for me to get (and stay) in shape. Today was Day 1 of the new schedule.

My alarm clock went off at 4:50. Then I hit the snooze button. I don’t remember hitting the snooze button. The alarm went off again at 4:55, which is when I groggily realized: Oh, yeah. I need to get up. My wife must’ve been reading my mind because a second later she muttered, “dontyouneedtogetup?”

I put on my running clothes and reflector vest, and then grabbed a flashlight. I was out the door by 5:00.

With the exception of races, I don't think I've ever I’ve gotten up this early to go running. Here are three things that surprised me:

1. Nobody else was out running. Or walking. I thought I’d see at least one other runner out there. Or even someone walking their dog. Somebody to give the Hey-how’s-it-going-you’re-also-up-early head nod to. I did see a fat woman in a blue bathrobe picking up her newspaper, but that doesn’t count. And I wish I didn’t see that.

2. There were no cars on the main thoroughfare in my neighborhood. None. Not even a bus or a delivery truck. I thought about running in the middle of the street for a couple blocks, just for the novelty of it. But I didn’t. That would’ve been stupid.

3. It felt good. Actually, it felt great.

I got home at 5:40 -- a 40-minute run. Not a bad start. I’m going to do the early morning runs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and get up at 5:00am to draw cartoons on Tuesday and Thursday. So here’s to running and drawing cartoons early in the morning!

Thank God for coffee.

Tall Tale Radio! It's Podcastic!

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:51:07 -0800

This week Tom Racine of Tall Tale Radio interviews Scott Hilburn of The Argyle Sweater, one of my favorite single panel features. Mike Witmer (cartoonist of the hilarious Pinkerton) and I are also on this show. Scott talks about his journey to syndication and answers all the questions he gets about his comic’s similarity to “The Far Side.”

We all discuss how we work and cartooning in general. Tom, Scott, Mike and I all had comics on Comics Sherpa around the same time, so we talk about our experiences with that as well. Good times. Listen to the show here.

Metzger Cartoons on the radio!

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:42:59 -0800

This past Tuesday, Sarah mentioned Metzger Cartoons Christmas cards on the Sarah and Vinnie Morning Show (Alice 97.3 FM). Kudos to Sarah for having such excellent taste. Thanks for the plug.

You can listen to it here – she starts talking about it at the 2-minute mark.

Possessed Puzzle

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:11:26 -0800

Recently my sister gave my wife Katrina and me few puzzles her children had outgrown. One of them is a wooden “sound puzzle.” Here’s what it looks like:

The child pulls out all the animal pieces and when they put each one back over the matching animal, it makes the sound for that animal. When you fit the bird piece into the bird slot, the sensor activates and it chirps. The cat meows. The dark barks. The child has fun and learns at the same time. That’s the idea.

When our 17-month-old daughter Kate started playing with the puzzle, she instantly loved it. It was great. But then the puzzle started messing with me.

A couple weeks ago, I came home late and Katrina was upstairs. I closed the front door, walked past Kate’s toys in the living room and suddenly heard “ROWF! ROWF! ROWF!” It scared the crap out of me. A second later, I realized it was just the animal puzzle.

Over the next several days, it kept making noises by itself—sometimes it would chirp, sometimes it would meow, sometimes it would bark. Eventually the puzzle settled on the bullfrog sound. Whenever I’d walk in the room, it would croak. Loudly.

One night, as we were getting ready for bed, Katrina said, “That animal puzzle keeps making noises when I’m near it.”

I said, “It’s been doing that to me too. Every time I’m in the living room, it makes the bullfrog noise.”

“For me, it’s the guinea pig,” she replied.

“You always get the same animal too?”

“Yeah. And just when I think it’s not going to happen – it happens.” She paused for a few seconds and added, “I wonder if it’s your dad trying to communicate with us.”

My dad passed away six years ago and whenever either of us experiences what could be paranormal activity—lights turning on by themselves, objects moving by themselves, etc.—Katrina suggests that it might be my dad letting us know he’s around. While I believe in ghosts, I don’t think my dad would try to communicate through a kid’s puzzle.

“I doubt it,” I said.

“You never know. It’s certainly interesting that the puzzle makes a specific noise for each of us.”

As Katrina finished putting her clothes in the dresser, we were both silent. Then she turned and said, “Did you turn off the front light?”

“I think so.”

“Could you go check?”

“Okay,” I said. “But if the puzzle makes the frog noise while I’m down there, that would be a little too freaky.”

As I walked downstairs, I yelled “Hey Puzzle!” I wanted to catch it off guard.

I walked past the living room to the front door and opened it. The front light was on, so I turned it off. Then I turned around and glanced over at Kate’s little table. Sitting silently on the table in the dark corner of the room was the puzzle. It looked ominous. I walked away and was near the foot of the stairs when the puzzle let out a loud “CROOOAAK! CROOOAAK! CROOOAAK!”

I ran up the stairs faster than usual. The stupid puzzle was messing with my head.

When I got to bed, Katrina came up with a more plausible theory about the puzzle: perhaps the sensors are light sensitive. This theory was corroborated the next day by my brother-in-law, Sean.

“The puzzle is definitely light sensitive,” Sean said. “It would meow at me. It’s a little freaky.”

“Yeah, it is.” I said. “For me, it always makes the bullfrog noise.”

“Really?” Sean said. “It’s always the bullfrog?”

“Yeah. It just did it last night.” I decided not to mention the part about me running upstairs like a little girl.

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, the puzzle was silent. No croaking, no barking, no meowing—nothing. Then early this morning, as I walked into the kitchen to make coffee, I heard what sounded like an indignant mouse. “SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK!” Even though I knew why it was making the noise, it still was a little creepy.

It could be worse, though. At least it's not a talking Elmo doll that makes death threats.

A Temping Story

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:55:07 -0800

When I was looking for a job several years ago, I registered with a temp agency. A couple weeks later, they called with my first assignment.

“I have a filing job available,” a woman told me. “It’s for a company downtown. Are you interested?”

I hate filing and I’m not even very good at it. I’m bad at filing the same way I’m bad at dusting. Putting documents away in alphabetical order is, of course, easy. The same way wiping dust off a bookshelf is easy. But when I have to file an enormous stack of documents—or dust an entire living room—that’s when the wheels come off. It’s a mundane task, so I get bored, lose focus, and the next thing you know it’s “Who put the Advanced Textiles invoice in the Advanced Engineering folder?”

“Sure, I’ll take the job,” I said to the woman. “When does it start?”

The next morning, I walked into a large office building in downtown San Francisco. I don’t remember the name of the company but they took up four floors of the office building. They were huge. I got to the lobby and told the receptionist, “I’m here for the temporary position.”

A couple minutes later, a plain-looking woman walked into the lobby. As we shook hands, she said, “I’m Glenda.” Glenda’s handshake was firm and she was all business. All three and a half feet of her.

Glenda was midget. Or to be politically correct, a “little person.” The top of her head was only a couple inches above my belly button. It was the closest I’d been to a little person and I found her fascinating.

“Follow me,” Glenda said in her semi-squeaky voice, and we walked to the elevator, which we took down to the enormous Accounting department. She led me to the kitchen and said, “The coffee is here and the mugs are in the cupboard over there.”

Meanwhile, I was thinking: That cupboard is pretty high. How does Glenda reach the mugs? She must use a stepstool. Or maybe she has her own mug and washes it herself. But how can she reach the sink? Even on her tiptoes it would be hard for her to turn on the---

“Hello?” Glenda said. “I said do you drink coffee?”

“Oh, yeah. Coffee. I like it.” So far, I could tell I wasn’t impressing Glenda.

Along with being a little person, Glenda had a lazy eye. As she began describing the job, I tried to keep eye contact with the eye that was looking at me, but my mind began to wander.

How does Glenda open the top drawer of that filing cabinet? Maybe she can open it but she definitely can’t see what’s inside. Not without a stepstool. There should be stepstools all around the office for Glenda, but I don’t see any. She probably has her own stepstool that she carries around the office when she---

“So that’s the job. Any questions?” One of Glenda’s eyes was looking at me expectantly. The other one was looking out the window.

I had missed about 95% of what she had just said. I only remembered something about groups of numbers and making photocopies. I had to get Glenda to explain the entire job again, without looking like a complete moron.

“Could you...go over it more time,” I said. “I want to make sure I have it right.”

Glenda sighed and explained the job again. She described everything slowly and loudly, with big, sweeping gestures. She was clearly frustrated with me, but she looked so cute waving her little arms and pointing her little fingers.

“Each piece of paper in this cabinet has a list of numbers on it. See?” Glenda took out a pink sheet and pointed to a group of numbers—each one eight or nine digits long—at the top of the page. “You need to match each PINK sheet with its corresponding document in the cabinet over there.” Glenda pointed to another cabinet across the room. “Those sheets are YELLOW and each one has a group of numbers, just like this one. You need to MATCH them up. Got it?”

“Yep.”

“After you match them up, make a photocopy of both documents, staple the copies together and put them in a pile on this table.”

“Okay.”

“Then put the originals back in their respective cabinets—in the appropriate client folders.” Glenda smacked the side of the cabinet as she said those last three words.

“Sure,” I said.

“They have to be put back in the appropriate client folders. Very important.”

“Yes, of course. Got it.”

“Seriously, don’t mess it up. I spent months organizing these files,” Glenda said, and then she waddled away.

A thought immediately crossed my mind: I am SO going to mess this up.

As I began working, I had another thought: The best way to succeed at this is to go SLOWLY and stay focused. No need to go super fast. No need to prove anything. I just need avoid screwing up. Slow but accurate. Slow but accurate. Slow but--

“That’s IT? That’s all you’ve done?” About 30 minutes had passed and Glenda was checking on my work. “Please tell me you’ve done more than this.”

I looked down at my pile of work, which consisted of two stapled matches. “No, that’s pretty much it,” I said.

“What’s taking you so long?” Apparently Glenda was a micro-manager. In more ways than one.

Before I could answer, she said, “Well, I’m sure you’ll pick up the pace.” I caught a few people peeking up from their cubicles to check out the retarded temp.

It was clear my “slow but accurate” strategy wasn’t cutting it, so I made an effort to go faster. Matching up groups of numbers written in 8-point font, while trying to keep everything in perfect order was too much for me. I was going faster at the expense of accuracy. The wheels were coming off and this had to stop. I walked over to Glenda’s office.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to get someone else to finish this job,” I said.

Glenda’s eyes widened with concern. “What’s wrong?”

Filing is wrong. I’m wrong. Everything about this job assignment is wrong.

“I’m just not a good fit for this,” I said.

“That’s okay! That’s okay! You’ll get the hang of it!” Glenda’s semi-squeaky voice suddenly became full-fledged squeaky.

“I’m sorry, but I think it’s best that you get someone who’s more efficient. I have the agency’s number – I’ll call and ask them to send someone else.”

“Oompa, loompa, doopity doo. I have a telephone you can use.”

Okay, Glenda didn’t really say that, but she did let me borrow her phone. I knew the temp agency would never call me again after bailing on this job and I didn’t know if I’d find work somewhere else. That was unsettling to think about, but as I walked out of the building, I knew I had made the right decision.

I also knew that when Glenda went back to look at my work, she would discover that the stupid temp messed up her files. I envisioned her shaking her tiny fist and yelling “Noooooooo,” her voice reaching a whole new level of squeakiness. I was glad I wouldn’t be around to see that.

In less than two hours, I screwed up files that had been painstakingly organized by an anal-retentive midget with a lazy eye. While that’s not something to be proud of, at least it makes for a good story.

Healthy Penis ad on buses

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:07:15 -0800

A billboard for the Healthy Penis campaign has been appearing on some San Francisco Muni buses for about a month now. Today a coworker saw the ad and said “You didn’t tell me your penis was on the bus!”

If you live in San Francisco, keep an eye out for the Healthy Penises (left to right: Byron, Pedro and Clark)!

Simon Buckman: Deer Comedian

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:46:29 -0800

Back in 2002, I thought it would be fun to do a children's book. My idea was about a deer, named Simon Buckman, who goes against the herd to follow his dream of being a professional stand-up comedian. I wrote the story and sent proposals to publishers. It was rejected mainly because the idea isn't...what's the word I'm looking for....oh yeah, "marketable."

I was going through old files and came across this drawing. It was part of my "pitch" to publishers. (Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.) At the very least, this piece was fun to do.

Letting the Cat out of the Bag

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:15:36 -0800

My friend and cartoonist/writer/designer Stephanie Orma wrote an article in the SF Examiner about people who have creative side gigs that their bosses and coworkers don’t know about.
From the article:

"Closet Creatives" - they’re hiding everywhere: the endocrinologist who makes exquisite crafts when she’s not diagnosing patients; the banker who plays foot-stomping, spirit-lifting trombone music when he’s not handling mergers and acquisitions; the pharmacist who writes lyrically, beautiful poetry when she’s not dispensing pills.

I’m mentioned in the article because I’m one of these people. For years, I didn’t tell anyone at my work that I’m a cartoonist. I had a pretty good reason for this. When I was working for another company several years ago, my boss told me, “Your cartooning career makes me question your devotion to this job.” Even though I was reliable and got good reviews, my boss looked at me with suspicion. I think he thought I was going to bolt at any second because of my side gig. Our working relationship wasn't that great.

When I got my current job, I decided to keep the cartooning on the down low. I just didn’t want to be accused of not being serious about my work. Eventually cover was blown. The article explains how. So now a lot of people at my work know I draw cartoons for greeting cards and magazines.

But I haven’t yet told them I also draw cartoon penises and syphilis sores for an anti-syphilis campaign in San Francisco. Baby steps.

"Healthy Penis" in the news

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:16:15 -0800

A few weeks ago, Mark Bogetich, a Republican "political vulnerability researcher" (best euphemism ever!) , had requested a variety of information about the "Healthy Penis" campaign. Bogetich wanted a "summary of all costs" for the campaign. When an SF Gate reporter asked Bogetich why he requested the information, he was cagey. "We don't discuss our projects," he said.

Yesterday, SF Gate posted an update to this story, detailing the cost of the campaign. It costs $122,575. A pittance in the world of government spending. But I'm sure the Republicans will use this info against Gavin Newsom in some way down the line. Politics is so much fun!