Have you bought your Valentine’s Day cards yet? Of course you haven’t. It’s a month away. You have plenty of time.

But the days go by fast and the next thing you know, you’re rushing into a Walgreen’s at 5:37p.m. on February 13 and finding out that the only Valentine’s Day cards left have either sappy-sentimental greetings or really dumb jokes (like group of cartoon bananas and inside it says, “I love you a BUNCH!”)

You don’t want those cards. Your significant other, friends and family don’t want those cards either. (Well, your 87-year-old grandmother might like the bananas card.)

I happen to have two Valentine’s Day cards for sale right now. Buy your cards today and rest easy knowing you’re covered. Click on the image to purchase. For the second one, you can personalize it with your very own greeting.

Happy Valentine’s Day a month early!
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A while back, my friend Lucas Turnbloom, cartoonist of Imagine This, came up with a really great character: Do’Raath, The Klingon Barista. Do’Raath works at Starbucks and serves up lattes, mochas and cappuccinos…with honor!

Do’Raath isn’t a regular character in Imagine This (he only appears from time to time) but he never fails to crack me up. Below is one of my favorite Do’Raath strips. Other Do’Raath appearances are: Here, and here, and here.

And if you have never read Imagine This, do yourself a favor and go through the archive. It’s a very funny strip.
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One of my favorite Christmas songs is "Merry Christmas from the Family" by Robert Earl Keen (whoever posted the YouTube video below misspelled his last name). I discovered this song a couple years ago and it quickly became one of my favorites of the holiday season. I love this song almost as much as I love Christmas classics like, "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)," "Silent Night," and "Jingle Bells." 

Here’s how Wikipedia sums it up:

"Merry Christmas from the Family" describes the Christmas gathering of a fairly dysfunctional Texas family whose merrymaking—which includes drinking alcohol, carving a turkey, watching a televised ball game and smoking cigarettes—seems to be punctuated with Christmas music and the need to run to convenience stores for additional supplies such as fake snow.

"Merry Christmas from the Family" is pure genius. Take a listen and enjoy the excellent video.

I hope you had a very merry Christmas. And Happy New Year!
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Mill Valley Map 12/19/2011
 
The blog Mill Valley Life did an excellent write-up about the new Mill Valley Map, which is being distributed in many fine establishments in downtown Mill Valley. I was hired to illustrate the map.

Thanks to Bob (my friend and owner of Two Neat) and Sylvia "Chipps" Barsky for conceiving this project and rallying local merchants to be a part of it.  I enjoyed working on this. 

For fun, we put (Mill Valley resident) Bonnie Raitt on the map. You can’t see her on the low-res version below but on the print version, she’s visible. Barely. If you live in the area and pick up the map, you can have some Where’s Waldo-type fun by looking for Bonnie Raitt.
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This cartoon of Santa reading Rudolph’s Facebook page has been making the rounds on the internet. 
Did you know it’s a Christmas card? You can spread holiday cheer to your family and friends! It’s available for sale here!

(‘Tis the season for shameless plugs.)

Merry Christmas, Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays, and Feliz Navidad! 
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This past Saturday I was the Cartoonist-in-Residence at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa. Every second Saturday of each month, the Museum hosts a Cartoonist-in-Residence so visitors can meet and discuss cartooning with a professional cartoonist. The Museum does the Cartoonist-in-Residence Program to help fulfill its mission of “building an understanding of cartoonists and cartoon art.”
In the lobby with my daughter, Kate.
It was an honor to be there and I had a great time chatting with people. (I also sold a bunch of greeting cards, which was a nice plus.) Honestly, the best part was meeting various people of all ages who are interested in cartooning.  

One girl, who I’ll call “Ericka,” stopped at my table and chatted with me for quite a while. An aspiring cartoonist, she had a thick sketchbook filled with drawings. They were excellent. Her mother was with her and was clearly very supportive of her daughter and proud of her work. She had at least 50 of Ericka’s drawings on her iPhone.

Before she left, Ericka asked me to draw something in her “artists” book. She pulled out another sketch book, turned to a blank page, and handed it to me.  I quickly drew a man waving and saying “Hi Ericka! Good luck with your cartooning!”

After I drew it, I thought it looked pretty dorky.  I handed it back to her.

“My mom and I have come here for every Cartoonist-in-Residence,” Ericka said. “This book contains sketches from all of them. You can take a look at the other sketches if you want.”

She handed the book back to me and I flipped through it. There were dozens and dozens of drawings done by all kinds of cartoonists. About 90% of the sketches were of various cartoon characters saying things like, “Good luck, Ericka!” and “Nice to meet you, Ericka!” It was neat that she had this huge collection of sketches from professional cartoonists (and kind of reassuring for me to see that nearly all of them were as dorky as mine).

Later, one of the volunteers came up to me and said, “You know that girl who was hanging out at your table for a while? She and her mom have come here for every Cartoonist-in-Residence we’ve ever done.”

I said, “Yeah, she mentioned that. How long have you been doing this program?”

“Nine years. She’s been coming here once a month for the past nine years.”

That blew me away.
I did a few sketches on the dry erase board, which included a wiener dog, a reindeer and a guy named "Ned."
Towards the end of my visit, a woman came in with her daughter, “Molly,” who was in a wheelchair, and her daughter’s friend, “Teri.” Teri did most of the talking. After asking me some questions, Teri sat down with Molly at one of the tables to draw some pictures.

A few minutes later, they showed me their finished drawings. Teri drew Snoopy and Molly drew Charlie Brown.  As I was looking at Teri’s Snoopy, she said, “What do you think, Scott?” 

“Very nice,” I said. “I see you made Snoopy brown.”

“Yes,” Teri replied. “I like brown dogs. Scott, you can keep it, if you want. Do you want to keep it, Scott?”

As I said “Sure,” Molly rolled towards me in her wheelchair and handed me her Charlie Brown sketch.

“It doesn’t look very good,” she said, “but I made his shirt yellow.”

“I think it looks great,” I said.

“Molly is my best friend,” Teri said abruptly. “We’ve been best friends for two years.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“I’m developmentally disabled,” Teri replied. “Do you know what that is, Scott?”

Before I could respond, Teri said, “Molly has Cerebral palsy. Do you know what that is, Scott?”

“Yes, I do.”

“People make fun of us a lot,” Teri said. “Kids at school make fun of us.”

“I’m sorry kids make fun of you,” I said. “Some people are mean. Don’t let them get you down.”

“You didn’t make fun of us,” Teri replied.

Teri saw me put the drawings in my sketch pad and said, “What are you going to do with our drawings? Are you going to treasure them forever?” She wasn't being sarcastic – in fact, I doubt Teri was capable of sarcasm. She sincerely wanted to know if I was going to treasure their drawings forever.

“I’ll keep them to remind me of today,” I said.  

When I got home, I threw them in the recycling bin.

I’m kidding. I kept the drawings. They’re in my sketch pad and will stay there for a quite a while, maybe even forever.
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On Saturday, November 12 I’m going to be the Cartoonist-in-Residence at the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. I’m really looking forward to this. I’ve actually never visited the Schulz Museum before (which is kind of surprising since it’s only about an hour away).

I will be bringing my iMac with me so I can color a cartoon while I’m there. That’s right, drawing on the computer in front of real live people! It’ll be like a cartoonist concert. I want people to take out their lighters and wave them during the slow, emotional parts of the cartooning process.

Charles Schulz’s work was an enormous influence on me growing up, so I am honored to be a guest at the Museum.
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The Daily Mail reports that, according to the UK Government, Scooby Doo is the healthiest cartoon. Researchers spent 200 hours watching top children's television shows to determine which characters were the most active. Scooby Doo topped the list because, well, they run around a lot.
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Rounding out the Top 5 are: 2. Shaun the Sheep (never heard of it)  3. LazyTown (doesn’t sound very healthy to me), 4. Peppa Pig (never heard of it) and 5. Bob The Builder (“healthy,” but unwatchable)

Enough about the healthy cartoons. Here’s a list of The Five Least Healthy Cartoons:

1. Extremely Fat Albert

2. SpongeBob StretchPants

3. Super Fat Friends

4. Dora the Porker  

5. Angelina Size Fifteena
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Cartoonist James Sturm wrote an article for Slate Magazine about his experience submitting to The New Yorker for the first time. The piece is titled “How Hard Is It to Get a Cartoon into The New Yorker?” and it’s an excellent read. He includes the cartoons he submitted (all of which are good and a few are very funny). Here’s one that cracked me up: 
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One reason the article is such a great read is that Sturm isn’t a gag cartoonist. He simply wanted to shake things up, try something new, and see if he could get his work published in the most prestigious venue for gag cartoonists. Hey, why not shoot for the stars? Sturm eventually gets a face-to-face meeting with cartoon editor Bob Mankoff. Did he sell any of his cartoons? Read the article to find out. One thing I found very interesting — shocking, actually — is that David Sipress submitted for 25 years before he sold a cartoon to the magazine. That’s dedication.

I’d be lying if I said I had no interest in getting my cartoons published in The New Yorker. I’d be willing to bet that most, if not all, single panel cartoonists would love to have their work appear the magazine, just to say they accomplished the feat. In the article, Sipress says, "If you are a gag cartoonist and after a while you are not in The New Yorker, you begin to feel like a failure.” I think there’s some truth to that.  It’s like being an avid mountain climber not summiting Mount Everest. 

When I was just starting out as a cartoonist, in 1993, I submitted a batch of cartoons to The New Yorker. They were literally the first 10 single panel cartoons I ever drew—and I submitted them to the Mount Everest of gag cartooning. What was I thinking? Well, I was clueless about the prestige of The New Yorker and delusional about the quality of my cartoons. Of course, a few weeks later my work was rejected. On the first page of the submission package was a handwritten note. It read, "We’ll have to pass as these aren’t New Yorker material." (Biggest understatement ever!) They wrote something else, which was semi-encouraging (“keep it up” or “keep drawing” or something similar). Bob Mankoff wasn’t the cartoon editor back then, but whoever it was certainly didn’t need to take the time to write a handwritten note on my amateurish submission.  In Sturm's article, Mankoff mentions that he receives so many submissions that are “not even in the neighborhood.” The cartoons I submitted in 1993 weren’t even in the same country.

Over the past 18 years, I've accomplished some things I'm proud of in the field of cartooning. But I still don’t feel like my cartoons are in the neighborhood of The New Yorker. (I'd like to think they’re in the same zip code, though.) One day, I want to have at least one of my cartoons grace of the pages of the magazine. I’ve noticed that, over the past few years, Mankoff has been including cartoons that don’t really have the traditional New Yorker look—there’s been more diversity in humor and drawing style, which gives me hope.

So I guess I’d better start submitting. After all, it took Sipress 25 years. It may take a while, but I think I can get to the top of Mt. Everest. In the meantime, I’m having fun climbing.
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Quinoa is a popular item in health food stores across the country. Every day, people are choosing to incorporate this heart-healthy food into their diets. As a public service, I'd like to share 10 things I think you should know about quinoa.

Ten Facts and Tips About Quinoa

1. Many people think quinoa is a grain, but it’s actually the seed of a plant that’s closely related to chard. These amino acid-rich seeds are not only very nutritious, but also super disgusting!

2. “Quinoa” contains the word “no,” which is what everyone says when asked if they want seconds.

3. If you eat one cup of quinoa (one serving), you will:
    * consume 220 calories, 40 grams of carbohydrates and 8 grams of protein.
    * want to take back all the bad things you said about couscous.

4. The word “quinoa” comes from the French words “qui" meaning "who" and "noa" meaning “really likes this crap?”

5. If you’re in a fancy restaurant and want to order their highly acclaimed quinoa dish, be sure to pronounce it correctly: keen-wah. Actually, it doesn’t matter—you’ll never find yourself in that situation.

6. Quinoa’s Official Slogan: “Just for the taste of it! Okay, just for the health benefits.”

7. The Incas considered quinoa a sacred food and referred to it as the “mother seed.” They valued quinoa as much as gold. Oh, did I mention that the Incas also sacrificed young children?

8. Nobody in the history of the world has ever uttered the phrase, “May I have that fantastic quinoa recipe?”

9. Quinoa cooks very easily, in 15 minutes, the same time it takes to bake a delicious pepperoni pizza. Just saying.

10. Quinoa by itself tastes rather bland. You may want to add some olive oil or butter, which will make it taste only slightly less shitty.
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