beanbots #2

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UPDATE: A redrawn (more "on-model") version of this strip is up over at act-i-vate:


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beanbots #1

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The Vomit Comet

No need to get into too many details to set this up: long story short, the other night on the New York State Thruway my three-year-old took a half a bite of rest-stop pizza and promptly threw up everything in the world all over everything in sight. I had to use whatever I could find lying around the car to mop up her seat, and create something she could sit on to ride the rest of the way without completely freaking out.

After getting home and getting the kids down, I break down the car seat and haul her clothes and all the detritus to a laundromat, figuring it’s better to do it in an industrial machine rather than sully my wife’s most treasured possession. I get there just in time for last wash, and later as I’m hauling stuff out of the dryer I notice the laundry lady eyeing me sideways. What is her problem, I’m wondering?

And that's the moment where I had one of those beautiful moments of clarity where I was able to stand outside of the situation, free of all egoic illusions, and see what I looked like at that moment to the eyes of the world: I’m a slightly sketchy-looking guy who’s showed up in the middle of the night at a laundromat he’s never visited in his life, without so much as a laundry bag, carrying under his arm a bunch of questionable items including but not limited to: a small rug, a sheet and pillowcase that don’t match, some odd-looking straps that do god knows what, and oh yeah, at that exact second I’m holding in my hands a little girl’s underwear.

Someday I might look back and wonder when exactly it was that my dignity and I parted ways for good, and I'm thinking this might be it.

My theory on the USAir crash

I was on a deadline this week so I didn't have time read about this story in depth. Apparently a stray flock of geese took out the engines on a plane out of LaGuardia, and it made a miracle landing in the Hudson River, and luckily everybody made it out okay. Yeah right. I'm telling you right now I smell government cover-up. Because as far as I'm concerned this thing has Jack Bauer 's fingerprints all over it.

Obviously Jack Bauer busted this cell of terrorist geese, and he caught the head goose and tortured him in a hotel room with a piece of lamp wire or something until he found out about the airline plot, and he stowed away in the luggage compartment of the plane and right at the last second he burst in on the saboteur.

"Tell me how to defuse the bomb or you start losing feathers!"

Change we can believe in

New York has been given a monumental makeover in the 20 years I've been here, but one obstacle they will never conquer is the concept of public toilets. How the hell does anybody have kids in this city? There couldn't be a more hostile place for children if you had to walk them through a cave full of bears. Have you ever tried to find a place to change a diaper in midtown, like I did the other day? After about ten blocks, the best idea I could think of was to just walk into the dining area at Taco Bell, put her on a table and let it rip. Hey, why not. It's Taco Bell. It's practically a public toilet already.

I was trying desperately to remember how I used to handle situations like this back in my drinking days. Then saw an inviting-looking standpipe on a side street, and I remembered: oh yeah, I used to just take care of whatever I needed to right out in public like an animal. Which is just what I did. Someday my daughter is going to be lying on a couch somewhere, talking about a recurring nightmare where a hairy behemoth is groping her in public, and people are just walking by, not intervening at all apart from the occasional disapproving glance.

Get Dressed, Part 2

Get dressed, damn you!

This is what it looks like on pretty much any morning that my wife has to leave for work early.

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On another topic entirely: I know it's the most typical, annoying thing in the world when someone tries to act like their kid is so talented and blah blah blah, so my apologies but I just can't hold myself back.

Self-caricature

Studies for a character based on myself, for a project I'm working on. I suppose this expresses how I prefer to see myself: part worker drone, part mad scientist.

A conversation.

Palin & McCain

Inspired by this post on Bob Cesca's blog.