Punxsutawney Stinky

I saw a bunch of memes yesterday of Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow and predicting two more weeks of Taylor Swift. I posted on Facebook that there will be at least one political cartoonist to use the same idea. So far, it’s close as one cartoonist did a Groundhog/Swift cartoon but it wasn’t exactly the same. That cartoonist described it to me as a “thumbsucker” because it doesn’t do anything but make editors happy.

Sometimes an editor will ask me for something on a holiday or a death and after they receive my cartoon, they’ll say, “Well, that’s not what I had in mind.” What they usually have in mind is something innocuous and harmless that doesn’t make his phone ring.

Cartoonists love to use holidays and even fake holidays for analogies and metaphors. I’m no exception though I like more than others. I love using Halloween but am bored with Christmas-themed cartoons. I can go either way with Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. I like using Groundhog Day but I usually forget and it sneaks up on me. I’ll say to myself, “That’s today?” I think it sneaks up on shitty cartoonists too as I’ll see a bunch pop up on Groundhogs Day. For me, when it sneaks up on me, I let it go.

For my colleagues reading this and in case they don’t know, Groundhog Day is Friday. If you want to use it, you need to do it by tomorrow so editors will have time to put it on their pages. Waiting until Friday to draw it only serves social media. What, you work for Facebook? Amateurs.

Since Groundhog Day is the one holiday I don’t see coming until it’s too late, I told Alexa to remind me. She reminded me on Sunday which was too soon, so I told her to remind me again on Monday…and that too was too soon. So I told her to remind me again today (Tuesday) and when she did, I was almost done with it. That just reminded me to set a reminder to maybe draw a Valentine’s Day cartoon (which will be on February 14).

By the way, Punxsutawney Stinky is right. We have nine more months of all this Trump hate and bullshit…unless he wins. I hate that Groundhog.

In the film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray was trapped in time in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. If Trump wins, I’m going to feel trapped in a fascist state. When I Love You, Babe comes on at 6 a.m., I think I’m going to keep hitting the snooze button.

Shoutout: I have to give a shoutout to Laura, one of my proofers because she spends some time going over my wordier cartoons to make sure everything is correct, like “shoutout” being one word without a hyphen. I don’t ask her to do this. She just does it which is going beyond the call of duty. Sometimes she’ll tell me it’s all correct but something about it doesn’t read or flow right, and we’ll have a conversation about it because it’s important to me. There were at least two other changes in the text of this due to her diligence. She’ll also go behind me and look up facts, details, and names. She offers suggestions but never anything that would be a major change. Sometimes I take her advice and other times I don’t, but I always listen. I don’t thank her enough. Also, she does it for free. Every freelance cartoonist should have a Laura. And if you do get a Laura, she won’t be as good as my Laura. Laura even brought me soup when I had Covid. Thank you, Laura. You rock!

Also, my other proofer, Hilary, caught a typo.

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Tales From The Trumpster Fire: I have eight copies and you can order yours, signed by me, for $45.00. You can pay through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.

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