In which I get syndicated.

“I cannot tell a lie. Forget the cherry pie.” © D. Barstow, 2009 All rights reserved

Hey, I’m back. Can you believe it? It’s that darn Illustration Friday… it keeps pulling me in, daring me to match the new topics they put up each week, rain or shine, holidays be damned. (They’re international and free-spirited over there.)

This week’s topic is celebrate. I have some things to celebrate this week, yes, I do!

First is Valentine’s Day, which was Saturday. I didn’t get any, so I guess I’m a little sad about that, but I still enjoyed the decorations and the free design ideas all the advertisers threw at us non-stop. I can remember the smell of white glue and the crinkly rough feel of the lace when I made them in school, too. (And how I admired other kids who seemed to have a much better grasp of design, with blue hearts, and layers, and other stuff I can’t remember.) Design is really unrecognized art.

Then on Monday, President’s Day. Well, not a very interesting holiday, and no mail, hate that. (Hate even more that the Post Office STOLE my mailbox last week. The neighborhood public one. It’s not like I live on a farm, or some rural area. This is Los Angeles. On a major corner, on a very busy 4 lane street. They are so f-ing lazy, I guess they just couldn’t be bothered stopping at the box to pick up the mail. Yes, I could hear my mail drop to the bottom, as there was so little in it, but so what!!)

But President’s Day was a perfect day to start my syndicated Editorial Cartoons! Yes, I’m branching out: I’m syndicated on GoComics. And this is even more surprising: I’ve gone to the dark side – editorial cartoons! Well, someone has to do it. I have about a dozen cartoons up there now -some favorites from the fall election and new ones as they come to me.

Political cartoons, and the differences between them and general gag cartoons (hate that word, gag – GAG) are legion, which I’ll go into another time. But it’s fun to try something new, so I’ll drink to that.

Today’s cartoon is from my self-syndicated restaurant feature, Daily Special. I updated the caption for my chocolate book, to read: “I cannot tell a lie. Forget the cherry pie. Cherish the chocolate cheesecake.” Only my readers will be able to tell me if that’s funny, but it cracks me up! After all, why can’t a good waiter be both a poet and alliterative?