Warning!!! A word is in this cartoon that may offend you. I wrote it for men’s magazines. I apologize in advance. (It’s not that bad a word, but it’s a…
Donna Barstow Blog #2 Posts
I make no apologies, NONE. Everyone starts out drawing spacemen cartoons. I think I may even have one or two more. A friend wrote to me recently to say that…
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I cut this out of the LA Times Magazine in 2006, as you can see. I was going to call Macy’s Department Store to compliment them on their guts and creativity, but instead I’ll write it here. I could not believe the ad agency was cool enough to be so uncool!!! Yay, Macy’s!
Canaries are such an old-fashioned bird – I think of them as Victorian, although they’ve been in cages for hundreds of years. (I thought it was about 300 or 400 years, but Animal World says it’s since 1478!) The first canary I remember loving was Pip, Amy’s bird in Little Women. I always wanted a canary since I was little, so I got one for Christmas when I was 7. My grandmother told me they always had a canary in her own family growing up…and, no, they weren’t coal miners.
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“Tonight’s show is a rerun, but then, so is tonight.” The Illustration Friday topic: ROUTINE. Of course, I’m afraid this will be my life. Or is my life. Is there…
I talked in the post below about re-using cartoons. It’s like a kiss, really. You don’t call a second kiss, “re-using it”, do you? A good kiss is just as…
Bar cartoon copyrighted 2008.
The Idea
This is from my self-syndicated series, Daily Special. It ran in the LA Times for almost 5 years, and I slowly expanded it to reach a dozen other major newspapers (like the award-winning Minneapolis Taste section!) and alternates, like Nashville Scene. Daily Special is all about restaurants. Don’cha love them? I still think it’s so special when I get to go out and be served a carefully considered menu with a smile. I subtly stroke the lovely tablecloth, or get out markers to draw on the placemats, whichever seems more appropriate. Hopefully they’ll give us bread that doesn’t taste like it’s from the supermarket, as we start drooling when we read the menus.
(Tip: ask for the dessert menu before you order. When you know you’re going to get dessert, is the entree that important? And if they don’t have any dessert you like, pout, and leave a small tip.)
The Drawing
I was so nervous – almost paralyzed! – by the idea that hundreds of thousands of people would read me every week in the Times – including people I knew, some of whom were critical (Marty Murphy) some who were better! (Marty Murphy)- that I gave myself a break every month. Out of the 4 or 5 cartoons I did a month, one would just be a funny sign – without any people in the drawing. (Even though a person or stray dog adds some perspective to the size of a building or window.)
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Severe no for Trader Joe‘s Chocolate Chunk Cookies. The cookies are dry and the chocolate is not satisfying and tastes cheap. I’m Yankee thrifty, but I’m tempted to throw the rest out! Ingredients look fine (ie, no corn syrup, which I won’t eat anymore), and there’s a bit of honey, which will usually raise the rating, but not this time.
Perhaps not the most appetizing photo. From here.
Part of my bitterness is because they used to make a chocolate chunk cookie that was totally great, maybe 8 years ago. It was dense, hard, but not too hard, somewhat grainy, with good quality chocolate. (may have been Guittard’s.) All you needed was a couple to make the starving (or sad) feeling in your gut go away. ( I met a guy standing in line behind me once, buying only these cookies, and he told me he would eat the whole bag in one sitting. Ah, men, and their lucky, lucky metabolism.) A bag in the cupboard always made me feel happy. Grrr at TJ for always always dropping good food. I wrote a lyrical poem about Trader Joe’s in my other blog, here. It’s not very nice.
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