Teacher Comics: Proverb

I’m of two minds about this comic. This is something that happened; a student actually said  this. It’s also sort of a hacky joke… and I don’t do “jokes” very often with these comics. They’re a more observational than funny.

Teacher Comics: Wardrobe Malfunction

Yes, this actually happened. The sad part is, this isn’t even the most embarrassing “wardrobe malfunction” I’ve had in the past two weeks.

Teacher Comics: Assemby

Question: Other teachers out there, are your students being pitched to about school rings when they’re 9th graders? In my recollection, my graduating class didn’t start getting the hard sell from Herff-Jones until my Junior/Senior year…

Teacher Comics: Warm Bodies

It seems like every time I do Romeo and Juliet in my class, Hollywood has come out with a new spin on the tale. A few years ago, it was Gnomeo and Juliet. I believe there’s a big budget new version of the tale hitting theaters this October with Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet. I’ve even read that ABC just commissioned a series based on updating R&J to the modern era for next season!

For the record, I haven’t read or seen Warm Bodies yet but given the connection to Shakespeare and the interest my students have shown, I’ll get around to it eventually.

chalkboard drawings: the “wibbly wobbly timer wimey” edition

Short week this week with Presidents’ Day. I thought I’d have a go at some of the various incarnations of Doctor Who; as a lot of y’all know, I’m a recent convert to the series through the NuWho series, but I’ve been slowly going back and getting into the older episodes.

Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor being a particular favorite of mine and I’ve been trying to watch a lot of the highlights of his tenure. I’m planning on taking inThe Sontarian Experiment this weekend.

Comic delays

Sorry about the lack of updates, folks. I was hit with a really awful sinus infection this weekend and I’ve been battling that pretty hard over the last three days. I should be at full strength and posting new stuff by Monday. In the meantime, I’ve been re-posting older teaching comics on my Tumblr blog with some additional commentary, if you’re interested in checking those out.

Thanks for understanding – I’ll be back on Monday!

Teacher Comics: Shannon

I guess I forgot to post this months ago. It’s a comic I drew for my friend and colleague Shannon McLaurin. Shannon and I were hired at the same time four years ago and she’s been a great person to work with during that time. She, her husband and their gorgeous new baby daughter decided to move to Minneapolis in 2012. As a going-away gift, I drew her a comic.

The comic references my first year as a traveling/floating teacher, where I worked off of a rolling cart rather than having my own classroom.

chalkboard photos: the meddling wall-crawler edition

I draw a picture of myself on my chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. 

Thrift Store Finds: The Pocket Book of Boners

Get a load of this week’s Thrift Store Find.

Yes, it’s The Pocket Book of Boners: An Omnibus of Schoolboy Howlers and Unconscious Humor, published in 1932 by the Readers’ League of America. This is the Armed Services Edition of this book. I picked this up for a quarter.

First of all… FANTASTIC TITLE BUT A BIT MISLEADING.

odds and ends: aliens minimates, marc maron

This past week, The International Toy Fair was held in Manhattan. This is a business convention for toy makers and purveyors to show their wares to stores. In recent years it’s become somewhat of a bonanza for toy collectors who wait breathlessly for announcements of they new action figures and accessories to add to their collections. I’m always interested in seeing what new toys are on offer for the year, but I haven’t had a lot of disposable income in recent years. Most of the stuff in my collection is either an individual figure cherrypicked at full price, a gift from someone, or (most often) something bought on clearance.

Having said that, there is one toy line I manage to follow with some regularity, and that’s Art Asylum’s Minimates. Again, I don’t buy EVERY Minimate Diamond Select Toys puts out… but I buy a lot of them and enjoy the blocky style. I have a fairly decent collection. Although DST has produced some mighty tempting offerings recently including their series based on The Walking Dead comics, I haven’t been bit by the collector bug since the introduction of their Ghostbusters line. All that’s about to change however. This weekend, Diamond Select Toys and Art Asylum announced Minimates based on one of my favorite movies of all time, 1986’s Aliens.

While I’ve seen no pictures as of yet, the press release says that their license will cover Minimates of major characters AND vehicles. I’m hoping this means we’ll not only get a full platoon of Colonial Marines, but a Drop Ship and… dare I hope… a Power Loader.

I’m assuming a lot of the excitement for this line will be born out of the soon-to-be released Aliens: Colonial Marines video game, which isn’t getting a lot of great reviews. Hopefully that game’s performance won’t affect these Minimates.

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Last night, Ellen and I went to see Marc Maron perform stand-up at Bogart’s in Cincinnati. Maron’s become the poster boy for the podcast generation and for good reason- his WTF is a medium-defining program and one I listen to every week. I’ve been a fan of Maron’s since I was a teenager and he did regular work on Comedy Central.

(Digression: While many people remember him from this era for his run as the host of Short Attention Span Theater, I particularly remember the dude from the thankless job of hosting a “town forum” when Comedy Central stopped airing Mystery Science Theater 3000 every weekday at midnight. Fans were pissed; Maron was kind of the go-between on this weird half-hour segment where the president of the network explained the move. It was the kind of segment that would NEVER happen now that the Internet is a thing.)

Maron’s always used his stand-up and podcast as a forum as a kind of therapy to exercise his demons and I think that’s one of the reasons the guy’s so appealing today. Although I remember watching the guy on things like Stand Up Stand Up and SAST as a brash young comic, middle age suits Maron, his persnickety personality and obsessiveness.

Anyhow, the show was good; Ellen and I both enjoyed it. It was interesting to see Ellen’s reaction, as she’s not a regular listener to WTF. After the show, she remarked about what a communal thing the show seemed to be for Maron and his fans, with people shouting out their favorite bits and Maron directly referencing stuff that happened on the podcast. This is probably a good thing; Maron knows his audience and realizes most of them will immediately get it when he starts talking about Boomer or Pete Holmes. Ellen was lost on that stuff but appreciated the rest.

I didn’t stick around for the meet n’ greet after the show. Although I appreciate that Maron does that stuff, I’ve always found the fan impulse to get a picture with whoever they’re a fan of vaguely icky. The best way I can be a fan is support the artist with some cash (I did buy the iPhone app, thanks much!) and leave him alone. I know if the situation were reversed somehow, that’s what I’d want.