Hummus Birds
(To address the desire to see this picture grow more biggified, click the alien spacecraft disguised as a BBQ.)
Bizarro is brought to you today by Requirements.
When sketching this gag, I thought to myself, “What kind of backyard should I draw?” I quickly decided to draw the backyard of my parents house in Tulsa. It’s where I grew up, of course. I must say that even though I did it entirely from memory, it looks pretty damned accurate. My parents have added a screened-in porch now but this is pretty much the way it looked for many years. I should hasten to add that that is not my mother standing at the doorway. At least, it doesn’t look much like her. My mother is is well over six feet tall, African American, and wears very long dreadlocks.
Speaking of dreadlocks, or “protein turds” as I have been known to call them, I have mixed emotions about them. I support the freedom of each person to wear their hair however they like but dreadlocks on non-blacks, tend to look like the stuff cats occasionally puke up that we humans call “hair balls.” I don’t mind the look of long, snaky hair at a distance, but when I get up close and realize they are not braids but long, lumpy strings of matted hair, I experience an unpleasantness at gazing upon them.
The title panel today, used in some newspapers alongside my cartoon, was created from the weekday cartoon from 2010, shown at left. For my foreign readers who may not be familiar with the colloquialism it plays off of, super macho he-man types will sometimes say, “You want a piece of me?!” while leaning toward the object of their adolescent posturing and holding their arms out slightly like the gentleman depicted here, in an apparent attempt to invite the object of their intimidation to hit them. As for myself, I have never been tempted to use this phrase on another person and would not unless I were made of chocolate.
P.S. Thanks to all my Jazz Pickles for the numerous kind words you offered earlier this week when I was having a rough time. I really appreciated it. I missed posting several cartoons last week because I didn’t feel up to it but will get back to them in the next hours or days, as I find time to work them into my schedule.