Dave's Blog

Lil' Cuties

As seen recently in the basement of an antique store that was once my dad's elementary school in Antioch, Illinois. Eli wanted to buy them all, but they were five bucks apiece and stinky.

Ebert Wins!

This actually happened about a month ago, but I just noticed (in my bathroom magazine basket reading stack) this excellent submission to The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. For some reason, this one hit me squarely on the funnybone and I was literally "L"ing "OL," as the kids say. In fact I nearly "L"ed "MAO." But my laughter turned to warm fuzzies when I noticed the winner, one of my favorite people in the world, Roger Ebert. A little research led me to this interesting article, which included this Ebert quote:

I have entered the New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest almost weekly virtually since it began and have never even been a finalist. Mark Twain advised: “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.” I have done more writing for free for the New Yorker in the last five years than for anybody in the previous 40 years.

It’s not that I think my cartoon captions are better than anyone else’s, although some weeks, understandably, I do. It’s that just once I want to see one of my damn captions in the magazine that publishes the best cartoons in the world. Is that too much to ask?

Congratulations, Roger, you did it!

Tin Men

As seen in Richfield, Penn Ave, I think. Always nice to see a little outcropping of weird folk art. And also to know where to shop for a unique gift item.

Disturbing...

I saw this only yesterday. And I shuddered as though someone was walking on my grave.

Itty Bitty

Berry and I went out for our first morel mushroom hunt yesterday and found that we were a few days early. We found a bunch of little babies like this one (the only one we harvested) but left them for later harvest, this weekend maybe. Man, it's so hard to just leave them out there where someone else could pick them before we can get to them! Nobody seems to know how fast they grow; for all I know they could be the size of beer bottles today, and yet here I sit because I don't want to wastefully drive all the way down to... oops, almost revealed the top secret spot!