MAY 13, 2008 - 5:01 PM
Rachael Del Pozzo, of Wasilla, found the positive in the dismal education news: Some kids DO graduate! Her caption effectively damns with faint praise. There is a caustic sarcasm here that is close to the tone that teens frequently use. Let's hope that they are literate enough to appreciate it.
There is plenty of blame to go around here. The bodies were dropping left and right as the captions hit their marks. But one thing is clear to me. The current generation of students are no dumber than any other. They deserve better.
Back next week,
Pete
MAY 6, 2008 - 4:43 PM
GEORGIA BROWN looked at this week's cartoon, and saw... nothing. And, thinking outside of the balloon, she got creative and made something out of nothing. Instead of inserting dialog, she came up with a caption that made blank balloons part of the idea.
If brevity is the soul of wit, this is the wittiest Name That 'Toon yet.
The rest is silence.
P.
APRIL 29, 2008 - 3:19 PM
First off, congratulations to all on a Yogi Berra-free week. I know that many of you were tempted, but you took the high road, you played clean. To quote Yogi Berra, AGHH! PTHT$#@^7#!!!. Damn, that was close, just shows you how tempting it is to lapse into the Yogi Zone. Even if, like me, you don't even KNOW any of his famous... OH! just thought of one! "The opera ain't ov... GACK!! Nearly did it again! I think, as Yogi once did not say, we better cut to the chaste.
This week's top spot goes to LEO WASSILIE for sheer force of will in turning the cartoon into a comment on the latest getaway by the Robber Barons. Let's see if we can explain this. The dogma is that if we just get the government out of these people's way, they'll make lots of money for all of us. So we deregulate them and let them go. Then they get greedy and careless because, what the heck, nobody is watching. Next thing you know the gravy train jumps the rails, careens down the street, runs over a dog, and slams into the Federal Treasury.
APRIL 22, 2008 - 5:04 PM
So CHUCK HOEHN lulls us into a pleasant, unsuspecting frame of mind with his witty but gentle humor for months at a time... and then he suddenly lets loose with a small thermonuclear caption right in the downtown metropolitan district of Alaska politics.
Imaginative, short and spot-on. It's all over but the barricading of the area until the radioactivity subsides to a habitable level, sometime in late 3010. In the meantime, be on the lookout for strange mutants wandering shell-shocked across the landscape. I also recommend you hustle over to your local big box and pick up visqueen and duct tape to protect yourself from the fallout.
APRIL 15, 2008 - 6:14 PM
CLAYTON AWE returns with a humorous sally with nice ironic undertones. Good job, Clayton. And now, if you'll excuse me, gotta' practice my speech!
Pete
APRIL 8, 2008 - 8:02 PM
STEVE GRUHN wrote this week's pick. The cartoon was a tough one, and he came up with a slick way to make it work. It was an adroit application of "cartoon logic". Well done Steve.
Vern brought up an interesting cartooning dilemma: What does a poor cartoonist do when they believe that politician is doing a good job? (see the entry "Sorry Pete... below) I will toss out two thoughts for your consideration. First, turn your attention elsewhere, for example, to the political foes that your visionary, gifted leader must contend with. They surely deserve a drubbing. Second, when your hero screws up, you must be as hard on them as you would on anyone else. This is what constitutes "fairness" in the word of editorial cartooning.
APRIL 1, 2008 - 4:44 PM
Ok, now I'm jealous. You guys came up with three captions this week that I wish I thought of myself. (Damn, that must have been a good drawing) My Favorite was THOM RICHARDS' $700 million seismic test. It's enough to make a person apologize to Ketchikan for ragging on their bridge. Hard on his heels was Ken Jacobus with his potent "Little Shop of Horrors" take. Right there neck-and-neck with Ken was Georgia Brown with the trenchant Bay of Pigs line.
Like I said, I'm jealous. But a little proud, too.
Next week for sure,
Pete
MARCH 25, 2008 - 5:25 PM
Thom Richards tossed off a deft bit of wordplay that caught the sense of the drawing, and sparkled with wit. There were several nifty takes on the Rushmore angle, but this one stood out for the way it evoked the sudden journey these senior politicians hve taken from rugged invulnerability of stone to the precarious semisolidity of slush.
Thanks to all for contributing.
Pete
MARCH 18, 2008 - 3:19 PM
FBI - ROOM 604
CAUCUS HELD BEHIND CLOSED DOOR
MONEY, MONEY MAKES YOU SPIN
RANDY GOES , OR WE CAN'T WIN
Lynn Willis pulled together a chant the Governor may actually want to try. She's tried just about everything else. Maybe if we all chant together...
Or just keep chipping away, one caption at a time. I will if you will.
See you next week,
Pete
MARCH 11, 2008 - 4:38 PM
GEORGIA BROWN walks off with the honors this week. Her deft parody of the distinctions we make about prey and predators, hunting and "predator control", is simultaneously biting and elegant.
There is little in the world that defies satire, but this comes close. The rules of "fair chase" and idea of "wanton waste" are a sort of chivalric code that can appear arbitrary. We have a guy looking at a felony charge for leaving a couple of sheep in the field, but it's fine to whack all the black bears we can across the inlet, and leave the meat to rot? Can't we at least get the urban moose squad to salvage the meat for the food pantries? I'll part with my black bear stew recipe.
MARCH 4, 2008 - 5:25 PM
All around the Juneau halls,
the money chased the weasels,
the feds said it was not in fun,
pop goes another weasel.
You can practically hear KEN JACOBUS cracking up as he put this witty ditty together. But when the innocent sing-song of the children's rhyme veers off into the darkness of the last line, we get a savage satiric jolt.
If you really want to push things here, this is a highly concentrated history of our state itself. As we look at our approaching 50th birthday, we've made a hasty journey from youthful innocence to tawdry experience, just as the lines of the caption take us from the nursery rhyme to the wages of crime.
FEBRUARY 26, 2008 - 6:11 PM
Congratulations to Doug Capra for refracting the lessons of the Exxon spill into the future, illuminating concerns about the Pebble project. Simple, well thought out, and trenchant. I'm taking notes here! Good stuff.
If any of you are curious to know how well a person could recount growing up in the Ayatollah's Iran
using cartoons to tell the story, I'm here to tell you that Marjane Satrapi pulls it off with drama and flair, first in the form of her graphic novel "Persepolis" and now in the movie of the same name. I caught it here in town last week, but it seems to be gone already. Fortunately hr books are easy to find locally, and perhaps the movie will come back through. Here' a "Persepolis" trailer.
FEBRUARY 19, 2008 - 8:43 PM
There were some sizzling entries this week, so THOM RICHARDS had his work cut out for him (I'll just pause here while you all groan.)
Thom's rueful caption speaks for many Alaskans who hate to see a person of Ted Stevens' scope and accomplishments screw up. While we do not know in his case if any laws have been broken, it's hard to see how any politician at any level can be proud of their association with Mr. Allen. Likewise it is difficult for citizens to look at this episode and not have their faith shaken.
On a recent visit to the Dily News, the Senator berated the editors for tagging him "Senator for Life". But for many long-time Alaskans, including this one, he has been Senator for near all of our lives, not just his. He is as much a part of Alaska as the Seward Peninsula. And just as it is difficult to accept that the peninsula is eroding, it's hard not to wish the Senator had not cut those ties a bit more neatly.
FEBRUARY 12, 2008 - 6:48 PM
Brian Dollerhide put a nice spin on the whacko "McCain TOO LIBERAL! McCain TOO LIBERAL!" chant. McCain too liberal? alarming! But is it true? You can look at a wide variety of ratings of said pathetic liberal collected by Project Vote Smart here
What, you're back from Vote Smart already? The guy doesn't exactly come off as the Arizona Dennis Kucinich, no?
What would Senator McCain have to do to convince these true believers that he is a real conservative? Advocate the arming of fetuses? Waterboarding illegal immigrants? Death penalty for judges that stray from strict construction of the constitution?
FEBRUARY 5, 2008 - 5:32 PM
"Golly gee, How could I've have known that my 'worst political rival and enemy' was married to a prominent judge. Maybe I should start reading the papers, get in touch with what goes on in this community."
Mary Sommers caught the irony of a would-be leader and public figure adopting the "clueless" defense. It's not one of the things most politicians will admit.
Vic certainly had a rude awakening, describing himself this way on discovering that the judge who presided at his trial was married to a person with whom he had scrapped with in the capitol. "Once I made this connection, I was sickened. My heart sunk into my stomach, and I was just stunned by what I learned."
JANUARY 30, 2008 - 9:13 PM
Let's all take a deep breath and consider this: If there were a Muse of cartooning, it would be our Frank. The evidence is right there on the NTT Web page.
There is a brilliant range of choice stuff. We get the dryly scathing, courtesy of Rick Bray: "If I can fix this, maybe my approval rating will climb back up to 19%." There is gonzo hilarity from Chuck Hoehn: "They can't fire me I don't even work here ... WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!", which has a positvely Mike-Petersesque blend of humor and bite. And how about this, from Steve Gruhn: "Alaska's first governor with triple-digit disapproval ratings."
JANUARY 29, 2008 - 4:33 PM
Georgia Brown, employing the ever-risky "dream gambit", pulls it off through a combination of good writing and the great way the dream motif actually furthers the point. "Just a dream" is where these gags usually leave off, but Georgia imagines his grandiose dream occurring while our hero naps through a budget session. What an elegant way to make the point that while chasing aliens may be more glamorous, it's the mundane nitty-gritty of local affairs that Mr. Bauer was elected to deal with.
Your host,
Pete
JANUARY 22, 2008 - 5:45 PM
Step 1 - Build golf course
Step 2 - Surrounding properties values increase
Step 3 - More tax revenue collected by MOA
A well-known rhetorical technique is "reductio ad absurdum" to show how a premise leads to a ridiculous outcome. MARY SOMMERS here seems to apply the opposite technique, looking back from an absurd outcome to find the grander absurdity that drives it. I suppose there must be another fancy name in Latin, but don't ask me.
When done well as it was here, it has a satisfying and pointed ironic elegance.
Of course, as Mary notes, this is also the technique used to construct conspiracy theories. Which means we ALL NEED TO KEEP AN EYE ON MARY.
JANUARY 15, 2008 - 5:28 PM
The Soldotna Cowboy rides again. VERN NUSUNGINYA claimed he was having a tough time coming up with a caption for this drawing. But he kept slogging at it and came up with a solution that I'll bet surprised him as much as it did me.
I've found that the more stumped I am about how to proceed with a drawing often means the imagination is jolted out of its habitual lanes and forced to go across new territory, resulting in fresh approaches and exciting departures from the usual bag of tricks.
I think it was Edison who said "Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration." I'd go with 1% inspiration, 70% perspiration and 29% desperation.
JANUARY 8, 2008 - 5:47 PM
KEVIN EWING, of Anchorage, took me by surprise by managing to smoothly connect The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Alaska's convoluted, frustrating hunting quagmire. A quagmire that involves starring roles from these same players: the Feds and Legislature.
The hunting debacle ended with the federal authorities reasserting their prerogative to take over wildlife management where federal land is involved.
The corrupton debacle has seen the feds assert their authority to manage certain Alaska politicians on federal land in Oregon.
The big difference between these two sad failures?
Read the adn.com updated privacy policy | 
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.
© Copyright 2009, The Anchorage Daily News, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Company 
Contact Us | Newsroom Contacts | Communication Forms | Subscriptions | Advertising | Featured Advertisers
Daily News Jobs |
RSS Feeds |
|
ADN Store |
Newspapers in Education
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | About our ads | Copyright