2-1-08: A magnifying glass that spreads the sun's rays outward?

Sigh.

The famous Quigmans attention to detail strikes again!

(Yes, I know there are lenses that are designed to spread light rays but I guarantee you that wasn't Buddy's intent.)

Okay, time to make the gag funny: Replace the person on the table with a big ant and make the magnifying glass focus the rays normally. It wouldn't even need this dumb caption.

Tah-dah!

That took a whole twenty seconds of thought. Would that old Hicky-pants gave it that much effort.

Sloth Alert: I see the Quigmans bullpen has seen a lot of movement in the off-season as old Hicky-pants brings the unheralded Grieco in as a relief gag-writer for the 2008 Grapefruit league. In joke-writing terms, his ERA currently stands at infinity, and that ain't good.

Sloth alert: Originally syndicated 1-5-01.

2-2-08: "And since my name is Pitt, that makes us 'Stu-Pitt'. Get it? Sort of like this little half-joke of ours."

2-4-08: What do you call it when a third-rate gag-writer references a fourth-rate cable program featuring fifth-rate celebrities in order to create a sixth-rate punchline?

Around here, we call it "Monday".

Good night, everbody! Drive safely!

2-5-08: It's safe to assume that you have never opened your daily paper and found a headline for a possibly intriguing story about, say, Barak Obama's cat's hangnails only to discover that the rest of the story was completely blank. Nothing but white space for eight column inches, as though the writer had said to himself "Well, this headline is information enough. They'll find the rest of the story on TV or the 'net anyway. I'm gonna go watch me some Celebrity Rehab."

And yet, that is perhaps as perfect a visual metaphor for the Quigmans as I can imagine although, frankly, I'm appalled it took me thirteen years to conceive it.

Guess I'll go watch me some Celebrity Rehab now.

2-6-08: There are jokes in which it helps to be immersed in contemporary topical humor in order to understand the punchline, such as the following:

A man goes to his doctor says: "I've had the song 'What's New Pussycat' stuck in my head for weeks, and it's driving me crazy."
Doc: "Well, I think you may have Tom Jones disease."
Man: "I've never heard of that. Is it rare?"
Doc: "It's herpes."

For those of you experienced enough to have understood this joke please do not be alarmed if today's Quigmans comic completely mystifies you as it has nothing to do with anything except old Hicky-pants desperate desire to get back to further installments of Celebrity Rehab.

To those who didn't understand it... it's not unusual.

2-7-08: I don't think anyone actually believes that the lady in the cartoon wants Bob to try again. I think it's clear that she wants Bob to go far, far away and hurt himself with farming implements.

This gag is just another case of old Hicky-pants glomming onto a noted catch-phrase and half-assedly applying it as a punchline, whether it completely makes sense or not. Even more annoying is the juvenile sexual spin he's added, its jocular equivalent being the addendum of "Thats what SHE said" to almost any innocuous phrase... and we all know how funny THAT is after about the 2nd time.

Make that 1st.

Sloth Alert: I knew this was an old, reused-recycled-reprocessed-regurgitated Quigmans cartoon before I even read the caption. That's because it has Bob in it. Bob Quigman. The character from whom the strip derives its title. The character who hasn't made an appearance in the strip, apart from the occasional re-run, since Moses accidentally dropped the third tablet behind the refrigerator. That Bob Quigman. The cartoon is originaly from 1-27-03, in case you're interested.

2-8-08: As a way of explaining how I feel about this gag, as well as the Quigmans in general, allow me to share with you a choice quote from Groucho Marx: "My guess is that there aren't a hundred top-flight professional comedians, male and female, in the whole world. They are a much rarer and far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world. "

Groucho's statement easily applies to almost any field of endeavour but, just for the sake of argument, let's stick to the field of cartooning, where there are good writers and bad writers, as well as good artists and bad artists. Rather than get bogged down in an endless, rambling, bile-laden dissertation on the subject I've reduced the argument to its barest essentials utilizing the folowing Venn diagram:

2-9-08: A good idea for gag writers is to always base your material on something that's familiar to your audience. Like babies, cars, golf, computers, cannibalism, self-mutilation, stuff like that.

For old Hicky-pants to base a gag on a show like (and I'm just guessing here) "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" defeats its own purpose because the audiences for both that TV show and the Quigmans are comprised of mutually exclusive sets of driveling morons. EM:HE, on the one hand, is designed to attract female trailer-trash of all races, keeping them mollified and docile with the lure of false hope. While the Quigmans, on the other hand, reaches out to those too stupid to steal. (Thank you, Elaine May.)

If old Hicky-pants was smart he'd stick to lampooning his favorite program, Celebrity Rehab. That way he'd unify his audience into one, large self-loathing mass.

As I said, I'm not sure what program is being referenced here so I Googled "Who's that elegant" just in case it turned out to be a notable TV tag-line. Not even, as it garnered a total of four whole hits. You have got to be working PRETTY hard to conjure a phrase that obscure, and old Hicky-pants does it without even thinking.

Which is a damn shame because if old Hicky-pants seriously thought about what he did for a living I'd have more time for wanking.

Either way, it's wanking all the way down.

2-11-08: This is already the third Quigmans gag this month based on some lame-ass TV program. I don't know about you but I'm beginning to wonder if old Hicky-pants hasn't barricaded himself in his little apartment and is now wandering around with Kleenex boxes strapped to his feet, talking to his TV friends and wondering why they don't answer back.

If tomorrow's Quigman is a sly burlesque questioning the authenticity of Lucy Ricardo's red hair or a sarcastic broadside at the Professor's inability to fashion a simple transdimensional wormhole from coconut shells and dilithium crystals I, for one, would not be surprised.

(Note: As it turns out, the Quigmans cartoon for 2-12-08 wasn't just about TV programs, it was also about movies. Quite the vast range of cultural experience there, Hick.)

Collaborator Alert: Today's gag was penned by Hicky-Pants' brother, Sander-pants, proving that lack of humorous aptitude is a dominant gene.

2-12-08: I am not embarrassed to reveal that I have a real life based on real life. It may not be a mad social whirl but I have enough on my plate to absolutely arrest any desire to canvass the fetid breeze which exudes from the obsidian nether-abyss of the Hollywood media machine, the very hot gas on which this gag relies.

The lives of celebrities are so far outside my realm of interest that I actually had to Google "Ashton Kutcher" to find out (A) who he is and (B) what he did, discovering that OH MY FUCKING GOD! he had the impertinence to date an older woman (Circa October 2003, the original date of this gag). And not just any older woman but that wizened, dessicated hag Demi Moore! What was he possibly thinking?

Don't. Care.

Never watched That 70's Show, never saw Striptease. Again, Don't. Care.

And I really, REALLY don't care who in Hollywood is fucking whom unless it involves Buddy and the IRS. And although most people would agree that sex/love is the primo bankable emotion it's clear to me that the media places much of its money on envy.

(And, yes, I now know that Kutcher and Moore later married. Good for them.)

So thank you so veddy, veddy, veddy, VEDDY much, Buddy, for forcing me to don my little rubber Google gloves and root elbow-deep through the vast show-biz cloaca to discern some trifling degree of rational meaning from your newest non-joke.

2-13-08: There is a little trick screenwriters use to spotlight the dumb character in any performance, as a means of minimizing exposition.

It works like this: One character will begin a phrase like "I have not yet begun to" and then another charcter will abruptly finish his thought with something surprisingly imbecillic like "plant onions?".

Hilarity generally ensues.

Today's Quigmans punchline, on the other hand, uses this technique in reverse to clearly reveal that the dumb one in question is... the writer.

"I'm Mike Stanfill, and I approve of this... character assassination."

2-14-08: As usual this is another Quigmans comic that's been through the wringer once before, having first seen the syndicated light of day on October 7, 2003. Same old, same old, actually, but this one's special as old Hicky-pants chose to actually leave his beloved Celebrity Rehab program long enough to revise the woman's head, as seen in this comparison.

I can only guess old Hick thought making the woman more of a bitch made the joke that much funnier. It's a logical assumption on Hick's part as the Quigs are more famous for looking funny than actually being funny. Too bad it doesn't work in practice.

Hick should have applied his emergecy ministrations to this punchline as it made no sense in 2003 and it makes less sense now. The Iraqi economy is about as 'rebuilt' as Detroit's, and that ain't funny.

2-15-08: In the face of ever-waning newspaper markets I'm suspecting old Hicky-pants is now courting the periodicals... specifically the TV Guide.

How else to explain this gag, the sixth Quigmans this month to read like a clue to the ThemePuzzle, the TV Guide crossword.

16. Down. "____ it up"

I didn't know offhand the name of TV Guide's crossword puzzle so I reached for my trusty Google and found something which explains a lot about how old Hicky-pants got started in the comics biz:

Sloth Alert: This gag hails from 7-9-04, which proves that the more things change, the less things change.

2-16-08: This Quigmans cartoon originally debuted on August 8, 2002. It is no less lousy than any other Quigmans joke, so the less said the better. However, there's a really bizarre coincidence regarding the topic of this joke, the humble Tic Tac.

A story broke on February 8th regarding a 17-year-old woman from England by the name of Natalie Cooper who is unable to ingest anything BUT Tic-Tacs. Here's her picture and her favorite food:

Sloth Alert: As I mentioned above, today's Quigmans first appeared in August of 2002 while the gag itself is attributed to someone named "Grieco". Curiously enough, Grieco didn't write another gag for old Hicky-pants until 2-1-08, almost six years later. That, too, is quite the coincidence which leads me to suspect that old Hick must have pulled today's joke out of the pile, noticed Grieco's name, and then cadged another lame joke out of the poor sot instead of writing a new one himself. Makes as much sense as anything, I suppose.

2-18-08: How do we honestly know when something has true, intellectual merit? There's no doubt that any number of respected, though skeptical physicist's had egg all over their faces when Einstein's theory of relativity proved accurate. And more than one art critic who rejected Jackson Pollock's pours quietly moved to Omaha and opened a dry cleaners. And who among us could have believed that smashing watermelons would prove to be the transcendant comic statement of the 1980's?

So that's why comic strips like today's Quigmans are so valuable as it offers an unequivocal watermark for failure both artistically and thematically, affording even the dullest prole in the drawer an opportunity to grab his nose and loudly opine a hearty and undisputed "Peee-Ewww!".

2-19-08: "Oh, dear! I'm afraid you'll have to pardon me, young man, as I'm only capable of understanding jokes which contain a punchline. However, if by some small miracle you happen to chance upon a bon mot which has a premise more sophisticated than "knock-knock" then please feel free to visit our competitors and afford them the opportunity of sharing your scintillating charm and wit. Guards!"

2-20-08: "Last night, guys, I hit the fuckin' jackpot. I mean I found the perfect woman. Tits out to there with long, silky blond hair. Legs that seem to go on forever and a smile that said 'foreplay optional'. So I take her home, break open some wine, dim the lights and kick up the Barry White. That's when she takes off her face."

"What? She took off her make-up?

"Nah, stupid! She took off her whole face. The eyes, the mouth, the nose, just like she was peeling a fuckin' orange or somethin'."

"Yeah, right! How did she breathe? How did she talk? How did she see?"

"Hey! Slow down, Einstein. I'm a lover, not a thinker, you know what I mean."

"Yeah, we know, Frankie. Heh-heh-heh. So?"

"Okay, so anyways, she then takes off her hair, removes her legs, unscrews her boobs, unplugs her vagoo and disconnects her butt. All that was left was this fuckin' bald head attached to a pair of skinny little fuckin' arms."

"Let me guess, Frankie, let me guess... handjob? "

"Handjob."

2-21-08: In the beginning, network television programs had live audiences. Later  the networks began adding laughs to its programs through mechanical means although it wasn't, as you might naively suspect, for the purpose of highlighting humorous climaxes.

In reality, the purpose of canned laughter is a Pavlovian signal to that vast American conglomeration of viewers, those too half-witted to grasp the supposed witty thrust of the broadcast jape, that it's time to open their fat yaps and pretend to act entertained. This saves them the embarrassment of looking like the boobs and dolts they truly are in front of kith and kin.

So that my point is made perfectly clear allow me to state that smart guys don't need a laugh track to let them know what's funny.

The Quigmans needs a laugh track.

Sloth Alert: Hi Bob! Long time no see. Your appearance means this must be an old Quigmans cartoon. Let's see.... yup! From 3-12-03.

2-22-08: This gag raises more questions than it can ever hope to answer:

(1) God can create a whole universe but he can't make a Frisbee? Sh'yeah, right!

(2) God is roughly the size of Jupiter? Since when?

(3) Isn't it cruel to make a giant male dog but no giant female dog?

(4) If God is going to add wings to a dog, shouldn't they be large enough to actually create lift rather than being merely decorative?

(5) Couldn't God devise a more crafty means of flight than wings? Anti-gravity would seem to be within his all-powerful grasp. And it'd be cool as hell!

(6) Why is God wearing clothing? Did he eat of the tree of knowledge and is now ashamed of his own nakedness? Does he even have anything under that robe to be ashamed of? Can God even feel shame? Who the fuck could possibly make God feel shame? We must hunt down and kill anyone who has made God ashamed of his Almighty Wiener?

(7) Why does God throw like a girl?

(8) Is Buddy going to hell for attributing a really crappy joke to the Big Kosmic Kahuna?

2-23-08: Back in 1988, when this Quigmans cartoon first saw the light of syndicated ink, Middelman was nowhere to be found. The original employee was played by good old Bob Quigman, and the boss addressed him by name.

In 2002, when Buddy last re-used this gag, he inexplicably replaced Bob with this nondescript, generic, colorless, unmemorable little man and gave him the rib-tickling, foot-stomping, knee-slapping, gut-busting name of Middleman.

And that's what made the joke sooooo much better.

Update, 10-23-08: I'd forgotten that I'd actually written this gag. Here's a scan of the original cartoon from January, 6. 1988. You can clearly see the word "stanfill" in the signature on the left. I should also point out that the original artwork was far superior in comic quality to the current one.

2-25-08: You know how when you were a kid and you really, REALLY wanted to do something that had the potential to be unbelivably cool, so you went to ask you mom if you could do it but you both understood that whatever it was would require a lot of effort on her part, so she just rolled her eyes and said "We'll see", which you both understood to mean "fat chance"?

Similarly, this Quigmans is a "We'll see" Quigmans, as in "Hey, Buddy! How about a semi-decent gag today?"

Buddy: "We'll see."

Fat chance.

2-26-08: If you took a delicate jewel and mounted it in a setting of fresh wolverine poop you'd wind up with something similar to this Quigmans cartoon.

It might be appropos to say "this is one doodle that can't be undid, home-skillet".

2-27-08: For once, old Hicky-pants didn't pull a nonsense phrase out of his ass... in this instance he pulls it out of his collaborator and former paramour's ass. Yes, it's another scintillating jape from good old Angela Szyszka, who obviously still has a death grip on her day job.

I Googled "Biofeed" and found complete and total diddly apart from the occasional mention of a sort of livestock Pepto Bismol, plus a type of plant food. Neither reference seems to suit this gag in any comprehensive manner.

I also performed a Google search of the news, just to be certain there wasn't a hot story about this mystery product.

Nothin'.

It's clear that both Hick and Szyssy were simultaneously struck by the same, supposedly hilarious, hallucination involving strung-out cattle. You have to wonder if the source of that delusive illusion involved either Columbian or Hawaiian "Biofeed". I'll keep ya posted.



Sloth Alert: Originally syndicated 4-6-01.

2-28-08: According to Erik Erikson, the guy who coined the term "identity crisis", anyone suffering from such a psychological dilemma is, in a nutshell, unable to answer the questions "Who am I?" and "Where am I?". So having your identity crisis stolen, rather than solved, would probably leave you asking "Huh?" and "What?" a lot.

I don't know about you, but that's exactly the same effect I get from reading a Quigmans cartoon.

Now that we've got "who", "where" and "what" out of the way let's concentrate on "why". And the answer is: Gygli, today's Worst Collaborator in the Worlllllllld!

2-29-08: Hmmm, I wonder what that spam could be?

"Are you trapped in a humorless cartoon? Are you ashamed of your tiny, shrinking audience? Are you tired of being saddled with all that excess weight from third rate cartoonist's? Would you like a bigger, bolder premise, the kind that makes you irresistable to high-class syndicates? Then send this message, along with $500 to bob@quigmans.com and he'll see that the money is well spent."

Sloth alert: My memory isn't what it used to be but I always remember a really funy cartoon. I guess that's why I couldn't remember this one at ALL. Thank goodness I keep good records. And for the record, this originally ran on 5-19-03.