This Week's Troubletown Cartoon: Nature Poem
 I just got back from a week in the wilderness. No phone, no email, no washing dishes. All I did was write in a notebook and sketch by a crayfish hole (sketches to come). The only way I found out about Michael Jackson was that I overheard a girl on her cell phone talking about it with a friend! And yes, a bear really did eat our plastic cooler pak once, only I'm remembering it from years ago.
Super Special Early Cartoon: Obamaoratory
  Hey folks, I'm getting out of town for a week to fill up my creative reservoir. And no, not with alcohol, but with good, clean mountain air unless there's a grass fire. Since we're all friends here I'll give you the super-early preview of next week's cartoon. Cheers! Ps: Don't abuse your privilege!
Today's Sketch: Mahmoud and Bambi
Today's Sketch: The Ayatollah
 Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has a goofy smirk that shows he has a light side; makes him look like a mischievous old codger who's about to tell a dirty joke. Not like Ayatollah Khomeini, what a dick! That guy never smiled. I don't know what Ronald Reagan saw in him. The Gipper had him out to the ranch to ride horses together. My read says that this Ayatollah is not that kind of guy. But of course I predicted Giuliani for president. This Ayatollah could pull a Tianammen Square any day now, but something in the eyes tells me he won't do it. I think he'll tell Ahmadinejad to take a long walk on a short pier. ps: The Disney notebook is of inferior quality. The pages keep falling out.
This Week's Socialistic Troubletown Cartoon
Dangle Art for the Holidays
 It's June, so on the licensing calendar it's time for Valentines Day! Let's make millions together. I've been doing Santas and snowmen too. 
This Week's Troubletown Cartoon: Why are Bankers Such Liars?
 Here's this week's cartoon. I wanted to talk about the shadow surplus of foreclosed homes that the banks are keeping off the market. Houses are selling so poorly that banks will often take half of their, already way marked-down, prices. Releasing all of the foreclosed properties into the market would drive the real estate market down dramatically, further screwing the economy. I didn't manage to get all that in, but it would've been too hard to explain in a funny way, so I just went for whacking banks for all of their lying. It's bizarre how these companies will cook the books to make themselves look solvent and prosperous. The financial industry spent 30 million to get the accounting rules changed so that they could park their foreclosed homes and place their own, imaginary value on the property. Nice. Time to start learning how to short stocks in the housing sector. There's no recovery coming. As people continue to lose jobs there are likely two more waves of foreclosure crises coming. So, I had a couple of decent hooks to build a cartoon on this week, but I don't know if I did it. Up until 5 am this morning I had no ideas at all. I never know if anyone will get it. Bonus, here's last week's cartoon colored in! 
The Vegas Sketches Never Stop!
Licensing Expo Sketch Dump
 Day two with those two damn spotlight beams converging on my eyeballs.           My sketchbook ran out so I had to go in search of a new one. The best I could do was one with lines and, of course, branded with Bambi. Dr. Krinkles with some serious animated TV show suits. Bits of overheard discussion Tacos and Tequila ads showed two girls with unbuttoned ultra-short jean cutoffs, which could possibly lead some people to wonder about the pubic hair content in the food. Just a thought. Dr. Krinkles tried to institute a no photo- graphy policy in their booth after they had a couple of Chinese manu- facturers trying to shoot pictures of their characters. Carrot Top performed at the Luxor. I never knew he was a comedian, I thought he was just a guy with red hair. Well, you learn something new when in Vegas. Vegas mugs and finally mugs in the Vegas airport.
LIcensing Day Three
 Man, there's nobody at the Licensing Show today. An enormous tumbleweed just blew past my exhibitor booth. Where is everybody? This is the part of the show where the exhibitors stand around jawboning with each other and commiserating over the sorry traffic flow. We just discovered that Sam's cousin, the actress Alicia Silverstone, is a friend of Gomez Bueno's. So Sam was very excited to have Gomez pass along a note, because Gomez is likely to see her at a party on Saturday in Malibu. Hmmm...Such a small world! Gomez is friends with lots of famous people. Whoosh! There goes another tumbleweed. I decided that it might liven up the booth to put some candy in my bowl today instead of the Airborne samples. Switch things up a bit. Now I'm just wolfing down chocolate like a mental patient. Today I'm getting some important work done as I sit here immobilized. I picked up copies of the License Global Show Daily. I'm going through the magazine finding every powerful licensing word I can, like turbo, cutie, moxie, pixie, epoxy, etc. Next I'm jumbling them together to make up new brands. I figure this is as good a way as any to discover the next gigantic licensing sensation. I mean Lazytown, Balloonatiks, Rainbow Brite, Babymouse, Hukjam Gummies, Winx, Waybuloo, and Fancy Nancy are big licensing news today. I can come up with stuff like that! Sketches to follow.
Licensing Show Liveblog: My Bad Attitude
Licensing Show Liveblog
Bakugan took all the big awards at the LIMA (pronounced lemur) awards ceremony last night which is nice because it's something that I know about since my son and his pals play and gamble with those little fucking things like fiends. I'm sitting here in the Licensing Show watching the corporate suits lining up across the way making deals with Dr. Krinkles. Krinkles are two young guys who design characters of the type that you frequently see as vinyl toys, but these are kind of monstrous. They have eyes that look swollen shut and otherwise remind me of the ghoulish characters from Nightmare Before Christmas. One Krinkle introduced himself by saying he met me at a comics convention. He was in diapers at the time. Next booth over is the God's Hearts people. God's Heart is the word "God" squeezed into a heart shape and made in gold, titanium, and various other materials including that chrome plastic you stick on the back of your car next to the Jesus fish. Sam from God's Heart made a couple of big deals at the show and he's happy. He likes to rub it in, too. I long ago learned never to sneer at the work your neighboring booths because the more schlocky it may seem to my snobby sensibilities the more it is likely to sell like gangbusters. One funny thing that happened earlier was a tall blonde giving off licensee vibes walked past and looked into my booth. When I tried to engage her, she said, "We make automotive accessories, your stuff isn't right for us." Fair enough, but then she and her partner went over to Dr. Krinkles and spent a half hour talking with them about their little Frankenstein zombie cuties. I guess we'll all be seeing them soon as headlights or mudflaps or spinning rims. On GM cars. 4:03. Only another godforsaken hour of this.
This Week's Troubletown: Explores America
Fear and Licensing in Las Vegas
 I flew in yesterday and already have my booth set up for the International Licensing Expo. It only takes five minutes. The show's taking place at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, which actually resembles a hotel convention center, unlike the Luxor, which looks like an pharaoh's tomb, or my hotel, which looks like a cheesy castle, although you have to walk for miles through casino and food court before you finally get there. Right now the construction of hundreds of corporate attractions is underway and there's partially-built plywood structures and huge hanging soffits and false ceilings, giant characters made out of foam and fiberglass, undulating fascia, spinning stages, and great big images of Elvis, the M&M man, Mr. Peanut, and every brand in the world competing for mind space. There were so many pallets and boxes and half-built displays yesterday that when I left my booth I wandered lost within the endless zone of manic construction. I couldn't find the one door that was open to the outside, and I went into a panic. Sanrio, John Wayne, United Features, NFL Football, Warner Brothers, Smurfs, Hooters, Terminix, let me the %#@* out of here! When the show was at the Javits you would transition from the madness inside to the gritty street ambiance of New York City, which was always a relief, but here in Vegas you pass seamlessly from one branded environment to another, each as lit-up, sexed-up, and sell-sell-sell as the other. If it weren't for the one-arm bandits you'd hardly know that you'd left the show floor. Ironically, the art and design section of the show is the calmest, most non-branded place probably in all of Las Vegas. It's also scrunched way back in its own corner, seemingly way off the beaten track. The show has not hung banners with row numbers from the ceiling in our area, so it's impossible to track down a booth by the number. Maybe they'll fix that before showtime. I'm in booth 3173, not that the number will help you, but drop by and say hello if you're here.
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