Monday, February 28, 2011

GRIGGITS 1985


This panel ran in the South Bay Easy Reader in 1985. That was a long time ago. The cartoon was a bit of a take off on Tina Turner's What's Love Got to Do With It music video.

Friday, February 25, 2011

TRAPPED IN FACULTY MEETING HELL

A few years ago, bored out of my skull, I transcribed a Friday afternoon faculty meeting.
Here here is the most exciting portion of an hour and fifteen minute meeting.

“That’s all I have. Is there anything else?” the boss asks.
Please nobody say anything, I think.


“I have a question about the dress code, Mr. Hammer,” one of the idiots pops off.


“Shoot,” Hammer replies.


Don’t shoot!!! I beg, using my best extra sensory communication.


“Boys aren’t allowed to wear ear rings at the junior high. Is that right?”


“Correct,” Hammer answers in no particular hurry.


“What about safety pins?”


“Safety pins in their ears?”


“That’s right.”


“Well, isn’t that a health issue. It’s not sanitary, is it?” another mindless nincompoop enters the fray.


“I’ve seen students take safety pins from their ears and throw them across the room,” someone else decides to throw in her two cents.


“Now we’re talking about a classroom management issue,” Hammer states very seriously.


“What about paperclips? Are we going to allow the boys to put paper clips in their ears?”


At this point I begin searching the room for the hidden camera. This has got to be some elaborate joke on me and they are all in on it.


Bla, bla, bla, bla.


Superfluous, superfluous, and more superfluous.


My god, how I hate meetings!

Monday, February 21, 2011

WZ SNYDER STICKS IT TO THE VIRUS, STEVE JOBS AND BILL GATES

Last week, a nefarious virus  infested my p.c., making it impossible to open various programs and slowing things down to a crawl. I was ready to purchace a new computer, possibly an Apple. I was considering the Apple switch because friend over at Microsoft said Bill Gates is a mean s.o.b.. Then a fellow blogger pointed out that Steve Jobs is also a mean s.o.b.. Since I didn't want to fork over my hard earned cash to either of those mean sons of bitches, I decided to take one last crack at the nefarious virus. Ladies and germs, I stood toe to toe with that rotten virus, slugging it out for five hours. Quite frankly, I'm not sure what I did. There was downloading, uploading and a heckuva a lot of deleting. And when the smoke cleared, the low down dirty virus had high tailed it out of town.

Final Score:
WZ Snyder 1
Mean Sons of Bitches and that Nefarious Virus 0

As for the cartoon, it has nothing to do with viruses or mean sons of bitches. It's an illustration from my never published children's book, How Larry the Griggit Learned to Fly.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

PRESIDENTS DAY - snydeR coMics #27

                                    whEn piGs Fly

Thought I'd do a comic in honor of National Stick Day.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

THE COMEDY GUYS AND STICKING IT TO BILL GATES


This picture was in the bottom of my sock drawer. I'm the goofy looking one. We called ourselves The Comedy Guys. I did stand-up comedy with these guys in the eighties. Now we don't care what the temperature is. That was a joke. I think it's pretty funny. The fact that I think this joke is funny is a primary example of why I am no longer performing stand-up comedy.

I'm making this a quick entry because my computer keeps crashing. It's being attacked by a virus. I hate viruses. I'm probably going to need to buy a new one. I'm thinking of buying a an Apple. I hear Apples almost never get viruses. Furthermore, a friend of mine works for Microsoft. He tells me the working conditions are deplorable and Bill Gates is mean s.o.b..

I hate viruses and I'm not exactly happy with Bill Gates.

If I buy an Apple, I can stick to the man. I can stick it to Bill Gates. Make no mistake, Bill Gates is the man. I like to stick it to the man. Yeah, this one's for my buddy and his colleagues at Microsoft!

But wait. What if I start a trend? What if eveyone buys Apples because they never get viruses and Bill Gates is a mean s.o.b.? Won't my buddy lose his job? What if Steve Jobs is mean s.o.b. too? Life is so complicated.

I'll have to do some ruminating on this one...

Sunday, February 6, 2011

JUST A CITY BOY, BORN AND RAISED IN SOUTH DETROIT


 
It’s been a heck of week, a cold week, the coldest week I can recall in the twenty-two years I’ve lived in Phoenix. My ficus trees are dead – dammit. It was cold enough to hurt your face, if that makes any sense. The automatic sprinklers watered the baseball field outside my classroom each morning and you could have ice skated on the puddles all afternoon. I had this fantasy of secretly tossing a little water onto the concrete outside of my door and asking a couple of choice freshmen to leave the classroom. I’ve seen the trick in movies. It’s not the kind of thing that happens in an Arizona desert city.



A few of my students competed in an academic competition across town. I served as sponsor and chauffeur. Would you believe me if I told you those kids made fun of my family Chevy Astro van? Well, they did, all the way out and all the way back – both days. They made fun of the cracked windshield, my broken blinker and the dents on the sides. They made fun of my busted taillight. And they made fun of the fact that the front doors wouldn’t open, forcing the front passenger and me to crawl in from the back. It kind of got to me when they called my family van a “creeper van.”


“Hey!” I told them, “Did you ever consider that this is the kind of car you gotta drive when you have five kids and a teachers’ salary? Huh? Did you?”


“How come teachers always complain about their salaries?” one of them asked.


“All you got to do is look at this van,” another kid came to my rescue.


“I happen to like this van. It reminds me of the broken orb on George Bailey’s staircase in it’s a Wonderful Life,” I said.


“Who’s George Bailey?” two or three of them asked at once.


By the way, the radio does work. I demonstrated this for my kids by playing A Prairie Home Companion all the way home Saturday night. For some reason, teenagers don’t fully appreciate Garrison Keillor. Got to tell you, I appreciated their lack of appreciation for Mr. Keillor.
The team didn’t exactly break any records. We had a few kids drop out, leaving us quite shorthanded. The highlight came when my students demonstrated the ability to sing that Journey song with the line, “Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit…”


It was a good moment. I mean, nobody took home a trophy or a medal and they made fun of my van, but all of my kids knew all of the words to very cool song. It was a very cool moment. Yeah, cool enough to help me appreciate my profession, my wise cracking students, and my 2000 Chevy Astro van.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011