New Year’s Resolutions, Las Vegas Style
Plagued over the last couple days with cluster headaches, also known as suicide headaches (OMG you can’t begin to understand the horror unless you’ve suffered through them yourself), instead of creating a new toon today, I’m publishing a very recent one from my magazine gig.
I recently wrote and illustrated an article featured in LasVegas.Net Magazine.
Thanks to LasVegas.Net Magazine
Here’s one of the illustrations and an excerpt from the article. I’m also showing the roughs here and an intermediate stage of the illustration.
As you can see, I changed my mind after the scan, and flipped the image. It worked better for the Magazine Layout.
1. I resolve to walk away from the poker tables just AFTER losing all my dough and just BEFORE losing my shirt. I’ll have pawned my car by then and walking home bare-chested in January just isn’t smart.
2. I resolve to visit my doctor and get a checkup once a year. It’s about time I stopped gambling with my health.
3. I still haven’t used the five year gym membership I bought two years ago. I resolve to unpack the sneakers and put down the donuts as I stride triumphantly through the front door. More importantly, I resolve to stay at least a full five minutes before screaming and fleeing in shame like a frightened schoolgirl.
4. And speaking of fitness, I resolve to stop buying or reading fitness magazines. The fantastically sculpted hardbodies of the cover models only serve to make average, healthy people feel foolish, and makes the overweight and unhealthy population frustrated. Sure, if my profession required me to unemotionally push inert slabs and bars of iron around for hours on end, I too could have the body of a low fat – high muscle content – low self esteem – Hollywood heartthrob. But unlike them, I live in the real world where abs come in 4 packs and my most developed muscle is the one I sit on.
5. So what if my ‘69 Vette gets six MPG? It’s a total babe magnet. I resolve to, at the very least, LOOK closely at one of the many hybrids and see if I can satisfy both my need to help the planet and my planet-sized ego.
6. I resolve to practice patience and understanding while driving Las Vegas roadways. It seems 30 seconds can’t pass before I’m cut off by an angry truck driver, nearly broadsided by a multitasking soccer mom or rear ended by a lead-footed high school musical. To let the poor driving habits of others adversely affect my mood is to give them power over me. A simple smile and a tap on the breaks can turn victimization into victory.
7. This year I resolve to spend more time with my kids, who have all but forgotten I exist. I shall turn off the TV, unplug the Xbox and power down the PC for some real face-time with my offspring. Maybe I can plan a family game night, regular dinners or a fun night out once in a while. I’d like to have a hand in their upbringing rather than having children pushed around by pixels.
8. I resolve to clean up my lawn on a regular basis. Rather than contributing to the declining home values in my neighborhood, why not take a little pride in my lawn? I will fire up the mower, sharpen the weed whacker and dust off the garden rake to bring some small square footage of beauty into an otherwise ugly world.
9. I resolve to spend less time in front of the television and will find ways to enrich my life, rather than watching it away. I justify watching TV by tuning into the Discovery and History channels long enough to assuage my guilt over the 12 hour marathon of “Who Wants to Make an Idiot Of Themselves with a B-List Superstar?”. These so-called reality shows are just bits and bytes of someone else’s unbelievably skewed life in the limelight. Nobody paid attention in high school when Schrodinger illustrated that the mere act of studying something under a microscope changes an event’s natural outcome. The more I watch TV, the less of it makes any sense to me. I shall pick up a book a week and remember what it was like when my brain actually worked for itself.
10. And finally, no more text messaging. Ever. Period.
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