Tag Archives: payback

Occupy Dim Sum

Occupy Dim SumAs I sat at my desk today performing menial, mind-numbing tasks in order to help a colleague,  my various trains of thoughts, all loaded with many cars of twisted, ephemeral cargo, skipped the tracks, as if  a drunken, heavily unionized switchman on his last day of work before vacation and with a large dose of  cold medication in him were at the switching controls.

And it’s apt that I mention cold medication as I have been suffering (not loudly enough it seems) from a sinus infection that only now, after what would seem like a few hundred decongestant pills and other kinds of sprays and vats of chicken soup that have been popped into my body on a pretty regular basis, seems to be getting a little better. But only a little. I still need reasons to complain.

As for those thoughts skipping off in different directions, I managed just long enough to string together enough of them to do this cartoon, on a topic that cried out to be covered by the sharpest mind, the keenest wit, the most vicious humor this side of the western hemisphere. Unfortunately, he’s on vacation and the rest of the staff were fired due to “right-sizing” and “rationalization” so I was left with the job of cartooning this sucker. How it got from Wall St. protests to dim sum I am really not sure.

It really did distract me from my ever more decrepit house that requires untold amounts of stabilization and repair (think Champlain Bridge, but far worse workmanship). If I could convince you people to buy a t-shirt, or better yet, when I get around to it, the e-book I plan on creating of this comic, I would have just enough to finance those repairs. Or buy the repairmen a beer. You have been warned — an e-book is coming of the  Stanko & Tibor saga.

So keep reading this comedic/operatic saga that will stand the test of time, unless my PC dies before then. Highly likely.

Be well, and don’t forget to speak with pride when you mention my comic to  your shrink and/or parole officer.

-Giovanni di Prosciutto

Parental Payback

Parental Payback


Do you remember that Alan Parsons Project song “Games People Play“? I barely do, but what I do recall of it was a mess of whiny, annoying pop drivel that made me reach for the tuning knob on my old radio in a desperate effort to find something entertaining to keep me from having to do my homework. And no, I didn’t play video games largely because I sucked and was massively uncoordinated in the fine and gross motor skills department. But as a child I wanted to do something well enough to impress my dad so I’d gain his love and respect as any child would. And show him he was getting old.

Hence this episode of the parentally-themed, Picasso-esque visual tour de force brings to light a topic that so many of us, the intentional and accidental creators of offspring, must deal with – the generation gap. Happens to all of us, the coolest of the cool, the dopest of the dope, even the hippest of the hip, including those who have had multiple hip replacements. We eventually stop being cool as nature intended us. Were we to remain eternally cool, we’d piss off our kids so much they’d either run away and join the circus as some do, or they’d kill us for stealing their thunder. Nature has this way of replacing the people who are ahead of the curve with those just behind them, kind of like ducks flying south in a V-shape. At some point, the lead duck has to give up and let a stronger duck ahead.

But that doesn’t mean parents have to completely give in to our children. In fact, by being intentionally uncool, non-hip, or even lame and loser-ish, we hold the great trump card in the eternal battle of child versus parent. All it takes is some well-timed and skilfully placed verbal blunders, particularly in front of the kids’ friends,even better if you’re in your underwear or wearing a filthy mustard-stained t-shirt with swear words on it, and you have sunk their battleship like an Exocet into the side of a Bismarck.

Armed with the knowledge that your child will one day replace you and make you obsolete, much like that last technology with the came along and made the one before that look so yesterday, know that for a brief time, say about 10 years if you’re lucky, you will appear cool, the hero, the dude to your child and then it all goes south in a medley of disco pants and bad hairdos and they’ll make fun of you too. Until their kids make fun of them.