It has been ten years. TEN YEARS since the last Broadside book. Coming this summer. Stay tuned!
Browsing: Broadside moments
Today was a good day because as I drove around, every song that came on the radio was a killer. I rocked out to the Rolling Stones and got mellow with the Eagles. I turned it up when they started playing Motown, and I sang along because I actually knew the words – something that doesn’t happen much nowadays. As I enjoyed the moment, it occurred to me how important music is in our lives. It can make us happy; it can make us sad. It can lift us up when we are down, and take us back to those…
Ha! Made you look. I don’t do politics, but it is tough to ignore the fact that we just had an election. I may be wrong, but I would guess that military people – for the most part – are less emotional about them. Why? Because about every eighteen months each of them gets a new Commanding Officer. During that same time they will also get a new Executive Officer and all the eccentricities that come with the position. And they will probably see changes in their Department Heads, Division Officers, Command Master Chiefs, Leading Chiefs and Leading Petty Officers…
Today is election day and most of the people I talk to think we are in deep kimchi no matter who wins. I don’t do politics, but what I DO know is that my town…heck, my state is in Big Trouble because it is about to be overrun by a rogue band of [gulp]… Cartoonists. I know. Scary. They will be in town to support the Wyakin Foundation’s Guardian Ball on December 3rd, and the authorities have been alerted. You can join them, you know – heck, even sit at their tables and dine with them. All you have to…
After two weeks of growing a beard, last night was the night to show it off to the world. Last night I became a lumberjack, complete with a thrift store flannel shirt, old mess dress uniform suspenders, and an axe made out of cardboard. It all combined into the perfect fit for me. You probably can’t see it in the photo, but my self confidence was shaken. That’s because earlier in the day someone asked me if I was going to use hair color on my beard. “No”, I said. “Why?” Because of the gray. “I guess you can always…
Anyone who joined the Navy after 1984 has lived in a beardless service. The cover story we heard for the reason facial hair was outlawed was that it made it difficult to establish an air tight seal with an Oxygen Breathing Apparatus or a gas mask. The real story, of course, was that a lot of Sailors sporting beards looked really bad. Case in point, a photo of Secretary of the Navy Mabus when he was in uniform. I have met Secretary Mabus and he is a handsome man, due in part because he doesn’t wear a beard now. There…
No one joins the Navy to be an escort, but a lot of people spend a lot of time doing it. Escorts are little ships that accompany the big ones when they go to sea. If aircraft carriers were world famous rap artists, escorts would be the posse. They are the offensive linemen to the Peyton Mannings of the sea. Frigates (when they exist), destroyers and cruisers are generally grouped into the escort class. Their job is to protect the “High Value Units.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together when it comes to figuring…
It almost seems like cheating when I quote Military Times as my source, seeing how I draw and write for them, but this article by Andrew Tilghman really caught my eye: “And the fattest U.S. military service is…” Why did it catch my eye? Because the Army and Air Force people are fatter than the Navy and Marine Corps people! This is cause for celebration and analysis. By looking at the empirical evidence put forth in this study of body mass (and excluding the Marines as “outliers” since everyone already knew they were the skinniest), we can conclude that: 1.…
I’m not completely sure, but I think “pegged” is a military term. Pegged as in, “My fun meter is pegged.” Or… My BS meter is pegged. My frustration meter is pegged. My anxiety meter, don’t care meter, crap-o-meter… The term comes from the little pin – or peg – in a gauge that acts as a stopper when the needle reaches its maximum value. This weekend my gross meter got pegged. It was so bad that I can’t even tell you about it because if I did, your gross meter would peg too and I have a responsibility to protect…
Everyone loves a good laugh. As a cartoonist, it is part of the job description. But there are times when you unequivocally do not want to laugh. For one, you should not laugh while driving at 80 miles per hour. If you do, you definitely don’t want to laugh so hard that your eyes fill up with tears, because then you cannot see and that is dangerous. So it follows that, while going 80 mph down the interstate in Wyoming, you absolutely should not listen to your brother tell the story of the first time he got sent onto the…
