How to Make Your Villain Change Sides and Turn Good

I believe I drew the brand new (at the time) pose for Rocket Hat in panel 3 just so that I could use that joke about him putting on the chains of honor, as the only other drawing of him features him already wearing handcuffs.

In retrospect, I could have just said “now that you are wearing the chains of honor,” and saved myself the trouble. You know, the trouble of drawing even one fresh image for my comic strip.

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How top Assume a Positive Point of View

Back when I was a stand-up comic, I had a club owner short me on my pay by such a paltry amount that it made me wonder why he even bothered to rip me off.

Of course, if I couldn’t believe he cheated me for so little money, I had to wonder if it was worth it for me to walk back into the club and confront him in front of a bunch of other comedians and audience members, and be known as the guy who raised a stink over so little money, especially when I couldn’t actually prove that the amount he gave me was less than promised.

I chose to just let it go as the fee it cost me to know I never needed to answer his phone calls again.

And, because I know you’re asking, I really did have no way to prove he had shorted me. No, I couldn’t just point the sum on my “paycheck” to demonstrate how didn’t match the amount I was promised in my “contract.” Most of the comedy industry back then just didn’t work that way.

And by “that way,” I mean “in a legal or ethical manner.”

Example: I once had a club owner promise me a certain amount of money for a gig. I turned down other paying work because I had his gig on the books. Then, two hours before showtime, he called to tell me there was a problem, and I would not receive the money I was promised. Instead, I would receive pizza as payment. Not a whole pizza. He intended to split a pizza with me.

When I told him what I thought of that offer, he told me, “I can see that somehow you’ve got this twisted around in your head so that I’m the bad guy.”

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How to Use Technology to Improve Yourself

I did have a fitness tracker for a while, but I found it to have a fundamental design flaw, which was that I was able to strap it to my right arm, or, as I call it, “my eatin’ arm.” When placing a forkful of food in your mouth counts as a step, the day’s final step count loses its accuracy as a measure of how hard you’re working to lose weight.

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How to Defend Your Position

Also, again, I had no problem with the idea that my mother found men attractive. It was the frequency, enthusiasm, and specificity with which she expressed that attraction, and the monstrous, wheezy-voiced, golem-made-flesh she expressed it for.

One bright spot of the last few years is that it has completely vindicated my position on the phrase “You have to admit.” If we’ve all learned one thing, it’s that nobody ever has to admit anything.

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How to Share Your ideas

This is only tangentially related. (It has to do with certain primates having hand-like feet.)

I have no intention of ever getting a tattoo, but if I someday do, it will probably be of this image.

Image Source

A ’50s sci-fi robot running forward while carrying a gorilla that’s firing machine guns with all four limbs. My friends, asses just don’t get any badder than that.

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How to Understand People's Motivations

The only funny part of a knock-knock joke is the look of despair and audible groan that usually comes out of the person being told the joke immediately after they realize they are, in fact, about to endure a knock-knock joke. Anything amusement anybody may feel after that is an unanticipated bonus.

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How to Make a Joke About Celebrity Gossip

Decades later, “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves is still the best musical shorthand for happiness. If you hear that song play in a movie, you know exactly what emotion you are meant to detect. Someday “Happy” by Pharrell Williams might take the crown, but he had to literally name the song “Happy” to even come close to challenging the champ.

When “Happy” became a big hit, I wonder if Katrina and the Waves were bummed . . . and what Katrina and the Waves being bummed would even sound like.

If I were a billionaire, I’d gather all of the members of Katrina and the Waves to do a cover of “A Long December” by Counting Crows.

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How to Process the Latest Horrible Information

When I was something like ten years old an uncle of mine explained his genuine belief that connecting your TV to a coaxial cable allowed the networks to watch you as you watched TV. Not to keep track of what you were viewing and for how long; to literally watch a video feed of your home. That’s the kind of conversation that makes an impression on a kid. It was the first time I realized that some adults are nuts.

That uncle is still alive and believes that he prevented himself from getting COVID-19 by “coughing extra deep” to “get the virus out of his lungs.”

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How to Explain the Use of Specialized Equipment

I do have a collapsible pointer. I keep it right here on my desk. These days, I mainly use it to retrieve cat toys from under furniture. Whenever I use it that way, the cats bat at the end of the pointer, essentially turning the pointer into a cat toy as well, and making me wonder why I’m bothering to fish the stuffed mouse out from under the couch.

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How to Point Out Something So Large That People Don't Notice It

Actually, Patrick Stewart owned a hairpiece, and wore it for some of his Picard auditions. Also, for many years, he had (it makes me shudder just to type this) a comb-over. Apparently, it was a particularly unconvincing one.

One night, some friends of his invited him over for dinner and ambushed him. They held his arms down and cut the combover off over his protests. Usually, I would be dead-set against people doing that to another person, forcibly robbing them of their autonomy to do something irreversible they know he does not want, but I feel strongly enough about comb-overs that I have trouble condemning his friends in this case.

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