Ol’ George #26: Brew Monk

 

Ol’ George #25: How to Draw Ol’ George

 

Ol’ George #24: Barley Whine

 

Ok’ George #23: Everybody Plays the Fool

 

Ol’ George #22: Head Like A Ball

 

Ol’ George #21: The Wearin’ o’ the Grin

 

Ol’ George #20: India Pale Fail

 

Notes on #20: 

1. I realized after I wrote this that Balonious begins his litany of Wilting Turnip’s great IPAs by copying “Patrick Swayze Christmas “ from MST3K. 

2. The punchline comes from Looney Tunes, but where did they get it? No one knows. Some say Vaudeville. They’re just guessing. 

3. George will never go to Wilting Turnip. He’s got everything he needs at Kelly’s.

Ol’ George #19: Tick It to Ride

 Ol’ George #19: Tick It To Ride

Notes on # 19:

1: This strip needed a beer geek character and I decided it should be me. Balonious Funk is a play on my BeerAdvocate.com username FeloniousMonk. When I came up with it in 2002, I thought I was so very clever, unaware that the joke had been made many times before. 

2.  And now we have our very first continuity. The beer called Ferval’s Finest in #18 is the same that Irma served George in #11, 2 months ago. It’s been on tap all this time and hasn’t gotten any better.

Maybe Balonious heard how awful it is. He doesn’t care.

Ol’ George #18: Poet of the Pint

 

Ol’ George #17: He’s No Clown

Notes on #17;

1. I came up with this idea months ago, but I had to do it now for this reason: it was 25 years ago, on February 12, 2000, that Charles Monroe Schulz left this world. 

I found out the next morning. I woke up early that Sunday morning, drew a bath, and got the paper, got in the tub, and read Schulz’ last strip. It was the same goodbye letter as his final daily, published in December 1999, but with a collage of classic scenes surrounding it. Oddly enough, almost immediately after, the announcer on the jazz station playing in the background gave the news. As I say in the tub holding the funnies and started to cry. I’d been following Charlie Brown and Snoopy since I was four years old. 

2. My original idea for this one ended with panel two, but I had a change of heart. I didn’t want to end with a bitter Charlie or with someone being mean to him. I had to give him some happiness.

In the end, Schulz also gave Charlie some happiness. He never flew the kite, kicked the football, won a baseball game or sat down to lunch with the little red haired girl. That wouldn’t be funny, after all. But he did enjoy a relationship with a girl who liked the way he danced, and his dog was always by his side. 

3. So I’m sentimental, so sue me.

Ol’ George16: Drunk, Drunk, Drunk

 

 Notes on #16:

1. All of the previous 15 cartoons were done with pencil sketches first and embellished with felt tip pens and markers. For this one, I used no pencils, only a Pilot G2 .07 gel pen. It’s not my favorite pen, but the one I had on hand. My favorite is the Pilot V5 ( or 7) extra fine rolling ball. However, right now I only have one of those, in red, and George is a blue cat, not red. 

2. This change in style is a tribute to one of my cartooning heroes Jules Feiffer, who passed last month at age 95 (almost made it to 96!) I have no idea what his process was, what pens he used, whether he pencilled, etc., but his work has always been loose and spontaneous. 

3. The title is a nod to the original name for his later self-titled strip, Sick, Sick, Sick, which began initially in the Village Voice in 1956 and went into syndication until 1997. Meanwhile, he produced plays, screenplays, novels and children's books. I became a fan from the I discovered a paperback collection at a used bookstore in the 80’s, scouring shelves on each visit. For years, I could only find a few, but now I have them all. Thanks, eBay!

Ol’ George # 15: Post No Bills

 

 Ol’ George #15: Post No Bills 

Notes on #15:

1. I’d been obsessed with comics and cartoons for as long as I could could remember, but the comics page was getting boring as I got into my teenage years. Mad Magazine alone couldn’t fill my needs.Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed arrived in our local paper just in time, in 1981, when I was twelve or thirteen. It was the right dose of satire and subversion. I still recall the thrill I felt when the first book collection came out. 

When they introduced that lovable Bill the Cat in ‘82, I was infatuated. I got the first t-shirt immediately, but that was all the merchandise for a bit. That would ruin the joke, after all, for Bill was originally a spoof of the ubiquitous selling of Garfield. 

I drew Bill all the time. In the backgrounds of my high school newspaper comic “Lenny”, signs appeared saying Post No Bills with a picture of Bill. A friend and I did an animation of Bill hocking up a hairball for an art class. When I decorated the window of my favorite used book store for Halloween (an annual tradition in Anoka, Halloween Capitol of the World) with a depiction of ghosts floating through a graveyard, Bill’s tombstone was in the scene.

After Breathed stopped the strip and started up Outland, my enthusiasm waned. When Bill merch appeared, I was up on my high horse, all righteously indignant.

All these years later, I own a Bill doll, bought directly from the cartoonist (along with a signed copy of a two volume complete edition of the strip with an Opus sketch, and a signed/Opused print of a favorite strip). And I again own a Bill t-shirt, but one in a size more appropriate for my contemporary build. 

2. The funniest and cruelest joke about Cathy is courtesy of Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead. “Someone draws that? I thought they dropped string on the ground and photocopied it.”

I can’t complain too much about minimalist cartooning. Much of the blame can be delivered to Charles M. Schulz, and I do not hide my admiration for his art. 

3. Remember, folks: this is not a strip about beer. It’s about a cat who drinks beer at a bar and people, animals, things he meets there. And I hope you find it entertaining. 

Ol’ George #14: Lynch Mob

  Ol’ George #14: Lynch Mob

Notes on #14:

1. Obviously, this is a reference to a scene in David Lynch’s classic 1986 film Blue Velvet. It’s the most natural choice for a Lynch tribute in a strip about a beer drinking cat. We are paying homage to the first 10-15 years of the filmmaker’s career here. I haven’t seen anything after Wild at Heart. I’ll catch up eventually.

2. This is the second time George has had no lines. I thought of giving Frank Booth’s line to George, but that didn’t seem right. This time, he’s merely a spectator to the madness at Kelly’s, rather than the instigator. 

3. Also, it’s the first three tier strip, and the most characters. All the others have had 2-4 characters, while this one has a whopping eight!

4. I haven’t done much brand-naming in the past, but will only do so on the service of the story. Unless someone feels like driving a truckload of cash up to my driveway…I could be bought.

Ol’ George #13: Poe One Out

 Ol’ George #13: Poe One Out.

Notes on #13: from Americanliterature.com,

1. Poe may have written this poem at Washington Tavern in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1848 to pay his drinking tab. The original copy hung on the wall of the tavern until about 1920. What a shame, the tavern's been replaced by a Dunkin' Donuts.

2. I’m never 100 % sure if my jokes are original. In my efforts to find out, I discovered that you can find plenty of graphic images of Poe with a beer and variations on the phrase “Poe Me Another.” I’ll bet someone out there has it as a tattoo. 

3. I can’t tell you what’s in George’s bottle, ( well, I could…) but there is at least one Poe-themed brewery in existence. His own home town’s Baltimore-Washington Beer Works in Maryland has ales and lagers named for his poems and stories, with the poet’s face on every label. 

Ol’ George #12: Sober-ish

 

 Ol’ George #12: Sober-ish.

Notes on #12:

1. I hate “Dry January”. It’s a stupid trend, and I hate those. I don’t hate drinking in moderation and I certainly don’t hate not drinking or quitting drinking. This thing of taking the first 31 days of the year off, then resuming is non-sensical. Are you doing it just to prove you can? Then do a full week every other week. Do every other day. Do Dry February. March. Even, if you can imagine it, August. But, January? Are you kidding?

January is the worst month for bars, brewery taprooms, restaurants for many reasons. The cold, the dark, seasonal depression, tight budgets after holiday spending, …so many things make January a hard month for bar industry staff. And you want to add another reason for making things slow at your favorite bar/brewery/restaurant? That’s unnecessarily cruel. 

If you return to see your favorite bartender or server on February 1, and say “sorry, we were doing Dry January”, that doesn’t help them pay their bills. Maybe you did visit them, but chose NA options. Well, that’s cool. You ate and tipped? All good. 

2. These two do not enter the club of George’s drinking buddies. They’re not drinking. Tom Waits and Snoopy did enter the club. You don’t have to be drinking alcohol to be a George drinking buddy. I really don’t know what they were doing. Slurping from the water cooler? I’m not giving them names, they’re terrible people. 

Ol’ George #11: Mind your P’s

 

1. Chester is back, after his first appearance in the first strip from way back in October/November. I’d forgotten that he always wore a button bedecked vest. I hope that every time he appears, I get a little better at drawing him. Of course, that’s my general, every day wish about everything.

2. Ditto Irma the bartender, in her 4th appearance.

3. I thought the “peanut butter pickle” was weird enough to gag George, but sure enough there are several of those out there, but none is a Porter.

Barn Town Brewing in W. Des Moines canned PB Pickle Tickle Blonde Ale, which poured a bright green and seemed to be liked. 74 check-ins on Untapped, 3.25 average.

Lagunitas made a PBP pils for a Strange Beer Frstival. Several people reported getting neither flavor. 12 check ins. 2.17 average.

Martin House Brewing of Fy. Worth, TX made one as a Gose. One commenter said it didn’t work as a sour. 4 check ins.

Craft Life of Hudson, FL did a PB Dill Cream ale. Also 4 check ins.

I can’t come up with a weird beer without discovering it already exists. Maybe someone will take a pickle beer (my store has two in stock, by Oliphant and by Destihl) and a PBP and combine them, tell me how it tastes. Too bad that I finished a Destihl PBP a few days ago, could’ve kept it “in the family”, so to speak. 

Ol’ George #10: Time and a Bottle

Original notes from 12/31/24.

 1. This is the sixth week in a row that I have started a strip on a Sunday, finished it on a Monday, and showed it to the world on Tuesday. It’s a project conceived in September, begun in October and proceeded with in earnest in November. The year ends on a nice round number. Ten down, who knows how many to go. I am happy about that.

2. Father Time ends the streak of George’s hatted drinking buddies. Will Baby New Year begin a new one? 

3. George’s beer of choice tonight is Robinson’s Old Tom, an English Old Ale that I once had the pleasure of putting on tap at the Blue Nile years ago. Unfortunately, it is no longer available in this market, or this country for all I now. It was named for the brewery’s cat, who has appeared on every label. 

Happy New Year, everyone!

Ol’ George #9: He Said Ho, Ho, Ho

 

Originally, way back in December, 2024, I had no notes for this one. It’s a pretty straightforward gag. Santa likes his Christmas Ale.

When I posted this one to Instagram, I was presented with the option of choosing a song to accompany the post. I went with Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer by Elmo & Patsy. Am I saying that Old St. Nick was drunk sleigh riding when he committed grandmacide with his murderous reindeer? Yeah, I am. Someone has to hold that fat, jolly killer elf accountable. 

Ok’ George #8: He Said No, No, No…

 

 

Ol’ George#8: He Said No, No, No…

Notes on #8: 

1. George does not believe in a higher power. As long as he can reach the barstool, he’s fine.

2. George is not a fool, nor an ignoramus. He’s strictly a smart aleck. Not everyone gets the joke, though, especially when part of the punchline never leaves his brain. 

3. This strip has nothing to do with my disdain for hazy IPAs. I just needed a funny IPA name. Did you know that there isn’t a Golden Fluff beer out there anywhere?Doesn't seem right. 

4. Poor Irma. To have a regular like George can really try your patience. By the way, she is supposed to be an emu, but I don’t think I have nailed that visually just yet, so let’s just say that she’s a sub-tropical flightless avian, with the patience of a saint. 

Ol’ George #7: It’s Tom, Tom, Tom…

 

Original notes from December 2024: 

1. I was thinking of another idea for #7, but when I realized that Thomas Alan Waits (born Dec. 7, 1949, Pomona, California) had just celebrated his 75th birthday, I bumped this one up.

2. In this seventh installment, Tom is George’s 5th drinking buddy, the second based on a real human being and the second one drinking root beer and not real beer. I don’t know if Tom actually drinks that beverage, but if his wife Kathleen hadn’t made him quit the sauce all those years ago, he probably wouldn’t have made it to the present anniversary and we’d be without so many great songs. 

3. Tom’s quote is not of his own invention, but he speaks the line to Martin Mull and Fred Willard in a 1977 episode of “Fernwood Tonight” after singing “The Piano Has Been Drinking.” Look it up on YouTube, it’s hilarious. Some say it was first spoken by Tommy Smothers on “The Smothers Brothers” TV show, others say Dorothy Parker originated it, but I can’t nail down the truth. 

4. The punchline is just an excuse for George to make reference to a certain film about a man for his times that I’ve seen probably a hundred times. The cowboy on the label is another clue (hint: it’s not Wilford Brimley.) And if you still don’t get it…obviously, you’re not a golfer. 

5. Tom carries on another tradition of George’s drinking buddies. They all wear hats. (In Snoopy’s case, a flight helmet.) Will they all remain hatted? Who can say