Posting Comments

I've been told by phone, email and in person that there are a lot of you who enjoy cruising BorgBlog, but who never feel moved to post a comment. That's no mystery to me. Mostly I post my sketchbook pages (not much to rouse comments among those shards and seeds of ideas), and sometimes finished cartoons. When I do pose a direct question, many of you respond.

Yesterday some of us bloggers met with the Big Bopper (editorial page editor Dave Wells) and learned that Papa Gannett judges the success of a blog largely by the number of comments a posting receives. Anything over five comments per post is considered successful.

So I'm not trying to manufacture success here, but if you do like BorgBlog an occasional comment will help keep it alive and thriving.

Thanks!

Schmidt Keeps Happening

Can you believe Jean Schmidt's Midas touch? (Everything she touches turns into a muffler.) You won't find many congressional candidates proposing to locate a nuclear waste storage facility in their district a week before a close election.

Every blue moon a newsmaker comes along who is such a caricature that a cartoonist has a hard time exaggerating them. Ross Perot comes to mind. Marge Schott had a long and glorious reign in this category. Jean Schmidt has assumed the throne. (Loved the Enquirer's Schmidt endorsement calling Wulsin an "artless campaigner." As opposed to Schmidt?)

Is the second district going to return her to her congressional seat? Are you voting for Wulsin or Schmidt?

Opportunity Knocks

Wednesday Sketchbook 10.27.06

Dermatology Nightmare

The Shrink

McCartney vs. McCartney

Sherrod Brown Sketchbook

Sherrod Brown, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Ohio, also visited the Enquirer editorial board yesterday. While his expressive features are easy to capture, it is his posture and gestures that make Brown such a singular figure to draw. He never stopped leaning far across the big conference table, craning forward as if to take each of us by the collar and knock some sense into us. Brown came across as an aggressive personality who would shake things up, but who might be a poor listener and have trouble playing well with others.

Strickland Sketchbook

Ted Strickland, the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, visited the Enquirer yesterday giving me my first opportunity since he originally ran for Congress to draw him in my sketchbook. Strickland is a psychologist, which should give me some fun set-ups for cartoons if he is elected. His opponent is Ken Blackwell, a long-time Cincinnati politician. I have sketchbooks full of Blackwell drawings.

YourTube

I came out of Rock Bottom Brewery last night with some friends on my way to the David Sedaris talk at the Aronoff when I sensed an otherworldly light around me. They were test driving the new video screen looming above Fountain Square for the grand reopening on Saturday. Ted pointed out that it was actually causing us to cast shadows on the sidewalk.

Hard to imagine how the Square will be ready to launch on Saturday -- we walked past exposed rebar sticking out of the unfinished surface behind the construction fences and cranes were still working full tilt. From the artist renderings I had imagined I'd see groves of trees and grassy play areas. Everything I saw was concrete. What do I know about construction, but it'll be dazzling if they bring this one in for a landing on time.

Two-fer

When I was brainstorming this morning on cartoon ideas about the North Korean bomb story, I came up with two separate captions for the same little sketch in my sketchbook.

Locals will know that our Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell was called "a nut" by President Bush as returns came in slowly during the 2004 election, according to Bob Woodward's recent book. Blackwell, who says he's been a family friend of the Bushes for half of his adult life, denies that the Prez would ever call him such a thing. Those of us who've tracked Ken's career have no problem imagining anyone calling him such a thing. Hence, a local cartoon.

At the same time I was playing with the words "rogue state" and imagined Bush thinking of California this way, in light of the Kyoto-like agreement Governor Ahnold recently signed with the rest of the world on that "rogue state's" behalf. Why not do both? Hence, a national cartoon which I'll send out in syndication.

And the biggest success of the day: I managed to avoid drawing Kim Jong Il's hair as a mushroom cloud, like virtually every other cartoonist has done!

Bob Taft put the "Goober" in "Gubernatorial"

Monday 10.9.06

Gas and Election

"How Come You Never Criticize Democrats During Sex Scandals?"

Ain't Love Grand

Foley on the Loose

Wednesday Sketchbook 10.4.06

Foley Follies

Sunday Morning Notes