Buddy's Blog

I’ve been coloring early Sundays that I didn’t have color files for. It was before I got my first computer. This Sunday is from Christmas 1994…

I told James B that I’d relate a story about skinny dipping. When I was a young adult, my sister, my cousins and I used to skinny dip every so often. We started when we were teenagers. It was I, my sister, my two male cousins and one cousin’s wife. We were skinny dipping in my cousin’s pool in Bradenton, but we decided to drive out to the island to swim in the gulf. It was about 11 o’clock at night. All of us piled into the station wagon and drove. Just at the entrance to Cortez Bridge to Bradenton Beach there was a hitch hiker. We stopped, he jumped in without looking. We started across the bridge, and he turned to look at us, five buck naked people. His eyes got real big and he started shaking a little. We just talked like it was absolutely the normal thing to go. Asked him how he was doing, how far he was going, etc. He didn’t say a thing. As we reached the other side he says “This is where I get off! I gotta go!” He was out of that car like poop out of a goose. What good times I had when I was young.

I killed this one. It didn’t appear.

As I’ve explained before, Friday evening is Date Night in the Grace household. Frau G and I get dressed up and sit around and drink. I think it’s a wonderful concept. One of you guys told me that he and his Frau did the same thing except the part where you dress up.

See, I’m dressed up. I haven’t started drinking yet.

Ready for the fat guy in the red suit? I still haven’t done my shopping.

If you didn’t think the hippo gag was funny, look at Comments and see what I wrote to James B. What is humor? What is it that makes people laugh? Part of it, at least, is that you are led down a path, and your experience makes you expect a certain outcome. But you are tricked and surprised. A lot of the gags that I wrote worked this way. Characters were in an absurd situation. The outcome was outrageous or silly, but everyone behaved exactly as his or her character dictated. Does this make sense?

While I’m on the subject of Billy Graham, I met him once when I was a senior at Manatee High. Kind of. He came to Bradenton to preach at the Fighting Sea Cow football field. That day I was walking downtown, came around a corner and almost slammed into him. I had never, and never since, seen a person with such immediate charisma. He was very tall, his rosy face, beautiful blonde hair , and most of all, his eyes, his shining bright blue eyes blew me away. That night I took my girlfriend, Jenny J, to the stadium. He preached. She was enthralled. The next day she dumped me.

BTW, The Salvation Army is my favorite charity.

Which reminds me of this great cartoon by Paul Crum. It appeared in Punch in 1937.

I published lots of cartoons in Punch before I started Ernie. Many of them can be found in my single panel magazine cartoon books.

8 more shopping days to go. I haven’t started.

Today’s Quiz: How many ghosts visited Scrooge on Christmas Eve?