I always wanted to be a cartoonist. And I am. But I’ve been a writer and editor since 1977, too, and that’s what’s kept the kibble in the dog dish all these years.
If I’d had to rely on cartooning for a living, I’d have starved to death in the summer of ’77, shortly after graduating from the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and minors in political science, sex, drugs, alcohol and rock ‘n’ roll. Because while I went on to draw cartoons for a number of newspapers, among them The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, the Corvallis Gazette-Times in Oregon and The Pueblo Chieftain in Colorado, they all insisted that I do something else, too, and plenty of it, if I wanted to get a weekly check with more than two digits on it.
So I’ve written hard news, features and commentary; spent many an evil night as a rim rat on one copy desk or another, editing other people’s stories, writing headlines and laying out pages; and even scored a half-assed title from time to time, generally in lieu of a raise and prefaced with the word “assistant” — assistant news editor, assistant city editor, assistant sports editor, assistant features editor.
I made it all the way to news editor once, at a chain of suburban weeklies in Denver, only to get laid off. And I quit newspapering altogether in 1991 after a short stint as the feature editor of The New Mexican in Santa Fe, where I edited copy, laid out pages, wrote about bicycle racing and took pictures for the sports department — and yes, drew cartoons.
In late 1991, after nearly 15 years with my scabby little snoot pressed to various grindstones of journalism, I took up free-lancing. Three decades later, I pulled the plug on that nonsense, too.
In my dotage, I post to my personal blog, Mad Blog Media. That ongoing yardsale has been scattered around the Innertubes in various guises for decades, ever since AOL started allowing users to create a rudimentary homepage. Alas, most of that early content, like many newspapers and magazines, is no longer with us. Even the Wayback Machine has some difficulty sniffing it out.
In the final months of this Year of Our Lard 2026 I am beginning the process of relocating as much of the old “content” as I can salvage — seven years’ worth of toxic cranium emissions, covering the years 2002 to 2008 — from its original cage, built with bad HTML and and ancient PHP, to this modern WordPress blog. Feel free to peruse/comment upon these hysterical, historical harangues at your leisure.
But be advised that they contain toxic quantities of disrespectful parody aimed at my betters and rude satires intended to cause grievous harm to the humorless clots of tight-sphinctered ninnies whose breaking of wind only dogs can hear.
Mad Dog Media neither sells nor installs senses of humor — we merely service them.
