DANGEROUS DIRK

"I don’t even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very..."

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:12:00 -0500

“

I don’t even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very small one. I let them bellow at me for just as long as it took me to find enough pluck to bellow back at them…

I stood up as best I could to their disgusting stupidity and brutality, but I did not, of course, manage to beat them at their own game. It was a fight to the bitter end, one in which I was not defending ideals or beliefs but simply my own self…

I thought the war would never end. And perhaps it never did, either.

”

- George Grosz, dadaist & cartoonist

"You are waiting for my words. You know me well, and know I cannot remain silent for long. Sometimes,..."

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:32:50 -0500

““You are waiting for my words. You know me well, and know I cannot remain silent for long. Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent.””

- Miguel de Unamuno, from his public quarrel with the Nationalist general Millan Astray at the University of Salamanca, Spain 1936

Dirk's Picks: "Last Words" by George Carlin

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:41:00 -0400

I remember sitting on the floor of my friend Mario’s place in the early 90’s, as he put George Carlin’s Class Clown LP on the record player, and losing myself to laughter as Carlin ran through his “7 words you can’t say on television” bit. Recently, I picked up his Last Words memoirs, expecting myself to howl through several hundred pages of diafragm-rattling material. Surprisingly, although there were many hilarious sections in the book, I found myself looking into a sincere and thoughtful work of self-reflection by one of the most outrageously insightful and incisive social critics in recent memory.

Last Words chronicles Carlin’s development from an unruly juvenile delinquent on the streets of mid-century Brooklyn to the irascible and unrelenting elder statesman of comedy most of us remember him as now. Along the way we follow his wild stunts: racking up court marshals in the air force, nose-diving on cocaine-fueled rides in his private jet and engaging in bizarre self-destructive experiments in order to break free from his success in establishment comedy.

The work certainly doesn’t shy away from documenting and critiquing his own screw-ups and his journey from conservative knucklehead to liberal to anarchic provocateur and more is quite interesting to behold. Also energizing, is his disaffection from hollywood bullshit and his search for authenticity in his work.

What really shines for me is his later more politicized content. He came to a sort of rubicon later in his career where he realized his work had degraded into self-involved navel gazing and began to keep a research diary of everything that was going on in the Reagan administration. This led him to statements such as:

“See that’s what you’ve got to remember, this is the Ronald Reagan administration we’re talking about. These are the Law and Order people! These are the people who are against street crime! They want to put street criminals in jail to make life safer for the business criminals! Yeah! They’re against street crime, provided that street isn’t Wall Street.”

and to more general commentary on American society:

“You know Time Magazine and Newsweek put cocaine on the cover, but they put the liquor advertisements inside the magazine. It’s the old American double standard, you know say one thing and do something different. And of course the country is founded on the double standard, that’s our history, we were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free. So they killed a lot of white English people, in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people, and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give us a color, we’ll wipe it out.”

I found Carlin’s final years (and his blackest humor) also profoundly intriguing, as he seemed to adopt a bleaker anti-humanist stance, lambasting the follies of the human race in our collective destruction of the planet’s biosphere:

“I look at it this way… For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers… so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it’s natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse.”

It’s certainly a shocking sort of honesty. Apparently he just up and decided to emotionally disinvest from the catastrophe and take on the mantle of trickster and spectator. I think this fearlessness allowed him to say things that would have destroyed the careers of others. In his own frequently repeated words:

When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.”

This is definitely a book worth picking up… and thinking about.

Dirk’s Picks: Rap News with Robert Foster (The Juice...

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:56:00 -0400

Dirk’s Picks: Rap News with Robert Foster (The Juice Media) presents Osamacide.

Austerity Pleasures

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:50:00 -0400

Here’s the article that goes with the latest Dirk cartoon:

The recent news that Michigan’s economy is bringing in higher than expected tax revenues must strike Governor Snyder’s true believers as a little surprising. Ever since the last piece of confetti fell at his inauguration, the governor has been hitting the state’s airwaves like some tweaked-out late night infomercial host, raging on about the perils of a cataclysmic budget crisis…

http://critical-moment.org/2011/07/05/austerity-pleasures-a-look-at-the-snyder-budget-crisis/

Dirk’s back with special guest Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder....

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 16:18:00 -0400

Dirk’s back with special guest Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Keep your eyes out on critical-moment.org for the accompanying article, Snyder’s Austerity Pleasures, for info on hizzoner’s retch-inducing budget cuts.

"If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can..."

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:52:00 -0400

“““If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.””

- Joe Hill

Hey, gang. I know we haven’t seen our favorite wharf rat...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 19:25:00 -0500

Hey, gang. I know we haven’t seen our favorite wharf rat in a while, but he’s been busy, honest. Here take a look at what he’s been up to… This work will be published in the forthcoming issue of Critical Moment. It’s a great issue dealing with development and efforts to reshape Detroit. We’re having a small release party tomorrow (Feb 10) at Cafe con Leche in Detroit from 6-8 pm. Stop by if your in the neighborhood.

Dirk at USSF

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:04:00 -0400

I ran into catoonists Seth Tobocman and Ethan Heitner at the US Social Forum in Detroit. Seth helps put out a great magazine of comics that’s been publishing since the 80’s called World War 3 Illustrated. He’s got a new graphic novel called “Understanding the Crash” that’s available on his website. Also got a chance to share my comics from people from all around the US. It was a fun and interesting, but exhausting week.

Dirk #4 on the shelves

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:49:00 -0400

Hey everybody, Dirk #4 is on the shelves. Take a gander at the online version.

Also, i just found an interesting Sci-Fi comic series online: http://spacetrawler.com.

Dirk #1 online

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:07:19 -0400

All right. Here’s the one that started it all:

Dirk#1: Dirk goes for broke

Get out your handsaws and crowbars ya’ll.

"Then I’ll be all around in the dark - I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look...."

Mon, 31 May 2010 15:04:00 -0400

“Then I’ll be all around in the dark - I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there… I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’—I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folk eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.”

- Tom Joad, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Dirk #2 & #3 added to archives

Mon, 31 May 2010 13:50:00 -0400

Just added a couple of old Dirk’s online. So here we are:

Dirk #2 - Boxed in

Dirk #3 - Dirk goes to prison

Man he’s really gonna have to pay those BP execs a visit.

"You think you’re God Almighty, but you know what you are? You’re a cheap, lousy, dirty,..."

Mon, 24 May 2010 23:15:00 -0400

““You think you’re God Almighty, but you know what you are? You’re a cheap, lousy, dirty, stinkin’ mug! And I’m glad what I done to you, ya hear that? I’m glad what I done!””

- Marlon Brando (as Terry Malloy), On the Waterfront (1954)

Dirk #4 comic going to press

Mon, 24 May 2010 17:15:00 -0400

I just finished my latest Dirk cartoon which deals with bankers and foreclosures. It’s my first full color comic strip (aside from some one panels that I did for the Michigan Citizen website many moons ago). It will be published in the next issue of Critical Moment, a free activist paper published here in Detroit. CM is publishing quite a few copies to coincide with the U.S. Social Forum and Allied Media Conference which will be taking place in the Motor City this June. The issue should be out soon. More info when I get it.