One of my favorite living artists is Johnny Sampson. He's known as the "Last Idiot Standing," because he is pretty much the last artist creating original artwork for Mad Magazine. Mad started mainly reprinting their classic comics a few years back, but Sampson still creates a new fold-in for ...
The thing about my Ma is that she can get along with just about anybody. This is a quality that I do my best to emulate. For example, my Ma works for the Department of Corrections Residential Facility in Marshalltown. She has for over 20 years now. People from all walks of life have passed ...
They say in preschool, I hated art. I detested coloring, and whenever the subject came up, I threw a fit. My parents say that when I came home from school and they asked about my day, I'd grotesquely spit out the words, "They made me color!" Strangely, my art journey started with TV. ...
Anyone who watches TV with my Ma is more likely to kill her than if they weren't watching TV. The reason for this is because my Ma constantly talks, riffs, jokes, and comments on whatever is on the screen. And the worst part is, over the years, I've started to develop this habit too. Quiet ...
Alright, to tell this story, and all that happened Saturday night, I have to back up a couple of weeks. If ya didn't already know, I am an artist, and over the summer I have been working on a couple of big projects. They are wood cutouts of cartoon characters of my own design, something ...
The question I get most frequently about my work with the paper is, are those Magic Mike stories really true? And the answer is yes, all of them are 100% true. But still, people have trouble believing that, I don't know if these situations are specifically unique to my family because we are ...
My Ma has carried a purse for as long as I can remember, and all that time, her purse has been a thing of legend. Just about anything could be inside it. I often joke that I once saw her take a potted plant out of it, but that's not far off. First of all, the thing is huge. My Ma has gone ...
My dad goes to power shows, and one of his absolute favorite parts is the ropemakers. My father could watch a rope being made for hours. And once, when I was but a boy, my father got it in his head that he too could make a rope. This is that story. I don't remember my father making the ...
It is extremely apparent that one of the things that I inherited from my parents is the predilection to go in waves of things. Today I'm all about this over here, and next week I'm all about that over there, it comes, it goes, it happens. So, about a month or two ago late at night, half ...
Well, here it is, the 50th Magic Mike column. Fifty stories, fifty rants, fifty late nights, thousands of words, one book, and one award. What started as a joke column name has turned into something astounding. Nothing I could have imagined. Writing this column is different than writing ...