Plainfield presentation

I will be speaking Thursday November 13 at the Plainfield/Guilford Township Library at 7:00 (p.m.) The title of my presentation is 4000 years of architecture in 20 minutes (or so). It is a brief architectural history lesson with sprinklings of humor from my books. A book signing will follow Perfect timing for the holidays - and who wouldn't love to find one of my books in their stocking?

November toons

Enjoy.

October toons

Cartoon #1 - Irridiculous

It's always been a pet peeve of mine when people say irregardless. Irregardless is not a real word, although many heathens out there have continued to abuse the term and it has achieved a general acceptance. www.dictionary.com defines it as follows:

Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so.

Websters defines it as follows:

Main Entry:
ir·re·gard·less
Pronunciation:
\ˌir-i-ˈgärd-ləs\
Function:
adverb
Etymology:
probably blend of irrespective and regardless
Date:
circa 1912
nonstandard : regardless
usage Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that “there is no such word.” There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.

So, even though they acknowledge it's existence they also note that many don't accept it and I am one of those who choose not to accept it. If you happen to be one of the intellectual dwarfs that practice using this term, I apologize to you, because you likely see no humor in my comic. But for the majority of us, I hope you enjoy this illustration picking on a common language error.

Cartoon #2: You're no HC

Obviously, it's campaign season, so I tried a cartoon relating to debates. The most famous debate line I could think of was the You're no Jack Kennedy line from the Dan Quayle VP debate. I know there has to be a better caption available, but this is where it ended up. If you have a better caption for it let me know, I'm easy going.

Look for these cartoons in the October issues of Hendricks County ICON, and the October Business Leader magazines (Hendricks County, Hamilton county, Johnson County). More to come soon.

That's it.

AIA golf outings

Tomorrow is the annual AIA Indianapolis Chapter Memorial golf outing. I have been involved with these golf outings for at least the last ten years. "Doing what?" you ask - well I have been the person responsible for designing the T-shirts (Whoa - I almost left the "r" out of the word shirt, hopefully it was not a subliminal message someone was trying to push into my brain).

When I started the golf outing shirts, I was doing cartoons for the AIA and thought it would be a great opportunity to get more exposure. So I did some cartoons that tried to bridge the gap between golfing and architecture - using my Oblique View comic format. Looking back - the cartoons weren't that great - but it was good experience and people enjoyed them (I think). I believed they enjoyed them because; 1. they were different than the previous, mundane golf shirt designs, which were merely plan views of the golf course, and 2. many people didn't realize that the creator of Oblique View, which brought them hours, if not days, of enjoyable water cooler conversation every month, was a fellow Indianapolisosian (how do you like that word?)

The outings back then were called the Frank Lloyd Wright Memorial golf outing - however they never were really associated with FLW. One year, I had a great illustration idea I wanted to explore for LeCorbusier's Modulor man.

So I suggested to the golf committee chairman that we make it a rotating memorial each year. He agreed, naturally, and the rest is history (pun intended). I then became responsible every year for determining which dead architect to honor. This was easy for me to relate to, as I was working in the by Famous Architects books at the time. Since then we have honored the following great architects:

• LeCorbusier
• Mies van der Rohe
• Louis Kahn
• Phillip Johnson
• E. Fay Jones
• Eero Saarinen
• and this year it's Walter Netsch

Walter Netsch is probably the least famous of the group - in fact many architects have never heard of him. But they would all likely recognize his most famous structure - the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel. His death this year makes him the most famous architect to die in 2008 (so far, anyway). However his obscurity to the general architect population has left me questioning where to go next year - shouldn't the architect have some relavence to Indiana? or shouldn't he be an architect who has had an impact on what we have learned about architecture? These are questions I'm sure you are asking yourself and will likely keep you awake for a couple of weeks. But the truth is - it's just a golf outing, a once a year event for the architects of Indianapolis to get together and enjoy hacking up manicured lawns and guzzle some beer. Next year's architect to be remembered, will be decided next year.

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my first post on Blogahead. I have been considering doing this for about a year now, which seems to be the average time it takes for ideas to come to fruition for me. Anyway, I decided to start this blog for two reasons; 1. My website Dipahead.com has not been updated in 2 years (maybe more) and I thought this may be simpler than messing with Frontpage to modify it, and 2. I have an idea for a more serious blog devoted to architecture that I want to start, and this is kind of a testing ground for me.

Actually there is a third reason, I needed to find a way to communicate my cartoon work and other side ventures to you. I am currently doing cartoons for 2 magazines in central Indiana (The Business Leader(s) - visit http://www.businessleader.bz/ - and Hendricks County ICON). These cartoon efforts are more along the editorial cartoon line than my typical obtuse humor line, and I'm not fully comfortable with this style yet. I am used to drawing things that are fresh on my mind as humorous, not necessarily hot news items. Below are the cartoons for the September issues - please feel free to give me your comments.

Well - I am not sure how often I will be posting. I would like to think it will be at least once a week - but we'll see. Consider yourself a lucky reader - this might be the only post ever made. I hope you've enjoyed it and will return for more. I may even update http://www.dipahead.com/ to try to keep up with this yearly event.