A Few Sketches

Jokes About Farts and Boogers

Warning: The drawing below is crude humor, or as some like to say, 'toilet humor'.

You all know what that is... laughing at farts, burps, boogers, fannies, weiners, balls, and the like. It's the stuff we would scribble and draw on notes and pass around the class in grade school, only to snicker about it until we gave ourselves away. It's the stuff that got us detention, or a visit to the principal's office. It is forbidden fruit.

And, it is delicious...

 

Esau takes a much needed break.

....and, no more so than when we are young.

Boobie and fart jokes are taboo and infantile. I'm certain some expert in acceptable behavior told me that at some point. We are expected to outgrow them.

Of course, there does seem to be some truth to this. At adult dinner parties, (and by adult I mean grown-up, not pornographic) it is not acceptable to blow raspberries into the crook of your arm and point at the hostess while letting the banana from your dessert protrude from the open zipper of your trousers.

Yet, there is a certain honesty to this kind of humor that cuts straight to the core of what we find funny. It is direct, frank, and immediate. If done correctly, it can even dabble in borderline sophistication. The comedy group, Monty Python was particularly skilled at the blend of sophistication and crudeness.

Important Things with Demetri Martin © comedy central

I once saw a Demetri Martin sketch about a man who, through miraculous means was able to have dinner with Galileo, Shakespeare, and Benjamin Franklin at a TGI Fridays.

The man, anticipating the most stimulating conversation of his life from these great thinkers, was not prepared for them to be such crude perverts. We expect scholars to ascend above our own base instincts and to be better than us, but sometimes find the truth to be all too shockingly human. Eventually, in the sketch, these great minds were ejected from the TGIF for sexual harassment and lewd conduct. Super funny.

So, like many men my age, I still champion the flag of crude and infantile humor in certain situations. Because of its honesty, it has a power to cut through the mire of everyday life. Sure, it isn't okay in every situation, but it transports us back to our childhood and that is fun.

Plus, farts make really funny noises.

Uh, what I have learned, and I'm not kidding about this, is that what works for me in late night is what works with two year old children. 
 - Conan O'Brien (discussing philosophies on what makes people laugh.)


"I don't drink water, fish fornicate in it"
- W.C. Fields

Where Does Personality Come From?

"Are your characters based on you or someone you know?"

 It's a question I get a lot. In most cases, it would be easy enough to say that I base most of the characters on aspects of my own personality, while a few are based on people or pets I know or have lived with. And that answer would be true enough, even if it is overly simplified.

However, there is one character that I have that defies that explanation. Esau the Donkey is based on Esau the Donkey.

 To be fair, Esau is actually a creation of mine and my friend Andrew based on silly stories we would make up while doing improv together. He's a character born of collaboration, and by far, the easiest of all my Last Resort characters to write for.

When I'm plotting scenes for Esau, I finally understand what authors are talking about when they say their characters tend to write themselves.

Where Orange Juice Comes From

Admittedly, I doodle a lot of really stupid things, but I had to post this one. Here are Esau and Orange answering an age old question about the origin a certain breakfast beverage.


I won't ruin this moment by typing much more. The drawing was done in a free online program called Harmony.