I was reading recently about new Red Sox third baseman Adrian Beltre and how he refuses to wear a protective cup, despite the fact that he took one in the jewels last season and suffered a – deep breath here – torn testicle.

That got to me thinking about athletes who should wear a cup but don’t. Aside from Beltre, one other other obvious candidate came to mind…

Do the right thing, gentlemen. Protect the boys.

Tags: Adrian Beltre, baseball, cartoon, cheating, Elin Nordegren, golf, protective cup, testicle, third base, Tiger Woods

My latest IT Underworld cartoon.

Tags: cartoon, doctor, health care, IT Underworld, ITWorld, laptop, nerd, nurse, pre-existing condition

Don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed the recent Winter Olympics. However, I read about the debt that Vancouver will be left with, which makes me wonder if it’s worth it, and also led to the following cartoon…

But, hey, can you really put a price on watching Lindsey Vonn in a skiing outfit? I think not.

Tags: cartoon, cigar, debt, hockey, Olympics, The Hangover, Vancouver, Winter Olympics

My latest IT Underworld cartoon.

Tags: cartoon, Foursquare, Hooters, IT Underworld, ITWorld

Tags: baseball, cartoon, losing, Pirate Parrot, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Pirates, t-shirt launcher

My latest IT Underworld cartoon.

Tags: cartoon, IT Underworld, ITWorld, Microsoft, smartphone, Windows, Windows Phone 7

My latest IT Underworld cartoon.

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, cartoon, George Washington, IT Underworld, ITWorld, Presidents' Day

My latest IT Underworld cartoon.

Tags: Apple, Barack Obama, cartoon, iPad, IT Underworld, ITWorld, State of the Union, Steve Job

My latest IT Underworld cartoon.

Tags: cartoon, Conan O'Brien, IT Underworld, ITWorld

My latest IT Underworld cartoon.

Tags: cartoon, Google, IT Underworld, ITWorld, Nexus One, typewriter

My New Year’s Eve IT Underworld cartoon.

Happy (belated) New Year!

Tags: 2010, cartoon, Cast Away, IT Underworld, New Year's Eve, Tom Hanks, Y2K

My Christmas Eve IT Underworld cartoon.

Merry (belated) Christmas!

Tags: cartoon, Christmas, egg nog, Santa

One of my recent IT Underworld cartoons… Merry Christmas!

Tags: cartoon, Christmas, Grinch, Windows

Tags: Barack Obama, cartoon, Dr. Manmohan Singh, India, Joe Biden, Secret Service, stat dinner, White House

What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving – the best holiday of the year (well, aside from Super Bowl Sunday) – than with a cartoon?

To that end, imagine what the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line would be like if it were manned by the Microsoft support staff? Maybe something like this:

That’s my latest IT Underworld cartoon, a weekly tune that I do for ITWorld.com. If you like it be sure to tell your friends, family and neighbors. Heck, feel free to also Digg it. I won’t object.

Any love you can show it is greatly appreciated.

Have a great Thanksgiving! I hope you’ll be doing what I’ll be doing – eating and drinking myself silly. Remember, if you don’t, then the terrorists win.

Tags: Butterball, cartoon, Digg, IT Underworld, ITWorld, Microsoft, Super Bowl, Thanksgiving, turkey

Tags: candy, cartoon, Glenn Beck, Halloween

Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Brett Favre, cartoon, Rahm Emanuel

Tags: Barack Obama, Carla Bruni, cartoon, G20, George Bush, Gordon Brown, Iran, Iraq, Nicolas Sarkozy, nuclear weapons, Pittsburgh, tea

PC World – in their kind and infinite wisdom – has seen fit to pick my technology cartoon, IT Underworld, as one of the funniest tech cartoons on the web!

They even led off the article with this one that I recently did:

I am humbled and honored and would like to thank my family, the academy and one JR Raphael for a very fine piece of journalism.

Thanks, JR!

In other cartooning news, I’m posting my new editorial cartoons over on Open Salon, and a couple have already been deemed an Editor’s Pick! If you like them, please swing by and give them some love.

Tags: cartoon, IT Underworld, ITWorld

Tags: cartoon, Democrats, health care exchange, health care reform, illegal immigrants, Republicans

Tags: Barack Obama, cartoon, Dick Cheney, IHOP, Joe Wilson

Tags: Barack Obama, cartoon, George Bush, God, Intelligent Design

Tags: Barack Obama, cartoon, Dick Cheney

Tags: Barack Obama, cartoon, Florida, George Bush, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Richard Nixon, teleprompter, Washington

Tags: cartoon, Hendrix, Regis, Woodstock

Tags: Barack Obama, cartoon, health care reform, town hall meeting

Tags: Bill Clinton, cartoon, Hillary Clinton, Kim Jong Il, North Korea

Tags: Barack Obama, beer, cartoon, Henry Louis Gates, Oval Office, police, race, Sgt Crowley, White House

Are you an IT professional? Do you spend your time toiling away thanklessly on servers, networks, desktops and answering dumb questions from annoying end users all day long?

Or, on the other hand, are you one of those end users that has to deal with scary and strange IT professionals, who can never seem to answer your questions in plain English and, more often than not, could use a bath or at least a breath mint?

Well, either way, do I ever have something for you!

My newest comedy endeavor is a comic for the web site ITWorld.com, called IT Underworld. The inaugural cartoon has been posted here:

The concept: IT Underworld is the story of George and Elias, two lowly foot soldiers in the IT army of a large company, and their daily battles with clueless end users and meddling executives.

New cartoons will be posted here.

The plan is to produce one cartoon per week, through the end of December. If the reaction is good, we’ll keep it going!

So, please, tell your friends. Pass the word. Visit the site, add a comment, give it a thumbs up. Hell, feel free to tattoo IT Underworld on your forehead.

You get the idea.

That is all.

Tags: cartoon, IT Underworld, ITWorld, tattoo

Much as I love writing jokes for late night TV, my real dream in life as a young fella was to be a syndicated cartoonist. I loved TV and sitcoms and David Letterman and all that growing up, but what really got me going was reading Peanuts or Bloom County or Calvin and Hobbes.

I’m talking comic strips here, as in the multi-panel, recurring character type of features. Nothing, to me, beat that daily shot of comedy and art that they provided, not mention catching up with my favorite characters. For a long time, that’s what I angled to do with my life.

For a variety of reasons that I won’t go into here, I never pursued it as much as I should have. The thing that always held me back was the drawing. I love to draw, but I never formally studied it and doesn’t come nearly as easily to me as the writing.

But, every few years, I come back to the dream and start noodling around on a strip. The bug recently took ahold of me again. The result? A poorly drawn but hopefully funny strip. So, without further ado allow me to present (drum roll please) my latest attempt at a comic strip: Schwilm!

The basic premise so far: it’s about a guy named Bob Schwilm, the leader of the Marvelous Institute of Togetherness (MIT), a non-denominational, all-inclusive quasi religious/spiritual community. Bob has a wife, kids (for now – I may change that), a crazy congregation, goofy friends and relatives, etc. and so forth.

As you can see, the drawing is, to put it mildly, pathetic. My whole goal is to spend as little time drawing as possible. In fact, my friend (and amazing illustrator) Brad Fitzpatrick described my drawing style perfectly: it’s a I-don’t-care-what-you-think-of-my-drawing-skills style.

Well put!

But, I’ve decided, I don’t care! I’m a comedy writer. I have these characters and ideas in my head, and I’m just going to throw them out there.

The whole thing is a work in progress. Everything is still in development, from characters (a bunch of whom I have in my head but haven’t debuted yet) to character names to such details as whether Schwilm has children.

My goal for now is simple: one new strip a week.

If you like it tell your friends, write your congressperson, or even put Schwilm on your own site!

Of course, if David Letterman or Conan O’Brien or Bill Maher finally comes to his sense and hires me to write full time, all bets are off.

Tags: cartoon, comic strip, schwilm