Tag Archives: Funny shows

Cruz day-in-a-life with a fictionalized spin

during my creative writing group I wrote this a real day in my life — followed by a Sci-Fi rewrite – or how my mind reimagines the daily grind away with a few aliens from outerspace and whynot say in that fictionalized account I was a vampire.

7:AM I’m up a half hour after the crack of dawn — that’s about the time of day a big slice of the sun settles in the right side of the apartment. The dog on bed is dead weight his way of telling everyong in the house it’s hella too early to be awake (I agree) — my dog is nicknamed the old lady because he’s 10 years and that’s 500 in dog years if you’re lucky enough to sleep by my side. I sit in the same chair for 20 minutes eyes closed — half asleep — doing the mantra and knocking back those big worldly worries to the curb.
8:45AM The smell of fresh coffee coming from street vender trucks fills the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. I spot a vendor selling chicken empenandas and think that’s a bold choice for breakfast. Sure enough, two women are chowing down on freshly cooked empandas and for at least five whole minutes my world view is rocked.

Rewrite

from my musty bedside filled with dirt the dog had smelled the change. He registered it with a long whimper calling for the end of times. Being a creature of the night I knew this day was coming humans were weak blood vessels.
The crash of New Jersey happened while I was on my chair meditating. A dark cloud with the smell of roast pig pushed into the Bronx and I knew it didn’t just carry smoke. I thought it could use some of grandmas spices.

* Follow me on Twitter @HenryCruz101

Vampire cartoons rise from the dust in my bathroom walls

I‘ve been sketching in notebooks since I could hold a pen…here’s a sketch that my cat ate — her new name is Ms. Hater or Ms.-Thing-makes-art-better (you be the judge)

Inspiration is like that weird dude who shows up uninvited — when you least expect it, um, like say — when you’re finishing-your-business-in-the-bathroom…’few months ago I saw a vampire on my bathroom. yeah…most people would say that’s just dust “go clean your bathroom
and I’d reply: judge much, hey judge-judy maybe I really really like Vampires?

Here’s the vampire I saw — again, just a dust patch near the bathroom window — but before I cleaned it away forever I sketched what I saw on a yellow post-it note

and later this

Same thing happen a week later, here’s the pic I snapped of the dust from my bathroom — tell me what you see — and yeah, if you’re wondering I did eventually clean up that dust somewhat afterwards:

If you’re like me you saw a Cat-that-thinks-she’s-a-Vampire, or something like this:

I now have two characters in my growing Vampire family, I’m sure they’ll be tweaked as I re-draw, streamlined into something easy to draw as I draw them more and form them into fully formed characters (at least in my mind) that I will use for the the weekly web cartoon strip.

* Follow me on Twitter @HenryCruz101

Cruz Book Quotes: Funny on Purpose

Aim your comedy guns at the right target is my basic takeaway from those who do comedy right and why I’m liking today’s comedy book by Joe Randazzo “Funny on Purpose”

on page 15 we get Seven Traits of highly successful comedy people: Self-Doubt, Excellent Procrastination Skills, Fear of the unknown, Laziness, Fear of Failure, Poor planning, a Need to Express something to the world — personally, I’m good for “Laziness” and a dying “need to express something to the world

my favorite quote on creating-funny is from page 38: β€œThe two primary functions of comedy are: to push the bounds of comfort and to challenge authority. Without these two principles – and an important and universal third principle, which is to smear the edges of tragedy with a shared sense of the absurd – one does not have comedy.”

finally, grab a listen of author Joe Randazzo’s Viewpoints radio interview chatting “Comedy and Comedians, How do they get so funny?”


 

‘really loved what he said here about the late Joan Rivers — in the business for decades — still tried out her jokes at small clubs before she decided they were keepers.

hey, I’m a keeper too why not…
* Follow me on Twitter @HenryCruz101

Throwback HAIR-day – hair tells a very gay story

A very confused young teen Cruz growing up in the Bronx (that’s me, all hair) — ‘rocking the 80’s Michael something (during my gang years)

yeah, some pictures where meant to be destroyed…this hair tells a story of things to come

* Follow me on Twitter @HenryCruz101

Birth of a web cartoon world?

It started a few months back when I bought a stylus for my iPad. Around the same time I was seeing cartoons made-of-dust on my bathroom wall –

the logical brain says it was just dust but my mind says: ‘ooooh no, that’s a fully formed cartoon cat on my wall’ — maybe I need new glasses, but that resulted in more doodles and finally I came up with this cartoon on modern dating:

and when it snowed, I sketched some more and came up with this called Snow Day:

here’s a rare making of video – me inking over my pencil sketch on my iPad to clean up the lines (impressed yet?)

Over the coming weeks I hope to turn all my doodling into a weekly web comic with characters and a story line – all right here.

* Follow me on Twitter @HenryCruz101