Endive Alive

Written By Dan Piraro

I’m Dan Piraro, the creator of the Bizarro newspaper comic. Each week, I post my Sunday Bizarro comic, then a short essay, then the past week’s Monday-Saturday Bizarro comics written and drawn by my partner, Wayno whose weekly blog post I recommend highly.

Here’s the ANSWER KEY to this week’s Secret Symbols in the Sunday comic, above.

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Olive Oyl and I are still traveling in Europe. We’ve been in Rome and Florence and today we’ll move north to Milan for a couple of days.

After two weeks in two of the most popular tourist cities in the world, I am conflicted. The sheer number of people milling about the streets is depressing. They are like a plague of two-hundred-pound gnats, inside and outside of every old building or church. Swatting at them does no good. And most of them, the ones from the U.S. primarily, are poorly dressed and clueless.

I cannot help but feel that tourists have ruined these cities and I cannot escape the reality that Olive and I are contributing to the problem as much as any person I silently curse for being here. I find it impossible to avoid thinking that there are simply too many people on this planet and that most of them are in Italy right now. We should all just go elsewhere.

One thing that greatly accentuates this feeling of overpopulation to the point of disease is that this was not the case when I was here for the first time in 1979. In those days, a person could walk up to a church or museum and walk inside. Most were free and none were charging exorbitant fees to “skip the line.” There were no lines to skip. But now, everywhere you go is a madhouse of rude humanity that makes Black Friday shopping in the U.S. look like a quick pop into the corner shop for a pack of gum.

Sadly, our home city in Mexico is becoming the same. Month by month, the traffic gets worse and after seven years there, we dread and avoid going into Centro, the old part of the city that we fell in love with when we decided to move there. It’s just too crowded with Americans. And, god forbid, many are falling in love with our town and looking to buy a home there. Just like we did. I curse them all and us, too.

But where to live if not somewhere wonderful? I can think of no alternative other than to live somewhere that most people don’t want to live. That’s a bitter pill to swallow for artistic types like us who thrive in beautiful environs and wither in drab ones. It’s the whole reason I left Oklahoma as soon as I was old enough. Yeah, I know, poor us. 

Enough of the depressing travel report. When not battling crowds of poorly dressed Nebraskans, we’re having a lovely time! Here are some photos to prove it.

Here we are with the main duomo of Florence in the distance. Getting this far away from the central part of the city is the only way to get a photo without thousands of strangers in it. You may notice that I’m wearing a jacket from Roma. I pride myself on not wearing tourist garments but I liked this one and it was cheap so I guess I can’t claim that corner of snobbery anymore.

This is Galileo’s house. He had an observatory on the roof. In those days, with no electric lights to pollute the night skies, you could see all the way to Andromeda after the sun went down. His full name was Galileo Galilei, which makes me wonder if his parents had a weird sense of humor, like naming your kid Tommy Thomas.

This is Dante’s house. He was born in this building and lived there until he was exiled at the age of 30-something. He is still considered a genius all these centuries later. I rather doubt the same thing will happen to you or me.

Here we are walking down a street. We must be miles from anything interesting to see or there would be a billion people in this picture.

Now we’re in Siena. That place is incredible. Still very medieval. We loved it. I could post a bunch of touristy pictures of cool old buildings but you can see those all over the Interwebs. What you can’t see everywhere is our seemingly endless parade of selfies. Something I almost never do but have done quite a lot of here.

That brings up another curious point. Everywhere you go here you see young women posing cheesecake-style in front of historical landmarks. I cannot get over how shamefully vain and idiotic this looks. Here is the Colosseum, where countless people and other animals were slaughtered daily for hundreds of years for the amusement of barbaric locals, and in front of it is a young woman with her feet placed just so, her heel in the air behind her, her torso turned a little sideways, one hand on her hip, the other fluffing her hair, batting her eyes at a cellphone camera, begging some hypothetical person to mate with her. Here is the 450-year-old Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and in front of it is a young woman practicing her hottest, most flirtatious pose as she offers herself as a sexual hors d’oeuvre to the theoretical world within her social media accounts. Here is the statue of David by Michelangelo, a 12,500 lbs., 17 feet high piece of marble carved into a statue of nearly incomprehensible beauty 500 years ago by a genius in his twenties, and beneath it is a girl trying to look as F-able as possible. In my opinion, this is more than vanity, it verges on delusion.

Here I am displaying my own brand of vain delusion trying to look casual and cool in front of a thousand-year-old building. Like some stupid American tourist. I blame the dozens of cappuccinos I downed daily.

Here’s a firehose in a museum with an interesting translation of “In case of fire, break glass.” Everything in this building is made of stone so I’m guessing this thing will never be used unless someone sets fire to a painting.

I’ll conclude today’s travelogue with a shot that reminds us of how small the world can be. Italy is famous for its food but we’ve not tried their version of Mexican and probably never will. We agree with the restaurant’s slogan, however.

Now it is time to review Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons from the week. Finally!

Wayno was feeling some Darth Vader inspiration this week. I’m not a Star Wars aficionado but I’m told this line is based on a famous quote from one of the movies.

Vader waders full of potaters. (A colloquial pronunciation of “potatoes.”)

Originalists have a kind of artificial intelligence that no one much talks about.

How low would you have to sink to throw a poetry contest?

Yes, I have tried that more times than I can count.

He hasn’t been the size of a thumb since he was a child. I’m thinking it’s time to change his name to Tom Forearm.

We’ve come to the end of this week’s chuckle tour, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for enduring our silly drawings and selfies. Next Sunday I’ll be on a 500-hour flight back to Mexico City, so I may not post on time. I’ll most certainly be wishing they’d perfect teleportation Star Trek style or at the very least, allow full-strength marijuana products on airplanes. Both seem long overdue!

Until then, be sexy, be hot, and be standing in front of a famous building of some kind.

Dan Piraro
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