I expect to catch a little grief for this cartoon.  Not so much from people over gay marraige, or soda barons.  No, I expect grief from Jason and Gordon.  Jason and Gordon are two of my best buddies and the guys I hang out with the most.  They’re not gay though Jason does love Rob Thomas, Cold Play and he’d probably switch teams if Anderson Cooper gave him a shot.  Neither one of them is obese and neither live in New York.  If anyone of the three of us is a sodaholic, that would be me.  I was going to draw Jason and Gordon to look like the real Jason and Gordon, except I didn’t want to draw a caricature of one of them and call him obese.  Plus, Gordon is actually black and if I drew a black guy as the obese one then I’d catch Hell for something that didn’t have anything to do with the cartoon.  I couldn’t draw Jason as the fat guy because Gordon is bigger than Jason and then I’d have my friends calling me stupid…again.

I just thought it’d be funny to catch their attention this way.  Jason will probably notice within an hour.  Gordon will notice tomorrow morning when he reads the paper.  Tomorrow is my birthday and I totally plan to milk that so the guys don’t beat me up too much.  They wouldn’t beat me up on my birthday, would they?

I did try to make a message with this cartoon and not just a simple joke.  New York respects people’s liberty but they want to create a nanny state that tells them how to control their diet?  And I don’t see how this works.  They plan to ban any drinks over 16 ounces.  Today I usually order a small drink and get free refills which probably leads me to drink a lot more than 16 ounces.

What they should do is ban outrageous prices on snacks in the theater.  I would vote for a politician who made that promise.

My editor later told me he’s glad I’m doing this cartoon because he wants to write an editorial encouraging the ban of purchasing soft drinks with food stamps.  OK.  That’s connected….how?

Here’s the rough.