Has anyone else noticed that Halloween decorations are all spiders this year? I mean, some year it's bats and some years it's ghosts or witches. This year it's spiders. (Arachnophobes really notice things like giant inflatable black widows). So I was wondering who decides? Do commercial graphic designers sit down and have a Halloween marketing conference sometime in March?
"I think we should do witches again. Harry Potter is still hot."
"Nah, that's getting old. What about spiders?"
"Oh, spiders are good. We haven't done spiders in a while."
I heard on the radio that spiders top the list of things people are afraid of. People are more afraid of spiders than of death, terrorists and public speaking. Which makes sense in a way. On any given day, spiders are much more likely than death. And over a lifetime, death and public speaking are both far more likely than terrorists.
In case you were wondering, yes, Aunt Ronnie is a very loose caricature of Ann Coulter (who, by the way, has not yet responded to my official challenge to a mud wrestling match on national television). Aunt Della isn't a caricature of anybody in particular. She looks kind of like Percival's mother, though, which I think is how I draw a generic lefty liberal arts teacher. At least three of George's friends are based on pictures of actual political figures, when they were younger.
