Recently PBS’ show, Independent Lens, aired a program about the beginning of hip hop and how copyright infringement, forever changed ho rap was created and produced. If you haven’t had an opportunity to see this, check it out. It’s well worth it.

Here’s a great picture sent in from avid Peanizles reader Craig from West Virginia. Word is that Craig loves using his Peanizles mug to drink everything from coffee to cocoa to cherry coke.

Great stuff Craig.

This great picture was sent in from Gretchen from Andrews, Texas, who showed her support of Peanizles while she was on vacation in St. Croix.

Nice Shirt Gretchen (which is coincidentally available for all the cool kids in the Peanizles Cafe Press store).

2009 was huge.

Peanizles launched it’s website in July and has faithfully posted comics every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the past six months. The website got a bit of a revamping in November. I attended my first convention in June, and had Chuck and Mingus littered across the table, with various comics and goodies. Which I then followed up in July by attending my first major convention: the San Diego Comic Con. I got to meet some of the greatest cartoonists in the business, and was thrilled by how supportive and encouraging and amazingly cool they all were (more on that to come). I wrote and illustrated five pages of Zombie goodness, for an anthology comic book in October.

And on a personal level I got engaged in December.

So, all in all, 2009 was a pretty satisfying year.

That’s a lot of pressure for a new year to try and compete with. But, looking ahead, I think that 2010 is up to the challenge. Look for 2010 to offer up some of the funniest and cutest cartoons to hit the web, right here at Peanizles.com. There will be a new Peanizles.com store, which will be featuring t-shirts, books, and pint glasses, among other goodies. ZombieBomb, will be hitting shelves at your local comic shop later in the year. And Skope Magazine and I have a few plans in the works for the next year.

Stick around. It’s going to be off the chain.

This year for Halloween, Melissa and I were down in Providence, Rhodes Island where we went to the Roger Williams Zoo and saw their collection of over 10,000 carved jack-o-lanterns.

We both had decided on spending the weekend in Providence to celebrate her birthday, and a few weeks before going we had heard about the pumpkin exhibit at the Zoo and thought that it would be something that we would both like, and that really would be more than appropriate away to celebrate Halloween. And let me tell you, if you haven’t seen it yet, you should definitely give it a go one of these days. There were pumpkins of every shape, size, and kind imaginable carved in some of the coolest ways possible. There were lit pumpkins on out on the water, twenty to thirty foot trees were covered with glowing carved pumpkins as if they were christmas lights strung across the branches, and there were pumpkins carved inside of other pumpkins.