Raoul Pascual started doing cartoons for his office mates in his old job as a designer in a marketing/ publishing company in Burbank California. After leaving the company, he decided to keep in touch with his friends by sending them original cartoons based on some joke emails he received. Encouraged by their positive reactions, he decided to send them out to other friends. This continued and what started with a handful of recipients, he now delivers his jokes to thousands of people in several countries every Friday morning.
At first the drawings were just quick black and white pen sketches. Then it evolved into full color cartoons. Now, people send him large videos and graphics.
In the beginning Raoul’s choice of jokes were simply based on how hard he laughed when he read them for the first time. Then some readers complained about the content being too graphical, too sexual, too political, too religious, etc. With so many “sensitive” people out there, it’s amazing that any joke even makes it to the list. But somehow a few do. Thank God for that! Of course a few borderline jokes make it through the cracks especially when Raoul has so much in his hands that he zombies out on the Thursday evenings when he prepares the email. Yes. He really prepares these emails just a few hours before launch. That explains his eye bags on Friday morning.
Raoul considers this as one big experiment. Since his first TGIF joke (the exact date is vague but his earliest one on file was dated April 23 2004) he has not missed delivering a joke on Friday morning. Even on vacation, he sends them out one way or another. The experiment is one of consistency and quality — how long will this record stand? How long can jokes be funny without offending anybody?
Visit Raoul’s TGIF posts here Visit some of the older editions of Raoul’s TGIF JokeBTW, Raoul’s claim to fame is his design of the 42nd GRAMMY AWARDS millennium logo. If you Google “42 grammy logo” you’ll find a Wikipedia article about him.
