Weekly Dose of Dangle

I called my oldest friend, Geoffie, a week ago to check in on him and see how he’s doing. He’s had a hard time of late, broke, semi-homeless, and in and out of the pokey a few times. My call got him started. Now he’s calling me every day and I’m avoiding him. He calls when he’s got big ideas that he wants me to collaborate on. Once he called because he needed artwork for a Dr. John concert he was going to put on at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Another time he was going to buy an abandoned hotel in Detroit and turn it into an art hotel in time for the Superbowl. His plans are always world-changing, enormous in scale, and going to happen within days or, at most, a week. The problem is that they’re all in his head.



When Geoffie gets one of his ideas he expects me to drop everything and get on board. He calls and makes me take notes and gives me assignments. This week he told me to call Michigan Governor Granholm’s press secretary to see if the Governor would take part in a big party the Geoff wants me to help organize. “Can you get on that right away?” he said. He talks on his cell while he’s walking because he’s very busy and has to double-task. So somewhere in Michigan he’s walking down a street barking orders into the phone. It should be mentioned that the CIA and Department of Homeland Security are following his every move.

There’s been a sinister blue van parked in front of my house. I’d never seen it around here before. I peeked inside, there was a bed with blankets on it. Nobody moved it for a week. I started to think that it had been stolen and dumped here. Like I said, it was very sinister looking with it’s dull blue paint and stripes on the side and tinted windows. Tinted windows are illegal in California you know. I learned that in my online traffic school. Anyway, I figured I’d call the OPD and make it their top priority to come and check it out––but before I could it was gone. I’ve become that cranky, nosy old man on the block.

Hae and I are doing a “cleanse” this week. It’s no meat, no sugar, no dairy, no alcohol, no chocolate. It means eating a lot a squash. Also there are various herbal pills you have to swallow ten at a time. Hae had to buy a hundred dollars worth of supplements and disgusting things like aloe juice. Have you ever tried to drink aloe juice? It’s nasty. We’ll have a bottle of aloe juice in our cupboard for the next ten years. I’ve also got a killer headache from coffee withdrawal. I have also been conned into doing yoga. You can see me walking on Telegraph Avenue with my little rolled up mat. It’s taken twenty-four years but now I’m totally California.

I did my cartoon at five am on Monday, LIVE on Ustream as usual. I hated it at first but now I like it. I have three fans who tune into Dangle on Deadline despite it’s early hour and they’ve taken to throwing out ideas for my cartoons. Sometimes I even use them. One idea Dyana had for this week’s cartoon I liked but I didn’t use: Billionaires use their tax cuts to water the golf course with human organs. Funny, huh?

I’ve suddenly got a couple gigs that are going to bleed right into Thanksgiving. One of them is really requiring me to stretch my capabilities. In fact I don’t know if I can do it. For years I drew illustrations and nothing was ever scary. Now I do professional work that scares the hell out of me. This one’s a corporate snooze but it'll be good for some bank.

I watched: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, it was good, and my old favorite, Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, which was great. Classic marijuana humor. Yes, there was more Mad Men. It’s just like the Soprano’s except instead of getting whacked, people just get fired.