Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Larsen E. Whipsnade said...

In a perfect world, People like Geoffie would be paid a living wage just to go around creating ideas and things.

My job involves some level of "marketing", and you'd be amazed at the number of young good-looking hipsters making $50G a year to be "creative" for some ad agency. Staring at walls, thinking up things like "Five Dollar Foot Longs."

The difference between them and Geoffie --other than the young, good-looking part? They grew up rich and waltzed their way into Yale or some such place and so now their loopy ideas are highly creative new concepts instead of being the ramblings of some slob on a bus in Detroit.

Remember that movie Being There? That's what I want for Geoffie and all the Geoffies... some powerful rich person happens to meet them and sees something worthwhile and suddenly their advising the rich and powerful about what reality's like.

12:40 PM  
Anonymous m.t. karthik said...

I've been a Geoffie plenty of times. And though I love Being There, I find the above comment condescending. I don't think it's a permanent condition. and he doesn't need money ...

I think this intense, grandiose creativity you describe to us, readers of your blog, is highly subjective to interpretation.

I am CERTAIN that in the Midwest he is both proud and excited to get a pone call from you Dangle, whom, I infer, he respects. I liked your astute observation that people around him just hear him barking orders - but I take it as a sign of fighting spirit, a positive.

Trapped in the shitty Midwest (well, Texas, it amounts to the same)I have called friends on both coasts doing that just to ensure myself I had an out. Or that there existed other places where peole at least thought like me, understood my ideas.

it could have been utter babble on my part to them it didn't matter.

second, more than money from a venture capitalist, I think Geoffie needs hope. real hope. and that can't be bought or elected.

sad times.

hard times.

many poets in similar times in the past chose suicide

Mayakovsky, most beautifully, imho.

so Geoffie scrapping away at grandiose idea makes me feel good.

nice these blogs Dangle.

9:46 AM  
Anonymous Larsen E. Whipsnade said...

I don't think my comment is condescending at all. I simply said that Geoffie, in a different context, could be viewed as creative and successful.

I know plenty of people in the midwest and I'm sure there are other options for them besides 1) moving to the west coast, and 2) suicide, albeit beautifully.

Talk about condescending.

1:34 AM  

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