Weekly Dose of Dangle

I’ve been on the road, last week in Chicago. I got to see my friend, Schmelzer, who was the Guild president after me. Anybody who’s been Guild president is automatically bonded to the ones who went before. It’s so painful and traumatic an experience that you have to have to been there to understand. Schmelzer and I ate oysters and drank pints of Guinness in a classic Chicago meat house. He’s creating cartoons for the New Yorker these days working with a gag writer. The drawings are good, but the gags are bad. He goes to the New Yorker office on Tuesdays at eleven when he’s in New York to show Mankoff his cartoons. It’s still done the old fashioned way there. So far all of his cartoons have been rejected. I wish I could do New Yorker style cartoons, but I just don’t seem to be able to write that way.

It’s Oscar’s spring break so I’m out of the office again on two camping trips. The first one was to Steep Ravine in Marin County, camping in little cabins with wood-burning stoves on a steep cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It’s really not camping at all. Next we’re going on a boy scout camping trip in the redwoods with the tent and the whole bit. It’s supposed to rain. I’ve had job requests coming in like mad so taking time off makes me a bit anxious. Things sure have changed since a year ago.

I confused my readers last week with my third-to-last comic strip by suggesting that I’m leaving the country. A bunch of haters sent emails saying stuff like: don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. Well forget about it. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll still be a thorn in your sides whether I draw Troubletown or not. I’ve had several newspapers interview me about the end of Troubletown. Everybody expects me to be sad and grieving the end of my comic strip, they look at me with big puppy eyes, but I’m not at all. After next week’s deadline I’m a free man. I won’t disappear though, I will still have Troubletown the blog and a constant annoying Twitter presence.

I’ve been reading the three Steig Larson books, you know, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the others, on Hae’s kindle. At first I was unimpressed with the artistry of the writing but after a while I got so hooked that I didn’t care anymore. The kindle is an odd little machine with a gray screen. It’s not lit so you can’t read it in the dark, but the face is shiny so you have to get the angle just right so that your reading light doesn’t reflect into your eyes. You don’t have the cover of a book constantly reminding you what the title is, so I always forget. It’s called The Girl who Played with a Tattoo of a Hornet’s Nest. Something like that.