Month: March 2007

Growing up, my pop was a fantastic handyman around the house. Sure, he was a brilliant surgeon and doctor, but that never kept him from the get-yer-hands-dirty kind of work. He’d hang drywall, or build fences, or swap out water heaters, or change tires, or re-roof a house…or any honest bit of work he could get his hands on. And I always loved and admired him for that.

But the amazing thing was that, for a brilliant guy, his toolbox — heck, his whole dang garage — was a mess. You could never find anything in there. And as an anal-retentive kid, it drove me nuts. “Dad,” I’d ask, “do we have a wood chisel I can use?”

“Oh yeah, I have a whole set of chisels. They’re out in the garage.”

Which, of course was a futile statement. You could look, if you chose, but those chisels were lost to the world…by the mere fact that they were in that garage. Archaelogists, way in the future, would find them with delight underneath six boxes of National Geographics, various unused gate hinges, and some Christmas decorations.

Growing up, I always told myself that my garage would be different. My garage would have those hole-peg thingies where all the tools had little white outlines. My garage would let you find the right socket wrench at a glance.

But somewhere along the way, my plans didn’t work out.

Yesterday, as I was building a deck, I realized that my tools had jumbled together. They had taken on the appearance of installation art: stacked in a way to represent man’s inhumanity to man…I guess? It was a beautiful artistic expression, but it was also an absolute mess, and I couldn’t find a dang thing.

Took me thirty minutes to even find my wood chisels.

And that’s when I realized it: the Harry Chapin song “Cats in the Cradle” had come true: my garage had become my father’s garage. My stack of tools had become my dad’s.

And an even bigger realization hit me: I am gonna drive my sons absolutely nuts.

…And I got the biggest, dopiest grin on my face at that. I can’t wait to tell them to go look in the garage. The torch shall be passed, pop!

As I’m toonin’ in the studio today, I get a call from my buddies Bill and Gene over at Unshelved.

After pleasantries were exchanged, they threw down the gauntlet: Would I, they wanted to know, be cartoonist enough to accept a challenge? A week of competition between our two strips, where we’d both have to write six days of material on some everyday, innocuous, uninspiring subject matter? Say…plastic coffee cup lids?

They — confident, bestrident, mocking in their tone — assumed I would not answer the call. But I said to them what I say to you now:

Cry havoc, and unleash the dogs of war!

(Be there! April 2nd! Two strips enter! One strip leaves! Hopefully mine! But maybe not! It’s possible this could prove to be a bad decision on my part!)

One of my favorite Gramp-related toons from past health-kicks.

“Boo”.

For those following along, here are the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 previous installments of our Saturday-only storyline.

It’s interesting, because customer feedback reports and consumer satisfaction surveys have actually cleaned up the dealer-affiliated used-car business. They’re not at all as skeevy as they once were. And even cable and phone guys have gotten (a little) more prompt in their scheduling. (A little.)

But boy…you walk into a gym like Ballys, 24 Hour Fitness, or LA Fitness…and they’re on top of you like a vulture on week-old road kill. Everything is a special-deal-today-only-but-don’t-wait-sign-up-now offer.

And there’s something more intimidating about it than your usual salesman: because not only are they givin’ you the hard-sell, they’re givin’ you the hard-sell with 24-inch biceps and thighs that are the size of your chest.

Those guys scare the Pop Tarts outta me.

Dear Sir:

Though I am amazed and inspired by your presence at the gym, I wanted to take a minute to offer some constructive fashion criticism.

Let me first stress how impressed I am at your ability to get yourself to the gym. Especially in this, your 125th year. You are an inspiration to folks young and old.

But brother, the dolphin shorts have got to go.

Even during their heyday in 1979-1982, I’m fairly sure Dolphin Shorts were pretty roundly made fun of. They are, after all, only three-inch swaths of fabric.

But here you are, in 2007, rockin’ them Dolphin Shorts like the Bee Gees just dropped “Saturday Night Fever”. And on an EFX machine, no less. Wow.

So, in closing:
– Points for getting yourself to the gym
– Negative points for the Dolphin Shorts

In Friendship,
Dave Kellett

The LA Times is a great, great paper. Not a “national” paper, perhaps, in the same way that the NY Times, the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal are, but darn close.

The breadth and scope of its reporting in the last decade has been impressive. The paper has won a slew of Pulitzers for its in-depth reporting; it has a wonderful stable of in-house columnists; it’s one of the last multi-page comics spreads in the U.S.; it’s one of a handful of papers that maintains a stand-alone “Books” sections in the Sunday paper…and the list goes on and on.

But it’s slowly dying. Or, better put, it’s shrivelling down to a lesser version of itself. And it’s sad to watch.

The paper is certainly not “dying” in the financial sense. Like a lot papers, the profit margins at the Times still outpaces most Fortune 500 companies. But ever since it moved from family ownership to Tribune corporate ownership, it’s been under steady stockholder demands for increasing profitability. Tie that to the slow trickling away of readership and the ad dollars that go with it, and the Times’ corporate management finds itself cutting staff, cutting features, cutting print runs, cutting columnists and cutting cartoonists.

And cutting…and cutting…and cutting. And it’s sad.

In a lot of ways, the LA Times is the reason I decided to refocus Sheldon solely on the web. Living in Los Angeles, I could see the writing on the wall as far as making a living in traditional newsprint…just by looking at my local paper.

But when I picked up my copy of the Times today, the paper itself was so thin. It’s not just the missing reports and features that I find myself noticing. The overall paper just feels smaller.

All of which, of course, will drive away the next batch of readers who once took the paper. Which in turn will drive the next round of cuts to staff and features.

Bums me out to watch it happening.

Some of my favorite moments in the strip are when the characters drop their guard a little bit, and we see glimpses of their bruised humanity. It doesn’t happen often, but those strips carry a bit more meaning than most.

If you haven’t seen them before, take a minute to read the two-week storyline where Sheldon reminisces about his parents…or the two-day arc where Gramp thinks back on his his wife. They’re both nice moments.

In fun news, über-librarian Jana Atkins writes to report that the Univ. of Central Oklahoma’s Chambers Library is picking up a number of Cuban CDs based on my earlier post. Jana’s ordered a copy of all the Cuban musicians mentioned, and two copies of Celia!

Drop by the library and check out their collection of Cuban tunes — you won’t be disappointed! And thanks, Jana!