The Think Bottle Blog was created to gather great art, ideas, and inspiration into one place. I hope you get inspired to take a chance and dive into something of your own. Plus it’s a great place to interact with me on a daily basis. Cheers!
“KAY SERAH SERAH”
I’ve never drawn Barack Obama. Thinking back on it now, I imagine I could’ve gotten into it; maybe even reveled in it. Okay, yeah, on occasion, even reaching that euphoric state of frenzy again, whereby I’d be reduced to a giggling, unshaven shuffler who mumbled dialogue bubbles to himself while standing in line at Chipolte’ (not that I ever did that).
I left cartooning to become a civilian sometime before John McCain started looking like a guy who’d misplaced his pancreas or wondered if he’d had a BM that day. I left cartooning before I felt, one more time the gut cold grip of a cartoon on my cerebrum, squeezing out a little more juice.
I had my moment beneath the heat of the table-lamp working on deadline. Drawing furiously so I could beat all the other cartoonists to the punch but not realizing my hair was getting singed by the 100wt light-bulb. My moment when the only noise in my office was the scratching of my nib on the paper. Spittles of ink shooting out from my pen onto my shirt, my pants, my hands. Migrating its way under my fingernails until I looked like I worked on an oil-rig instead of a newspaper. Scratching at this insatiable itch until I bled, yet I never seemed to reach “the spot”. That perfect nexus of pith and insight, with a little butt crack thrown in (for the ones who didn’t understand the pith).
To put it to you as a graphic metaphor, because cartoonists enjoy putting it to you as graphically metaphoric as they can, I had my moment when reading a newspaper was like intentionally infecting myself with an intestinal parasite that roiled and writhed and fed until the beast was eventually purged onto my 100% acid free Bristol board in the form of a funny light-hearted cartoon (with a dog thrown in for good measure).
Then sleeping fitfully, wrestling “IT” again in my dreams or anticipating the arrival of this horrid creature into the hands of the unsuspecting muesli-munching reader the next day.
-And then process begins again: infection, feeding, writhing and finally the purge.
My cartoons always seemed a little wanting, if the drawing was great, the idea was half-baked or gratuitous. If the idea busted into my head like Jules Feiffer directed by Frank Capra, my art looked clipped.
I was in search of the Great American Cartoon and I needed a blood transfusion from all the scratching.
Sorry, maybe the “itchy itch” was easier to stomach after all, but you get the point don’t you?
The kids books are my salvation. I hope that doesn’t sound too dramatic but it’s the truth. With all the itching and scratching and writhing and bleeding and trying beat a bunch of other guys to the punch with a trenchant cartoon; all I wanted to do was just be with my books and pictures. While cartooning was fun and I got the opportunity to be screamed at by a lot of really interesting folks, my books sustained me like nothing else. Rather than contributing to the feeding frenzy, my soul was fed like nothing could.
When I began cartooning I always regretted not being old enough to have had Richard Nixon to kick around. It would’ve been a gas but I’d still be where I am today, wallowing in my books and loving every minute of it. Bush was my Nixon and for brief moments I wish I still had him to kick around.
What do they say? “KAY SERAH SERAH” (that’s French for,"we’re all better off without him").
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