Dog, as a devil deified, lived as a god.
All posts by Bob Keller
A great digest of the best in editorial cartooning. Well organized, thoughtfull and entertaining. There’s a very intresting article that shows how many cartoonists came up with the same idea for the Mars lander….finding Osama on Mars. These guys know a good Idea when they steal it!
This is a doodle I did during a particularly agonizing corportate meeting last week. I like the whippy, immediate line quality, all energy and spontaneity. Seems like I do my best work when I’m doodling. This was kind of a downfall for me when I was drawing pictures for a living. I could do the nice loose stuff when I was scewing around but when someone hung a check and a deadline in front of me the icy fingers of chokedom would start clamping on my windpipe. Or as The Mountain would say, “It’s hard to draw (shoot-pass-kick-catch-dribble-hit) with your hands around your throat.” HARHARAR! He’s got a million of them! A lot of my professional work is much stiffer than I would like it to be. One of the worst drawings I ever did shows up every year in a newspaper ad. It’s an awful drawing of a guy spraying lawn chemicals. Just terrible. It’s run every spring now for about twenty years. I cringe everytime I see it.
That fearlessness of attack is why I admire Calvin and Hobbs so much. Bill Watterson can draw like a mutha. The stuff seems to be born on the paper. He is a master of the economic of line, creating the perfect gesture and expression with the fewest possible strokes. It takes years of practice. I don’t remember what cartoonist said it, but when asked how long it took him to do a drawing he replied, “30 seconds and 20 years.”
I just left in the note crashing into her forehead. “Regional” Regional what? There’s a word in front of it, but I can’t read it. Mostly when I take notes I can’t make any sense of them when I go back to read them. I used to be able to remember everything and didn’t need to take notes. Now I can’t remember anything and I don’t know how to take notes.
Stop, murder us not tonsured rumpots!
Last night, Princess Q walked past the entrance to my “office” and quipped, “Dad, can you say addicted?” This coming from the queen of AIM. It’s closing in on 3 am and here I am pumping out more narcissitic drivel. Judging by the details of my site tracker, my readers are no strangers to insomnia. But I have a confession to make. I’m on drugs. Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been under the influence. Prednisone. I’ve had Crohn’s disease now for over thirty years, but I won’t go into the shitty details. It’s a mild case, and when it flares up (stress will do it) I can usually knock it down with that wonder corticosteroid. Prednisone, like any other Faustian deal with the pharmacuetical devil, is a two edged sword. (honey get the blender, it’s time to mix some metaphores) It can erase my symptoms in a few hours and take my arthritic pain away with it. I feel fifteen years younger. I have way more energy than normal, I’ve eshewed my customary daily nap for more productive things. Well, blogging anyway. But on the other hand, you retain water, have a ravenous appetite, get agitated and jumpy, talk too loud and fast, and have problems sleeping. Not to mention the long term effects like bone loss and in males I think your dick falls off.
So the burst of energy that’s propelled my to keep this little celebration of myself going for three weeks now is fueled by drugs. I’m enjoying this exercise so much though, I’m really afraid that when I’m done tapering off the elixer, I’ll go back to my old lazy self, snoring away on the barcalounger instead of participating in this wildly entertaining ego circus. No! I shall persevere. I’ll overcome my natural lethargy. After all, I must think of my readers. Anyone? Hello?
Get Your Ya-Yas Out!
Earlier I wrote that I was going to explain the Ya-Yas. Of course they were named after the book by Rachel Wells but these Ya-Ya’s predate the book by at least a couple of decades. The first time I ever saw my wife she walked into a party at the Belvidere Museum¹, she was with the Ya-Ya’s. My calendar has a permanent repeating entry, “bec out” on Thursday nights. They call themselves Cookie, Higs and Swan and these girls know how to have fun. One is an escapee from a convent, one is a Wisconsin farm girl and the third is a small town Minnesota girl who grew up poor with an absent father and seven siblings. I don’t think guys do this. My pals and I don’t. For us if it didn’t involve killing something, competing in games, watching other people competing in games or fixing something, what’s the point. The thought of having a permanent night of the week reserved for hanging out is just too…well you know. We have a standing joke at our house. When my wife is telling me about her latest plans with her women friends, I put on a sad face and say, “I wish I had friends.” 
Not that the Ya-Yas just hang out. They go to plays and movies and restaurants, they are regular bon vivants. Sometimes when the work week has been tough they do just hang, often in a room in Hig’s house known as the Ya-Ya room. Alcohol consumption is often involved. Otherr times they paint a room or have a garage sale or plan a party. I suspect they spend some tme bitching about their husbands, although my wife denies it.
Beck is a great friend, I can tell when I drop into her work world that people really like her. I think sometimes I get jealous of that. Sometimes it seems like she gives more of a damn about her friends than her family. I know that’s not true, just old Mr. Insecure popping his ugly head up again, but what good’s being married if you can’t occasionally bitch about it? One of the bonuses of the Ya-Ya sisterhood for me is that I’ve become pals with the other husbands. We play poker and fish and camp together and when we all get together we laugh so hard it hurts!
1. The Belvedere Museum: The house on the Robert Street Hill in St. Paul that I was living in. It was literally a museum to kitch, a college dorm room on steroids. but that’s another story.
The youngest and I are off to see the Gophers. I don’t get to spend much time with her. She’s a social animal.
Gophers won 75-61, not quite as bad as Penn St. beat them, but I’m guessing Iowa wanted to beat the Gophers very badly. oooh, sportsgoddess look at this, the Lady Lions just squeeked past the Badgers by 1! The Hawkeyes starting point guard from last year, April Calhoun, is now a Gopher sitting out a year to play in her home state. We put an emabarrassing whipping on them here last year and they beat us in the Big 10 tournament last year. There is always bad blood between Iowa and Minnesota and this was by far the most intense game yet. Welcome to the Big 10!
Wierdly inconsistant reffing. They were drawing blood in the first half with no calls. At the beginning of the second half the Gophs were called for four quick fouls, which took them out of their intense pressure defense. They were behind in the second half for the first time ever. As usual they were awesome in crunch time. It was the largest crowd to see a women’s basketball game in Minnesota history.
I think Princess Q had a good time. We had some laughs, like when I bought a large tub of popcorn and immediately spilled it on the girl in front of me, dumped the whole damn thing on her. And when we couldn’t find our car in the parking ramp after the game. It’s fun to share traits like total lack of directional sense. The weather was wierd on the way home, above freezing, gray and damp. The kind of late afternoon you expect some zombie to come stalking out of the fog. We live next to a cemetery, I better not let my imagination get going.
Speaking of Awesome, I took the photo with my new camera. Our seats are in the second row of the balcony even with the opposite free throw line. I had the camera on continuous exposure and was just shooting away. I was able to crop the image down to a 5 x 7 of what you see. Incredible!
My normal routine in the morning is to microwave a cup of left over coffee to get me through while the fresh stuff brews. That’s what I did this morning but I forgot and when I went back up to the kitchen and poured a fresh cup the microwave was beeping at me. I guess I always was a two fisted drinker.
The Mountain Man and I are going to a seminar on Yellowstone fly fishing this morning. We are hoping to find new places and techniques for not catching fish. MM, his son and I drive out west every summer to leave deposits of wind knotted leader material in some of the most beautiful spots in the world. I would guess that the cost per pound of the trout we’ve caught must be about $2000. Yellowstone is great though, you can have an audience while you’re trying to untangle your line.
I am such a poseur. We showed up at the seminar and I was looking the part, fleece pullover, ball cap with modern fishy graphics, scuffed slip on shoes for the campsite. I was really flying the testosterone flag. I am a man. I fish. I can find my way around in the outdoors. Problem is I got lost in the strip mall that the fly shop was in. If these bonafide Mark Trail types could actually see me fumbling with a knot, or crashing a looped up ten foot cast with enough finesse to put down the hungriest trout, they’d get quite a bang out of it. The guy put on an hour and a half slide show covering the Gallatin River up into Yellowstone. The Madison, The Yellowstone, Slough Creek, the Lamar River and a few other drainages that I wasn’t familiar with. I’ve actually spent a lot of time in that area and I love to get out and fish, it’s as good an excuse as any to stand around in the middle of paradise. And maybe if I worked just a little harder at it I’d catch some fish and really get the bug. For now I’m fairly satisfied with sitting around camp, watching the river flow and going out to flog the water, pretending that I’m fishing.
It’s really all part of the romance I’ve had with the West since I was a kid. West Fargo was kind of the gateway to the West. Moorhead and even Fargo are on the edge of the East. In 1965, the Union Stockyards in West Fargo was cowboy country. It was a bustling place, my dad wore a cowboy hat to work and you heard that western twang, that accent that I love so much. Women who talk that way….wow. Barrel racers. And then after college Bill Benson and I went out to his native Idaho and experienced the summer of a thousand stories. I’ve tried to get out there as often as possible. Bill has made it now, he’s living out there, but he’s a real fly fisherman.
Bill Benson, if you’re reading this, feel free to refute
my assertion that I wasn’t a very good basketball player.
Eavesdrop:
Telephone conversation heard over the cube wall:
“Hello”
pause
“Really!”
pause
“Did she poop?”
I’m so excited! My digital camera should arrive today!
Gophers beat Northwestern 72-40.
They are only 600 tickets shy of selling out the Barn for the Iowa game on Sunday!
Let’s Talk About Me!
Brief biographical notes
I’m 54 years old.
I’ve been a recovering alcoholic for close to 19 years.
I’m a lousy speller with a short attention span.
I fly fish, but only because I think the clothes look cool.
I love the sport of basketball, although I never was much of a player.
I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on the Westside. I moved to Moorhead, Minnesota in 1954. Had nightmares about the High Bridge.
I attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
My father was a cattle buyer at the West Fargo Union Stockyards, My mother had, along with her sisters, an incredible sense of humor. My dad died in 1970 when I was 20. My mother died in 1992. They were in their forties when I was born. I have a brother and a sister, I am by several years the youngest. An afterthought or no thought at all. I suspect the latter. My Dad was a recovering alcoholic who quit before I was born. Was I a sobriety baby?
I have been a bartender, a tow boat hand, fought forest fires, two of which I started myself, driven a taxi, worked in a machine shop, been a block layers assistant, short order cook, taught art, guarded the rich, been an animator (OK in-betweener), an illustrator, graphic designer and now I’m the Poster Child for the Peter Principle. Yeah, he’s a pretty good artist, let’s make him a manager. OH YEAH!
I have a beautiful and talented wife and two beautiful and talented daughters.
I’m so tired!
Too much adrenalin pumping after getting home from tennis at 10:30. Stayed up and wrote until after midnight. Layed awake for awhile and then got horrendous cramps in my lower legs just above the ankles. It felt like my foot and calf muscles were trying to snap my shin bones. I got up and tried to walk them off without success. I actually got sick to my stomach from the pain. This seems to be happening more regularly as I get older. Any advice on what to do?
By the way The Old Pea Picker was Tennesse Ernie Ford. I got 0 answers.