8 Cartoons to Make You Think & Laugh

And the Most Expensive Cup of Coffee in the Country

Aug 25, 2024

Bus pulls up to The Cloisters museum entrance. After all the students spill onto the sweltering hot street in front of the museum entrance, the teacher lets out a big sigh to the group and says, “I’m ready to go home.”

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck gettin’ dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity?
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city
All around, people lookin’ half dead
Walkin’ on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

Well, that’s all coming to an end now and soon you’ll be missing those days when your clothes stuck to you and the subway smelled like compost. Meet me in person and let’s talk about it. I will be doing a FREE panel in Milford, Pennsylvania on Friday, September 13, at 3pm in the Pike County Public Library (they know about this). I will be chatting, showing cartoons and sharing publishing advice on marketing your book, but feel free to go off topic during the Q & A and complain about anything you want. It’s all part of the Milford Readers & Writers Festival that weekend.

“How do you go about marketing your book? Today marketing IS, unfortunately, the biggest part of a book’s success. You can never do enough. It’s like walking into Flaming Ass All-You-Can-Eat buffet, you can’t eat everything, so pick what you like most…whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, X, Notes…whatever doesn’t give you food poisoning.”

Can you imagine a world without brakes? Every time you have to stop, you would have to make a quick decision as to what would be the softest impact? I can’t. So I was only happy to be having the brakes on my beloved Mini Cooper repaired.

It always starts off innocently enough at the dealership—I find a comfortable seat, near an electrical outlet. I wander over to their gourmet coffee-maker make myself what will always turn out to be the most expensive cup of coffee in the world.

Be clear, I love this dealership and I go there for the coffee. Vanilla latte. Sometimes French Vanilla. But also because I was told by another mechanic that the local garage was coming up with phantom repairs for my Mini. The FOX TV and Trump banners decorating his waiting room, didn’t help. But my Mini Cooper place has on The View with the sound off.

The first communication is very promising. I was literally promised this would all be taken care of in an hour or so and under $400. But my car is like an onion, the layers are removed, something new is found. The first trip the service manager made to the waiting area to speak to me was to break the news that other things were found wrong…the rotors. Well, let’s reach for those complimentary fruit bars out for the customers and get a coffee refill. One hour later another trip from the service people—the calibers were seized up. Forget the onion metaphor. My car repair experience is like therapy. The deeper we dive, the more we find wrong. Finally, I learn that the part needed is hard to find and being bought from another garage. We will all have to wait here for its delivery. We went from $400 to $1,200. It happens. I think the repair cost of all cars has gone up.

I sometimes get hired myself to fix books. I help others with the book’s design, editorial direction and marketing advice. In most cases they ignore the most crucial points, things like displaying their book cover out instead of spine out. Reminder, I’ll be doing a free panel on marketing all this on Sept. 13th and one of the things I’ll be discussing is the importance of providing the details to your events.

Part of putting out books is, ideally, the learning experience, assuring your next book will be better. Experimenting, exploring how to push the form. It was this way for me with cartoons. Now I only see that in stand-up, where they are not answering to anyone. Examples off the top of my head are Mkq Kaplan, Demetri Martin’s Deconstruct and Maria Branford.

Well, enough yapping and back to the fast I started. My therapist recommended I try a strict juice fast to address my self-image issues I am having about my recent weight gain. Just juice and one piece of fruit a day. It’s really a test to see if I can finally stick to something. So far I’ve been on it for one day but I skipped a day.

Finally, congratulations to an old, literally, Pratt Institute college classmate, designer Nick Chiechi, who won a Long Island logo contest, commemorating its 250th anniversary. His design firm is CS Design Works.

Basically, this is a pay-as-you-wish honor system and I appreciate anything you can give to help (and encourage) me to continue this newsletter as I really enjoy doing The Bob.

Overheard at a yard sale, a woman looking through a box of rude gourds states, “My daughter does interesting things with gourds.”