TWO SAXOPHONES
1993, I was visiting NY. See Hear was the premiere zine-shop in the heart of Manhattan. I had a stack of my very first, hand-copied, hand-stapled, Too Much Coffee Man mini-comics. Two shop-keeps were chatting about the show they’d been at the night before, “Can you believe he played two saxophones at the same time?”
“Tweeeeet toot-toot-be-boop-be-boop-boop. So cool!” They went on and on. I waited. And I waited. Finally one looked at my zines, and said ’Nah.’
For years I told that story. I used the experience as an example of why I hate hipsters. The double-sax-man was a symbol of style over content, gimmickry over quality, coolness over sincerity. I hated him. I hated them.
Around 2018, jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter played at the Ivy Room with drummer Scott Amendola, an East Bay dive bar. I’m no Jazz aficionado, but it was one of the best concerts I’ve been to. It was intimate, genuine, and spontaneous virtuosity. The humor surprised me as much as anything. They’d riff and laugh and the joy was contagious. Half into the show, the drummer walked over and picked up a saxophone, played a little. Then he picked up a second sax. He played two saxes at once. What the hell? Could it be the same guy I’d heard about? After the show, over a beer, I asked if he played in New York in the 90’s. Yep. What are the odds? I didn’t tell him that I’d been complaining about him for 20 years. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong. I do wonder what’s happened to those two shopkeeps.
WHAT I’M WORKING ON (Games We Played)
Having 3 or 4 projects running at the same time is a great way to get things done. If you hit a block on one, you can switch gears and work on another one. Usually one of them hooks with a publisher and the deadline makes you finish it. I have a slew of ideas I’m working on. My dad died a few years ago. I figured I’d do some cartoons about him. It was like pulling the thread on a sweater. The more I wrote the more memories unraveled onto the paper. Simply thinking about playing Four Square in the 1970’s made me remember Spoons, Dodge Ball, Smear the Queer and instead of Cops and Robbers we played FBI and SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army). A lot of what we did seemed normal at the time. In retrospect, it’s weird. I’m working to draw up memories of seeing Jim Jones (no Kool-Aid jokes, please), having a dad at a commune, and having the Black Panther Huey Newton as a landlord. With any luck I’ll find a place to serialize pages as I draw them and I’ll have a finished book sometime next year.
On another front, I’m posting a new daily cartoon on GoComics. I have an enormous backlog that I can slowly work through. Right now I’m republishing the cartoons I drew for print edition of the Onion. I called them Postage Stamp Funnies because I had a 1”x3” space - slightly larger than a postage stamp. I liked this cartoon because of the odd mental loop-the-loop it creates. You read ‘Aaarg!’ and assume the guy is yelling it. Then see that it’s going through his body, which is why he’s saying it except he’s not saying it but he must be saying ‘Aaarg!’ because the balloon saying ‘Aaarg!’ is going through his body. Then there’s an odd perpetual tension of trying to see the balloon as something physical rather than a symbol of speech.
You can check out the Onion run (except the dirty ones), and subscribe for free, here:
https://www.gocomics.com/toomuchcoffeeman
I really enjoyed this - the personal stories are so much more interesting than much of the "here's my latest cartoon in such and such magazine." I'll cheap out by not upgrading (sorry) but thanks for posting this.
I enjoyed the snippet. Thank you