When Is the Right Time To Retire a Comic Strip?

It’s always tough to know when to retire a strip.  If you use as your example Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side or Bloom County, the right amount seems to be somewhere between ten and fifteen years.

But if Peanuts had retired at that point, we’d have no Flying Ace or Woodstock or Peppermint Patty. In fact, Schulz’s most famous Sunday strip, the one with the characters lying on their backs identifying cloud formations, did not even come until the 10th year of the strip.

For me, the decision is a tough one.  I have to balance the freshness of Pearls with financial considerations, because after all, I’m only 42, and need to make money for a number of more years.

But the decision was made a whole lot easier for me last week, when I received this:

From: “BARR JAMES ALFRED”

Date: February 5, 2010 1:28:48 PM PST

To: unlisted-recipients:; (no To-header on input)

Subject: Notification of Bequest In Your Name

Notification of Bequest In Your Name

On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the Estate of Late Scott Kennedy ,I hereby attempt to reach you again. I wish to notify you that late Scott Kennedy made you a beneficiary to his will.He left the sum of thirty one Million five Hundred Thousand Dollars.($31,500,000.00 ) to you  in the codicil and last testament to his will.  This may sound strange and  unbelievable to you, but  it is real and true.

Late Scott Kennedy until his death was a very dedicated Christian who  loved to give out. His great philanthropy earned him numerous awards during  his life time, Late Scott Kennedy died at the age of 71 years.According  to him this money is to support your activities and  to help the poor and the needy.   Please You should fill the information below for more directives

1.Full Name

2.Telephone number,

3.Age

4.contact address/Country

5.occupation

6.identification

Yours In Service,

Barr.James Alfred (Esq)

At first, I questioned the email because I found it strange and unbelievable.  But he knew I would think that.  Look, he says:

“This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true.”

Then I started thinking, “But why would this Scott Kennedy guy leave me this money?”  But he explains that too.  See, it says Scott Kennedy was:

“…a very dedicated Christian who loved to give out.”

But then I was like,”Wait, wait, wait… how does Scott Kennedy know me?”  But he obviously does.  See, he says:

“According to him this money is to support your activities.”

See, he knows I have activities.  Which I do!  I like to sit on the beach and drink, and I want to do that for the rest of my life.  But that takes money.  Which now I have!

I know what you’re thinking.  There’s still the formality of sending him the information he wants.  But I’ve already done it!  And to be extra thorough, I threw in my social security number.

So when is the right time to quit a strip?

When Scott Kennedy dies.

Rest in peace, friend.

Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say Saints gonna win Super Bowl back in his book introduction in 2006?

Four years ago, in February, 2006, I wrote an introduction for my treasury, “Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My”, in which I discussed my inability to predict whether a given strip I write will be liked or not.  I added, “I could better predict the winner of the 2010 Super Bowl than I could the funniness factor of an unpublished Pearls strip.”

And then I added a footnote.  I’ll let you look at it yourself.   It’s at the bottom of the page.

I suppose there are a whole host of possible explanations for why I was able to predict what I predicted, from dumb luck to my knowledge of the game.  I prefer this one:

I’m a prophet.

So way to go, Saints.

I was with you all the way.

A Brief Video of How I Spend My Free Time

Just click HERE.

Shotgun Blues; Honeymoon of the Damned, Part Five

When you’re waiting in line in America, and your wife kicks a man in the back, you’ve got trouble.  In Greece, it’s called “being in line.”

So the man that Staci kicked did nothing.  He barely looked back at us.

It was tempting to start punching him in the back of the head, just to see how far we could push it, but our boat for Santorini arrived.

When we docked in Santorini, the boat was greeted by a massive swarm of people.  And I mean massive.  Think United Nations rice drop in Chad, but not as orderly.

Each person carried a placard.  And on each placard was a picture of the person’s house and a few words about how close it was to the beach.  We took the one that looked the closest to the beach.

We got in the man’s van.  It began to go uphill.  Up a long series of narrow switchbacks with no rails.

I don’t know who the person in Greece is that determines how wide you make the road on the side of a cliff, but apparently they decided it should be no wider than a Yugo.  God forbid someone is coming in the other direction, because you’re not gonna fit, and eventually you’ll be forced to draw straws to determine who pushes whose van into the Aegean.

I suppose that’s why they don’t have rails.  It makes pushing the other guy’s van into the Aegean that much harder.

But the Gods didn’t want us dead.  At least not via car accident.  So we got to the man’s house.  It was late at night.

I could not hear the shore.   Which is bad when you get a house that is supposed to be by the shore.

Either the Aegean was the only ocean in the world without waves, or we had been ripped off.

It was too late for a fight.  So we went to bed, ready for one good night of sleep.

Then we heard the shotguns.

Booming shotguns, each of which rattled the glass doors of our upstairs bedroom.

I looked out our window.  Three Greek men were drinking beer and shooting shotguns.

I didn’t remember them advertised on this guy’s placard.

I knew at this point I was going to die.  Not from these guys.  But from Staci, who was sitting up in bed.  She hadn’t talked to me since Italy, but at least now she was glaring at me, and that was progress.

When we got up in the morning, the owner of the house told us in his broken English that it was bird-hunting season and his house was in a field where they shot birds.

Staci wanted to kick him, but she had already kicked one Greek man that week, so it was my turn.  So I kicked him where it really hurts.  I told him we weren’t paying.

Before I tell you what he said, I should mention that I am Greek.  But growing up, I was the only kid in the family who didn’t have to go to Greek school and learn the language.  So I rarely understood what anyone on this trip was saying.  However, my wayward cousins had always been quick to teach me one thing:  every bit of Greek profanity one little Greek-American’s brain could hold.

So when I told the man we weren’t paying, his reply was the only time in Greece that I understood every word someone was saying.

He also let it be known he would not drive us back to the port.  And we could not use his mopeds.  So we packed our bags and walked.

And walked and walked and walked.

Until we got to a bus stop.  When the bus came, it was so filled that there were people on the roof.  I thought that only happened in India.  But no, it also happens on Stephan’s honeymoon.

Thus, when the door of the bus opened, there was no room.

So Staci made room.

She pushed the people down the center line of the bus so hard that I think one of them got shoved out the back window.  She was now Greek like the rest of us.

When we got to the beaches, we sat on the black sand and had Heinekens and gyros.

It was the only nice moment of the trip since London.

So I thought I’d push my luck.  I told Staci we should rent a kayak.

She shook her head.

So I rented the kayak myself.  And went out into the ocean.  And was amazed at how fast you could go in a kayak.

In my drunk mind, I was very fast with an oar.  Heck, I was more than fast.  I was magical.

And so Magical Me looked back at the shore and saw that I was hundreds of yards away.  Being pushed by a very fast current.

So instead of being magical, I was just lost at sea.

I wanted to see Staci’s face one last time.  But I was much too far away.

Which was probably good because if she saw that the husband that had engineered this fine honeymoon was now lost at sea, she’d surely celebrate with another Heineken.

A Day in the Life of a Cartoonist

Just click HERE to see.

Do You Do This Too?

The top of a Kleenex box is perforated.  You have to punch out the perforated part to get to the Kleenex.

When I do it, I form my hand so that it looks like the head of a snake and strike at it like I’m killing a mongoose.

I can’t be the only one.

When Kids’ Sports Stop Being About Positive Reinforcement, We All Lose

My twelve-year-old son’s basketball coach asked if I could help during practice by scrimmaging with the kids.  I was sitting in the bleachers at the time, but I did have on shorts and tennis shoes, so I said yes.

“Just stand there with your arms up and make them go around you,” he said, “I just want them to get a feel for playing against taller guys.”

So I stood there.  I’m 6′ 1″ tall, so it wasn’t hard to be a presence in the key.

That’s when a 4′ 6″ kid tried to make a layup around me.

I didn’t like his cockiness.

So I swatted the ball so hard it flew twenty feet out-of-bounds and hit the gym wall.

The coach stopped the practice.

“Thanks for your help,” he said, “You can go back to the bleachers if you want.”

I walked back to the bleachers.

“Way to go,” said the cocky kid on my way past him, “You can stuff a kid two feet shorter than you.”

But the difference wasn’t two feet.   It was 1′ 7″.  So in addition to being cocky, he was a big-time exaggerator.

When I got back to the bleachers, some of the parents stared at me, as though I had done something wrong.  No high-fives.  Not even a “way to go.”  That was a surprise because I thought childrens’ sports was all about positive reinforcement, and it really was a great block.

But I didn’t say anything.  Especially not to the one dad who looked like he was taking pictures.  I want to stay on his good side because I’m hoping he got a shot of me packing that kid’s shot.

I’d like to make it my screen-saver.

No Boat; Honeymoon of the Damned, Part Four

It is the summer of 1993.  I am in Athens on my honeymoon with my lovely bride.

Who is crying in a travel agency.

She is crying because she has been trying to get us two flights home so we can cut our honeymoon short.  But she has just found out that changing the flights costs a lot of money.  Which we don’t have.

So we are stuck in Greece.

Tip No. 14 About Honeymoons:   It is  bad when they feel like hostage situations.

So I call an audible.  I tell her we’re going to Santorini.  It’s got beaches, beer and gyros.

She agrees.  Well, she doesn’t say no.  Mostly because she can’t hear me over all that crying.

So I take advantage of the situation by buying us two boat tickets to Santorini.  And they’re cheap.

How cheap?

So cheap the boat doesn’t show.

Travel Tip No. 22:   Boat trips are harder without the boat.

So we are sitting at the port of Piraeus and we are waiting for a boat.  Hours pass.  It is hot.

Staci sees a Greek man in a sailor outfit.  He is smoking a cigarette.  Staci approaches him, and in her best uptight Americanese, says this:

“Excuse me, but we were supposed to be on the 10 a.m. boat to Santorini, and it’s 1:05  now and we’re wondering what time the boat will be here because we would like to get to Santorini as soon possible.”

The man turns his back, takes one last drag on his stubby cigarette and tosses it in the sea.  Then he turns back to face her.

“No boat,” he says.

It is poetic, really.

‘Cause what else do you need to know?

There’s no boat.  You can “blah blah blah” all afternoon, but the situation is this:

There’s no boat.

I come to realize that it’s really the answer for almost any question you have in your unhappy life.

No boat.

I’d say it’s almost existentialist, if I knew what existentialist meant.

So we sat and waited.  And over the succeeding hours many Greek people showed up at the dock, which told us that at least some boat would be showing up and it would be going somewhere.  Which was better than here.

But we had a problem.

Despite our being the first people at the dock, there were now some people trying to stand between us and the edge of the water.  And here is where I will give you a travel tip straight from the good people of Mediterranean Europe about Americans and their love of orderly lines :

We mock your orderly lines.

In fact, if you have extra time, look up “line” in a Greek dictionary.  I did.  Here is a loose translation:

Place where big group of people shove each other.

And that, my friends, was all that my crying American bride needed.  Because now she was a proverbial camel.  And someone was about to put one straw too many on her proverbial back.

And that someone was a Greek man in an undershirt.

Who made the mistake of cutting right in front of her.

Causing her to do what any reasonable American tourist would do in that situation.

She kicked him in the back.

Oh, it’s on, my Greek friend.  It’s on.

Writing the Strip Can Be Hazardous to Your Social Life

Sometimes when I write the strip, I unconsciously mouth the words the characters are saying and make some of their facial expressions.

Yesterday, I wrote the strip in a coffee shop I had never been to before in St. Helena, California, which is in Napa Valley.

In one of the strips I wrote, Goat grimaces at Rat, showing all of his clenched teeth.

As I was writing it, I lifted my head from the page and just happened to catch the eye of the woman at the table directly in front of me, who smiled and started to say, “Hi, how are you?”

But at the moment she spoke, I was grimacing so hard I flashed her every single one of my teeth.  Like an insane man-dog ready to bound over the table.

She moved tables.

On the Transitory Nature of Art

Yesterday, I bought 10 Vitamin Waters and a bunch of Power Bars from the grocery store.

Rather than casually tossing them on the checkout conveyor belt like everyone else does, I thought I’d do something special.

So I arranged the 10 Vitamin Waters in a circle.

Then I layed Power Bars atop them, each spanning from the top of one bottle to the next.

Now it was no longer a bunch of random groceries.

It was Stonehenge.

When the grocery store clerk saw it, she just stared at it.  Then she looked up at me.

“You mind if I break up your little sculpture here?”

I paused and lowered my head.

“If you must,” I said.