Let The Good Times Roll

I have the song stuck in my head, so I made it the title.

To my great delight and honor, Substack has deemed my little web page a “bestseller”. I am delighted, because “bestseller” goes along with other great honorifics like “Best In Show”, “Best Dressed” and “Best Pizza In Chicago”. I am honored because people like the comic and possibly me.

However (and that’s the dreaded however followed by a comma), I am now described as having “hundreds” of paid subscribers and I cannot find evidence of this. I think I poked my head over one hundred and then went back down. Either way, a hundred and one is not hundreds. Having worked in the advertising world I certainly understand the hyperbole, but it concerns me. I do a lot of schtick about being a poor cartoonist and it might be giving a false impression

Shouldn't a best seller be able to, I don’t know, afford a car payment? Take a vacation? Buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks without feeling like he’s throwing money out the window? Ok, skip that last one. I don’t care how much money I have, I’ll never be able to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks without feeling like I’m throwing money out the window. It’s a cup of coffee for god’s sake, not a can of Folgers.

So I was feeling weird being called a bestseller, but I remember Dave Barry joking about how little you have to sell to be a New York Times Bestseller. A quick search tells me it’s between 5,000 and 10,000 copies of a book in a single week. Wow. I forgot that nobody reads. If only 5,000 people went to a movie during a one week period nobody would consider it a hit. They wouldn’t even consider it a documentary about a sitting First Lady. That’s pretty bad. Thanks, Dave. I feel both better and worse.

Maybe I just need to learn how to handle success. Say “thank you” and shut up, you idiot! Ok, here we go: Thank you.

Well, I was able to do half of that. I got the thank you part down. No problem. I’ve never been able to shut up. I’ll work on it.

I’m practicing shutting up right now. Nothing to say. Silence.

Pure silence.

So boring.

Maybe I’ll put on The Cars.

This was said in real life and it went into my notes, where it sat far too long. Eventually, I put it into the comic and wished I’d done it sooner because it resonated with people.

Any time I’m asked if I enjoy working some place by an applicant I feel like I’m a hostage giving very measured answers. I don’t know why. It’s just a quirk of mine. I’ve learned to lean into it and stiffen up, looking left to right as I answer, as if I’m being watched and afraid of saying too much. Fortunately, applicants recognize my ruse and it’s just a bit of humor before an interview. I hope.

This would’ve been a bland one for me if I didn’t like that line about rattlesnakes so much. A line like that is usually believable when it’s said with a Southern accent.

The CEO is making far too much money to be caught dead in the place he’s in charge of unless he’s making a promotional video. Yes, I know, the profit margins on the grocery side are very low. People keep telling me that. Have you seen the CEO’s house? That’s a nice profit.

The top salesman at a company I did the advertising for would always ask me if I had any exciting weekend plans. I think that was his opening conversational line for every occasion, including funerals. I would have to inform him, repeatedly, that I’ve never planned a weekend in my life.

We went five strips without Tabby, so here she is. The setting that is out of touch with the masses is no longer a yacht. It is now a ballroom.

There’s something uplifting about seeing someone tell another that they are very uplifting and I attempted to capture that effect.

Basically my schedule without the goal of getting my Masters.

Shelby’s fate was to quit and never be seen again. I stopped myself from making that happen. Maybe I should’ve let her go.

This sat in my notes for well over a year. I was thinking of my father and the Mark Twain line “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Sadly, my father did not live long enough for me to tell him that he was right about so many things, but he’s been with me every day. His molecules are just doing something else. Working that into a retail oriented comic was risky, but it was surprisingly well-received.