Hubris Comics

“Book”? Did you mean “Nook”?

Dec10

by Greg Cravens on December 10, 2011 at 8:23 am

I (and Jay Schiller) got a cartoon in ‘Best Editorial Cartoons Of The Year 2012 edition’ (which has 2011 cartoons in it, so it can’t come out until the end of the year, but nobody’s going to buy a book that says 2011 NEXT year, ’cause it’ll look like last year’s cartoons, which this is, but…. sigh, you get the idea)

So, if you’re in a book store… remember those? Big building, rows of bound paper thingies everywhere… yeah, those. If you’re there, find one of these:

Then you have my permission to scribble ‘Greg Cravens- Page 145’ really big inside the cover and move it to the shelf marked ‘Autographed Books’. And then buy the other copy they have. Then, you can look on page 145 and see this cartoon:

You may think this is a spoiler… “Oh, I’ve done seen that cartoon now, I don’t need to buy that book no more.” Ah, but the book is filled with HUNDREDS of editorial cartoons on all manner of subjects and with a wide ranging catalog of art styles and political leanings. My cartoon is just to whet your appetite. Imagine having all those cartoons you can scan (leaving the cartoonist’s name and copyright IN PLACE) and share with one or two of your best friends over the Emails on the InterNets. It’s the new version of what they had when I was a kid- when you’d go to the barber and there’d be bawdy cartoons that had been crudely lettered and quickly photocopied, handed around, and finally taped to the wall to collect a fur of dust. Everyone would get a chuckle over it for years until it disintegrated. The Internets Emails is like that! Only the crude lettering and poor quality photocopying has been replaced by high-tech digital theft. And they don’t last years. It’ll be interesting to see if the Internets can last years, what with all the Spammeners and Hackerers. Speaking of which, I’ve been mugged in England/Budapest/Nigeria. Can you wire me $1,600 real quick?

Anyhow, the book is full of stuff you’ll want to show like-minded people you know. And full of stuff that’ll anger you because of your politics. It rolls both ways, giving equal time to open-eyed people like you and me, and also to that other gaggle of people- the ignorant self-deluded, brainwashed tools.

If you’re REALLY Internets-minded, you’ll want to avoid the non-digital bookstores altogether and virtually go to PELICAN PUBLISHING for your copy of the book. I don’t think Pelican has embraced the Kindle and the NOOK, yet, but you never know. Feel free to check out their site. You’ll also discover that the PAST FORTY YEARS of ‘Best Editorial Cartoons Of The Year’ are still available. Buy one on a friend’s/fambly member’s birth year. Good gift.

And for anyone who trolls this site regularly, you’ll recall that I’ve put some MoreOnTV cartoons here before. Including the one that made the book. Look how interconnected the InterNets is.

└ Tags: Best Editorial Cartoons Of The Year, cartoon, comic, comic strip, cravens, Dead at 27, greg, Greg Cravens, Jay Schiller, MoreOnTV, Page 145, Pelican Publshing

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Sköböten

Dec06

by Greg Cravens on December 6, 2011 at 8:18 am

Posted In: Play Nice

So… when you’re out on your adventure trips, funny things are said, right? And then repeated, and they finally become sort of a running gag for the week or the weekend or whatever.

Once upon a time, buddy Dennis Rhodes heard the phrase “Let’s go boating” enough times while trying to get everyone up and moving one morning that he realized that we were no longer saying “Let’s go boating.”

We’d done what people have always done to language. We’d shortened it the same way “Worchestershire” is supposed to be pronounced “Wooster”, at least if you have an English accent.

Our whole crowd now said ” ‘Skoboten”. One word instead of the usual two words and a contraction of two more. Once the magical ‘Skoboten was said, people got up from their breakfasts or from the campfire or whatever, and put on their wet gear (I’m assuming it was cold, wet gear. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to be badgered into getting up and going boating, right?) and headed to the river with their whitewater boats.

And Dennis pointed out that it was a new word. Not only that, but it was a new word the way that Volkswagen ads used “Fahrfergnugen” or whatever the heck THAT word was. There were a few spoof Tshirts going around, of course, that made something less bizarre and usually more obscene out of “Farfehgnugen” or whatever the heck.

I still had some contacts within the screen printing community, so stickers were made. And, I think we did a number of hats. I sold a couple of hundred stickers to a couple of retailers, but that sort of thing fizzled when the original Volkswagen ads became ancient history. I probably still have a few of the hats. I never broke even on them, but that wasn’t the point. It was mighty fun.

We saw the stickers all over the place. We wore our hats. There were some even younger people that ripped off our sticker design but theirs was so bad no one cared. We were even spotted in one retail shop where the employees said, “Hey, you’re those Skoboaters!” I doubt the girl got the joke, but she knew we were the ones shouting “SKOBOTEN” at the put-ins, so we were Skoboaters. Cooooool.

So there you go. Hats off to Dennis Rhodes, who probably got a dozen stickers for his brilliant idea. I got a pile of stickers and went a little money in the hole, but we had us some fun.

Wonder what the kids are yelling now at the put-in. Probably something less bizarre and more obscene.

└ Tags: cravens, Dennis Rhodes, greg, Greg Cravens, hats, kayak, outdoor, outdoors, outside, paddle, River, stickers, store, Tribe, whitewater

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Grand Canyon Diary- Part 4

Dec03

by Greg Cravens on December 3, 2011 at 6:40 am

Posted In: Lies Around The Campfire

“It’s difficult to know what to bung in when beginning a story”

P.G. Wodehouse

When packing, you naturally come up with some questions, especially when packing for something people keep wanting to call “Once In A Lifetime”. For one thing, how much personal grooming equipment should you bring? For men, the answer might be “Not much.” If, however, there is even one woman on the trip, though, the dynamics take on an altogether more hygienic tone. You might not be in such a hurry to start a ‘whose nose hairs can become the most unruly in two weeks’ competition. Things like that just aren’t as amusing if one person “just doesn’t get it.” or “Throws up in her mouth when looking at you”. You might think that women could be included in the competition by letting them substitute her armpit hair or leg hair or whatever in place of nose hair.

If you are the sort of person who thinks this might work, you are likely also the sort of person who is baffled by his own serial divorces.

Packing for an extended river trip is tricky. Packing for an extended river trip in the Grand Canyon is made trickier by several details: You’re paddling on heart-stoppingly cold water. You’re paddling in the middle of one burning hot sonofabitch of a desert. That doesn’t even make sense, and yet you have to give it a shot.

In fact, you have no idea what you’re packing for. I, for one, had never done anything like this before, and what was necessary and what was frivolous was anyone’s guess. I try to personalize the generic list by guessing where my own failings will rise up to bite me… I should pack my vitamins, my glucosamine, lots and lots of antacids, more sunscreen than others might want. Heart medicine. That might grow in importance the three weeks I’m out of town.

Then I have to decide WHERE these things get packed. Where do they have to be for the drive there? Where will they have to be in camps? Where on the river? I have no idea, and therefore, must make guesses and pack with a broad latitude for moving things around, or as is a regular thing on my short trips- doing without at the most awkward times.

Fred's truck, Mike, Jason, Me, and a lot of stuff.

I can’t say that I was completely in the dark about what to pack. Along with the timetable for payments, we made lists based on Fred and Kathy’s advice. The list was the sorts of things that we needed- big floppy edged hats, sunblock, waterproof liquid bandage (superglue), aspirin, waterproof duffle bags… you get the idea. We’d gotten all that info at the meeting wherein we discussed the trip and handed off the first of three checks each to David LeMay- the totally lucky guy to whom we all now owe serious Karmic debt. The trip wasn’t going to be horrifically expensive, as far as the fees and food were concerned, but the total was broken down into three payments. We all quietly feared that someone would miss a payment somewhere, a deadline wouldn’t be met and the whole thing would fall apart.

There would be a second meeting, we were told, where we would have to carefully watch a 36 minute Park Service video about how to behave on the river, and we’d need to deliver another check. And we’d need to start packing.

Speaking of packing, this might be a good time to reinforce an important idea: The reason that I was brought along. Entertainment. I’m not kidding. You pack what you need. It will be pointed out, rather indelicately, that if some of us were smarter we would have packed along a member of the opposite sex. In fact, the way it was put was: “You want a woman, you gotta bring ‘er with ya.”

I’m not saying I was brought along to be someone’s party partner. I wasn’t brought for any vulgar reason.

I think I was brought along because there was no television in the canyon.

└ Tags: adventure, camp, camping, David, Diary, Fred, Grand Canyon, greg, Jason, Kathy, kayak, Kelley, LeMay, Mike, outdoor, outdoors, outside, paddle, park, River, rock, Salomon, whitewater, Womack

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DMR Sidekick 2

Dec01

by Greg Cravens on December 1, 2011 at 6:30 am

Posted In: Talk About Toys

As usual, I seem to be writing a product review for a product that’s no longer in production.

In fact, I’m writing a lament for a dear friend. My DMR Sidekick 2.

There are different kinds of bicycles for different kinds of people. Some of my friends, for example, like to ride on really expensive road bikes with ultra lightweight frames and tires so skinny that you measure your contact with the earth in millimeters. Some people like good, solid old beaters. Some people like true cruisers which look like art these days. Some people like Mountain Bikes.

Finding the perfect bike for you means deciding what you want to do with it and riding something that isn’t perfect so you can catch the wishes coming off your lips. “Man, I wish my knees weren’t coming up so high. Man, I wish I was on a road with this thing. Man, I wish the brakes worked.” That sort of thing.

So. I was riding an old Trek mountain bike that I bought from a buddy for a hundred bucks. It was a nice, sturdy machine, but it wasn’t right somehow. Didn’t feel substantial. I felt wonky on it. I also ride an old BMX bike I still have from when I was a kid (People who know me are now scratching their heads. “I thought that imbecile was still a kid” some think. Others are thinking “Kid? That imbecile hasn’t been a kid in thirty years.” Both are correct, somehow. I blame the language, or the lack of clever use of it these days)

So, with those two bikes, I learned that I like to ride on dirt. What’s the next step? Buy a bike built to rule the dirt.

Cannondale SuperV 400. Wooooooo. More than I’d ever sunk on a bike before. Beefy. Tough. And the first time the trail turned to sand, I thought I pulled something.

In fact, the Cannondale is a great bike, just not for around here, and not the way I ride. It’s built for the way I wish I ride. It’s built for doing YouTube style drops off of big junk.

So, it’s a little heavy but you could say ‘substantial’, and it’s a little overbuilt but you could say ‘hardily engineered.’ You’d say that stuff if you were writing sales copy, but as is seen by the fact that I still own a 1979 BMX bike that was bought new for me by my daddy… I don’t sell bikes much.

Then one day, I got a commission. I was to paint a mural at a bike shop. I’ve put photos of it up on this site.

It may be stupid to basically hand money back to the people who just paid you, but you have to understand- this was a bike shop! I love the look and feel of bicycles… on dirt. I coveted a new bike, and I had the whole time I was working on the mural to ask questions… to pin down just what I wanted.

And I did. I got the perfect bike- for me. It was the DMR Sidekick 2.

It’s a trials bike- the sort of thing that Ryan Leech jumps up onto things with. That means it’s the size of a mountain bike but it has the architecture of a BMX bike. You could, and I did, grab the hydraulic disc brake up front and balance on the front tire. (I also flew right over the front tire a few time, and I also did that silly thing where you ALMOST balance and just step gracelessly off the bike over the handlebars. Oh, the joy in my heart.)

It was great for playing around. Hopping side-wise over whatever. Jumping front-wise over whatever. It had two chainrings in the front and nine gears in the back, so you could get where you were going before you geared it for horsing around and practicing trackstands.

So- dirt, distance, tricks and fun. The perfect bike… not for guys what ride a hundred miles of pavement, but for me the perfect bike. I was in love.

Aaaand then I went to unlock the neighborhood church for the cubscouts one Sunday. In the time it took to say the pledge of allegiance and come back to the door of the church, my love was gone. The police say it’s been too long now and it’s likely changed hands, so prosecution for the theft is no longer possible and blah blah blah.

So for a few years that felt like months, I pinched myself thinking I must be dreaming to have gotten into my possession such a fine thing. It took a month up a scaffold and many hours away from my family, but it was worth it. And now for a month that’s felt like years, I’ve been without it.

As for the low-life, sonofabitch, good-for-nothing, %$#wipe, low-rent, &%$#wad, nobody &%#$heap bastard that took my bike and obviously wasn’t going to even understand what he had under him other than thinking the seat was awfully low, well, he can die. Die a long, painful, slow, ugly, mean death. Him and his dog. I hope his house burns with all his best friends inside. I don’t suppose his family will hear about it because they’ve likely ignored and laughed at him behind his back for years because he’s been a useless waste of breath upon the earth. I hope he gets both intestinal parasites and skin disease that eat his bowels and his flesh in a grisly horrifying manner that leads to his lonely, pathetic demise. In a greasy puddle behind a dumpster. And if you think that sounds harsh on my part, I don’t care.

I just want my bike back. It was perfect, and it was mine. The thought of it rusting somewhere in the hands of a thief hurts every day.

└ Tags: bicycle. ride, bike, cravens, dirt, DMR, fat tire, greg, hydraulic disc brake, sidekick 2, trail, trial, trials

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And Just Like That… It’s Winter

Nov29

by Jeff Cravens on November 29, 2011 at 5:50 am

Posted In: Lies Around The Campfire

Jeff Outdoors says:

Yesterday we had the first snow fall of the year.

I got the Bronco plow-truck out and none of the electrics worked on the plow. The standard “kick it really hard” method didn’t work, so with the sun setting, I loaded the kids up and drove them to Charlie-The-Snow-Plow-Guy’s Shop.

Charlie’s shop is a large garage full of trucks, snow plow bits, tools, trash, and racks upon racks of metal, rubber, and plastic junk. All of it is covered in a layer of welding residue and dust (including the very old dog, Jake).

Charlie’s son, who is a pair of legs sticking out from under a Chevy 2500, also works in the shop.

While Charlie ran a full diagnostic, the legs twisted or slid around occasionally, and I heard a muffled exclamation float up from the engine compartment of the Chevy. Charlie and his son work around the clock when the first snow hits, because that’s when people like me get in their plow trucks and find out they don’t work.

So, by 6PM, Charlie found the blown-out relay switch on my Bronco. Ford stopped using these relays back in the mid 80’s, but Charlie had a box of them (under an unusually thick layer of welding residue and dust) and had me out and plowing in no time.

For all his time and skill, Charlie hit me with the bill…. $30. I now understand why Charlie can’t afford to have someone clean his shop.

See More Of Jeff Outdoors’ blog HERE.