Crash Talk

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Lately I've been depending on my good friend and talented colleague, Wayno, to help me with cartoons. My schedule has been a mess lately, as I've mentioned here previously, and without some writing help I'd be a basket case. CHNW and I swapped houses with some friends in Maui a few weeks back (which had been planned before I knew just how busy my schedule was going to be), then my daughter got married in Texas*, then I had a stand-up gig and a business meeting in Los Angeles. All told, I was home for just three days of the past four weeks. Fun and exciting, but grueling. By far, the worst thing about syndicated cartooning is having to work 365 days a year for years on end – over 25 for me so far.

Here are a couple of Wayno's gags from the past week. I like the Starbucks one because I don't like Starbuck's coffee – it tastes like burnt grill scrapings to me – but I drink it when there is nothing else available. I fully recognize the insanity of drinking something you hate just because it is all you can find, but the need for a strong, hot drink in the morning trumps my tastebud's preferences. I also suspect that any company as large as Starbuck's can't be doing the planet any favors, but I could be wrong about that. When it comes to corporations, I say, "guilty until proven innocent."

This next joke is an obvious pun which may have even been done before but I like the angle and the visual. "Crash," as an expression meaning "to sleep," probably came from the hardcore drug culture reference to coming down hard from a high. It amuses me that even mainstream America has embraced this word to mean sleeping in general. A middle-aged fundamentalist preacher and his wife visiting Branson, Missouri would think nothing of saying "we were so tired we went back to our hotel and crashed."

That's not to say that middle-aged fundamentalist preachers aren't using hardcore drugs, of course, but you get the idea.

*This photo was taken by a super talented photographer you can find here.