I’m still rooting around in my basement, moving my old papers from cardboard boxes into plastic boxes. I came across a manila envelope containing all the items that were on the bulletin board over my utility-room desk when we emigrated from Geneseo, NY, in 1978 — to Heidelberg, Germany, where I wrote White Light and Software in the next two years. I was primed for ignition.

In parsing this first image, you have to realize that, growing up in Kentucky, I saw that particular pair of phrases very frequently posted near narrow turns on our two-lane highways. So my drawing is what you might call satire. The mouse's neck is infinitely long, you understand, reaching clear up to heaven, and that's the null-and-void behind him/her.

For awhile there I was printing my own photos and then coloring on them with pencils. This is none other than Eddie Marritz.

This little collage goes back to my grad-school days, maybe 1970, when I was 24. That’s a photo of Albert Einstein looking very hip with his inventor pal Steinmetz. As for the caption — hey, surely by now, nearly 35 years later, the statute of limitations for crime-think has kicked in.

I loved drawing with Rapidograph pens, drawing pretty much at random, simply making gnarly curved lines that pleased me by their forms. And then I’d turn them into pictures of surreal scenes, adding extra lines, coloring and so on.

This picture came with an ad for a set of encyclopedias, I think. I always relished the vapidity of the people’s expressions. Like this is the first book they’ve ever seen in their life, and maybe the last one they’ll ever look at. Gosh!

And here’s a nice curvy-line picture of two dancers, a bit like La Goulue and Valentin le Desosse. In the upper left corner it says, “Do the Funky Chiken. It’s Seventies! Inter-Dimensional! Decadent! CUT HERE.”

Ah, the glorious 70s! A time before Reagan, even! And the whole wonderful world right “Outside My Window.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Rudy's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.