Comic Strip Yappy
Diane, I don’t remember all these cartoons.
I have novel-sized reams of mail you sent
me during the nineties (in particular). Was
your intention to send me both Mary Worth
AND Apartment 3-G? The latter, what
ever the case, seems hilarious, looks
like it would be a total scream to
me (now - I certainly did not get
them at the time). Also, The Far Side
never grows old, apparently. I love the
one you sent of a young Captain Hook
who’s seeing a “job therapist” (I could
definitely use one of those, by the way)
because he’s torn between two potential
careers: pirating or massage therapy. The
look on the therapist’s face is priceless.
Or did I make that part up? Anyway,
one thing I didn’t make up were two
“Special Report” sidebars you must have
cut from something (From what, though?
Was there a magazine called “Special Report”
to which someone in your family – or, just as
likely, you – subscribed?) that were entitled
“Special Report 2” and “Special Report 3.”
They remind me of the pamphlets that folks
in and around Chinatown are always passing
out about the ... Falun Gong ... I think?
I’ve no recollection beyond that, at
the moment, because I’m reminded
of the man (I actually really miss him)
who stood on a dais made of a couple
of milk crates, I believe, on the corner
of Grant and Washington Streets (or
Grant and one of the cross-streets
nearby Washington Street) literally
all day long sing-saying “Happy Happy
Happy” over and over and over again.
Only it sounded more like “Appy Yappy
Yappy” to me. So I’d be sing-saying
the same, all the rest of a day when I
had the joy of running into him. It
gave me a very warm feeling, and I
felt reassured and okay, as in I’m gonna
be okay because Appy Yappy Yappy.
There really are a lot of these letters,
Diane. All in one envelope, for example,
there’s an 8 1/2" x 11" handwritten letter,
along with a Gil Thorpe strip, an always
seemingly worthless comic (to me) that
again, only now, as I read through your
letters and their various surprise enclos
ures, seem to be getting. Like, I GET
Gil Thorpe! How crazy is that?
And then there’s Mary Worth,
another soap opera strip with
only two or three frames a day,
like the soapy and oh-so-slow-
moving Dick Tracy, a strip I
actually read and read, but
never actually got, to be per-
fectly honest. Who knows why,
though, because even back then
I loved soap operas (I’d watch
Days of Our Lives and The Young
& the Restless – which starred
David Hasselhoff, at the time – with
my mom before I even started school.
I remember this!) I always felt in these
drawn-out dramas that there was
some sort of humor that I must surely
have been totally missing. And
there must have been. Because
you sent me strip after strip after
strip, along with your three- to seven-
paged incredibly engaging letters,
most all of which I took photographs of
before everything in my storage unit
went to auction. These are the things
that life is made of. Of which life is
made. Which make life. For which
I am beyond grateful.
