Friday, April 6, 2007

mr. natural rides again

Last night I went with Michele to see the R. Crumb exhibit at Yerba Buena. It's pretty comprehensive -- they even have the original comic books that Crumb and his brother concocted in the early '60s, as seen in the documentary about him.

I've never been too huge a fan of his content, especially the '60s and '70s stuff which feels dated and silly. But he certainly is an amazing artist. The detail in the backgrounds and the expressiveness of his characters are unbelievable. As for the content, Michele nailed it when she said, "He's all id." I wish I could be more like that in my writing. The thing that's amazing about him is he's not afraid to be repulsive or un-PC; he's comfortable being a freak.

They showed a video of him and all the other Zap cartoonists collaborating on a strip, and he looked so different from them all. They had beards and long hair and hippie clothes, whereas he was wearing a suit and a hat and big glasses and a massive goofy grin. It was the happiest I'd ever seen him; usually he's depicted as removed and sarcastic and anti-social, but here he was actually goofing off with S Clay Wilson and others.

Another cool thing Yerba Buena has is these cell phone set ups that you can dial into. You can listen to Crumb and his wife Aline talk about art or old-time San Francisco (before the hippie hordes and yuppies ruined it, according to him) or meatballs (a famous strip of his, inspired by LSD, like many of his early ones). Again, he sounded way less snarky than I imagined him. Maybe living in France will soften anyone. It's all that pate.

In other news, I just changed my IRA to a socially conscious mutual fund. This may be the most boring thing I've ever written about. But for some reason it made me very happy, like I was actually getting Wells Fargo to use their evil powers for good. Then again, I bet the fund isn't exactly devoid of evil companies, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Now for a step in the wrong direction. An ode to Crumb, I guess. Here's the second installment of "Grumpy Guy & Sunshine."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um, is it me or does "grumpy guy" kind of resemble you and "sunshine" resemble Russ? Does Pink need to be worried?

PopPhilosopher said...

hilarious! i hadn't even noticed that. well, next week's installment will dispel all these notions.

i think.

maybe i need to introduce a "pinky t" character.