{"id":1873,"date":"2009-11-07T12:42:47","date_gmt":"2009-11-07T16:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=1873"},"modified":"2009-11-07T12:47:54","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T16:47:54","slug":"my-dinner-with-crumb-ii-posted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=1873","title":{"rendered":"‘My Dinner with Crumb’ II Posted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CrumbIIprev\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rob Ullman’s posted the second installment (the first is here<\/a>) of his “Traffic and Weather” comic strip documenting a recent bizarre happenstance in which we both wound up going out to dinner and drinks with a number of folks, including R.\u00a0 Crumb.\u00a0 We’d just finished hearing Crumb and Fran\u00e7oise Mouly speak about Genesis<\/em> in Richmond and were standing around in the lobby with Ed Sizemore<\/a> trying to get a few folks together for some drinks.\u00a0 Pretty much everyone Rob and\/or I knew, though, seemed to have somewhere else to be, so we parted ways and started heading for Rob’s house.\u00a0 Rob mentioned on the way home that Richmond writer\/comics scholar Tom De Haven said that he and a few folks (including his wife, pictured there in the middle)\u00a0 were going to a nearby hotel restaurant, so on a lark we decided to stop by there.<\/p>\n

According to that first strip, Rob was apparently aware that there was some possibility that Crumb and Fran\u00e7oise Mouly might be joining the group we were heading out to meet; I, on the other hand, just thought we’d be meeting Tom and maybe a few other Richmond comics folk.\u00a0 I was about as surprised seeing R. Crumb and Fran\u00e7oise Mouly show up at our table as I would have been if we’d been joined by Osama Bin Laden and J.D. Salinger.\u00a0 Like Rob, I didn’t talk to Crumb much at all–which is actually OK with me, since I can’t imagine what in the world I’d have to talk about<\/em> with Robert Crumb (and as depicted, there was some guy chewing his ear off the whole time anyway).\u00a0 I did, though, get a chance to talk with Kim Deitch and his wife Pamela.\u00a0 While Crumb is obviously the<\/em> underground comics guy historically-speaking, I’m actually a much bigger fan of–and am a lot more familiar with– Kim Deitch’s work, so hanging out with them was a real treat for me.\u00a0 I tried not to pester Kim about comics stuff overmuch, though, so we mainly talked about cats.<\/p>\n

I spoke a bit to Fran\u00e7oise Mouly as well toward the end of the evening.\u00a0 In a testament to my complete and utter lack of self-promotional business acumen, I talked to her mainly about my daughter’s love of Jeff Smith’s Little Mouse<\/em> children’s book, which is published by her TOON Books imprint, never mentioning that I’m a cartoonist myself.\u00a0\u00a0 It occurred to me, though, that being out of town in Richmond, VA may be just about the only time the art director of The New Yorker<\/em> can go out for a meal in peace with out a bunch of hard-up freelancers putting the pester on her for work.<\/p>\n

All in all it was a really fun trip to Richmond all around–from the talk, to hanging out with Rob and his wife and daughter, to the dinner with so many fun folks.\u00a0 Can I put “Had dinner with R. Crumb” on my resume?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob Ullman’s posted the second installment (the first is here) of his “Traffic and Weather” comic strip documenting a recent bizarre happenstance in which we both wound up going out to dinner and drinks with a number of folks, including R.\u00a0 Crumb.\u00a0 We’d just finished hearing Crumb and Fran\u00e7oise Mouly speak about Genesis in Richmond … <\/p>\n

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