I use the term "warped" in the most complimentary way possible, since GPK exposure at an impressionable age apparently generated cartoonists with appealingly perverse comedic outlooks as copiously in its day as did exposure to the Kurtzman-era Mad magazine a generation earlier.

If you want to see what the creative upshot has been for Jeaux, pay a visit to his Jeauxland website or watch him chat about the orphaned pirate spawns in his Peg-Leg Orphanage. But Jeaux’s charming work is not really the topic of the day. Instead, let me clear something up about me and those Garbage Pail mutants spawned by Topps Chewing Gum.

In his first email Jeaux complimented me for being a card-carrying contributor to the GPK phenomenon. He is far from the first to do so, and I am not above basking occasionally in the reflected glory that comes with that history. But I really should put this matter into perspective once and for all.

My involvement in the GPK scene was truly marginal and brief. Other cool cartoonists (including my friend and fellow underground comix veteran Jay Lynch) also had a hand in the GPK series before it ended. They did themselves proud and we all had fun.

But that being said, the true glory for GPK illustrations should rightly and almost exclusively go to John Pound, whose brilliant paintings (as exemplified by the sample card on the left below) set the standard for the series and merit comparison to the hilarious work that Will Elder did with Kurtzman in their best collaborations.

This is not to denigrate my own drawings. They are perfectly good Howard Cruse drawings that I don’t at all disown. I’m especially fond of the certificate border that I drew for these cards — inspired as it obviously is by the manic Kurtzman borders that wrapped around the first few issues of Mad after it metamorphosed from comic book to magazine.

But let’s face it, I’ve never pretended to have the painting chops called for if you’re going to play in John Pound’s playground.

Still, I was happy to have the gig, which was the last of a string of cartooning assignments that came my way during the early days of my career, beginning shortly after I moved from Birmingham to New York City.

Maybe I’ll talk about some of those other Topps jobs (including my stint drawing Bazooka Joe comic strips) in some future installment of this blog.

Eddie is used to dealing with me when I’m in this state. Indeed, he had to deal with it for five uninterrupted months back in 1991 when I was obsessed with wrestling a working draft of Stuck Rubber Baby to the mat so I could begin to draw the damned thing. By now my hubby knows that resistance is futile and so deals with my mental absences philosophically. I salute his forebearance. It has made our marriage possible.

Frustratingly, the state of mind I’ve described doesn’t lend itself to communicating entertainingly with my blog readers — particularly when other tasks insist on piling into the mix. Last night, for example, I was suddenly asked to email print-quality versions of thirty images from my web site to Spain, where my web feature "The Long and Winding Stuck Rubber Road" is being translated for a comics magazine as promotion for the newly-published Spanish translation of SRB. I was happy to comply, since helping to promote my books is a necessary part of my job description, but it didn’t help me make progress on the two book-cover drawings I’m supposed to turn in to Beacon Press soon. At night I’m too tired to write, so making progress on those assignments was how I was originally intending to spend yesterday evening. Then Spain called.

And this was the week when I could no longer postpone composing an official syllabus for my MCLA cartooning class, whose first edition will convene only two-and-a-half weeks from now. Think it’s easy to compose syllabi for college courses? Try it sometime.

Conveniently, I’ve been summoned for jury duty the week my class debuts. Will I be able to make it from the Pittsfield courthouse to the MCLA campus in time to greet my new students at 5 PM? What would life be without a little suspense occasionally?

Meanwhile, I’ve gotta nail down a script for a new Mark episode. (No, the series isn’t online yet; I’ll let you know when that happens.) Writing the script should be a simple matter because I already know exactly what’s going to happen in the comic strip. Yet I’ve learned from experience that I will nevertheless have to spend valuable time patiently massaging my brain while pacing about the house in a fog in order to bring my character’s exact words into focus.

Later, when my focus shifts from writing to drawing, I’ll become more human and blog-enabled again.

At least I usually do.

It’s always useful to me, when I take on a teaching gig, to scope out in advance the environment where I’ll be doing the teaching. It mades the coming challenge feel more real if I can picture myself in the actual space, standing before imagined versions of the students who will soon be occupying the room’s chairs, expecting me to impart something reasonably interesting that they can wrap their inquiring minds around.

As you can see from the snapshot above, I’m pretty darned good at imagining myself when I set my mind to it. In fact, I can sometimes lose track of which is the me who is doing the imagining and which is the one being imagined.

One of us came home afterwards and resumed everyday life, but I’m not 100% sure that it was the right one.

When our dog Foxy’s suffering from cancer had become too severe to permit further delay, our 1996 Plymouth Neon transported the three of us at from Queens to the animal hospital in Manhattan at 3 AM for what we knew would be Foxy’s last car ride.

After Eddie’s and my move to Massachusetts the red Neon dutifully transported us back and forth many a time between our new digs in North Adams and Eddie’s sister’s home in New York City. In other words, she has served us well.

But over time her breakdowns became more frequent and the repair bills more daunting. The broken air conditioning and recalcitrant radio became the least of her ailments. Smoke poured unexpectedly out of inappropriate orifices, forcing inconvenient changes of travel plans. Persistent noises from somewhere in the Neon’s bowels spelled trouble, we knew. We’ve wanted to believe otherwise, but in our hearts we’ve known for a while that she was fast approaching the end of life’s roadway.

Today — stripped down to her barest automotive essentials and decorated with garish war paint that left her all but unrecognizable (but for the one tiny patch of her original paint job that could be discerned if you squinted hard at her roof) — she met her brutal yet somehow noble demise as a gladiator at the Adams Aggie Fair Demolition Derby.

She was Combatant #49. A jovial fellow named Travis was at her wheel. Travis is a mechanic at North Adams Tire & Service, the garage where, after too many repair jobs to remember, we were finally advised, "For god’s sake don’t waste any more money on this pile of junk!" Or words to that effect.

It’s not that easy to know how to dispose of a dead car around these parts, burial being beyond our means and cremation an environmental no-no. Fortunately Travis’s boss Dan, having grown VERY familiar with our Neon during the long arc of its decline, passed on word to us that his employee would be happy to take the heap off our hands. We learned as we signed the bill of sale in July that Travis was itching to strip down and repaint our mild-mannered Neon in preparation for the August 6 Aggie Fair competition.

Joining in the glorious clashing of willful, doomed chassis before a cheering crowd was to be our car’s last and greatest adventure.

Think of such destructo spectacles as a kind of anti-hospice for cars. With death being inevitable, let’s inflict as much pain as possible on the patient before the soul is released.

And as our society embraces ever higher degrees of mayhem for its amusement value, perhaps we’ll adopt the Demolition Derby model as our preferred form of euthenasia once our loved ones are pronounced terminal.

Let’s herd big flocks of our fragile grandmas and grandpas into arenas surrounded by bleachers so that we can all cheer as the old folks summon their last measures of energy to crash into one another until the last bone is broken and all but one lie dead on the playing field, their souls roaring up to heaven as if powered by petroleum.

Death won’t be painless but it will be quick, and quick isn’t chopped liver when your exit is near. Meanwhile, the last patient left breathing will win a prize: a nice closing note that should make everyone feel warm.

Our Neon didn’t win the prize today, but she did make it into the final round. Eddie was on hand to represent the family during her death throes.

I couldn’t go; I had to stay home and draw comic strips. But Eddie took snapshots.

The new steps are blessedly sturdy, serviceable, up-to-code, and each riser is actually the same height as the ones above and below it,which is a major improvement over their stumble-prone crumbly-concrete predecessors.

The bank on each side has been re-seeded and will, we’ve been assured, someday be green again.