I loved my years of living on Capital Hill in Washington, D.C. I was your typical hippie-turned-yuppie. Still thought like a sixties, guy, dressed like an eighties one. I liked my paycheck more than a bag of pot or the Beatles White Album.
Several friends called me one day with an invitation to see a Gary Larson Far Side exhibit at the Smithsonian. I didn't want to go. I was tired after a long day's work. They talked me into it.
Don't misunderstand why I wanted to stay home, given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I loved and still love The Far Side, but at the end of the day I was usually exhausted and the though that went through my head was, "Why wait in a long line for an exhibit, when I can simply open the Post or Times any day of the week and there's The Far Side.
The girls insisted I go with them. So I did. They picked me up and we were on our way. The lines, though long, moved quickly and the exhibit was beyond my wildest imagination. The panel cartoons had been blown up onto 5 or 6 foot poster boards and were hanging from the ceiling. Many of them were my Far Sides of all time.
I was like a little kid in a candy store running from one cartoon to the next. I had seen almost all of them in the Washington Post. Suddenly I was a kid again and a happy camper.
Something inside me started going wrong. My nervers were twitching and I had trouble catching my breath. Could it have been a heart attack? I went home that night and cried, not knowing why at first.
I tossed and turned most the night, still wondering why I felt so sad. Then it hit me. When I had been a college student, in Dallas, at about age nineteen, I wrote close to a thousand offbeat single panel cartoons (this was in 1974), many of them in a similar spirit to The Far Side.
Rule number one: Never show your parents any lofty dreams no matter what your age, especially if they are full-blown business professionals. MY mom hated them and insisted my dong my homewwork first and then deciding. I did my homework but had already decided. I just didn't know how or when, only that it would somebady happen
Publishing and newspaper syndication are a difficult business for cartoonists. Nedles to say, most do not get published.
If anyone thinks art is not a powerful medium, think again. It cultipated me from obscurity to heavy Interet saturation.
The motto of this story is "build it and they will come"; though that was not my favorite Kevin Kostner quote of his movie career. But the concept is true. If one focuses hard enough on a project or profession, sooner or later, something will break. The secret is being patient enough to hang in there until it does.
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Rick London once considered himsself a failure in every apect of his life. Now he owns 8 e-stores and a main cartoon site of offbeat incredibly funny cartoons It's All Gary Larson's Fault
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