#57 "Happy Hour at the Cafe Loup" May 8, 2013

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There are no real Cafe Loup patrons in this picture. There is one person who is based on a real person, but not a customer. The rest of these characters are from our collective imagination. However, when I posted this on Bookface on May 8, 2013, all of my Loup friends thought they had figured out who was who. I guess on the one hand, you could find similarities to a couple of our customers in some of these fellows, but they just happen to be at the bar. In fact, this one wasn't even located at the Loup until the very end, when I put in the coat room and the clock over there on the far left of the picture. Before that, it was just some random bar in Anytown, U.S.A, although with all those shot glasses littering the bar, it could be anywhere in the world. We always joke about Happy Hour, saying that it's always Happy Hour when someone inquires if we have any specials. I worked in Massachusetts for a long time and you aren't allowed to have happy hours there at all. You can't have happy hours, drink specials, or sell beer in gas stations or after 11 pm or on Sundays (actually, that one got changed) and last call at the bars is at 1am.  It's all from what they call the Blue Laws, which is a fancy name for antiquated Puritanical nonsense. There are Blue Laws in many states and countries that basically force businesses to stay closed on Sunday to observe the sabbath; Massachusetts dates back to the 17th century. You can imagine my surprise when I went to college in New York and found out the bars are open until 4am and you can buy beer pretty much anywhere. I was born in Massachusetts and I have a lot of family from that part of the world, but there are some things about that state that baffle me. I understand that you want to control the amount of alcohol people consume before they do something stupid. I even understand that people in bars at 4am are certainly up to no good. But, if there is one thing I've learned about people and drugs (and alcohol is one of those weirdly and widely accepted drugs), it's that if you want some, you can figure out a way to get it. I learned this in High School, when drinking was taboo, but very common. I learned from a early age that the cool kids went to places like The Field and had parties with beer! This story is as old as teenagers, I'm sure. These kids would find a way to get booze, any kind of booze,and 9 times out of 10 they would succeed. My buddies knew a guy named Basil who would sell them Milwaukee Best cases when they were 16. Kids would lift their parents bottles of booze (which I previously mentioned led to my never drinking of Johnnie Walker Red again). You could always get something if you really wanted it and were determined. It's like that old Chris Rock joke where he says that junkies are the most industrious Americans because they wake up in the gutter and they are high as a Georgia pine by the time they go to sleep.

 Drinking is such an ingrained part of the American Culture. The advertisements for booze come into our homes right through the television. Every magazine has ads for beer and wine and even hard liquor these days. On top of that, people are always discovering new ways to get a buzz. In my lifetime, dozens of new designer drugs have been invented for people to get high from. I know that these are very different from alcohol, but in some ways they are exactly the same. From these designer drugs, all the way down to the caffeine in your daily cup of coffee, drugs are a part of daily American life. You ingest  them in order to change your chemical composition in your brain to feel good and feel different from how you feel without ingesting these things. You take these things to feel happier. You take them at your own Happy Hour. By that logic, when I wake up in morning and have a cup of coffee, that's Happy Hour. When I get off work and have a beer, that's Happy Hour. I guess we were right in our assessment: it really is always Happy Hour at the Cafe Loup.

#54 "The Ones That Mother Gives You" In Color! April 11, 2013

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Speaking of drugs, let's talk about coffee. Most of my life would not be possible without coffee. I feel like a lot of Americans share my love of coffee and would agree that caffeine is hands-down the best drug around. It's legal, accepted, and you can get it almost everywhere. Now, what bugs me is decaffeinated coffee, but we'll get to that in a minute.
As a waiter, I like to have a nice double Americano before I start working. I used to drink a double iced latte to start the evening's shift, but then I decided I was lactose intolerant and I had to cut the milk out of the equation. That was bothersome for a while, but now I have learned to like black coffee and black double Americanos. I will agree with true coffee purists that all of these names, Americano, Macchiato, Cappuccino, are supremely annoying. Then, put Starbucks lingo on top of that and you have reached the pinnacle of obnoxiousness. However, I don't work at a Starbuck's and I rarely go into one, so I am relatively safe from them. But not really, because they have infected the minds of the American Consumer, and that affects me directly as a waiter. When I first started waiting tables, there were two options for coffee; regular and decaf. Now there are seemingly endless combinations. And none of them irk me more than decaffeinated cappuccino. I get one or two of these orders during a shift, if not more. It used to make me physically upset. I would grit my teeth and be so mad at the person who ordered it from me. I would think that they were doing it to spite me, like they knew how much I hated hearing those two words and they were getting joy out of my misery. Not only are they a pain in the butt to make, they are time consuming and when I have a full section on a Friday night and I have to stop and make a couple of these drinks, it can send me directly into the weeds; do not pass Go, do not collect $200. I realized one night after someone ordered a decaf cappuccino that it was affecting me so much and I thought that was a bad thing because people are not going to stop ordering the darn things, so I had to stop being such a baby about them and deal with it. I didn't know how to deal with it at first, because it was and still is an annoying beverage. I realize that people don't always want the delicious buzz that regular coffee gives you. I realize that some old people can't drink regular coffee any more and that after a lifetime of drinking it, they still get the pleasure out of decaf, because it actually tastes like coffee. I get this. I realize that some people don't drink coffee at night because they'll stay up looking at the ceiling in the dark and think of things like last years taxes and did they say the wrong thing at that party last week? I understand all of this. But I don't have to like it.
I finally figured out how to deal with the situation using reverse psychology. I now offer people decaf cappuccinos. That's right, I beat them to the punch. How can I be angry at them if I am the one who brought it up. By that logic, I should be angry with myself for even broaching the subject, but I like myself so I am not going to be mad at myself for something so trivial. I have much bigger issues to be mad at myself for, so offering a sweet old lady a decaf cappuccino is really low on that list. I have even been stepping it up a notch by offering decaf macchiatos, the crowned champion of obnoxious coffee beverages. I mean, really people, a miniature cappuccino? Get a life! I find that using this technique truly works, and I am no longer physically angered by orders of decaf anything. I may still find it annoying and time consuming on a busy night, but I am no longer shaking with rage when I hear those two bitter words. There are so many annoying orders that people come up with, and so many annoying people in the world, it's best to just accept this fact and try not to get so upset by these people. I mean, they have to deal with themselves, which must not be fun, so why let it affect you adversely? I understand that this is sometimes easier said than done, especially in the heat of the moment, but it's good to step outside yourself every once and a while and remind yourself that eventually, everyone will eventually go home.
But you order a "hot water with lemon" and so help me....

#54 "The Ones That Mother Gives You" April11, 2013

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When I was a teenager and everyone started experimenting with drugs, pills weren't part of the regiment. Of course there were pills circulating the subcultures since forever, but for some reason, pills weren't part of the cocktail. We were more interested in getting a couple of beers, some pot, and the occasional psychedelic. But pills didn't come until later. Prozac was brand new, Ritalin had just been introduced and Adderall wouldn't come out until 2002, the year I moved to New York. Of course there was other pills to take in the 90's, but they were a rarity until 1998; at least with my friends and I. Although, I feel like if you were doing some graphing of recreational pill use, 1998 would be a point where the graph spikes sharply. I remember my last couple years as a Phish head (yes, I am fully recovered, thankfully) the scene changed so much that it was hard to score marijuana in the lot. Even mushrooms were gone and it was all replaced by pills, predominantly Ecstasy and Molly. But there were stories of kids easting a ton of Molly at night and then chasing it with mood stabilizers in the wee hours and in the morning. That would help you with the crash. These days, the Molly culture is shadier, because the pills come in capsules filled with powder that may or may not be Molly. When two kids overdosed and died at Randall's Island last summer, they thought they had taken Molly, but probably more likely took a pill that had all sorts of crap in it including Bath Salts. I'm not saying that taking pills from strangers back in the day wasn't as sketchy, I am merely saying that these days, there are more sophisticated designer drugs out there for you to take, and a lot of them are not the highest of quality (pun intended?).
In fact, when the Silk Road was busted and shut down late last year, some people saw that as a bad, and dangerous thing. The Silk Road is an online drug store, literally. You can buy anything from Weed to Coke to Heroin to Molly. The DEA shut it down in October 2013 and arrested a couple people involved, mostly because there had been vague posts on the site about being able to buy "hits" on people from the site. That information will come out during the trial, no doubt, but in the meantime, the Silk Road was up and operational a month after it was shut down. Some people feel that buying drugs from that site is safer than buying from strangers or small-time dealers. The reason is that it is a meritocracy for drugs, meaning if you are selling some Heroin on the site and it is bad, or weak, people will complain about it and give you a bad review. It's like Amazon for the drug world. So, in this instance, the drugs you buy from it are more pure, and safer because they come with instructions, almost like a real prescription drugs. There are recommended doses, purity levels, and even a doctor available online to ask questions about the products. Of course, doing drugs is dangerous no matter what the internet says, but everyone knows that dealers on the street are cutting their drugs to get the most for the money. That goes back as far as time itself.
Kids have always experimented with drugs, whether it was booze, or drinking a bottle of cough medicine, there has always been the interest in altering one's mind state. This probably dates back to when we were still hunting and gathering and every once and a while someone would ingest something that wouldn't necessarily kill them, but make them sick and vomit and then see some crazy stuff in the form of hallucinations. From there, they would remember that plant or mushroom and it became a spiritual thing. Nowadays, it's more about having a wild night and less about getting closer to some sort of god. And now it's more about pills than ever before. You can tell just by the commercials that play during the Super Bowl. When I was a kid, the anti-drug commercials were about pot and cocaine and "Just Say No" and all that. Now, they are about knowing what's in your medicine cabinet and keeping your adult pills away from your teenagers.
Of course, not everyone wants to experiment with drugs, as the prospect of doing so is sometimes kind of scary. You see Uma Thurman overdose in "Pulp Fiction" and drugs are the last thing you want to try for the first time. But I feel like some people are inherently drawn to drugs and alcohol from some deep code hidden in the genes. That, plus an adventurous, rebellious streak. However, a lot of kids are on drugs from a young age these days because of medical conditions. Asthma, Attention Deficit Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, dietary problems, all of these are conditions where kids as young as 10 are starting to take pills on a daily basis. When you are taking pills that sometimes drastically change your bodies chemistry, every day from the time you are ten, taking a couple Molly pills when you're a teenager is going to be easy. 

#46 "Sacajawea's Nightmare" November 23, 2011. In Color!

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Sacajawea was pretty amazing. She was pregnant with a child and then gave birth to said child while on the expedition with Lewis and Clark back in 1804. She was detrimental in helping the expedition with relations with the Shoshone tribe that lived near the Rocky Mountains at the time. You have to remember that no white people had been this far west ever, and it was probably a good idea to have an interpreter. Even Sacajawea couldn't help the expedition once they crossed the Rockies, as she had never been that far west either. However, the whole expedition made it to the Pacific and back while only losing one man the whole time. And that was before they even left the Territories! Sacajawea died young at the age of 24, but had packed a lot of life into those 24 years. This person whom I am referring to as Sacajawea in this picture is no doubt not even close to what Tim or I were thinking about when we drew this picture back in November of 2011. Tim drew the face and I drew the body from what I can tell, and we probably didn't think it looked anything like Sacajawea then (or now, to be honest). However, like I have said before on this blog, I name these things to try to harness the chaos and turn it into something one can grasp. I could have easily called this one "Deadhead Tacos" and people would say, "Oh, there is a severed head inside a taco. That makes sense." I could've called it "Outside the Cabin in the Woods" and people would say, "Oh, I saw the horror movie with a similar title and this does look like what would be happening outside that cabin during the daytime." I think what my point is, is that no matter what these things are called, they are still an exercise in randomness. For instance, the vacuum cleaner-looking thing at the left hand side of the panel started as an espresso stain on the dupe pad. Then it got turned into the vacuum cleaner-like thing that stands before us today. Yes, that is cliche, but you have to understand that these drawings were done in a working restaurant during working hours, so these "mistakes" often happen. The days, weeks, and months that it takes Tim and I (and also some guest collaborators) to complete these drawings make most of them listless and afloat on strange seas that have no beginning and no end, but simply bob and turn with the current. Once they get nearer to their completion, sometimes they are pulled together by a strand or two of cohesiveness, but even then, it is a separate idea that has come up in the heat of the moment and sometimes will have nothing to do with the drawing as a whole; it bullies it's meaning into the drawing that was once just trying to get along in this crazy world. Then, you slap a name on it, and that further harnesses it so that now, when the viewer sees the title and the imagery together, they say, "Oh, I can totally see that Sacajawea is having a nightmare. I too hate traffic, Smurfs, cowboys and mummies and would not want to dream about them in this fashion." The fact of the matter is that Tim and I drew this picture over two years ago, I colored it in and posted it on Bookface on November 23, 2011 and I named it "Sacajawea's Nightmare" today, about an hour ago, on October 16, 2013. I think that this reasserts the drawings randomness, but I guess one could argue that it does the opposite. That the process eventually makes the piece cohesive and compartmentalizes the chaos and makes it orderly. But, as my 8 loyal readers know from previous posts, this is the question I keep asking myself about these drawings. Namely, "Is it chaos or is it order?"
To that, I say, "Oh, I just want to go watch some Smurfs."

#45 "Fever Dream" November 17, 2011. In Color!

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Halfway through the evening, our host mysteriously disappeared only to reappear a couple minutes later holding one of the most unique pinata we had ever seen. He described the means in which he had obtained the pinata, a story that would seem outlandish even to us, but told in a way that made even the most skeptical of us believe. He was the kind of man who you meet and know that he had seen things that most people could hardly dream of. He was the man who had proven the unicorn existed and even cloned one out DNA he had obtained on a business trip to Tibet back in the 80's. He had made a couple billion dollars on the business of illegally cloning these animals for affluent families with daughters with princess complexes. His son rode the unnatural beasts in parades in various towns across the world, usually bringing the most eccentric and wildly colored ones for the utmost spectacle. Cloning wasn't the only enterprise we had been lightly lectured about that evening, although unicorns weren't the only animals wrestled out of samples of double helixed obscurity. Our host held the belief that dairy cows would produce more milk if their udders were in the front of the cow instead of in the rear. This way, the milk can be produced faster, and if his theory held sway, he was willing to genetically engineer these cows worldwide. The experiment was a failure so he only made one of these horrible bovine monstrosities. He named the animal "Onesie" and coddled her like one would a house cat or some other such domestic pet. One day his youngest son, who was a champion falconer accidently shot the poor cow, wounding, but not killing the brute. Instead, through some miracle of genetics, the wound inflicted enabled the cow to spit fire from it's posterior. Sadly, our host found this out while the beast was indoors and she set the curtains on fire, scalding one of the guests and sending them to the hospital. It was right around this time that Tobey Maguire showed up to the party. We were all happy to see that he was in the costume of the "Hitchhiker" from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the 1998 vehicle from Terry Gilliam. He was in a foul mood, but still entertained us, first by stripping completely nude and then defecating in our host's public toilet. Our host felt that having a toilet for all to see was some sort of art performance. He was of the school that every organic member of the planet defecates, so why should it be a private matter? Shouldn't it be celebrated like all other human achievements? Many of the guests disagreed with his eccentric tastes, but Tobey was a good sport about the whole thing, and saw it as something interesting to put on his resume. Meanwhile, one of the family dogs thought it prudent to make a cocktail of raspberry sorbet and Oxycodone. The poor devil had been blinded in one eye in a ghastly accident sometime in the past, and even his good eye was injured and he ended up having to wear a monocle. It wasn't a surprise to anyone present that the dog needed the Oxycodone to relieve some of the stress of being nearly blind in one eye and only having a hole in his head where the other eye should be. This dog was special though. Another one of the host's cloning experiments, the dog had thumbs, wore clothes and even had a small demon where his left hand should be. Our host was both modern and terribly old fashioned and he believed that left handed people were actually spawns of Satan Himself so he fashioned the demon hand in the most literal sense. The poor dog had to carry around the demon, who had a mind of his own and a cantankerous smoking habit that polluted the air and melted the sorbet. This would have upset the guests and the host as well, had it not created the river in which our boat had been moored. Unoccupied, our boat waited patiently for us as we listened to our host spin fantastic yarns, all of which we believed because we had no reason not to. After all, isn't it better to believe in the fantastic than to dismiss it? If something can be imagined, it can eventually be created. We simply had to wait for the technology to be invented.