jaxon's rant, part 11+

[jaxon41]

HOW THE CHRON MEASURES UP OVER 20 YEARS

Okay Gang--This is It!  My last rant on Austin's creative/artistic scene, in
which we'll learn how the Austin Chronicle measures up to our Grand
Tradition with their 20-year track record.  That's a lotta time, enuff for
an artist to starve to death & then some...

I've been getting some nice feedback from several folks out there so here's
my plan: after I post this final installment, I'm gonna send all other 10
rants along too.  They've been corrected & expanded over what you earlier
saw.  This "package deal" has a + symbol after the number, and you jaxon
completists can save these & delete the earlier "first drafts."  Cool, eh?
BAP BAP!!

If I ever decide to quit cartooning, pursue a more lucrative line of work
(THAT shouldn't be hard to do), and become a zillionaire, guess what I'm
gonna do?  Print up millions of these "Jaxon's Rants" booklets--glossy
paper, full color, & packed with the art mentioned herein.  Then I'll put
out racks beside each of the Chron's claimed 1500 distribution points, so
each time somebody grabs a Chron they can pick up my free crap too.  Freedom
of the press & free speech, eh Louis?  Keep on Rockin' in th' Free Wurld
with me then...

Of course I'll have to install hidden (indestructible) cameras at these
spots so when the Chron's delivery boys--acting at Louis' orders--grab my
stuff & haul it to the dump I'll be able to nail them!!  What a yummy court
case that would make, cameras rollin' every day for months & maybe years as
the issue of free speech was sorted out before Neil's Free Wurld.

Louis, you're not dealing with some glazey-eyed Hairy Krishnaw mystic here.
I learned the competitive nature of Biz in this town working for a tuff
gangster-type garbage disposal outfit in East Austin a few blocks past
Cisco's Bakery.  Yeah, back when our already-entrenched garbage rivals put
sugar in our gas tanks, stole & drove our trucks off cliffs, plus firing
rounds into the office where I sat doing my bookkeeping at night.  Those
guys' tactics make yours look like kindergarten!  So, just wait till ol'
jaxon gets rich and puts your "free exchange of ideas" bullshit to the test.
Cameras with laser blast attachments?  NAW, automated pie flingers are more
my style.  Sticky chocolate merrang all over their faces when they furtively
scoop up my pile of setting-the-record-straight poop.  HA!  What a
friverous way to spend money.

I can't complain of how I've been treated, publicity-wise as an artist, in
the Austin media.  Absent in San Franciso between mid-66 & the beginning of
'76, I escaped back to Texas with relatively few possessions--thanks to Bob
Vennell & his determination to rescue me.  We almost didn't make it, pulling
a U-Hog trailer full of my heavy book stuff, icy sleet-type weather, car
trubble, etc.  We spent New Year's Day 1976 freezing our butts off in BV's
dead car while people were crowding El Paso for the Sun Bowl.  Yeah, those
were the days.  Vennell used Ol' Blue's body warmth to stay alive while I
hovered around an electric space heater at the "service" station we'd
managed to limp to before da car won't go no mo'.

But Ol' Ghettoite Robert "Bob" Vennell got me home & gave me a place to live
in his South Austin pad.  Those were wild times in Austintacious, and I
found the city hadn't changed much (spiritually or physically) during my
long stay in the Bay Area.  BV was tending bar at the old Soap Creek Saloon
& I quickly fell into the scene, becoming almost a nightly regular at the
club.  Old friends George & Carlyne let me in free & allowed me to
exhibit/sell the 5-set prints of my Indian chiefs, done before leaving Hotel
California.  Yeah, like The Eagles say, checking in is easy; it's LEAVING
that is the problem--right, Chet??  Cliff Endres of the Austin Sun wrote a
cover article on me; it was a nice 2-color spread, kind of a "welcome home,
jaxon" thing.  Ed Ward even did a full-page writeup on me for the American
Stats.  Ed's articles I'd enjoyed in Rolling Stone & was pleased to learn
he'd moved to Our Town.  WOW!  I was in Hog Heaven after the uptight West
Coast scene.  AIDS hadn't hit town & VD was rare--in my circle, at least,
and it was a circle I kept busy expanding all the time.  Lardy, Lard.

Many of the Austin Sun people--you know them or ARE them--were old friends
from before my exodus to SF.  Some, like Moriaty, had escaped California
earlier than me & were working at the Sun down on 15th Street.  I did a
strip about Willie's Picnic & another called "Cozmic Cowboy" for them in
'76, plus one called "The Rise and Rapid Decline of Austin Tacious" in '77.
All were done in multi-issue installments & have been reprinted in my God's
Bosom comix collection, mentioned in rant 9.  I was also doing spot illos
now & then: ads for Oat Willie's & other joints around town.  With all the
nonstop music, booze, drug, poker, & party scene, I don't know how I found
any time left to draw--yet I completed Comanche Moon for ROP/Last Gasp in
1979 and commenced work on Los Tejanos (published in 1982).  Somewhere in
here I got married to my first wife ("CP" daughter of a UT cop, who I put
through Nursing School) and moved out of Vennell's house on Ethel Street to
her place on 11th & West Avenue.  Juke's sister lived down the street; he &
Doris not too far away.  I had weekly poker games for the Soap Creek/South
Austin gang at this place North of the River, CP joining in the fun.  I was
still in Groover's Paradise, even if married.

My marriage didn't last long, but what does in this mean ol' world?  She was
much younger than me & wanted to do all the globetrotting, NASTY things I'd
already done.  At least I got to keep the rental place & her dog Lily, the
most mellow Blue Tick hound imaginable.  Lily used to go wait on the corner
every morning for the black mailman & accompany him on his rounds, keeping
hostile pups in line.  He'd drop her back at the house when finished, and
the poor doogie never could figure our why he didn't come see her on
Sundays.  She even got on teevee as the "postman's friend."  People who saw
it complained that he let a smelly, hair-shedding & probably-flea-ridden
mutt ride in his jeep (US govmint property).  Assholes...probably the same
subspecies as those who now want to exterminate Austin's alleycat population
and make us either keep our pet kittys on a leash (can you believe it??) or
inside the house all the time.  All because these Krazy Katz might open the
cage door & eat their pet birdie!!  HOW we supposed to keep the rat
population down if our tuff alleycats are wiped out??  Specially now that
there's a high-toned eatery where the Orkin Bug extermo business once was.

So I went back to being a swinging single again, partying harder & snorting
more speed than ever.  Hey, there's more than one pebble on the beach!
Right.  Tell that to someone who's just gone thru a gut-wrenching
divorce--somebody who stupidly thought that marriage vows, once you took
them, were supposed to last forever.  Fortunately, an ego boost came just
when I needed it most.  A classy lady named Robyn Turner, a member of the
large & talented Robertson clan of Amarillo, wanted to include me in a book
she was writing called Austin Originals: Chats With Colorful Characters
(1982).  It was quite an honor to be linked with people like Charlie Dunn,
Mary Faulk Kooch (Guich's mom who owns/owned Green Pastures & sister of John
Henry), and several of you "colorful" Listers.  This came when I was still
trying to recover from my failed marriage.  In a photo of me in the book,
you can see my "Think Shit and You'll Be Shit" reminder I had posted above
my drawing board.  Another pic shows Lazy Lily asleep on the floor, as she
was able to do even during the most chaotic happenings.  When the book was
printed, Robyn arrived in a stretch limo to deliver my personal, signed
copy--this in the midst of my weekly poker game.

These High Plains Drifters/Dreamers are different than the rest of us
Texans.  If you want to know why, read my friend John Miller Morris'
award-winning Llano Estacado.  It's a book about the impact this region has
had on people from the beginning, and still does to some extent.  It also
helps explain the "Lubbock Mafia" and why these folks have had such a strong
creative influence on the Austin Scene for decades.  They're special people,
those brought up out there where the smooth, vast emptiness of the Land
discombobulates you and gives you nothing to grab onto except your fellow
Flatlanders & your inner self.  You might not want to live there now, but
growing up in that part of the world stamps you indelibily.  Right, Simmons?
The length of a list of creative, prominent "Austinites" from this Stretch
of Nowhere would amaze you.

Three years after Robyn published Austin Originals, her mother (Pauline
Robertson) published my Long Shadows: Indian Leaders Standing in the Path of
Manifest Destiny, 1600-1900.  Some of these pictures I had displayed/sold as
prints at Soap Creek, and an extract from the book (with text) was recently
featured in ROSEBUD: The Magazine for People Who Enjoy Good Writing, Issue
21.  It's an interesting mixture of literary stuff--heavily laced with
outtasight graphics & comix--in case yall haven't seen it.  Pat Brown, I
think, put the guy who designs it in touch with me.  No pay of course, but
ROSEBUD is a classy pub of the type I've always been eager to associate
with.  I may be wrong, but I don't think Michael Ventura has been asked to
contribute to it, either for his writing or "artistic" skills.  R. Crumb's
work, however, was featured in an earlier special comix issue, and it seems
possible that the "lowly fartfarm" of comix is finally getting some due
respect--in this literary venue at least.  There's the New Yawker, of
course, but it's not one I subscribe to, so I don't keep abreast (love that
word) of the comix used.  My ol' buddy Art Spiegelman had his hand on the
throttle up there for awhile (maybe still does?), and I've heard rumors that
other cartoonists call him "Czar Art," or was it "Art Czar"?

The Sun closed shop somewhere in here, and the Chron picked up (supposedly)
where they left off, in '81.  The whole story--as they'd like to remember
it--is in their 20th Anniv. issue which triggered my stream of rants.
You've already seen how my attempt to shift my talents from the Sun to the
Chron was rebuffed: "too broke."  So what's new??  THUS IT EVER WAS.  Can't
think of much work they offered me (or any other artist) in their first
decade.  This was very strange, as they shared space in the concrete
oven/freezer where Priest & Others had their Sheauxnough Studio.  The
artists had the primo space (with windows)--except in the winter when the
cold north wind hit & couldn't be kept out.  Priest did a few covers for
them early on.  He'll have to tell you all just how much the Chron used
their work & what Nick was paying for it.  I don't think that Micael has a
very high opinion of ANY of the Chron team in the early daze, except for
Miss Margaret Moser--"the only one with any abiding wisdom or soul," as he
recently expressed it to me.  Guy Juke also got some cover work, but unless
I'm mistaken, that's all they wanted from Us Guys.  Seems like I did a cover
of a funky old house in laid-back South Austin (Yeah!  April '86; just found
prelim sketches for it in one of my "Black Books") and the "I's Lyin" piece
mentioned earlier.

So what did us funny people who liked to draw do to keep the fire going
after the Chron locked us out in the cold?  Whatever we could, which wasn't
much because they were the only "alternative" in town that reached a large
audience.  We mostly survived doing what we'd done in the pre-Chron days:
poster & teeshirt art.  Thanks to the AWHQ & Antone's, the work of many
outstanding local artists had reached a wide audience.  There was a market
for this stuff, not only for weekend touristas but for us Old Austinites
too.  Bill Livinggood's shop down on Barton Springs Road was cranking out
teeshirts by the dumptruck full, even if the "royalties" were as slim as the
jefe hisself.  Bill liked to play poker too, and I'm sorry that he didn't
live up to his name & checked out early because of it.  We miss you
Bill...you were one wild & crazy guy, with a face pitted from high school
ackny worse than even me!  Never mind.  Can't judge a book by its cover, and
you had a heart of gold.

Thus, posters were about it as an income for the graphics arts crowd,
although comix didn't die entirely.  Even after Gilbert headed West with me
as Navigator, several boxes of his locally printed Feds n Heads in the trunk
of his car, people here tried to keep doing comix.  Once we ghettoites
founded Rip Off Press in '69, we were visited by several delegations of
Austin artists to see if we'd print/distribute their comix.  Jim Franklin
had already gotten his Armadillo Comix printed up, I think--this prior to
the classy edition later(?) done in the Netherlands or wherever.  We
assuredly wanted to help these hometown fellows--JFKLN, Rick Turner, Charlie
Loving, Kerry Awn, and others--but times were tight & most of their strips
were too Austin-focused to get across to a national/world audience, or so we
reasoned in our stoned-out attempt to run a Viable Bizness.  I recall how
sad I wuz when ROP delivered the news, and these poor guys had to head back
home emptyhanded.  They didn't quit, tho; several of them (Loving comes to
mind) published their strips in privately printed books, without G. Shelton
to rally around as the local maestro.  T. Bell had his "Motocross Cat" strip
to play with; he once showed me a stack of these original pages about a foot
thick that he'd cranked out through the years on a regular basis.  Guess
they're all gone now...

One attempt to stoke the fire in the Chron freeze-out era was a comic book
called The Adventures of Oat Willie, The Most Thoughtful Guy in the World.
This book (published in 1987 by "Austintatious Comics") was mostly the
brainchild of Mariann Wizard, and our logo had a question mark on it. It was
sort of a "promotional" for Oat Willie's Head Shop, done when Mariann's
hubby Mike Klineman was still partners with Doug Brown at their several OW
locations.  Nothing strange about this: some of the first comic books in the
US of A were issued by cereal companies as promo gimmicks for their kiddie
chow.  Joe Brown is in the opening splashpage behind the counter at Oats
when it was at its short-lived spot on Medical Parkway--practically in my
Bellvue backyard.  A crowd of customers pose the question to Joe: "Who th'
Heck is Oat Wille?"  This device gave us the opportunity to tell OW's life
story & how OW's feet got fused in a wheeled bucket of oats.  Bottom panel
on page 6 shows Gilbert & Joe talking to pre-fusion Oat Willie at a ghetto
keg party; in the background we see John Clay, Powell, Janis & Mike Allen
doing "Silver Threads & Golden Needles."  Typical frontyard party at the
Ghetto...  Awhile back a pair of lesbians from France, doing a film about
Janis' early Austin hangouts for French pubic teevee (one kinda cute/dainty
& the other very mannish/possessive), asked me to show them around in
exchange for a free burger at Dirty's.  Took them back to where the alley
used to be & showed them one of the pecan trees of the Ghetto yard where our
parties took place.  "Non, Monsoor Jaxon," they said, "the ghetto was
further back that way, not here.  We have the exact address!"  Whatever,
ladies.  It's all gone now anyway.  You pick the spot to shoot your footage;
fine with me.

Oat Willie, after cruising the West Coast scene, goes to NYC & gets the
Torch of Light from the Statue of Liberty.  (Hey, she's from France; maybe
she was a lesbian too?)  He's worn out saving the Big Apple from a dense fog
bank, lands at G&J's pad, and they take th' poor guy back to Austin.  He, as
we all know, winds up as the "mascot" of UG City Hall & later his very own
place, OW's.  After an assortment of G&J's, plus Lieuen & Charlie Loving's
OW strips from Days of Yore, I closed the book with something new that
Mariann & I cooked up: "Oat Willie's Mid-Life Crisis."  Yeah, all of us were
going through one at the time it seemed like.  Kerry Awn & Dale Wilkins also
contributed interior art.  Gilbert did the front cover, and Micael Priest an
outtasight back cover--"Onward Thru The Eighties."  We dedicated the book to
Joe.  It wasn't much, but at least we didn't want comic books to die in a
town where they'd always been given life.  Later, Shannon Wheeler & others
took up the fallen banner--Shannon's Too Much Coffee Man being one of the
best in the Old Tradition of Austin's whacked-out humor.  Coffee, after all,
was always on our list as a cheap drug-of-choice.  My shot kidneys are proof
of that, and I'm reduced to sipping bland yucky tea as a wakeup stimulant in
my Golden Years.

As for the Chronicle during this Drought & Starvation Period, Nick & Louis
mostly wanted photos.  I guess this was natural, as they'd first teamed up
at UT's Film/TV School.  Photographic images were their Link to Reality.
Fine.  Wouldn't be much of a world anymore without photos, and some of these
photographers are my friends.  Glad you got paying work with the Chron for a
change, and glad that some of you still do.  Juke was eventually joined by
tattoo man Rollo Banks as a cover guy, and other artists occasionally got a
crack at it.  COMIX?  Sorry folks, not on the menu.  Mainly Juke & later
Rollo were the Chron's connection to us Oldtimers; hard not to pick up an
issue with their art on the cover.  Sam Hurt had a few cover jobs too, and
somewhere in the Eighties or Nineties, Doug Potter (from Lubbock) came on
board as a regular inside guy for caricatures of politicos, etc.  Great
pen/brush work.  Not strips, but at least "cartunes."  JFLKN tells me that
the Chron snubbed him entirely, possibly because his AWHQ poster art had put
Austin on the map as a cool place for people like Nick & Louis to visit and
then decide to stay.  During the past 20 years, they asked Jim to do ONE
FUCKIN' COVER--for their "special" issue on Austin Poster Art.  What a joke,
eh?  Scumbags.  So covers are about it for the Chron & Austin's graphic
artists.  Can't count outside syndicated stuff; that does ZILCH for us
locals.

Nick & Louis used their covers as "teasers" to get us to pick up their rag.
My only other job that I can recall was a cover for their "Columbus Day"
issue (Vol. 11, No. 7, 11 Oct '91), along with an article inside about the
next year's Quincentennial Celebrations.  When Sam was in middle school at
Lamar, his SS teacher used this cover to explain the Columbian "exchange" to
the kiddos.  Sam recognized it & blurted out: "Hey, my dad drew that!"  This
impressed both his teacher & fellow students.  But that's okay: kids need
all the help they can get, making it through public school these days!  Like
his dad, Sam's an artistic lad but has just discovered that his freshman
highschool art teacher thinks comics are too lowbrow to call "art."  "Bring
me samples of your work," she told him on the first day, "but no cartoons or
comics pleeze."  Can you BELIEVE that art teachers are still so backward?
So here's my kid, barely a teenager, and already being exposed to the
elitist crap that we had to go thru at UT Fart School 40 years ago!  But
Sam's no dummy; he has already learned to distinguish snobby behavior from
those that look-down-their-nose at people who, by age 8, could already draw
the Ninja Turtles as good as their millionaire creators.  I fear that Sam
will turn out to be as much of an iconclast as his pa...  Then, in '95 they
asked me for remarks on R. Crumb & Terry Zwigoff's movie about him.  I think
I got a free pass to see the flick at Dobie Mall out of the deal--typical
for the Chron.

The local media (except for the Chron) continued to treat me kindly during
the Nineties.  Some lady named Susan Sneller sought me out for an interview
published in Trajectories: The Science Fiction Journal of the Southwest (6,
Winter 1992).  I'd never heard of this outfit, located up around Round Rock
or Georgetown I think, but our discussion wandered far afield of my comix
work to things like: why do our pampered kids take bad drugs & why are they
so pissed off at this well-heeled society of ours/theirs?  She titled it
"The Lunatic Fringe."  Just as the decade closed, a gentleman named Bill
Cunningham from San Marcos or thereabouts wrote a nice piece on Sam Houston,
the real-life person that I'd depicted in my comic book Indian Lover--as
opposed to the cardboard cutouts we make of our Heroes. It was in the 4 Nov
1999 issue of a newspaper called Chautauquan.  Well, I'm supposed to be an
injun expert, and I never heard the name before, nor do I have the faintest
idea what it means.  Anybody?

How these people track me down, I don't want to guess.  I'm paranoid enuff
already.  Why?  An example will suffice: some elderly guy out in Oak Hill
who'd read my scholarly book on Philip Nolan called me up out of the Clear
Blue to tell me he knew where Nolan was buried.  Years ago an aunt had told
him where to look for the unmarked grave of his g-gf, "beside where P. Nolan
is at rest."  Following her instructions, he dug about a foot down at a spot
near Rio ("Rye-oh") Vista & found a red sandstone marker with the word
"Nolan"  crudely scratched on it.  He put it back & covered up the
hole--knowing that he was onto something Big here--and offered to show me
the place if I'd get together a State-authorized archeological team for the
dig.  This I tried to do, but the outing fell through at the last minute.  I
didn't try again, as Fate seemed to want Nolan to rest cradled in Los Brazos
de Dios--his unknown grave near the river called The Arms of God.  How did
you find ME?, I asked this gentleman (probably dead now).  "Easy," he said.
"I used to work for the FBI.  People like you are no problem to find."  I
get calls/letters from history-oriented total strangers like this all the
time.  They don't even bother me anymore.  UNLESS like the call I got one
night asking, "Are you the Jack Jackson who did that comic book about Juan
Seguin?"  Yeah, that's me.  "Well if I ever run across you, I'm gonna cut
yor fingers off, you fuckin' asshole!!"  Slams down the receiver in a rage.
Yes folks, "history" in Texas is not just dry bones & dust; it's alive &
kickin' several doors away.  I musta said something true about one of his
kinfolks in my funny book, maybe how he screwed the meskin greasers...

Anyway, when the American Statesman started XLent, many of us artists were
disgusted with the Chronicle & ready to check out the New Game in Town.  At
first I thought it was only a blatant ripoff attempt aimed at the Chron's
audience, but this soon changed as I noticed all the artwerk they were
using, plus their intelligent coverage of the Scene.  And guess what?  They
want comix and will print them in full color--unheard of at the
"alternative" rag.  Old friend Eddie Wilson ran a reformatted version of my
History of Threadgill's comic strip (done for his Cookbook) in XLent as a
special supplement.  Unfortunately, it got buried  in the Sunday paper's
stack of ad stuffers instead of being put in Thursday's XL as planned.  In
case you missed it, the strip featured scenes from the old ghetto daze, and
you'll recognize the faces of several Listers who are still kicking.
Eddie's got it online & something about me too (with a neat picture of
Irish-Italian Bombshell BB, my Frisco girlfriend; I brought her to Austin
one time, as some of your ghettoites may recall).

Then, in Sept/Oct '99, XLent asked to run a 7-part seeries of pages from my
Indian Lover comic--sort of "free advance publicity" for the Mojo Press book
(they were based out in Dripping Springs, now OOB).  But it was a LOT BETTER
than free, because they paid me well for this spread--something the Chron
had never imagined doing.  All the guys at XLent (particularly art director
Mike Sutter) were aware of how shitty the Chron had treated me over the
Ventura review the year before.  I can guarantee it didn't take much
prodding for me to work for XLent, where I could hold my head high & feel
like I was appreciated.  I would venture to say that other Austin artists
they've published feel the same way--esp. those who have had prior
experience with the Chron.  Jimi used to ask us if we'd ever been
"experienced."  Yep, and that was enuff for us to learn something.

Since then I've "moved up" in the world of Texas popular publications.  Evan
Smith, recently installed as editor of TxMonthly, asked me to do a 2-page
strip called "A Lot of Soul" for their Texas Music special issue, no matter
which copy of the issue with 4 different covers you might have seen (Vol.
28, May 2000).  This strip, like all my other work, acknowledges how the
Ghetto Experience shaped my life, and it is something of a recap of what I
did about Threadgill's beer joint.  This was the first thing that TxMo had
ever asked me to do--thruout the long editorial reign of Gregg Curtis and
despite the fact that I used to party with Jap, Bud, & other WASAMs (White
Anglo Saxon Aging Males) who were regular contributors.  Why, I never
understood & must confess that I resented it a little bit. "Why don't you
guys share the wealth?" was a question on my mind every time I picked up a
monthly issue.  Shit Happens, but usually not on such a regular basis...

Gregg I'd first met in SF when he was a lowly pressman with Company & Sons,
an outfit trying to compete with the stranglehold monopoly that ROP & Last
Gasp held out there as publishers of UG comix.  They quickly gave up (most
of the cartoonists thought their mouthpiece was a gangsta-type shyster),
Gregg returned to Texas, and the rest is publishing HisStory.  Did he ever
ask me--in the past 20-something years--for a comic strip tailored to TxMo??
Fraid not, but at least I've finally got my foot in the door down there.
When I took my original art in, Evan called an assembly of staffers (mostly
women) together to OOOH & AWWW over the pages.  He introduced me to them as
the "R. Crumb of Texas" (prompting a lot of blank stares).  Sorry Robert,
but what can I say?  That's better than being introduced as the "Charles
Manson of Texas," right??  The pay's not bad, so--once I finish this monster
Alamo comic book I'm working on, by the end of the year--look for further
jaxon stuff in TxMo & in XLent too.

Here, at long last, friends & neighbors, is my Message in a Bottle, my
Nutshell of Wisdom, and I'll frame it as a question before answering it.  IS
THERE ANY HOPE? that the Austin Chronicle will carry on the venerable
humor/comics tradition that started in Texas with Alex Sweet's Texas
Siftings & On a Mexican Mustang Through Texas; was carried forward by W.C.
Brann's Iconoclast (which involved William Sydney Porter, better known as O.
Henry, & from which we ghettoites took the name The Austin Iconoclast); the
long-running Texas Ranger humor magazine at UT; The Rag, The Sun, the
Observer, & other kick-ass humorous/semi-serious publications in the Grand
Texas Tradition.

Judging from the Chron's 20-year track record, I CAN'T SEE IT HAPPENING.
But, of course, I try to always expect the worst.  That way I'm not
disappointed when bad things happen, and I'm tickled when they turn out
right on rare occasions.  This much I can say for sure: unless the Chron
Management Team changes their thinking, they're gonna find fewer & fewer
Austin artists willing to grace their covers or line their guts with the
type of art that has made this town famous far beyond our city limits.
We're STILL HERE, broke as usual, waiting for that change to come.  If it
doesn't, SCREW THE CHRONICLE!!

We Austin artists must ask ourselves: what's in it for us?  Why keep working
on Maggie's Farm?  Our absence from the pages of the Chron hasn't registered
as a Loss to the Boss.  Fine.  Unless "He" (IT?) wakes up and issues some
kind of a decent proposal that'll give us regular work at a fair price,
let's make sure that we stand together in opposition to the MOST HOSTILE
FORMAT for the graphic arts that Austin has ever had.  The razor of Free
Speech cuts both ways, Louis & Nick, and if "The Truth Hurts," so be it.
BASTA, BABY!!  Jarrin' Jack Jackson, aka jaxon