Today: an overhang. Next week: a hangover

Stilwell - Christmas cheer

Sort of continuing the digital restoration of "Stilwell," the comic strip that ran in the Cleveland State University student weekly The Cauldron, circa 1971-73... If you were a friend of mine or a relative I was on speaking terms with, you probably received a copy of this Christmas card, which I believe I made in 1972, exactly 40 years ago. This sort of thing is sooooo easy to do today on a home computer using similar textured card stock you can pick up at any Office Depot, but back then, this was a major project and prohibitively expensive for an average Joe Shmuck like me ... unless you happened to have a college buddy who had a part-time job working on an offset press -- ahem. I have probably already said too much. Anyway... I even chuckle at the lettering because nowadays everybody has great access to a wide range of fonts on inexpensive word processing software. Back then, I used sheets of press-on letters sold at office supply stores. Here's a bit of pop cultural trivia inspired by this card: The word "ribbit" as applied to the sound a frog makes traces back to a skit on the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," which was only a few years before this card. I can even vaguely remember Tommy Smothers dressed up like a frog for the sketch on the show. I find it worth noting, because the word entered the national lexicon and still has traction today, probably because of that one TV bit. "Ribbit" is not in any established dictionary as far as I'm aware, but it's out there, for sure. This image shows both the cover and the inside of my half-fold card. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Stilwell -- student government meeting

Continuing the series of digitally restored cartoons called "Stilwell," which ran in Cleveland State University's student newspaper The Cauldron from 1971 through 1973. While CSU's student government was the subject of my strip a few times, only once did I actually attend a student government meeting. I forget whether I was attending to cover it for a story or merely to get an inspiration for a cartoon, but this was the direct result of it. I don't recall the specific items on the agenda, but this cartoon suggests that at least one of those was related to approving an expenditure of funding from student fees, which I think may have been the one real power the student reps had. The cartoon suggests that those fees provided an annual nestegg of $70,000 to dole out as these yammering yoyos saw fit. I do recall that the meeting included at least a few hothead, self-important and boorish reps whose actual verbiage was close to what I characterize in this strip and a far cry from anything resembling the decorum of Parliamentary procedure. It struck me as being yet another embarrassment for this relatively new urban, state-supported university. It would not surprise me if one or two of these students, probably poli sci majors all, ended up or are even still in Congress.