Listen, as far as I’m concerned, the best thing about Facebook is that it can reconnect you with people you may not have heard from, or even thought much about, for decades.
Take the way I’ve reconnected with Robert Crumb for instance.
Nah, I’ve never actually met him. Mores the pity.
But in my callow youth, when I discovered underground comics, I knew we were, like, you know, simpatico.
I mean, his cartoons were about sex….drugs….
…and rock & roll.
Although, truth be told Crumb much preferred the old southern style blues, even as he was reveling in the acid-rock-Haight Ashbury scene.
But of course Ron The Callow Youth inevitably gave way to Ron The Hardbitten Newspaper Man. So I eventually gave up my underground comics and, you know, grew up and stuff.
It wasn’t until I joined FB’s Robert Crumb Appreciation Society Page, on a lark, really, that I came to realize how much, in my callow youth, I had underestimated the guy’s genius.
Not sure I’ve ever seen another cartoonist who’s work displays such keen insight into the human condition.
I mean, if Crumb ever met Pollyanna, he’d kick her little butt all the way back to Vermont.
Crumb knows the truth.
And the truth according to Crumb will either set you free…or drive you to slash your wrists.
But even that’s not what I’ve really come to appreciate about the guy.
Turns out that Crumb has been feuding with Trump since 1989…when the Big Guy was still a shuck and jive real estate hustler trying to MAKE IT BIG on his daddy’s money.
Which is why Crumb got some of his girl friends to flush the guy.
And even now, at the age of 82, Crumb is still giving The Donald what for.
But even that’s not what I really, really appreciate about Crumb.
What I really appreciate is that Crumb is an urbanist and an environmentalist.
As someone who has written millions of words about those issues, I’m here to say that Crumb is an ink-slinging Paul Revere when it comes to sounding the alarm and trying to Save Us From Ourselves.
A cartoonist who keeps harping on America’s despoliation at the hands of the greedy elite.
Still, all of the above notwithstanding, you need to know that this guy isn’t just a gloom-and-doom sayer of nays.
Like he says: We gotta keep on truckin’. We gotta keep rolling’ our blues away.
Yeah, our TVs are trying to kill us. And, yeah, maybe the future is scary as hell.
But like Mr. Natural says: We gotta be true to “struggle and truth and great, er, awareness!”
Or else what are we here for?
I’m with ya all the way on that pal!
FreeGNV 