Today’s Zippy, covering a range of topics:
(#1)
(Note the pun in the title, on zero sum game.) Backgound on the diner guys, from a June 1998 piece “Clearing out the Oasis” by cartoonist Bill Griffith in Roadside Magazine:
It started out innocently enough. I needed detailed photographs of diners. Specifically, I needed photos of the interiors of diners, of people sitting on stools at the counter, eating and talking. A few months back, in my syndicated daily comic strip, “Zippy”, I’d begun a series of strips featuring “Bert ‘n’ Bob”, two seriously committed diner patrons. Bert ‘n‘ Bob love diners. Bert ‘n’ Bob live diners. Bert ‘n’ Bob are diners. Zippy himself makes an occasional appearance in these strips, but more often it’s Bert ‘n’ Bob on their own, ruminating on life over coffee, rice pudding and the Daily Special. The diner books in my reference library contained mostly exterior shots; interior scenes were rare. My models for Bert ‘n’ Bob came from a single photo I took in Collins Diner in Canaan, Connecticut, on a trip in July, 1997 (great lemon meringue pie). They’re seen in a three-quarter rear view, a pose by now quite familiar to my readers. Though I was enjoying the repetitive, eerily existential quality of that one view, I finally grew weary of it. And, thus, I found myself in the Oasis Diner in White Plains, New York, early in February.
(#2)
Griffiths’ taking photos of the people in the diner then clears the place out.
Leave a Reply