WEBVTT - Part One: How The Dilbert Guy Lost His Mind 0:00:01.960 --> 0:00:07.480 Ah, what's Scott my at? What's Dilbert my guide? Is 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:09.920 probably the way we should introduce this because if I 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:13.360 say Scott Adams is the subject of today's episode, like 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.880 sixty percent of people are going to go huh uh. 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:17.880 So I'm going to say this is an episode about 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.000 the Dilbert Guy. Welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:24.720 about terrible people. Now listen, folks, I know what you're 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.280 all saying, the Dilbert guy. Didn't he just draw comics? 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:29.920 How could he be one of the worst people in 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:32.080 all of history? And the answer to that question is 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.240 because he irritates me, Like yes, let's let's let's clear 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:37.519 the air here. We're talking about a guy who has 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:39.959 drawn cartoons. He's not a well, he did kill one 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.199 guy maybe by an action. We'll get to that, but 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:46.360 we're not talking about like a war criminal or a dictator. 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.080 But he's a really unpleasant man. And the way in 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.040 which he lost his mind and became even more unpleasant 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:54.800 and eventually had a racist breakdown that got his comic 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:58.400 strip removed from like a thousand newspapers is super interesting. 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.360 So that's that's who we're talking about today. And in 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.440 order to help me peruse the life of Scott Adams, 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.560 flip through it like a collection of Gilbert comic books 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:12.760 or comic strips. I have Randy mill Holland. Randy is 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:16.039 the author and illustrator of the Something Positive web comic 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.080 which I've been reading off and on for like a decade, 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:24.800 and he is now legally the legal recognized guardian of 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:27.480 Popeye the Sailor. Randy, how are you doing today? 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:29.880 I'm fine, Thank you so much. And I feel like 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:34.520 I should say, to keep being fired that my opinions 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.119 are my own and in no way reflect King Feature 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:41.160 Syndicate or their parent company Hurst, just to kind of 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:45.039 save my ass. But yes, I do in fact own Popeye. 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.400 I am destroying him according to everyone who reads Boat part. 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:51.120 So, yeah, you have been a you have been a 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:55.360 professional cartoonist for longer than I've been doing just about anything. 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:00.520 And you also have one of the things because like 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.360 obviously with webcomics, there's a lot of people who have 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.920 been professionally cartooning, but who don't have kind of experience 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.360 with the syndicates or with you know, kind of the 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.520 old traditional any of the old traditional structures of like 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.080 newspaper cartoons, and you've kind of got your foot in 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.600 both of those worlds, which I think will probably be 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:20.840 helpful for context on this stuff. So I wanted to 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:23.920 start by asking, what do you think about Scott Adams? 0:02:24.320 --> 0:02:27.520 Where have you been on Scott most of your life? 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:30.960 Most of my life I've managed to avoid him, Like 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:33.680 in a friend of mine introduced me to his comic 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.280 in ninety five or so, one of his books, my 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:40.520 friend Eileen's, because I was We met through computer Bulltromport 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.560 Systems because I am old, and she was like, well, 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.880 you like text shit, so you'll enjoy Dilbert. And I 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:48.440 read a page of it and said, I do not, 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:53.240 in fact enjoyed Dilibert, And to read it further, I 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.200 remember it replaced Pogo in the fort Restar Telegram, which 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.400 annoyed me a little bit, And then I remember the 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:03.120 TVC is. The opening song was Danny Elton's theme from 0:03:03.160 --> 0:03:05.440 Forbidden Zone, a movie his brother made. 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:09.960 Ah, I know Elkman, I didn't realize that. 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:14.680 He made public accounts. Yeah, it's a repurposed theme song 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:17.840 from a movie that Richard Elfman made with the Knights 0:03:17.880 --> 0:03:19.720 of Aungo Bongo in nineteen eighty. 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:25.040 I think oh man, so uh yeah. 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:29.880 That song fuck you. Yeah. 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.360 It's the musical equivalent of one of those like glass 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.360 soda bottles that's got like a ring around it because 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:37.920 it's been recycled so many times. 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:39.560 Just shaking the theme song out like no, no, no, this 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:44.760 will be fine, this will work for Delberton show. Ye, 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.840 honestly it did. It was better it was. That song 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.840 was probably the best part of that show. Years later, 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:54.400 I know he made some song accounts to defend himself 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:56.000 and then he hated black people. 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.320 Yeah, he so. Kind of the thing about Scott is 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.160 that he was a successful cartoonist and there was not 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:04.320 much that you would note about him other than that 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:06.600 if you weren't super paying it, if you paid attention 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.520 to Scott because I as a kid read not just 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.080 his comics but a bunch of his nonfiction books, if 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:14.200 you paid a lot of attention to him, there were 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.119 there have always been some weird things that you would notice, 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:18.600 but it was just kind of like, oh, that's an 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:20.640 odd thing to believe. Oh, that's an odd thing to believe. 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:25.600 And then about five years ago he really pretty sharply 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:30.039 started getting very racist and very bigoted and super right 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.039 wing and kind of at the same time convinced himself 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:37.960 that like he had discovered the kind of almost supernatural 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.159 secret secrets to persuasion, and it was his job to 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.880 explain how Donald Trump was ushering in like a new 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:49.720 era for humanity by his magical persuader skills. This is 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:53.440 all like his kind of heel turn has been fascinating, 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.280 and so I wanted to just kind of like dig 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:59.800 into what happened with this guy because very few people 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:04.440 Scott kind of had a lifelong license to print infinite money, 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.920 and he decided to give that up in order to 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.600 get really angry in his like video blog and and 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:16.040 just like spout bullshit to a fairly small audience of 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:20.280 like weirdo Trump supporters. And it's it's interesting to me 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.120 how he gets to that point because he's not there's 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:27.880 not anything kind of he's not always someone for whom 0:05:27.880 --> 0:05:30.160 there's warning signs. So I think I think he's interesting, 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:32.240 and we're going to talk about him because I'm interested 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:36.560 in Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy. So let's start. 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:40.960 Randy Will if you can't yeah none twenty years ago 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:43.400 and said, Hey, Scott Adams is going to be like 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:47.240 this psycho conservative, you know, shit bag like the guy 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:50.839 who made all the weird vegetarian food for seven to eleven. Yeah, yeah, 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:55.280 that guy like that. No, that was a weird unexpected No. 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:56.839 Of course, if you were to say one of the 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.560 one of the newspaper cartoonists you read is going to 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:03.080 turn out to be like a weird fascist, I would 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:04.760 have been like, oh yeah, high and lowess. Definitely the 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.240 high and lowest guy, right, that's the let's. 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:08.680 Not go for the Brown family, and they've had a lot. 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.760 Scott Adams was born on June eighth, nineteen fifty seven, 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.040 in Wyndham, New York. His father was a postal worker 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.839 and his mother was a stay at home mom. And 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:23.960 I always like to point out when guys who grow 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:27.479 up into like far right, uber capitalist influencers grow up 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.080 in a comfortable, safe, stable environment as a child, because 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:32.640 they're born in a period of time in which a 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.159 government employee can support a family and own a house 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.400 on one income. And Scott's one of those people, So 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:40.799 just keep that in your mind when he has his heel. Course, 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:45.600 we get most of our information on Scott's early life 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:47.960 through him off and on in some of his books. 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:51.080 My primary source for his childhood, although I'm not My 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.200 only one is the twenty Years of Dilbert Comic collection, 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:56.800 which he published in like two thousand and two. If 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.160 you're into comm obviously, which you are, Randy, you know 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:03.279 how like you had those like the Far Side big collection. 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.320 Oh yeah, Garry Larson. Yeah, he writes a bunch of 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:08.239 stuff at the beginning, and he kind of like explains 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.440 different comics. There was another one for Calvin and Hobbes. 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:14.680 Most of like the really big cartoonists get one of 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:16.640 those at some point in their career. And Scott at 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:18.440 this is this that like this is what I'm using 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:23.280 as a big source for his childhood, right so sorry, yeah, 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.920 I mean this is he was starting to become a 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:28.040 little bit of a maniac when this came out in 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:30.440 two thousand and eight. He hadn't fully healed turned, but 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.080 he was starting. It's like it's like the pivot document 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.920 of his like turn into a far right like fascist weird. 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:38.720 As I hate sand moment. 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:42.400 Yeah yeah, yeah, where he's not fully broken bad yet, 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.480 but now you can tell he's about to go murder 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:45.160 the young lynks. 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:50.320 Oh Jesus Christ, Ratbert and like just have like weird animation. 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:51.160 M M. 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:53.960 It's interesting because we're going to talk about like some 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.640 of his early drawings as a kid too, which are 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:01.680 weirdly enough a lot technically better than Dilbert. So why not, 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:03.600 I mean, hey, yeah. 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:07.120 Part of comics is how fast can you draw something? Yeah, 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.400 so that's why you see a lot like yeah, yeah, 0:08:09.480 --> 0:08:11.840 like there's some old high lowist trips. I remember thinking 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:15.320 this is some stunning stuff, amazing angles, but it probably 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:17.440 took for way too damn long for hel muchs are 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:17.920 being paid. 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:20.240 Well, Yeah, and this is one of those things where 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:22.120 like Scott himself pokes a lot of fun at the 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.080 Dilbert art but obviously like it works like it was 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:27.720 a successful comic for years and years. But anyway, it's interesting. 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:30.240 We'll get into that in a second. But yeah, this 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.480 collection gets published in two thousand and eight, and it's 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:36.120 kind of like right at this hinge period where I 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:39.319 think before this, most people who knew anything about Scott 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:41.840 would have default kind of assumed, oh, he's probably like 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.240 a vaguely liberal, maybe even kind of like lefty guy, 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:48.320 because the comics are kind of, at least super officially 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:50.679 seem like they might be kind of critical about capitalism 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:54.640 and about like corporate they're not, actually, but most people 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.520 I think probably just sort of assumed that if they 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:01.800 weren't super up on the Dilbert lore. Yeah, so it's 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.200 a very interesting period. We'll be talking about that and 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:08.240 a couple other recollections that have been published about that 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.440 period of his life as sources here. In nineteen sixty three, 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:14.160 when Scott's six years old, his family was in the 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:16.360 habit of taking him on trips to his uncle's farm 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:18.839 up the road from their house. This uncle had a 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.000 collection of Peanuts comic strip books, and Scott would sit 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.080 down and stare at them eagerly, even before he could read. 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:28.440 In his book, he describes being fascinated by them because 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.840 they had what he calls the X factor, but which 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:33.800 I would say is just the result of kids being 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:38.160 drawn to comics, and Peanuts being a particularly good comic 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.400 at drawing kids in. But you know, I had more 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:43.600 or less the same experience as a kid, right Like, 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.560 my uncle was the guy and my family who had 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:50.840 a bunch of published comic book collection collections, and I 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.040 certainly read a shitload of Peanuts. I read all of 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:58.160 his Calvin Calvin and Hobbess books, I read Bloom County, Farside, Foxtrot, 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.520 even some like deeper cuts like gay Han Wilson's Demented Uvra. 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:04.600 Who oh yeah, I love Gayhan if you if you, 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.040 if you like Farside, you should check out Gayhan Wilson's stuff. 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.520 My early memory is getting a hands on Pogo books. 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.920 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah art, which was just astounding because 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:16.240 my family tends to be a little more on the 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:19.640 left side, so like Pogo was definitely something my dad 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:20.720 was a big fan of. 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.080 Yeah, it's interesting. I I read a little bit of 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.640 Pogo as a kid because we were just talking about 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.960 those like big collections of comics for like Bill Watterson 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.079 and stuff, his big Calvin and Hobbs collection. He writes 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:35.400 about being a Pogo fan, and so that was like 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:37.240 one of the comics I looked into because I was like, oh, 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:38.760 my favorite artist likes Pogo. 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:40.960 You need to know, like he did a whole storyline 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.320 making fun of the John Bird Society and at their 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:46.920 height he was taking them when he could have gotten 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:47.600 in trouble for it. 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:48.360 That's awesome. 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:50.880 Fucking hated him. It was beautiful. 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:55.480 But yeah, no, bas Pogo, I love it. So Scott 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:58.800 kind of goes through this this journey, and it's one 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:00.760 of those things where like he has this quote in 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:02.280 the book where he says, my parents always told me 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:03.840 I could grow up to be anything I wanted to be. 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:08.040 I decided to grow up to be Charles Schultz. Yeah, 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:09.160 don't don't tell him that. 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:12.360 It never ends. Well, my parents told me I could 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:15.440 grow up to work in an office. Yeah, and uh, 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.920 I rebelled against it, and I draw comics. But it 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.640 seems like everyone who like their parents told him that. 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:23.400 I'm going to tell my daughters that I, like, you're 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:24.440 gonna work in a factory. 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:27.360 I did have. I mean that's what my more or 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.000 less how my childhood was. Because I also wanted to 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.439 be a cartoonist, and I told my mom and she said, 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:36.199 do something that has a pension. But the joke was 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.240 on her because those don't exist anymore. 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.640 Oh my god. It's yeah, yeah, like my same things, 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:44.360 like I'm gonna be a cartoonist of my dad just 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:48.520 said you don't have to, yeah, just do something else. 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.720 It's this quote from Scott is really funny because it 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.360 gives you an idea of how different things were back then. 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:57.959 So he's like, this is him talking about like why 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.040 he wanted to be a cartoonist after how hard could 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:02.920 it be? You draw pictures, you write some words. It 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:04.880 seemed like easy work to me. And from what I heard, 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:06.000 the pay was good. 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:09.960 I will say, in the fifties, if you had a 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:11.760 good comment, yeah, it was great. 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.080 Yeah, in the fifties, yes, chastically. 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:17.000 Yeah. 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:18.480 You don't hear a lot of people being like I 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.240 want to get rich. I'm gonna I'm gonna get into comics. 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:23.800 Not a lot of smart people anyway. 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:27.120 No, yeah, I mean generally, whether you're taught, like especially 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.840 if you're talking about like you know, it's like superhero comics, 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.320 like the most famous stories are all. He created this 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:35.800 character that's worth a billion dollars and then he died 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:36.520 of starvation. 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:41.760 Oh getting Yeah, except the artist losing his eyesight by 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:44.040 the nineteen seventies, living in a nursing home and like 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:47.760 Warner Brothers, having to be guilted into paying them thirty 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.000 thousand dollars each ye year for rest Our Lives hated 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:50.439 doing it. 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.240 But but this this was the fifties and none of 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.680 that was known yet. So no, little Scott falls in 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:00.000 love with Peanuts and grows up being like, I'm gonna 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:02.880 I'm gonna make all those sweet, sweet cartoon dollars, and 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:04.920 he draws a lot of little cartoons as a kid. 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:08.200 These are mostly kind of like one panel strips. They're 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:11.160 sort of similar, and they're not really far side in 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:13.040 terms of the kind of sense of humor. It's like, 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:15.560 I mean, he posts some of the drawings he did 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:17.520 as like a six and seven year old in here. 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:20.240 They're like, I mean, they're like cartoons a little kid draws, 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:23.000 but yeah, they're like single panel strips, a lot of them. 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:25.440 By the time he was eleven years old, he'd moved 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:29.000 on to Mad Magazine, which makes sense. Mad was super 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:35.560 big back then. Very there, absolutely absolutely and Mad Magazine, 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:37.640 for those of you who kind of missed the Mad era, 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:42.439 had a brilliant artist named Sergio Aragonez, who I learned 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:45.000 while researching this episode is still alive. 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.400 He's one of the last of the original Yeah. 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.240 I was pleasantly surprised to hear that. 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:55.400 We just lost I can't remember now the gentleman who 0:13:55.440 --> 0:13:57.920 did the fold In's he just died at over one hundred. 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:02.880 Oh I didn't know well, but yeah, our Ghones is 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:05.199 still doing his Combat group. He still does a lot 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:05.720 of stuff. 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:09.000 Yeah, he's a he's a He's an amazing guy, an 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.360 incredible cartoonist. He was kind of known as being the 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.319 fastest cartoonist on Earth for a while, and he did 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.479 if you were a Mad reader, he did the marginal cartoons, 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:19.440 like he did other stuff too, but like those little 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.720 bitty like joke cartoons kind of stuck in between panels 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:24.680 and on like the side margins of the papers in 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:27.480 Mad magazine, And it was like, this guy is for 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.240 those of you, like one of my biggest influences as 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:33.080 a comedy writer, because when I worked at Cracked, one 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:36.280 of my first jobs was picking images to go in 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.400 between paragraphs of the articles and write little joke captions 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.280 for them. And like, Sergio's work was kind of the 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:46.360 thing that I figure like that was kind of my 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:50.400 earliest inspiration for that kind of humor and stuff. I 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:51.200 always loved him a lot. 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:53.239 The influence Cracked again. 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:56.280 Yeah yeah, yeah, this is the only time. That was 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:58.240 the one influence Mad hat on cra. 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:03.440 Ford from the head of Zeus one day. 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:07.280 Yeah, no way, I'm the only one who sullied it 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:12.560 with Mad magazine vibes. Yeah, so Scott Scott and I have, 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:15.320 like I I identify a lot with elements of his 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.640 early childhood like mine was was not dissimilar other than 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:21.400 that I had a more comics yeah. 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:25.240 Like especially comics kids. Yeah, yeah, we were all most 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:27.560 of us, especially heard an outsider kid. It was a 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:31.040 little nerdy mad magazine kind of was a siren song, 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.040 like it's here's the weird stuff. You can be a 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:34.680 little cynical, you can be a little mean, and you 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:35.480 have fun with it. 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:37.040 Yeah, exactly, it was. 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:37.360 It was. 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:39.360 It was really special for a while. You know. Now 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:43.480 now it's yet another zombie brand, but boy in its day. 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:43.520 Ye. 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.920 So Scott, his parents do kind of like realize he's 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.160 he's got this love for cartooning and he's drawing consistently 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:53.200 for years. So they get him like books on cartooning 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:57.040 and how to draw, and he he becomes pretty dedicated 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.600 to like learning some of the tougher technical things like drawing, 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:03.800 like proper hands and stuff. So this is a kid 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:06.400 who's got the ability to kind of like stick with, 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:08.960 you know, the stuff that he's fascinated and he's more 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.520 disciplined than I think most of us who wind up 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:16.040 being comics nerds but don't get into cartooning, which makes sense. Yeah, 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:18.400 and he's he's pretty good as a kid. In nineteen 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:21.920 sixty seven, he applies to a serial box contest, which 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:24.280 was a thing that used to happen for who could 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.560 do the best drawing of Old Faithful. He doesn't win 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:29.720 the contest, but he gets a camera as a runner 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:32.880 up prize. And this is in some ways that will 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:35.280 turn out to be kind of dark a foundational moment 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:38.480 for him, not because like it con seem it, not 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.200 because it convinces him to be a cartoonist, which is fine, 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.160 but like his his so basically like, as he enters 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:46.480 this contest, he's super excited that he's going to win, 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:50.080 and his mom does the generally responsible thing and she's like, look, honey, 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:52.000 a lot of kids are going to enter. Most of 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:54.160 them aren't going to get prizes, Like, you're probably not 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:56.160 going to win anything, don't you know, get your hopes 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.480 up too much. But then Scott gets a prize and 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:03.120 so this kind of like hits his brain like a sledgehammer. Quote. 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.080 I started to suspect that beating the long odds wasn't 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:08.600 as hard as it seemed, this became a pattern that 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.600 repeated itself throughout my life. God damn, that doesn't sound sinister, 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:17.920 but it's going to metastasize into something like oh, okay, good, 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:19.880 okay good. Yeah, that is a weird way to think 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:20.280 about it. 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:22.960 That sounds like a super villain. I read too many 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:27.119 cogbooks to like the long odds. Oh God damn it, 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:28.680 e'l O'Brien, it's almost. 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.080 Yeah, it is, like I do think it's odd his 0:17:31.160 --> 0:17:34.600 obsession on like winning this, meaning that he's beaten the 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:36.280 odds as opposed to like, oh, maybe I'm better at 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:38.720 cartooning than I'm thought. That's cool, Like I should work 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:41.520 more on this. It's like, ah, like I managed to 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:44.000 like hack reality. Like that's really is kind of the 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:45.720 road he's going to start traveling down. 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:46.480 Yeah. 0:17:46.680 --> 0:17:49.960 So the next year, his town holds an Easter egg 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:52.320 hunt and the ground prize is a golden egg with 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:54.960 like ten bucks in it. Now, obviously this is like 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:57.800 the fifties or sixties, so ten dollars is roughly equivalent 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.680 to the GDP of Mississippi today. It was it was 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:04.040 a big incentive, good prize. Ye Scott. Scott found the 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:06.760 egg and he got his picture in the paper, which 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:09.040 he says is what gave him a taste for fame. 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:11.240 It also furthered his. 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:17.919 Don't again everything. It's just like, uh, he's that shitty 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:19.920 kid who's like, I'm getting attention? 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:20.760 Yeah? 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:22.240 Can I get more attention? 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.479 Every time I look at like influential culture and like 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.080 the dark side of TikTok, I get more convinced that 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:31.879 no one should get their picture taken or video taken 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:34.760 of them until they're like fifty five. And that way, 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:36.679 when kids are like, hey, do you want to I know, 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:38.560 do you want to become influencers? People will be like, no, 0:18:38.600 --> 0:18:41.159 those are all like weird looking old people. Let's uh, 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:42.840 let's let's paint watercolors. 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.359 Partony wants to say, oh, say a lesser being shame, 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:47.960 But you know what, some people will enjoy that. 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:52.080 Yeah, and unfortunately Scott is one of them. So he 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:54.280 this is what gives him mistaste for fame. It also 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.280 furthers his understanding that quote beating long odds seemed easier 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:02.119 than everyone kept saying. Again, this is like says a 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.840 lot about Scott. It's interesting that he's so focused on 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.119 like the odds and that he's special for beating the 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:10.440 odds as opposed to like, oh, like, you know, this 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:13.960 was a nice experience in my childhood. It's also like 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:18.040 weird because none of this seems like to be particularly 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:20.560 the result of luck. He probably did well in that 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.480 cartooning contest because he worked hard on drawing, and the 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:27.120 egg contest. Like it's a small town, there's not he says, 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:29.800 there's like thirty kids in his graduating class. The fact 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:31.960 that you would have like gotten, you know, won the 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.960 Easter egg hunt one year in your childhood actually seems 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:37.640