Off to the Races!

Recently, on Facebook, I became friends with genius animator Sally Cruikshank. Check out her blog while you're at her site. It's good! I am pretty certain I met her briefly, back in those crazy 70's, in San Francisco, but she didn't recall. It didn't matter. We decided to meet at Santa Anita racetrack, which Sally describes as being "like an oceanliner." Which was perfect. It is just an enormous art deco dreadnought of horse racing, and surprisingly well-kept, in freshly painted shades of green and pink. One of the best things about Santa Anita is that while you're in the stands, a well-positioned, well-landscaped berm completely obliterates the squalor of latter-day Arcadia. It's the kind of place that makes you want to return in a well-tailored suit, pumps, hat, gloves, and a clutch bag. Maybe next year. The season is over at SA now, and has moved on to Hollywood Park, which, confusingly enough, is in Inglewood. Sally says it is a lot seedier there. That could make for better sketching possibilities!

Okay, enough about Santa Anita. More about Sally, whose character Anita starred in her brilliant cartoon "Quasi at the Quackadero." Sally and I hit it off like we were continuing a conversation we probably started 30 years ago. We gossiped about all the SF underground cartoonists we have known, like Robert and Aline Crumb, Spain, and our brilliant and lovely friend Bob Armstrong, whom I would link except the link to his site seems to be broken. We gabbed about the effect of the 1970's on our lives, hitting my favorite nerve, Patty Hearst, which for me is a rich, rich vein. We really bonded on the subject of being alienated cartoonist mothers. Hey, I could do a whole website called just that: ALIENATED CARTOONIST MOTHER. I could tell Sally and I were destined to be great friends because all I had to do was to nudge her when the really funny-looking family walked by and she burst out laughing. The other completely fantastic thing about the track was that, being Friday, it was free admission, with $1 hot dogs and $1 beers. I was there, supposedly, to talk to a jockey for an LA Times cartoon idea, but we got sidetracked with everything we had to tell each other.  I bet on my favorite jockey, Kayla Stra, a beautiful Australian whom I met on my previous trip to the track, but Sally was the one picking the winners, which led to her buying us another couple of beers. Since I like to post pictures of myself with the very coolest people I have met, here's a series of me trying to get it right. Can you tell we were  having fun?