25 Or 6-2-4.

" I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter."
- anonymous

Back in in the year 2000 Fantagraphic Books published a remarkable 17-edition series featuring nearly everything that artist Robert Crumb had ever drawn. It was called, unsurprisingly enough, The Complete Crumb. I love everything about them except the, thankfully few, comics in which his wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, was co-artist. To put it gently, they hurt my head when I look at them.

Anyway....

One of the stories, written in the early 80s, featured the famous Mr. Natural. He was having a deep philosophical discussion with Doctor Wanowsky, an old friend, when they stopped to have lunch. On the menu was boiled cabbage, something they both considered a delicacy.

About this time a fan of Mr. Natural showed up. At first he was humble and contrite but Mr. Natural, in his own peculiar way, soon showed the young man that hero worship was a fool's game. With his eyes opened the young man began to assert himself and began playing loud rock music and trying to get Mr. Natural and his friend to smoke pot with him. They declined. The doctor left in a huff and Mr. Natural bid the lad a hasty farewell, but not without first gifting him his his very own, very special mantra... Owa Tagoo Siam. (Repeat until the manifestation of cosmic awareness.)

When I first read this story when it was first published (What? You don't have your very own first-edition copies of Zap Comics?) I was on the young man's side. To me, Mr. Natural and the Doctor were perfect examples of a couple of loony old turds.

Now, having read it again twenty-five years later, I thought "Mmmm. Boiled cabbage sounds pretty good!"

Yeah, I'm old.

=mike=