#74: Selling and Sauerkraut
Hello buyers,
It’s another week of cartoons. Sweet, glorious cartoons.
This week we see what’s really going on behind the scenes of your favourite ticketing website, and we take a look at what ice cream vans do in the off season, which is most of the year.
Selling at a loss,
Chris
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Caption: “Due to budget cuts, our entire operation is now run from this single, 1997 Palm Pilot."
This one goes out to everyone struggling to buy tickets for, well, anything.
You know how it is. You wait on the website. Then you wait some more. Then you wait on your phone while also waiting on the website. Then you get friends to also wait while you’re waiting. And then, well you get the idea.
And then, maybe, you might just get a ticket. If the site doesn’t crash first.
A little artist’s note: This was actually a very recent New Yorker reject, but I wanted to get it out there as, in the aftermath of the Oasis reunion, it suddenly seemed appropriate again. It also feels like a bit of an evergreen for every big ticketed event, perhaps ever. The biggest dilemma will be if people forget what a Palm Pilot is. If you don’t know, consider this a precursor to your iPhone/Android phone, kind of. And it was actually pretty fun to draw the old tech in all of its monochrome glory.
This was also inspired by a report that IMAX run their projector setups off a 21 year old Palm Pilot. The article is worth a read.
Caption: “Ice cream in the summer. Sauerkraut the rest of the year.”
For many of you, summer is over. But that doesn’t mean the fun has to end.
Because, when the ice cream stops, the sauerkraut starts. Rich, weird-tasting sauerkraut, ready to enlighten your eager taste buds. And this is the story you need to tell yourself.
It’s out there. On the streets. In your hearts. Get your sauerkraut today.
A little artist’s note: Does this really happen? I hope not. But I do wonder how an ice cream van makes its cash when summer goes away, and sauerkraut feels like by far the silliest option.
From a visual perspective, the biggest challenge with this cartoon was drawing the ice cream van itself. It’s got a little bit of an Australian look, which is a bit more curved, but also a healthy hint of a New York van, which has lots of hard corners. Normally there wouldn’t be a sign like that on the top of a van, but I needed something that would be able to cater for a full-length word like sauerkraut.
Also, I spent a lot of time remembering, and forgetting, how to spell sauerkraut.
Thanks for reading MiddleSquiggle!
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