Where you keep your treasure

In a previous post I mentioned how my Dad carries around a tape recorder. The tape recorder is used to record the cartoons, because inspiration can strike anywhere. So the cartoons go onto a microcassette tape, but what happens to those tapes? And there are a lot of tapes!

Ill tell you what happens, they get used, filled up, taken out and go to microcassette tape heaven. AKA a safety deposit box at Wells Fargo.

That’s right, the place where you keep your jewels, your passport and your naked photos of that congressman is where I keep hundreds of cassette tapes.

Recently I‘ve been going to Wells Fargo to retrieve the ratty tapes and record them into my computer. And since I only take a couple tapes at a time, I’ve been going back often. So I love to imagine what the Wells Fargo people are thinking I’m doing in there. It’s one of the few times in my impoverished life that I feel a sense of entitlement. You have to be escorted to the back of the bank there, they ask for your special keys and lead you into a secure room to do your business. I imagine the other bank customers glaringly staring at the back of my head as I am lead behind secured bulletproof glass, imagining I have to retrieve gold and large notes and stocks. And they are so jealous, like WHO is this girl?! Is she a Kennedy or Onasis? OR  the  embodiment of Jacquelin Kennedy Onasis? But never in the entire world do they imagine I am going to get dinky little casset tapes to put in a ziplock baggie. I strut out, putting on my aires like I’ve just been crowned queen.

The Bob is Brilliant Campaign

My Dad is a genius.

“Say what?! Did she just say that?! OH no she di-int!” (That’s what you’re thinking as you snap your press-on nails across your chest in a “z” like motion)

I can say this with certainty since apparently there’s no universally recognized, scientifically precise definition of the word. When I googled “genius”, this is what came up:

gen·ius/ˈjēnyəs/Noun

1. Exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability.

2. A person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect: "musical genius". 

Again, I call my Dad a genius with certainty.  I know what you’re thinking again: ‘I am his doting, loving daughter. Every girl thinks her “Daddy” is a hero and the greatest’. I concede that. BUT you should also consider the possibility that I could think my Dad is a genius as well as in fact, him ACTUALLY being a genius. It’s possible according to the rules of logic.

A lot of people wouldn’t know how to recognize genius if it was a bowling ball stuck in their ass. I mean, you hear stories of people like Van Gogh, who lived without any major recognition, couldn’t sell a painting while living, lived poor and destitute until he killed himself. And now, well, dang… it’s Van Gogh… you’d give your ear to own a piece his work. ( Har, har Gina.) My point being, I think it’s a lot easier for people of a later or different generation to recognize genius.

I feel like my dad is Van Gogh for comics. I have every belief that I am the progeny of a living breathing creative genius, quite possibly the greatest and most original in this microcosm of a field of single- panel cartooning. I also recognize a lot of people will not see him as that, as unfortunate as it is. 

And here, I am going to try to convince you of the possibility that I may be right …and Big Bob is a genius.

Here are my 3 points

1. Because I am a sane (ok-debatable, somewhat), level headed and disgustingly honest advocate. AKA a trusted messenger.

2. I know my Dad’s stuff makes people laugh. Everyone? All the time? No, but more people, more consistently. He’s just that good.

3. Sheer numbers. My dad has come up so many cartoons I’ve decided to print a different one on toilet paper squares. Guess how many rolls it will take before I run out?

3. Consider the numbers:

FYI, Bob’s made roughly 16,000 original cartoons that he has alone conceived, and counting. It could very well be more than 16,000 if you consider the number of yellow legal pads, receipts, and napkins that my he has written cartoons on as well. But lets go with 16,000 for now.

Well, if we published a different cartoon daily (like newspapers do), well that’s 43.8 years worth of content with out ever repeating ourselves. Published weekly its 307.7 years worth. This is YEARS people. How old are you? Could you out-live SickWit?

I don’t think I could do 16,000 unique anythings? 16,000 unique squiggle drawings? Nope. Confirmed. I couldn’t.  So imagine the herculean task of coming up with 16,000 unique and funny scenarios for a cartoon. It blows my mind. 

The holy grail of cartoons, for us will always be “The Far Side” by Gary Larson. It’s arguably the most famous comic, certainly for the single panel genre like we are, it’s the one cited the most frequently as the funniest. As brilliant as Gary Larson is, in his 14-year career creating the Far Side he published some 4,000 cartoons.  Well, quick math tells you SickWit is 4 times the amount of cartoons. For every one of his that you think is funny, SickWit gets 4 tries to try to make you laugh harder. SickWit can do it, but more importantly I think SickWit can go toe-toe.

Alright so my ‘Bob is Brilliant’ propaganda is over, for now.

I’m not sure if I have convinced you of my Dad’s genius here. Perhaps I have convinced you how it’s possible for me, a 27 year-old woman, to be freely giving up any hope of ever having a “normal” job again in lieu of campaigning for my Dad’s ‘art’. I have no intention of letting my Dad’s success be something that’s acquired posthumously. I’m pretty sure if  Van Gogh had a daughter, she would have done the same.

Love Always,

Gina

What is in a name?

..."That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Some A-hole named Shakespeare wrote that.  He never worked in Marketing because if a rose had been called "Mexican restaurant bathroom" I guarantee it would not be the token flower of romance and passion.

There's a lot of thought and strategy that goes into naming a business and person for that matter. I recently watched a TV show on Bravo where this couple had focus groups with high powered business people and other professionals give their thoughts for potential baby names for this well-to-do and utterly obnoxious pregnant couple. They wanted their baby to be a potential CEO, so the name had to yield power and authority. My own name, Gina, had the benefit being discovered that by adding "Va-" to the front, it makes for a very powerful nickname. The bad news is that powerful nicknames don't translate to powerful CEO names. Nonetheless, as a now self proclaimed CEO of my own company ( EAT THAT, TeaserS!) we took marginally less than half a second to come up with "SickWit" for our business name.

We teetered with "Bewildered" which was a working title for a very long time. We liked that that's how most of our readers probably felt. It's the name I published my Dads cartoons under in the student newspaper of my alma matter, Long Beach State. I felt a loyalty to "Bewildered by Bob Stewart". But the ultimate test of what to name your business comes down to GoDaddy. "Bewildered.com" was not available. No self respecting business with delusions-of-grandeur like ours can start themselves off with anything but an easy to remember ".com" domain.  They don't teach you that in business school, but we all know it's the truth. We had days of brainstorming and GoDaddy checking, so when "SickWit" (Bob's idea) came up in conversation and was available as a .com, our business was born.

I've read in business books about how your company needs to have a good corporate story. Well the "domain name was available" doesn't necessarily constitute a good story. So the story we tell is this: "One day after coming home from work, Bob's wife/my mother (Mimi) began saying something or other,  Gina and Bob began to make fun of her in such a way that she did not find funny,  Mimi retorted, "I'm sorry I don't have the same Sick-Witted humor that you and your daughter share!" and thus setting off a lightbulb for Bob and Gina."
Unfortunately this story didn't happen. We've recreated it though and I'm pretty sure now my Mom does think she came up with the idea. Heck I could almost be convinced that this really happened.

About four months after getting SickWit.com, Bob remarked that he was worried the name had a bad connotation to potential customers. It wasn't safe enough. The word "Sick", would it fly when you're trying to get someone to publish you? Poop. I could see his point, dang PC world. What I couldn't see was rewriting the months worth of work I had made for SickWit and rebuilding the website I had just built by hand. Gahhhh, I was sooo mad. Why hadn't my dad or I thought about this sooner? I went to Olives (amazing neighborhood shop where Bob and I eat at least once a week) and got a sandwich. As I was getting my sandwich, I couldn't help but notice the restaurant "Proudly Serving "Boar's Head" Deli Meat", with a big ugly emblem on the window. There it was: lightbulb for Gina. Are you kidding me? "Boars Head", an ugly animal's ugly, hairy head with snaggle teeth is a name synonimous with quality deli meat you want to eat?! But... it is. It had never crossed my mind before. And that settled it. If Boar's Head clients could "proudly" display the ugly emblem, our customers would see our value regardless of the potentially not perfect first impressions on the name. The name's impression would be molded by our cartoons, which hold their own. We would overcome. We are awesome. We are SickWit.

(PS. The story about the Boars Head isn't true. I refused to change our name due to it being just too much work. It was much later I saw the Boars Head and felt validated by my decision to stay with SickWit. However, I like to think that I'm embracing the "corporate story" telling technique swimmingly.) I still love SickWit as a name and we get compliments form our four fans that they think it's a great name, and that's who counts.

Love Always,
Va-Gina

Vizzini said to go back to the beginning. This is the beginning

SickWit is the name of my Dad and my "single panel cartoon" business (<--"comics" are multiple panels and tell a story). We're equal partners, Bob being the creator behind all the cartoons and I do, uh, everything else.

To give you some background, my Dad Bob Stewart, may be the weirdest human being on Earth.  I qualify that by saying in the spectrum of non-institutionalized human beings, he is the weirdest. He's also awesome and I couldn't do this if he wasn't a really awesome weirdo.

SickWit started from tape recordings made by my Dad. Weird Bob has walked around for as long as I can remember sporting a hand-held tape recorder. Check his pockets today and you'll find it. I can recall being a small child, him sitting in church and bending over in the pew hitting that red button, and saying something along the lines of "two birds walking out of a doctors office...." he'd finish it by painting a verbal picture of a single panel cartoon.  It didn't matter that there was a preacher preaching at the time, or other people seated all around him trying to listen to the said preacher... Big Bob has had his priorities.

Here were are some 20 years (he prefers I say 10), hundreds of micro-cassette tapes and 16,000 some odd cartoon prompts later... I, Gina, his youngest of five kids, likening myself to Atlas, have hoisted the burden of Big Bob's cassette tapes onto my back in an attempt to make us both wildly, or even just marginally successful.

I always knew I wanted my Dad's tape recorded cartoons. I am without a doubt "Daddy's Girl" (my apologies to my two sisters for laying claim to this title).  The bond I share with my Old Man is most simply explained because I inherited his weird-ass humor. We crack each other up. Or rather, I make fun of him and he makes fun of me and we go to-and-fro with insults forever. Growing up I always told my parents that for my "inheritance" all I wanted were the cassette tapes filled with cartoons. This is in lieu of the credit card debt I'm letting my siblings inherit. Yeah, Suckah'S!

In June 2010 I was sort of laid off from a job I liked relatively much- doing various things in the Marketing and Advertising world . As I sat scratching my ass and my head, wondering what I was going to do for work, Big Bob held the answer like he held that magic tape-recorder. He said, "Why don't you do something with my cartoons?" And just like that, I decided to take my inheritance early and SickWit was born.


Love Always,
Gina