Leftover Lump

     Way back in 2003, I illustrated and published a book written by Troy England Evitt III called "Grampy's Lump and Other False Starts." This was a collection of disjointed and often spit-out-your-Cheez-Doodles funny stories that generally lacked character development, plot structure or anything a competent writer would attempt. I'd been collecting these scraps of paper, scrawled longhand in what I called "Ev-oglyphics," since the sixth grade, where Evitt and I first met, and decided after years of hoarding them to make a project of illustrating the little literary outbursts.

     Mercifully, the book is now long out of print. But I'm still pretty fond of the drawings, and I thought they at least deserved a little blog space. So I'm blowing the dust off these antiques and submitting them for your approval.

"He had heart, he had guts. Hell, he had what would've been his identical twin growing out of his left shoulder blade."

"He concluded the evening by dialing phone numbers at random and singing "Happy Birthday" to the parties on the other end, as they repeatedly protested that he'd reached the wrong number."

"While Chinese restaurants are allowed to serve octopus, there are no statutes mandating that somebody take the time to kill the poor beast, often with newsworthy results."

"Somebody had given him chocolate at my expense."

"Maldano was the kind of guy who would feed you like family even if you had showed up to beat him like a mule."

"A copy of Scarbone and Teabiscuit #11, with the elusive blue staples, sold for $2,441 at Comtrek '02 and was later bartered for a Polaroid of Will Shatner and his dogs."

The Mystery of the Burlap Grandma, Scarbone and Teabiscuit #17, 1949.

"Hap lost no time, offering a freshly-opened Stuperz Lite, a bearish handshake and that classic Hap Shefield smile."

"Nobody thought the marriage would work; he, a rotund goofus who owned a nude dancing establishment, she, one half of the world's only Siamese twin exotic dancing duo."

"'Grampy, I'm your lump,' it seemed to say."