If you are a regular reader of DRO you have no doubt figured out that most of the miscreants, misfits and malingerers who contribute to our magazines are generally the type your mom or minister warned you to watch out for in your youth. We mostly don’t stay between the lines unless they are the lines that designate the right or left lane of a drag strip, and most of us tend to run in the left lane.
The things that we all share in common, though, is a love of drag racing, a sense of humor, and the ability to not take the whole deal too seriously. So, when Darr Hawthorne told me a guy that worked as an Animation Director and Producer at Nickelodeon Animation Studios -- the house that Sponge Bob built -- wanted to meet me, was a cartoonist and wanted to contribute, I canceled my planned visit to the Ten-Count Lounge in downtown LA and went to meet Peabody Award winner, one Jeffrey M. DeGrandis.
He met us wearing plaid shorts, Converse All-Stars and a big grin. Ten minutes later, after looking at a stack of his cartoons, finding out that he is restoring a Drag Master dragster, that he was a refugee of the infamous Bob’s Berserko Lounge in New Jersey (followed by a call to Berserko Bobby Doerrer just to check his bonifides) we hired him as our newest staffer and anointed him with the title Staff Cartoonist and FOSB (Friend of Sponge Bob).
Here is his second submission and he says he will send us a new ‘toon every week or so. No subject is immune from his pen and ink. Got an idea?
Send us an email and we’ll pass it on. Welcome to the dark side, Jeffrey, and watch out for the bats. – Jeff Burk
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