Most of my cartoons seem to come to me in a flash. I see the picture and hear the gag line as a finished image in my head and sketch it out very quickly. But... some have a long gestation.
Today's review goes back over 25 years. When in our twenties, my brother and I were bartenders in our hometown. There was a young woman who frequented the clubs we worked and she had one of the most interesting hairdos I can remember. The shape of her hair was like a sphere on her head bluntly cut off at the base of her neck. She looked like she'd lowered her head into a very soft pillow - her face on the verge of sinking into the quicksand of her hair. The overall appearance of this ozone depleting dome resembled the helmets of New Guinea's Asaro River mudmen.
The most fascinating aspect was the color. The back half of her head was brunette and the front half was blond, as though she'd lowered her face into a washtub of peroxide - like a half moon sitting atop her shoulders.
We never knew her name, so my brother referred to her as 'bundt cake.'
Last year, my wife and I were at the movies and a young woman I saw had teased and brutalized her hair into this Amy Winehouse hornet's nest on her head and my memory flashed back to the girl in the bar from 30 years ago, complete with the nickname - and this cartoon instantly flashed in my head. The drawing took a few iterations before I felt it had the clarity to instantly get the joke. Had it not been for my brother's offhand remark, I'm not sure if this would ever have seen the light of day. Blame him.
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