Zippy and me
Today my name appears in newspapers across the country because of the syndicated comic strip Zippy the Pinhead. I’m quite amused by this. You see, Zippy is my favorite comic strip character. If you know the strip and you know me, you can certainly understand the attraction.
If you don't know anything about Zippy, well, it's not so easy to explain him. My understanding and appreciation for Zippy has evolved over many years of reading the strip in the newspaper with my morning coffee. I also own many of the old compilation books that document the strip in its early days when Zippy the Pinhead was an underground comic strip based in San Francisco. Zippy and his pal Griffy live in a non-linear world where reality meets the absurd, where serious issues of our day pass through a prism and come out again bent and nearly unrecognizable. There is playful poetic language here. Non sequiturs. Wry satirical comment. If you are interested in learning more, there is a section on Zippy's website entitled, "Understanding Zippy." This is a good place to start. Most people either love Zippy or hate him. There's not a lot of middle ground.
One of Zippy's regular gigs is visiting and interacting with roadside icons all around the country (the world, really, as you'll see in a minute). Giant muffler men; the York barbell man; an elephant in Margate, New Jersey; a big duck on Long Island; a silly dog attached to a post out in San Francisco. These roadside icons are either background material for the strip or actual characters that Zippy talks to - and sometimes they talk back! Often the oversized relics find their way into the comic strip because alert readers see them in their travels or in their neighborhoods. Zippy's creator, Bill Griffith, encourages readers to submit photographs of interesting roadside characters. If he likes what you send him, he'll use it and you'll receive credit in the form of a "tip o’ th’ pin" with your name written right into the strip.
So that's how my name appears in today's strip, as a tip o’ th’ pin to Jack McGeehin in panel #3. The roadside icon that I submitted was a bull and matador that caught my eye in front of a Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona. I looked at this molded plastic behemoth and thought...Zippy. Bill Griffith agreed and in today's strip we find Zippy and Griffy conversing in front of the bull and matador about poet Charles Bukowski.
Actually, this is not my first appearance in a Zippy strip. A few years ago, I sent Bill Griffith photographs from a tourist attraction called Roadside America in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. Roadside America is a kitschy place, a miniature village representing America in its “Father Knows Best” days, complete with working model trains and tiny houses grouped together as towns and cities. I went to Roadside America for a school field trip back in the late 60s and have been back a couple of times since then. In the parking lot, just off the highway, is a larger-than-life molded plastic Amish couple smiling and waving at passers-by. The Roadside America Zippy strip can be found here. Wifey bought the original artwork of the strip and had it framed for my birthday. I gaze upon it in our office every day; it still makes me smile.
Despite now having two tip o' th’ pins to my credit, it's more difficult than you might think to find a worthy roadside character for the Zipster. Two years ago I found myself driving through a remote village on the north island of New Zealand. I was in the middle of southern hemisphere nowhere. I looked over on the side of the road and there was a huge warehouse designed to look like a sheepdog. I had been traveling for 24 straight hours at this point, but I still stopped and got out to photograph the building. (I had to, didn't I?) The Tirau Visitor’s Center advertised itself as the world's largest corrugated metal sheepdog, and who am I to argue? Perfect material for Zippy, I thought. As soon as I got back to the States, I sent the digital photos to Bill Griffith. Within minutes, I had a response back. "Sorry, it's already been done," he wrote. "That's impossible!" I thought, but it was true. Bill even sent along a link to the strip on his site.
I asked Bill Griffith the other day what the record was for the most tip o’ th’ pins. I suppose I was feeling a bit emboldened by my recent success and figured maybe I could make a run at that record. Bill wrote back to say he wasn't sure of the number, but if he had to guess, it was somewhere around twenty.
Twenty tip o’ th’ pins?! Okay, so I have my work cut out for me.
9:12:08 PM 
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