Who's Out There?

« I have the best roommates in the world! It creates a fun sense of family… and that’s really important to me. Things can get so lonely without it. » — Kristen Bell

It’s late November, and, to quote John, the Wolfking of L.A., « All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray ». Outside my window, just about everyone’s dressed for a funeral and there’s a traffic jam in dire shades of monochrome.

How did we come to this? Bah.

I think it first struck me how afraid of bright colour* we’d become, as a society, from years of ads for Bose’s odiously-designed Wave® sound systems, as consistently expensive are they are hideous (so they must sound fantastic!), circa the early 2000s.

Today, I’m going to (gasp!) restore some colour to your lives. This may lead to a sudden jolt, so avert your eyes if necessary.

Strictly speaking, I don’t have a favourite Playboy cartoonist — honestly, how could I, with that sumptuous, half-century-plus embarrassment of multifarious riches? Ah, but I certainly hold Leo ‘Dink’ Siegel (June 30, 1910 — Dec. 28, 2003) in quite lofty regard, thanks to his fantastic sense of design, his bold, delicious colour palette and his fastidious attention to detail (pay and treat your cartoonists well, and see what you get!). Today, I’ll concentrate on Siegel’s ‘roommates’ series; there’s generally a black pussycat hanging about, a fine furry bonus.

Here we go!

– RG

*Oh, do check out this pseudo-scientific cluster of twaddle and pop-psych claptrap!