David Jacobowitz

January 1, 1997

Post #648 – 19970101

Good Day Dr. Pinkwater:

Funny I should find you in this round-about way. I used to have a perfectly good e-mail address, but I see you have changed it to avoid me.

I did find a reprint of the collected Norb strips from a guy in Seattle. He claimed that he was sending me the last archive copy that he had. He said that the binding was marginal. I am afraid to open it. I really want to read it, but it may self-destruct.

Do you have any copies of the reprinted collected Norb strip?

I hope to see you again some day. You cannot avoid this. I know where you used to live….

Yakobovitz

Daniel replies:

How to enjoy your crappily-bound collected dailies (I fear the color Sundays are lost forever) of NORB: Read it page by page. Enjoy the brilliant art by Tony Auth, and note how the text is mostly slightly worked-over Dr. Who programs, which DP usually was watching on the local PBS affiliate of a Sunday afternoon while writing it. By the time you have finished, night will be be closing in, and you will have a tear in your eye to think that such a lovable comic strip bit the dust after only one year. Also, all the pages will have come loose. Then, take a standard paper grocery bag from A&P, Kroger's, Price-Chopper, etc., and put the loose pages in it. Put it away with your other treasures. Any time you wish to enjoy the frolicsome antics of NORB and his pals again, simply shake out the pages, and read and gaze to your heart's content. This is what I do, and many other readers who possess this book, which is distinguished not only by the lousy binding but by the fact that no royalties were ever paid, shaking the $500 advance out of the publisher took far more time, plus threats, than it was worth, and the presonalities of the two guys who published the book are so repellant, that neither Mr. Auth nor I are willing to communicate with them to ask where our money may be, now that every single copy to the last archival one has been sold. (I know this is of little interest, but I promised myself I would at least allude to these experiences every time that publication is mentioned--and I would tell you their names, except I can't remember them). 
How are you, David? Have you heard that George Rose, our college friend, has done highly important work on protein folding? Big article in the Johns Hopkins magazine for (I think) June '95. Says he found the holy grail of science. So it wasn't Monty Python after all.