it is elvis presley’s birthday, david bowie’s birthday and the birthday of the infamous cf cartoon contributor shawn belschwender, who was responsible (at least in part) for pavement boy, nietzsche at the bowlie, and many other irreverent knee-slappers created for chickfactor. in a perfect world someone would infuse this silly blog with gazillions of dollars and I would just hire shawn to crank out his brilliant works all day and all of the night. but alas, what an idiotic world we live in. I first met shawn b and pam berry when we all worked at the then-wonderful city paper, where shawn had trouble getting his racy comix published from time to time, but he could also count on getting his illustrations for news of the weird into the paper. just like the village voice, the city paper has been bought by another alt-weekly company (creative loafing), which appears to be doing things all wrong. not only is shawn gone but so are some other illustrators and longtime contributors such as our pals mark jenkins and dave nuttycombe. city paper was the best place I ever worked and it’s sad to see things becoming so unfriendly to the staff. so if you see shawn b in chicago today, buy the man a drink!
art: shawn belschwender, chickfactor 4, 1993.