”Brent, we’re electing not to run this cartoon. Give me a call, and I’ll explain our point of view.
Margaret Williams
Managing Editor”
Managing Editor”
“Hi Margaret:
If you have already decided not to run the cartoon, I don’t guess there’s any reason to call you back.
I am sorry you did not get it, as you said in your voice mail. The gist was that it was covering about four different recent stories:
1) Another hotel being made on an underused city space. This time, from the sold BB&T/NW bank building (this, in addition to other old and abandoned spaces, like the parking deck across from the Civic Center are being turned into hotels, etc.)
2) The Chestnut St. neighborhood voicing concerns over proposed affordable housing harming the look of their neighborhood (the NIMBY or not in my backyard, that is referred to in the strip).
3) The recently newly-revisited complaints about abandoned and unsightly newspaper boxes in downtown and what the council plans to do about them. The result of which ties into:
4) The increasing move from print distribution of news to online dissemination of information.
Therefore, the hotel guest in the room writing an email to his significant other on a tablet device is listing these problems in what may be a not-to-distant future, and the joke—or reveal—that the final panel shows, is that to solve all these problems (to reiterate: the need for affordable housing that no neighborhood wants to provide space for; increasingly empty newspaper boxes the city needs to find uses for; developers making literally ANYTHING into a hotel) a single solution of turning the newspaper and apartment guide boxes into actual apartments and hotels has led to the guest staying in one of them!
The use of the names of actual publications was to enhance the comedic value of the puns, combining them with hotel names (Mountain Xpress became Holiday Inn Express with just a bit of graffiti and so did Apartment Guide become Apartment Building.)
I hope that explains things. I thought it was pretty funny, and was rather proud to be able to tackle a variety of local issues at once.
As for the other comment in your voice mail about your dismay at it being “pretty negative” I don’t know what to tell you. There isn’t much comedy or satire that is all positive and happy. Maybe drek like Family Circus, but most readers would not like the type of cartoon that would necessarily result from removing any negativity from it.
Thanks,
Brent”
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