Time, Grime, Slime (1977)

On the day this cartoon appeared, I received a personal message from Time Magazine. A colleague at the Jerusalem Post (who also worked for Time) was instructed to "Tell that bastard that if he ever thought he'd get into Time Magazine, he can forget it now!"

Years later I received a call from a Time correspondent who was thinking of doing a full page profile on "Dry Bones." As I trotted out to meet him at a local watering hole in Jerusalem, my then-wife said, as if talking to a child, "Don't mention Time, Grime, Slime."

After a fabulous pre-interview, with the guy from Time scribbling on a yellow legal pad and mumbling "this is great stuff," and me downing "Black Russians" between pontificating (the hip bar where we met served large drinks and teenie sandwiches) he smiled at me and confided that he had a "special" Dry Bones cartoon which he kept "hidden" in his desk drawer at Time's Jerusalem office. Quick as a shot I guessed "Time, Grime, Slime?!"
The silence of his response was deafening. He'd "forgotten" about my "vicious slandering of Time magazine."

Later, when I returned home, and my then-wife asked how it went, I said "I mentioned Time, Grime, Slime."
All she said was "I knew you would."

Black Russians