Over the past year I’ve been traveling almost nonstop, and of course, drinking to match. And while I’ve been able to quaff cocktails in the world’s finest establishments, I’ve also been disappointed plenty, too. Some of the bartenders I’ve been running into lately have made me visbly angry.
I was sitting around with my editor this morning and she brought up a quote from this article,
“…if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary.”
And it got me inspired to draw a few of these comedic frustrations into silly cartoons. They are anthropomorphic little expressions about how everyone has faults but me:
Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilins
And drinks his green label each day
Writing his memoirs, losin his hearin
But he don’t care what most people say
Slothy Joe is awesome in that Lebowski way. He has a Jimmy Buffet bootleg from ’82 that he really wants you to hear some time. Slothy Joe ain’t moving too fast.
I really like Slothy Joe. I like him for the same reason I like drinking a pint in a dark bar on a sunny afternoon, I like him the same way I like to wear the same shirt 2 days in a row; I’m on vacation right? Fuck it.
Slothy Joe’s aloha shirt collection is the only thing in his life untouched by the, “fuck it attitude.” And he has some epic hibiscus prints in his closet. Slothy Joe even knows all of the tropical drinks to back up his wardrobe. He can make you a Zombie, a Donga Punch or a Tropical Itch. He knows the Diki Diki, remembers the Jungle Bird and can make a Suffering Bastard (both ways). But Slothy Joe Isn’t called, “savant Joe,” because he can remember a lot of drinks, they call him Slothy Joe because he ain’t working too hard to make the drinks he remembers. Instead he wistfully remembers the drinks of yesterday while using off brand light or “gold” rum to make everything.
Slothy Joe takes the path of least resistance, always. He uses a blender for everything, instead of shaking any drink, even if not on crushed ice. Slothy Joe makes blended Old Fashioneds. Though he works in the tropics but fresh fruit is always passed up for canned. Pre bottled sour mix makes bigger drinks faster than squeezing a lime. Any recipe Slothy Joe could attempt is now likened to sculpting Michelangelo’s David out of mashed potatoes.
But none of this is really Slothy Joe’s fault. When he started working in that beach front hotel he just wanted a cool job making fun drinks watching long sunsets scored to Aja by Steely Dan. But F&B managers, Hotel owners and the general miasma of the service industry whittled the job down to the nothingness it is now. Sorry Slothy Joe, no more Cocktails & Dreams, just hearing loss from using a blender too much.
Next: The Goat
*Coined by Nathan Webber as a term for assholes that put amaro in everything
In case you’re wondering: I drew this with an app called Paper 53, after I had dinner next to a guy named Georg who made this app that delightfully allows me to scribble little amusing cartoons. Georg is a great guy to talk to about schnapps, and he sure can intuitively digitize a creative process.
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Both ways?