Meeting Robert Crumb

What a sweet man. So compassionate, so knowledgable, so hip. I got to hang out with him for a day in San Francisco. We got to pow-wow over our mutual friend the late great Harvey Pekar. So many laughs a few tears. I couldn't believe that he did not know that Harvey credited him for his career taking off. I said to Robert, didn't you at least see the movie American Splendor? Didn't you see the scene where the character of you (played by James Urbaniak) and Harvey (played by Paul Giamatti) are sitting at the restaurant eating french fries and the Pekar character shows you his script and the Crumb character chuckles to himself about it while he pulls out his rapidograph? Then asks if he can take the script home to illustrate it? Robert replied, "Yeah, but I thought they made up that scene so they could fit me somewhere in the timeline." WHAT????? I couldn't believe my ears. I said, I can't believe this? I guess it doesn't matter how famous the artist got, he still remains

humble and even a tad insecure, which is indearing. I told him that Harvey religiously referenced to that incident as "his big break" in the comics business. Crumb reacted with "Awe man, I think I'm gonna cry." I felt like some kind of weird underground comix fairy passing verbal notes to underground comix legends. One on earth and one in the afterlife. That's just one tiny story. I'll tell you one more, and then I gotta change a diaper. I said to him while walking across Valencia street, well, nobody can say that you and Harvey didn't deserve your recognition. You guys were some of the hardest working guys in the business. He said to me. "Nobody deserves anything in life." Whoah.. I was blown away by that statement for a minute. Harvey used to say something similar.. "It's a total crock of shit the whole fucking thing." Crumb said to me, "There's billions of artists who put their billions of hours in, and they never got recognized." Harvey used to preach the same thing, "It's a crap shoot. So many talented musicians, writers, artists have never been recognized,,,," I could sense how they had a friendship back in the day, how they subscribed to similar ideologies and so forth.