The stories of how two Westminster alums who had not previously known each other came to work together to produce a child written comic book about Covid-19.

Rob Kutner's Story

Allison Garwood's Story

You can buy your very own copy of the book here.

Rob Kutner ‘90, the comic writer popularly known as… Rob Kutner … took some time out to explain to us why giving our Inner Children a time out is mostly a horrible idea, mainly because one day we will all have to work for them and, what if they still remember? Sorry! Being prescient, he doubled down on a partnership with artist Allison Garwood ‘92 and saved himself. Observe...

I LAUGHED, I CRIED

Malcolm: Rob, we've had a little bit of back and forth in emails about what you've been doing. Fill us in some more, and also I'm interested in whether it started with Westminster, or how it connects to Westminster in the end.

Rob: Okay, great. So, I'm a TV comedy writer by profession. I've written for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Conan, and I'm now developing and writing animated shows for kids.

I have a 12-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son, so they were 11 and seven when the pandemic broke out. And, like most people, I guess, probably everyone at that time, the kids were stuck at home all the time and doing all of their school from home on top of just the overwhelming “Bummer” of the overall situation, not seeing their friends, not being involved in activities.

Normally, my son's class is very vivacious and imaginative and lively, and it was just really sad that they had lost this sort of cohesion they were starting to get as first graders, being big kids and all of a sudden going through this thing, which they weren't even really used to at all. I was also feeling for all of us parents, who were sitting with them on Zoom and trying to give some relief -- to give their kids something to do outside of the parents having to be responsible for their entertainment all the time.

So, I thought up this idea called Wacky Wednesdays -- just purely on the strength of the alliteration alone. I came up with a few different ideas for extracurricular Wednesday afternoon activities. It still would be over Zoom, but at least it'd be something outside of school. We did one where one of the other dads in the class is a professional composer. We had the kids make their own homemade instruments, and then we had them play along while we sang some songs. So, activities along those lines. Then one of them was just a very loose, freeform art project where I stood in front of a big easel and said, “We're going to draw a Corona-fighting monster today. And you guys are gonna help me come up with it.”

The kids came up with all kinds of crazy things. Eight legs! Six eyes! It has a soap spray, so it can wash your hands, these kinds of things. And, just like when you do anything by committee, -- it can also become long and unwieldy. Which was the name they came up for was the creature was Rainbow Pivity Chi Chi Jimmy Live!

Malcolm: Wait, let me get my pen!

Rob: The only thing that makes any sense is that one of the kids has a hamster named Chi Chi. So that's a sort of fuzzy anchor to reality in that crazy name.

So we came up with the idea for it, and then that just kind of settled. And then, I started handing off the baton to other parents to do Wacky Wednesdays. It went on. And then after a while, my son finally said, “Do I have to keep doing this?”

I was like, “Yes, you do!”

THE AUDIENCE

To backtrack a little, I've also been, on the side, a fledgling comic book writer. I pitched and wrote, and then eventually had published, my own original comic book for adults called “Shrinkage,” which is a graphic novel that contains eight chapters that came out in, I want to say, 2017.

And, my son is really into comic books and the Captain Underpants graphic novel kind of kids' books. So I thought, what if we could do some more with this creature they came up with? What if we could make a comic book about it's adventures fighting Corona, to help the kids kind of get their heads around this whole situation?

I just think kids have the very shortest end of the stick in this whole situation we're all suffering from, but they are the most powerless in this. They have just gotten used to rules they didn't like in the real, regular world. Now there's all kinds of new extra rules they have to deal with. And they have new limitations and new things to be scared of that they weren't really as scared of before. It's just the worst deal of all for them, all around. So I thought if something can give them a sense of escape from the situation and a sense of empowerment over it...

I know kids like to have monsters and crazy creations be sort of proxies in the world. So if we could tell a comic book story about this and how this monster takes on this invisible enemy that we're all dealing with, that would be a cool thing. And also maybe if people like it, we could sell copies of it and raise money, for a good cause that's dealing with some aspect of the pandemic dynamic and how it's affected all of us.

THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION

I tend to have huge, unrealistic thoughts that I'm in no way qualified to execute. So I started talking to my friend, Chari Pere , who's a great illustrator. And she said, yeah, I might be able to illustrate that. But then, like a lot of people, she lost her job and she had to pound the pavement and start hustling for work. “I don't have time to do a free comic book,” she said, “Art is so labor-intensive, and I've got to find a job.” She has three little kids, and her husband's an actor. So you can imagine, it's not the most stable income stream, but, she's like, “keep me posted on how this is going. I really like this project -- I just wish I had the time to do it.”

I was at a loss. Then, I turned to crowdsourcing and went onto Facebook and I said, does anyone know an artist who'd want to work on a kid's project for charity? I didn't know what would happen, what would turn up. Of all people, Miranda Bevington Tumlin, class of ‘89, good friend of mine. She was in the Flag Corps when I was in the marching band at Westminster. And Randi said, do you know, Allison Garwood? She's an artist, she's amazing, and this sounds like her kind of thing.” She sent me some of Allison's comic strips, and I thought they were hilarious. So I was like, okay, good. I found a soulmate on this project.

And then I was like, “Oh gosh, now I actually have to do this!”

Allison: That's the worst moment for a writer -- when you actually have to write the draft.

Rob: I'm a freelancer, and I’m trying to balance a lot of gigs. So I would find time when I could to write script pages for the book. And the problem was that Allison is so fast, which is amazing. She would turn the pages back around to me before I could finish the next ones. Usually it goes the other way. Usually artists take forever -- this was the other way around.

But that was great. I was really motivated. Then we kind of had this joke all along that, “Hey, oh gosh, what if the unthinkable happens and they cure COVID before the comic book is done?”

Michael: What a tragedy for humanity... that's sick.

Rob: I know I know. Did I mention I'm a sociopath also?

THE WAY WE ROLL

So Allison and I went back and forth, through the whole summer and the fall, and at one point she says, “Should we just finish this off as is? Or should we do it in color?” And I loved what she was doing in color so much. I said, “If you can do color, everyone loves colors, let's do that.” So then we had a full color book done. Then, I shared everything we were doing with Chari Pere And I said, “Do you want to do the cover?” She was very excited to do the cover for it because she could be part of it without spending too much time on it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that early on in this phase, we did a couple of Wacky Wednesdays developing the comic book. This is going back to the spring, back before Chari lost her job. So what we did was, first of all, we had a Zoom session where I told all the kids to bring two facts that they knew about Corona, like anything they knew about it at all. And we would try to find places that those could fit into stories and characters.

One kid said it was started by someone eating a bat. So we came up with this idea that there was one of the characters who had something to lose from Corona, a character whose livelihood was making food, made all from bats, and that nobody wanted any bats anymore.

Then I took some of their story and character ideas. I came up with three pitches for like, what kind of story could we tell based on this? And the kids basically liked one of them the most, which was that the monster and the Bat Chef ended up traveling around the world to try to track down the virus and stop it. My son actually said the phrase that “the virus made a conga line around the world.” That actually makes it into the book as, you'll see, in an illustration. But in fact, when he saw the final thing, he said, ”It's a virus. It's not a conga line. It's not dancing.” I was like, “YOU came up with that; you forgot about that entirely!”

Then, with Chari we had a session where she was helping us brainstorm what the characters looked like. We took the original, rough crayon drawing that I had done, which was terrible. And the kids shouted out suggestions and she drew them into cartoon characters, including a villain called Bad Rainbow Kitty -- because apparently all good and evil characters have to involve rainbows, So she drew these formative characters. Then Allison picked those up when we did the book and basically integrated them into the story and created the look for Bat Chef and... and did everything else as well.

So we did it all over three sessions to come up with things. Then I wrote the script over a long period of time whenever I had a chance.

And, by the late fall, Allison had completed and colored all the pages, and we had the cover.

USING THE FORCE

We found this website called Gumroad, where artists can upload their work and sell it. And it takes a small percentage of that, like Bandcamp or one of these things for music, except for art projects.

It must've been December. We put it on Gumroad and then some friends of ours were doing a charity project with their family, for Hanukkah. They picked different charity beneficiaries instead of guests to give to each night. I asked them for some ideas on what a good charity for Corona was.

They told me about this place called gavi.org, which is an international organization I had not heard of that funds equitable distribution of vaccines. I mean, they've been around for 20 years, getting all kinds of vaccines for all kinds of illnesses into low-income communities, all over the world -- but they have an entire branch about COVID now as well.

It seemed like literally the week that I got the idea for the charity, the week that I published on Gumroad and spread the word, that was literally the week that they announced the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines.

I look at it as though it was meant to be that way, and that we actually showed up at the finish line at the same time as the global struggle. And in fact, found a charity that was able to further the work.

So it all really came together nicely at the end. We spread the word to all the parents. We told everyone to just to share with their family and friends. I don't remember the number of copies we've sold so far, but, after the service fee, we just made our first $250 contribution to gavi.org.

You know, that's why I reached out to you guys as well; we're trying to spread the word further beyond our school circle. We think this is something that everybody's really liked so far, and it's really a nice project for kids.

We also had a section at the end where Allison drew pictures of the kids who were involved in this. And one of them, Ethan, was one of the ones who was the most active in the creative process. His mother told us he was super proud and excited to see his name with his face in it. That's all I ever really wanted. I wanted the kids to feel like they could do something good for the world.

THE BEGINNINGS

As far as the Westminster stuff, I’m a K through 12 or, as they called it in my time, “Alpha Omega.”

Back in kindergarten, I was super-annoying to everybody, including my teachers, who threw me out, because basically, I know now, that I saw everything, like The Matrix -- except that for me it was seeing everything that was funny that no one else did, and I was just laughing at it and pointing it out, and no one else was aware of it.

I was laughing and making jokes about things all the time. Everybody else was like, “What's wrong with him?” And then, then my mother discovered Ritalin and I, uh, settled into my studies, but I kept my streak of weirdness, which is a good thing. And, I was always trying to make people laugh. I remember, in junior high I loved “The Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson. So I’d draw my own one-panel cartoons and secretly pass them around during class. My own undeveloped style, which is exactly the same style I still have today.

I had a friend who would give me grades on each one, like how I did in the cartoon on a scale of one to five. Then in high school, Dr. Tom Curtis, one of the veteran Latin and Greek teachers and eventually the Bible Chair, started a writing club. I was part of that and I would always try to write funny short stories, but, you know, I think Westminster at my time -- maybe less so than now or your time -- was a bit of a stodgy place. So this was my escape valve, humor and weirdness and silliness, all that sort of stuff along with all the serious academics.

But I was still on kind of a serious track from Westminster. And I went into college, went to Princeton, majoring in anthropology and Russian studies, and interested in political activism and ecological stuff. And the comedy kind of took a back seat. Then I noticed that by junior year, everything I was doing extracurricularly, whether it was a student theater group or the improv troupe or the humor magazine I took over, everything I was doing was related to comedy.

And it finally occurred to me that that was where my passion was drawing me. So I took a lot of steps that led to a comedy career. But, you know, I had the roots, the roots were certainly planted in the soil of Westminster's dry and arid environment. And when I reached out and I needed a partner in this, it was the Westminster connection from long ago, that made this happen. Randi from Westminster brought me together with Allison .

And the funny thing is that, if you look at the timeline, I was class of 90 and Allison was class of 92. We were in Marching Band and she was in Flag Corps? We performed together in shows together on the football field for at least one or two years. And as I recall, the flags were right in front of the drums which I played. So all this time she was only several feet away from me! And yet never met each other. Now she lives in Pasadena and I live in LA. So we've missed multiple chances to actually meet in person for other reasons.

But it took the power of social networking for us to find a common cause.

Artist Allison Amdur Garwood (‘92), the visual creator in the team of Rob Kutner-Allison Garwood, talked with us about surviving 2020, the pendulum swings of career, and the liberating motivation that comes with a great creative partnership. We dove into her story at the point when she formed that partnership.

THE BEGINNINGS

Corliss: So Allison, can you tell us, similar to what Rob shared, was there any link between now and what you were doing at Westminster? What your thoughts were in ‘92 about where you were going to end up in life, you know, and what actually happened? Or, was it just something that evolved along the way after Westminster? We're always looking for that Westminster link or tie...

Allison: Definitely. I don't know why, but I didn't take any art classes when I was at Westminster, but I was absolutely cartooning every single day during and after-school and getting pens taken away and, you know, yelled at for drawing stuff in class all the time.

However, at one point I decided I was going to be the cartoonist for the school paper. I did this kind of a societal take. And as I look back now, I'm mortified by it -- it was from a great place of privilege and judgment, and the entire school erupted. Some people were like, “Yeah, she's right!” And some people yelled at me and pulled me aside to talk to me. Now as an adult, I'm like, that's a really successful comic, good job! But at the time I found it terrifying, and I was too scared to ever do another one. Then when I got to college, I started up again.

I have to say, I feel like all of us who went to Westminster, we know that it was a lot of hard work. And I think one of the coolest things about Westminster is it taught us we can go so much longer and harder than we think we can when working on something. It’s hard to not give in to “I'm tired” or ”I just want to go goof off.” Westminster built a work ethic in me. I can't relax until I’m finished and finished well. I have goals for myself every day, and I get my work done. All that stuff was pounded into us at Westminster. It really does come back to help us as adults in our careers.

Corliss: How about more information about this cartoon that you published that got such reactions, like the topic or anything about it.

Allison: Oh, it was awful. It was this guy with a sign, People will have signs that say like, you know, “please give money” or something. And I think his sign said “Need A Job,” but he was standing in front of a Help Wanted sign. I'm just, I'm not proud of that. So, no, I do not feel this way anymore. People change and people grow and people learn. If you don't have anything to look back on in your life that makes you cringe, that means you haven't grown. Right?

FAST FORWARD

Malcolm: Allison, so when Rob flew into your life, what changed?

Allison: This has been quite a year. Everything kind of went upside down. My son was having the best year of his life: friends, grades, sports, everything. We all were. We bought a house, we got tickets to the Olympics, and we even scored “Hamilton” tickets for opening night in LA. The day of the show, we were debating if we should go or not when we got an email from the theater: cancelled. And like dominos, then everything else shut down.

I made a decision at the beginning of COVID that hardship can either deflate me, or it can make me dig in and work harder. So I decided that I would work really hard every time I felt sad. I worked really hard a lot. I dug into that, and made space for working hard and balancing remote school and my tween and my marriage.

Then my close friend, Randi reached out to me and told me about Rob’s project.

The idea of going back into drawing was intimidating, and so was working with this talented genius who wrote for Conan and The Daily Show and won 5 Emmys! But it also sounded really fun. It felt good to get back into drawing on a daily basis, and getting back to my wheelhouse of books and comic strips and comics. There are a lot of days as an artist where I’m like, “If I don't get up this morning, nobody's going to care.” But now with this, I could say, “Yay! Somebody cares if I get up this morning!”

Malcolm: My kids are, I mean, they're going to be out of school entirely within another year. And I was an empty-nester for a couple of minutes. Then because of COVID they came back. We have to stay away from each other in the house, in order to keep the homicide rate down.

Allison: Did y'all see a Steve Martin bit when he said when he's in the kitchen, everyone needs to be in that one square foot of space at the exact same time, including the dogs?

I really, really missed cartooning and writing. Every once in a while I would try to get back into it. But then, my son would -- he just needed a full-time mom, and every time I would try to get back into something his grades would fall, and we'd have to do some family recovery. Yeah, I definitely missed it in that time period. I did start some comedy writing classes, and I went to the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I studied improv and writing there. And, I studied writing at Second City. Then I got to do some private classes where the teachers will invite you to their house. So I never fully got out of it, but I also was never fully able to get into it.

Now since my son is 13, and especially with the remote schooling, I feel like this is the time. I made a decision that this is the year that I get to get back into it. (I have a comic strip (Petunia & Dre on GoComics.com) launching on GoComics.com on May 3, and several projects in progress.) When the opportunity to work with Rob popped up it was a nice kick in the butt to get restarted and get ramped back up into what I love.

THE COMEBACK

Allison: My son was born in Haiti and I brought him home two months before the earthquake. So, we just went through some hard stuff -- let’s just say, it's been an adventure. I think that now I come back to it 10 years older, 10 years wiser, and with 10 years of challenging life experience. That is going to show in all of the stuff that I put out. And like Rob says, you’ve just got to squeeze every ounce of joy and comedy out of every minute of life.

Rob: I also want to say that along the same lines, as a writer in Hollywood this past year, everything was shut down, even animation -- where I’m currently focusing my career. Everything I was doing has been at a standstill. I had an animated project at the SyFy network that got killed this year. So I was just trying to earn a living, while nothing was happening with all the things I was pursuing.

As a writer, most of the things you do end up either on your hard drive or in your file drawer and don't ever see the light of day. So to see this thing that I was writing with Allison come to life, continuously and joyously and colorfully, was such a spirit-raising thing for me during this year -- that I could write something that was actually coming to fruition, in real time. And to know for sure it was going to come out into the world was just so empowering for me.

Malcolm: I'm going to sidetrack here. Allison, what gave you the courage to think that you could improve on this?

Allison: Pure arrogance.

BREAKING IN

Malcolm: I think we all have a lot of friends who have talent and some of them just like to be doing that all the time, uh, professionally. But I think in that group, even fewer, you know, actually pull it off. Each of you had a way in. For people who have not been in entertainment or media, it sometimes seems really mysterious how somebody finds out about you.

And, how's that going to work in the future? With all of us being so dependent now on the web to get anything done, do you think the prospects are different? Are they better or worse? Do we have to kind of reinvent the whole way that people get found and get to keep doing stuff?

Allison: I speak as someone who's trying to break back in a little later in life. In the olden days I submitted to editors and I was able to build relationships with them. My first comic strip went into web syndication because I was introduced by another cartoonist (Keith Knight of (th)ink, K Chronicles.) So that was one way. I think now it seems like you better come with a fan base, so you better be doing Twitter or Instagram and you better have a bit of a following already, and only then you can go to editors. That's how it feels to me. I don't know. What do you think, Rob?

Rob: I mean, it's kind of a double-edged sword because, on the one hand there's so many different avenues to reach people nowadays -- between more podcasts and digital outlets and even people's e-newsletters they send out about what they're doing, and also all kinds of tools that are out there to get your work out there and have it look really professional. But on the other hand there’s also so many options, so many media and entertainment options that there's a lot of, I wouldn't say signals and noise, but like, there's a big ocean of content out there. So how do you make a splash for what you're doing? How do you get attention? And maybe it is having to be a provocateur like Alison,

We've certainly seen that with some comedians who have just decided to take the political path and get politically radical, either right or left. They get all kinds of followers and it's a bit of a deal with the devil, sometimes to be honest. I think it's just a matter of just trying all different kinds of things and seeing what sticks. I think it used to be, you could sort of plug away at the same thing and eventually you would sort of be accepted into the ranks of those who do it and raised up. I think nowadays things are just more fluid. And so you have to spread your creative wings out in all kinds of directions and see where you get a reaction from people.

MAKING IT WORK

Michael: I'm the techie in the group, Alison. I had a question for you. Did you, did you do these, um, illustrations by hand, or on a computer while they're still by hand…? But what was your workflow, or how did you go about creating them?

Allison: I used to do everything on a piece of paper and then scan it in and piece it together in Photoshop. If I was ever going to quit cartooning, it would have been because of scanning. Later I drew on a Wacom tablet below me and it showed up on the screen in front of me. That took a minute to get used to. When I worked on this project with Rob, I actually did the whole thing on my iPad. I don’t recommend using an iPad. For future projects, I got a Wacom Intuos, and I use a program called Clip Studio Paint Pro.

Malcolm: Cool, cool. My, my daughter's got one of those, but I'm scared of it. So I have no idea how to use it!

Rob: Allison did you use Procreate?

Allison: I did, but I don't feel like Procreate is meant for professional work. So I got really stressed out cause I was like, “I’ve got to make Rob happy” but I picked this program that is slow, light on features, and won’t let me build the book as I go. Clip Studio Paint is a Japanese program that’s made for creating Manga and other graphic novels.

THE AUDIENCE

Malcolm: So, Rob was talking about the infinite amount of content that's out there now. And kids are younger and younger when they become completely accustomed to spending huge parts of their day, you know, online. But even accounting or allowing for those two things, is there, uh, a smaller world that you guys work in, as graphic artists and graphic novelists? Somewhere that you can see who you're targeting, who is aware of you already and you're building on that? Or is it mostly about a fan base?

Rob: Honestly, I don't have any idea. I think you feel very disconnected from your audience, unless you are doing literally live work.

I really just think of my 8-year-old son as my demographic, my audience for all this stuff. The other thing is that I'm writing an elementary school-aged graphic novel for Macmillan that is also “for” my son. It's called “Snot Goblins.” You can imagine what level of Westminster prep school sophistication has gone into that. It's mostly the kind of things that he would find really funny and he would laugh at.

But with publishing being at such a glacial pace, at best it's going to come out late 2022, 23. So he's going to be 10 years old and he’ll probably be like,”Dad, this is stupid.” With this comic book we did, because of the immediacy of it, I got to share it with him right now at this wonderful age that he and his friends are at. And that was a special little joy as well.

I think if I'm not really established, maybe when the graphic novel comes out, maybe there'll be readings again or something where you have the chance for kids to interact with you about your product. But I haven't really gotten into that field enough to have an audience yet. All I know is, when my son was learning to read, the only thing that really got him over the hump was the Captain Underpants series.

THE COMMUNITY

Allison: I was a member of the National Cartoonists’ Society when I was living in Atlanta and then in San Francisco. I was lucky enough to meet all the cartoonists we know and love. My heroes!

Then some people got a hold of the Cartoonists’ Society who were pretty mean guys. One night I got to hang out with Lalo Alcaraz (La Cucaracha) and Paul Gilligan (Pooch Cafe). None of us had been invited to the “President’s Party” as everyone had been in years past. That was crazy because those two guys are pretty famous. Well, we decided to crash the party at about 2 a.m. It was empty, of course. But the NCS President waddled up to us and said, “Well, crash my party and drink all my drinks.” And then he kicked us out! We were dues-paying members! And Lalo and Paul were (and are) famous! But out we went. It was so silly, because I wanted to say “You're a cartoonist, dude! That's not cool! You know, we need to all hang together.”

So I removed myself from that and went with the more indie cartoonists.

When Rob talks about trying to break into the cartoonist cliques and becoming accepted it makes me laugh. We cartoonists are not usually a difficult people to get to know … other than that jerk Cartoonists’ Society President. I’m sure the people Rob met are doing their version of accepting, it’s just very quiet and awkward.

I used to participate in the Alternative Press Expo, which was really cool. Cartoonists get right in front of the fans and each other. I made new friends and new fans would sell my little book that I put together at Kinko's. Tom Beland (True Story Swear To God) up and gave me a huge beautiful original drawing - just because I liked it and because he’s super nice. And we kept in touch a little through the years.

Nowadays, it's a little more isolated. First of all, because I've been away so long. But also, I think, because we can hide behind our computers. Funnily enough, I swim every day and I get to swim with a guy who's in animation. And I've been noticing how hungry I am to get to swim with him so we can talk about cartoons and drawing styles and stuff. Rob may not realize that Chari and I have actually started texting each other for the same reason.

I think we have more access now because we can get in touch with each other online. There's one artist that I was able to get a hold of through Instagram; I follow him and I asked a question and he answered it. So you can get in touch with really amazing people, more easily now because you can do it online. But also, you know, stuff has kind of slowed down. So people you normally wouldn’t be able to reach are bored enough to decide to respond to you.

Rob: That's very true. That's very true.

Michael: And San Francisco is a good place for, for cartoons. There's even a cartoon museum in San Francisco.

Rob: We were planning to go there with our kids, but we didn't make it. But my daughter took a summer class online from there and loved it.

Michael: Well, good. I'm glad to hear that. I never knew what the quality of that was, but I've always thought that the museum is great.

Allison: Yeah. I was there, we were there when they first started it. So I got to know all the amazing people that were a part of that. I haven't been for a long time, but I assume it's still a really cool place. They all have a love for cartooning, the artwork, the people, the artists behind it. They're a really welcoming, enthusiastic organization.

Michael: So they must be doing some outreach type things too. They want to stay relevant.

NEW WORK

Michael: Your upcoming projects are for adults primarily. Or did I get that right?

Allison: Go Comics continues to rerun my old strip NEUROTICA and we’re launching my new strip Petunia & Dre on May 3. It’s a spin-off of NEUROTICA many years later, and the main character is now a mom. It’s largely inspired by my life and my relationship with my son and our journey with race in this lunatic country. I think that strip will appeal to adults and tweens/teens.

I'm working on a book project with somebody that's definitely for adults. I’ve written two graphic novels that are Young Adult level. And there are some other fun projects, including another adventure with Rob! So it's fun. It's really cool. Right after I worked with Rob, opportunities started popping like popcorn, including the opportunity to do more with Rob -- and it's exciting!

To get back into this and for it to go as well as it's going is a really pleasant surprise.

Malcolm Ryder (West ‘72) Contributor

Suzy Goldberg (West '72) Contributor

Michael Slade (West '73) Contributor

Corliss Denman (West '73) Contributor