Why I Love Portland, Part 4: John Callahan

A few years back, I called my phone buddy, John Callahan, to find him having an unusually bad afternoon. He had been rolling across an intersection here in Portland and this white van took the corner too fast, clipping him in his wheelchair, before taking off. It was the kind of thing that can test a person’s faith in humanity, especially if John still had any.
What I got from that episode was how strong the guy really is. Of course, he has comedy chops for days, but he also has an advanced degree in processing emotional pain, and the end result is that he’s distilled down to an essential, unshakeable toughness. He seems deeply hurt at all times, yet he triumphs through it. To me, he comes off as exceedingly noble, but I’m willing to overlook that.
What I really like about him is that he’s a professional cartoonist with a devastating sense of humor and deep felt political beliefs, which he’s not afraid to put out there, even if it costs him dearly. He also has some great anecdotes. Did you know he’s mentioned in the court transcripts of the OJ trial? Judge Ito referenced one of his cartoons.
Several days after he got hit by the van, we talked about the irony of it all. On one hand you get run over in your wheelchair, but on the other, you can’t feel some of the new pain. In a deeply twisted way, it’s like he caught a break.
I drew him a cartoon of Osama bin Ladin blowing up the white van - this was pre-9/11. The caption was something like, “We brought in a guy to take care of your problem.”
He said he enjoyed it, although I’m aware that dealing with an amateur cartoonist, must have been a very tedious thing.
I set out to convince him that I had the comedy chops, too. Normally, I couldn’t care less, but this guy I wanted to impress. I mean he’s the hippest guy in the room. One day I called him with a joke about the Olympics being in China in 2008. This was right after it was announced. I said you can tell it’s a police state, because one of the new events will be Synchronized Thinking. Callahan loved that joke, and mentioned it years later.
The thing he said that knocked me out was when we were talking about how bad the new TV shows were. He said, “I can’t even sit through them, and I’m paralyzed.”
The subject I most like to talk about with him now is his song-writing. I asked him just the other day how that’s going. Try imagining his particular soul in the form of music. The lyrics occasionally have the same sense of humor, but the songs allow him to tap the deep emotions of his life. They are great. Somebody should get on this, soon. Could you imagine an album called, “The Songs of John Callahan”? Better yet, let him make up the title. The guy has comedy chops for days.