New Times And Old Prejudices

 September 19, 2026

   I got back from my walk with Uno this morning and as I traversed the breezeway I noticed a delivered packet inside the gate addressed to "Robert Allen Bell" and I thought to myself, The only person on the planet who would use those three words together was my mother and she has been gone for more than two decades. So, I took the packet in the kitchen and got a knife and started ripping into the plastic bag and the next thing I notice is that there appears to be a white T-shirt inside. Say what? So I pulled it out and laid it on the kitchen table and this is what was on it:

A "Too New Times" T-shirt Design

(and yes, that is the Arizona Republic at top, right)

   Here's the backstory. Former employees of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette (known collectively as the R&G) are having a reunion next month and would I like to design a commemorative T-shirt for the gathering? I told them I would give it a shot and immediately called my partner in design crime, Big D, and we jammed on ideas and ended up at the above design and copy. The guy at the bottom is a caricature I did of Bill Close, a feisty news anchor on KOOL TV back in the day when I did cartoons for a certain hippie publication. When I sent the proposed design to the powers that be in the R&G hierarchy, they deemed it, "Too New Times," as in the "hippie rag" I used to work for in the eighties, The New Times Weekly. 

   I called Big D with the bad news and just for grins he had one shirt printed and he was the one who sent me the shirt. Also, Dan Harshberger made the nod to my mother on the packet as an added humor bonus since he had heard my mom use it many times.

   So, I've got that going for me.

   If you would like your own R&G T-shirt you can get one right here:

I Want That Shirt!

"As an artist, we are reporters. Our job is to report what it's like to be alive right now."

—Robert Longo