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Never married. Trudeau lives alone in New Haven in a red brick town house he bought about four years ago. (He also has an apartment in New York City, where last week he went out with Candice Bergen.) One floor of the town house is taken up by his cluttered studio, in which he outlines the strip with a pencil, often to the accompaniment of thundering Rolling Stones music. The lines are gone over in ink by an artist at the syndicate's Kansas City headquarters. Trudeau can be spotted most afternoons jogging around the park behind his house. "I'm a religious jogger," says Trudeau, who spends three hours a day at it. Doonesbury's characters could fill a catalogue with their bizarre tastes, but their progenitor has few weaknesses. Among them are junk food and Dr. Pepper. He is so casual about feeding habits that he keeps a can of frozen orange juice concentrate in his refrigerator and spoons out enough for one glass at a time. As a cook Trudeau is a great cartoonist. "I've moved rom Swanson's to Stouffer's," he says. "A sign of affluence, I guess."
More than any of his comic-page contemporaries, Trudeau is a true journalist. He often works only two weeks ahead of Doonesbury's deadline (v. as much as two months for some other cartoonists), and spends hours sifting through newspapers, magazines and government documents in search of inspiration. His timeliness and diligence were clearly demonstrated last spring as Southeast Asian refugees poured into the U.S. In Doonesbury, they arrived in Washington to testify at Senate hearings that resembled a TV quiz show. ("What do we have for the witnessess, Johnnie?" "Well, for the ladies, from Speidel, the latest in watch-bands...") The refugees were then taken in by upholstered Georgetown matrons, shown off at dinner parties and fed Minute Rice. To research that series, Trudeau not only followed press accounts of the refugee influx, but also read the staff report to Edward M. Kennedy's Senate Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees. "He does his homework," says Playboy Cartoon Editor Michelle Urry. "Garry's on of the few intellectuals in the business."
Reporter-style, Trudeau often shows up at Senate hearings, conventions and other news events. Last fall he accompanied President Ford to China, where the cartoonist made diplomatic and aerodynamic history by tossing his Frisbee with NBC Correspondent Tom Brokaw atop the Great Wall. Reports the discus thrower: "The wall was too narrow to go for distance, and the wind currents were bad." Trudeau also wrote and illustrated a 3,000-word report on the trip for 75 client papers, and did prliminary sketches for Uncle Duke's arrival last month as Chinese envoy. This week, Trudeau will attend a Women's Political Caucus seminar for prospective candidates in preparation for Ginny congressional race.