newyorkette

^{(Don’t get them mad.)}
Diffee (another TNY cartoonist) joshingly told me the other day that I was full of “hair-brained ideas.”
I corrected him. I told him I was full of “hare-brained” ideas! Hare, as in “mad as a march hare.”

Above please find some mad rabbits that I spotted at Sur La Table on Spring Street. I thought they were rather menacing for salt and pepper shakers! But nothing compared to the kwazy wabbit I’ll be posting on Easter.

(Anyone recognize the quote from Dr. Strangelove?)

^{The Movado Hour is considerably more highbrow than this Plattsdeutsch “Oompa Festival” concert I attended because my Dad was in the band. Moreoever, the Movado hour offers canapés and white wine before and afterwards (so you’ll have to bring your own Jägermeister and herring sandwiches!)}

You can’t beat live music for free. Even my Dad’s Oompa Festivals are a pleasure for knowing that the fat old men playing their lurching polkas are playing just for us.

But my Tuesday evening was spent in a considerably more highbrow manner at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC), listening to a little Schubert octet, played live in a candle-lit, intimate setting, with city lights pleasantly perceptible in the background through tall black mesh windowshades. I spotted TNY’s Russell Platt two seats away. I’m not sure what my dad would think (he’s very picky, even finding fault with Lincoln Center’s acoustics), but I thought the sound in that room was perfect, the music enclosing the audience like a small egg in a velvet glove.

I’m no stranger to classical music, having grown up with a father who was a recording engineer for CBS and Sony and who told me stories about working with Glenn Gould and Wynton Marsalis, among others. So my take on the music was this: it’s funny how some music can sound exactly like a bunch of socialites at a high-class tea party engaging in animated gossip, suddenly transformed into musical instruments. The first allegro was for classical music what “Summer Dreaming” was for Grease. Well, maybe a cross between that and Cole Porter’s “What a swell party this is!” (I hope Russell Platt isn’t reading this nonsense!)

I saw other people with their eyes closed, absorbing the chords and harmonies and trills and crisp little curlicues, all very dignified and worthy of the music. But me, I was smiling. I was feeling tickled. I think we all should reach the point where a one-liner by a bassoon at the end of a musical jaunt can make us laugh a little inside. Here’s a shortcut to that point (or a life-saver if you’re just plain bored): just imagine it’s all the soundtrack to a classic pre-1957 Tom & Jerry cartoon.

Have a look at the schedule, maybe there’s something you’d like to hear played live for free. And even if not, try it, you might like it. Everything’s nicer when you hear it live, and it’s only an hour! Plus, Baryshnikov will be there, and he’s still very nice to look at: The Movado Hour at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC)

^{(Image: carolita johnson)}

Whenever I see couples in their wedding outfits wandering around Central Park I wish I’d gotten married at least once. Why? So that I could wear my wedding outfit and walk around the park and make people take pictures of me, or maybe eat ice cream and pretend my groom just left me. In fact, I’d love to wear a wedding dress all the time, on the bus, on the subway, in the supermarket… I’d love to go to a bar in a wedding dress, with all the ruffles and petticoats and everything, and tell guys I’m not looking to get married. “No,” I’d say, “I’m only interested in having fun, but I like to be prepared for anything. You never know! So, do you like children?”

For a girl who’s never been married, and never even considered being married, I’ve sold quite a few wedding cartoons. (I always say I do cartoons about things I don’t understand!) I ended up selling a variant on this idea (no doubt funnier than the rejected one above), which I can neither point to or post now because it hasn’t appeared in The New Yorker yet. But when it does, I’ll pipe up.

Meanwhile, if you’re not too depressed from doing your taxes, get your wedding dress (or tux) on and go take a walk in the park!

^{(My first attempt at oil painting last summer, inspired by my Coney Island Venus, came out rather unsurprisingly cartoony!) Image: carolita johnson}

Well, this is my favorite Brighton Beach babe, who I call my “Coney Island Venus.” But if she’s not to your taste, there are other “babes” to be seen on Brighton Beach against the Coney Island backdrop. Less bashful than your american babes, you’ll find speedo-clad male slavs, and the occasional tanga-clad female slavs.

Not everyone in a Speedo or a tanga really ought to be in one (summer’s variant on “not all that glitters is gold”), but diversity in body types is what makes the world go ‘round for an artist. That makes Brighton Beach a feast for the eyes. The hard-core Russians are already out. They seem impervious to cold weather and incapable of goosebumps, inclining me to indulge in romantic daydreams in which they’re all Dostoievskian escapees from the snows of Siberia.

Check out Gothamist’’s celebration of the the re-opening of Coney Island. True love means you’ll still come to Coney Island in the winter, but there’s no need to suffer now. Just stash a sweater and a good book in your bag and hop on the N,Q, D or F to Stillwell Avenue. Go straight across the street to Nathan’s and get your hot dog and fries, then take a shoreline or boardwalk stroll beyond Astroland to Brighton Beach. Cross over the boardwalk back onto the street there to pick up your favorite pickles and Russian specialities at the grocery stores, or stop for a quick vodka before getting back on Q or B train home again.

As part of its recent makeover, the online edition of The New York Times has added a new button which allows readers thwarted by the allocation of certain choice articles to TimesSelect to express themselves. In a related bid to improve customer relations, they have also removed the snarky “psych!” message from the top of the “sign-up now or go read the boring news” page.

^{Who am I kidding? I’ll be doing my reading at the laundromat. (Image: carolita johnson)}

This week’s fiction in TNY, “In the reign of Harad IV” by Steven Millhauser is a story that will ring true for those of us who have known the tragic but boring insanity (should I say tragically boring?) of the paranoid genius. The King’s maker of miniatures is continually seized by a restlessness he can’t exhaust except temporarily, by creating miniatures exponentially smaller and smaller until they become invisible to the naked eye. And yet he must surpass himself. His work becomes visible only in his imagination.

The story is a parable and applies very well to real life.

For example, the real life king’s magician I once knew was writing a book on Tate’s theory of knots and it’s relation to Lacan’s psychoanalytical practices. (Feel free to wolf-whistle or guffaw or smoke a pipe.) He became increasingly resentful, feeling that he was “giving away” equations and solutions he’d labored so hard for years to understand himself. He proceeded to alter the manuscript I’d typed into his computer (as his apprentice), throwing mathematical falsities into equations and explanations until his work became so obscure that he lost the book deal, his friends, his girlfriend, and took to the bottle. He continues his work in Beverly Hills, conducting an invisible seminar with rich misfits, drawing knots after hours in an empty classroom belonging to an English School for Japanese businessmen.

So very like the the maker of miniatures, who is visited by his abandoned apprentices curious to see what he’s been working on behind closed doors for so long. He shows them his latest and most brilliant work, and :

” knowing that they had seen nothing, that their words were hollow, and that they would never visit him again, returned with some impatience to his work; and as he sank below the crust of the visible world, into his dazzling kingdom, he understood that he had travelled a long way from the early days, that he still had far to go, and that, from now on, his life would be difficult and without forgiveness.”

Millhauser’s story perfectly recreates this gradual spiralling through the “floor” of the visible into the world of the invisible. He describes this descent from the tiny to the tinier to the invisible so well that I had the impression, while reading, that the story itself was getting smaller and smaller, and harder to read, till it became just a strange diamond shaped spot that looked like this:

^{My favorite view from the cartoon department at The New Yorker.}

The immigrants who teach our children Spanish, shine our shoes, trim our hedges, and clean our houses (when we’re prosperous enough to afford their meager wages) took to the the streets Sunday,waving diverse flags and raising issues of assimilation first and second generation Americans should think about: Who do you come from?

Apparently people have finally noticed the new European-Latino inspired trend of kissing people you barely know: Warning: when a kiss becomes two kisses, it can become four, which I thought I’d happily left behind when I left France to come to the land of the handshake.

Other bad manners I have objected to this week involve the wearing of sweatpants and the use of a stranger’s arm for the purposes of sexual gratification during rush hour, which I think is very rude! It’s time to shape up and observe better decorum in the subway: Live from the 1 train: the new rules.

I was berated for eating french fries by a well-paying customer, whose extended hours forced me to drop by The New Yorker’s premises with my batch after hours, a lonely journey that brought on memories and theories about the feminine side of being a cartoonist: Late night at TNY: the secret lives of cartoonists and models.

The exterminator came, and I posted an exterminator cartoon in honor of him as he’s the most important man in my life these days: Live from Washington Heights: Rejected cartoon of the day. Thank you Mr. Exterminator!

And I had my last mouth-watering bowl of sweet white miso soup with lemon rind, and last beautiful plate of sushi and sashimi before paying my taxes, at one of the finer Tables for One: Takahachi Tribeca. When you eat there, think of me!

^{“Today’s Special: Undigested News” (Image: carolita johnson)}

Someone once accused me of posting “partially-digested newspaper articles,” as if I’d ever presume to do anyone’s digesting for them. There are some articles that need no pre-digesting. All you have to do is look at the headlines one after another, and you’ve got the whole story. I’m just saying hey, look at this:

NYT: Cheney’s Aide Says President Approved Leak.

And this:
WaPo: Bush Authorized Secrets’ Release, Libby Testified

And of course, the inevitable this:
WaPo: Experts say tactic would be legal but unusual

I feel like I’ve just O.D.’d on the news! I don’t think I’ll be able stand having NPR on while I clean house today.

UPDATE: here’s one more from the NYTimes, about how the Bush called the leak he himself authorized “a shameful act” that “helps the enemy.”
The article poses that this may be hard for the President to live down. But he seems to be living it down so far! In fact, the lack of outrage about this in general seems to point to the public simply being fed up. Think he’ll be impeached? I think not. We’re too tired to impeach him now. And that’s probably what he’s counting on.

Bon appetit?

^{(Helpful hint of the day: The air-kiss involves no bodily contact and is even more sanitary than the handshake. Image: carolita johnson)}

This article in the NYTimes, “Better not miss the buss,” is about the Latin/European trend (and its perils) of kissing people we barely know penetrating our borders and continues the theme of good manners and bad manners of my week.

At about my thirteenth year of living in Paris, France, I was pretty sick of kissing everyone I met. It wasn’t just one kiss. It was two. And at the point when I was getting not just weary of all this kissing, but even grumpy and recalcitrant about it, a new and even more disturbing trend in la bise came in from the suburbs: the quadruple kiss. That was when I snapped. Four kisses? Four kisses to each person in a group of five meeting for a drink is twenty kisses! C’est trop!

I started sticking my hand out for a handshake.
This raised objections. “What, you don’t want to kiss me?” No, I didn’t. At first I’d say I had a cold. But that ruse eventually got tired. Then I simply decided there were people—close friends—who I would kiss, and everyone else would get a handshake. When an acquaintance or newly introduced person whose name I’d already forgotten asked what my antisocial behavior was about, I’d simply explain that I was sick of kissing every stranger I was introduced to, and that perhaps someday, if we became friends, I’d kiss them too.

This behavior was seen as symptomatic of an incipient nervous breakdown by my French friends. Only my friend Juan (descended from a family of Uruguayan diplomats) understood. He suggested the “air-kiss.” And that solved the problem. All it takes is an inclination of the head in the direction of the cheek, and the utterance of these two syllables: “mwa! mwa!” People would think I was a bit of a bubble-head, but at least I wouldn’t have to feel the lips of strangers or end up red-faced and itchy from the aggressions of razor-stubble.

I personally don’t see why we have to make everyone think we love them equally. I think it’s a social aid to distinguish between those you are close with and those you barely know by limiting your kisses to the former. It gives the unkissed something to aspire to. What’s wrong with that? People needn’t have such fragile egos. But if you’re not inclined to change the world one withheld kiss at a time, and feel obliged but reluctant to kiss strangers, try the air-kiss.

But please, no quadruple air-kisses. It’s dizzying.

^{(This cartoon is in honor of all those beleaguered teachers, who’d just like to teach. Image: carolita johnson)}

They’ve discovered the fossil of a critter that evolutionists would like to think of as the “missing link” between fish and man.
Here’s a picture of it! Just kidding! Here’s a real picture of the ugly critter.

No, you’ll be disappointed to learn that I take neither side, and prefer to contend that life is but a dream. I leave it to the religious to duke it out with whoever really has the time to think about it. I’ve got socks and underwear drying on my radiator to go fold!

Fossil proving “Link’ Between Fish and Land Animals Found: [WaPo]
More pix in “Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals”: [NYT]

It was the 3 to 4pm crush of people going home from school on the 1 train, a mess. I was standing in front of a girl seated by the door whose aspect annoyed me. She had dyed blue-black hair, frazzled-looking, with pixie bangs, thinning at the crown (probably from a scalp overwrought by hair dye and other aggressive products ), blue eyeshadow, deep red lipstick, pale, pale white skin, a bright cobalt blue scarf, and a rather bulky blue-green military parka on. I didn’t like her style. It was mostly her hair that bothered me. Why abuse your tender scalp like that just to look extreme? And so on. I was busy critically eyeing her whole get-up to pass the time, trying to avoid getting stepped on by the tall dork in the yarmulke who kept jerking his huge feet around every time he started to nod off. And then I looked up and met the eyes of the pervert. (cartoons coming up) Read the rest of this entry »

^{A polaroid from a Jean-Paul Gaultier show (of me, circa 1991?), wherein it may be perceived that being a model really isn’t that different from being a cartoonist, or a cartoon.}

I’m back from dropping off my batch at the magazine, and am now sitting on my sofa, eating corn chips and watching Conan O’Brien. I didn’t get to have my usual Tuesday afternoon nap (to make up for being up all night), because my brother Johnny was in town and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see him. We had lunch at Fanelli’s, discussing his love life, and cowboy shirts. The client I was to do a fitting with at 3 o’clock a few doors down the block came in and accused me of “fattening up before our fitting.” But she was forgiven when our fitting lasted three hours longer than expected, at the rate of $250 an hour. Which is why, you may correctly surmise, I didn’t make it to TNY before nightfall today.

My occasional late night drop-offs at TNY always make me feel very Guy Noir-ish. A dark night at a magazine that knows how to keep its secret stash of The New Yorker notepads hidden from greedy cartoonists, and where fact checkers search persistently for writer’s errors. Where you can observe from the conference room, with anticipatory nostalgia, the progress of the building that will soon brick over the view on Bryant Park. Where the blond-haired cleaning lady emerges from the broom closet as if activated by a motion detector and vacuums never very far from wherever you’re sitting, be it by the copy machine or by the extra-large scanner or by the assistant cartoon editor’s tantalizingly overflowing jar of giant paper clips.

Before heading back home, I scanned the “book bench” for any book reviewer’s discarded copies of literary gems and found it rife with 9/11 influenced writings, a lame-ass autobiography by a dog, and quite a few other titles that made me want to vomit, such as “Reader, I married him.” (Well, it’s only fair to point you to it so you can decide if my vomit reflex is trustworthy). It made me really appreciate those hardworking book reviewers, who read crap and warn us about it.

A browse of the bulletin board next to the bench on the way back to the elevators offered a country “artist or writer’s studio” for rent somewhere nice and quiet and quaint for an unspecified fee (depending, I guess, on which you are), Pilates courses with discounts for Conde Nasties, and an article cut out of a magazine about how to cope when a colleague steals your lunch, which made me feel weirdly guilty.

Suddenly I had an acute sense of déja vu. I was back in the days when I was a model in Paris running to Jean-Paul Gaultier’s showroom at the north end of the Galleries Vivienne in my high heels, black tights and minidress. Read the rest of this entry »

^{Mickey Mouse-hole (image: carolita johnson)}

Here’s a cartoon I’m posting in honor of my exterminator, the most important man in my life these days. He’s coming today, so I brought out this old reject for your consideration. TNY rejected it three times (perhaps four, or five, even, if I know me) with these three different captions over the last year:
1- “It’s a mouse hole alright.”
2- “What did you think it was?”
3- (as above) “You should see what’s in your basement.”

Any comments? Feel free!
They may take a while to post as I’ll be out all day and can’t allow comments to post automatically (too many viagra and porn spammers trying to sneak their links in via the comments!), but legit comments will appear as soon as I get home from work!

^{Takahachi Tribeca}

Before I found Takahachi Tribeca I’d been a regular at Takahachi East on avenue A and 7th street for a few years. Takahachi Tribeca is far more befitting of a Tables for One experience than its sister restaurant. It’s quieter, for one thing. It’s not full of raucous couples and groups of buddies. I have experienced no excess of infants or non-adults, indigo, dandelion, or otherwise, there. Don’t be fooled by the austere entrance. Once you enter, the suffused bright light ceases to intimidate and becomes what anyone hopes to see at the end of a tunnel. Even if you have to wait, you don’t actually feel put out, the sweet Japanese hostess and/or waitress that welcome you at the door make you feel as if you’re generous and kindly as you wait.

^{This is what awaits you in Central Park today}

Up here in Washington Heights, the neighbors are engaged in the battle of the sound systems of mass destruction, with one side blasting “Killing me softly,” in response to heavy artillery from the reggaeton neighbor dropping “Gasolina” bombs on us. The pacifist upstairs is playing disco, wondering why we can’t all love eachother, and I can’t hear my Freebird anymore, so I’m going a’fishin’! (There really are fish in the lakes at Central Park, but I’ve never actually seen any get caught, though occasionally they’re good enough to give a little tug to your lure as they pass by and give you a little frisson…)

For you birdwatchers, there’s plenty of different sparrows out there (song sparrows, black throats, and the regular ones), I’m sure I saw a nuthatch or two (possibly a warbler), definitely plenty of cardinals, bluejays, grackles, the ubiquitous robins, redwings, and though no one believes me, a red headed woodpecker (in a tree on the Great Lawn near Turtle Pond). And, of course, the red-tailed hawk that keeps the deadbeat pigeon population under control.

^{Who am I kidding? I’ll be doing my reading at the laundromat. (Image: carolita johnson)}

This week’s fiction in TNY, A Better Angel, by Chris Adrian, reverses last week’s trend in my tear ducts and serotonin uptake. The further I wandered fascinated and transfixed into it, the more I suspected this story was the metaphor of every attempt at domestic intimacy I’d ever recoiled disgusted from. The fetid stink emanating from the angel’s wings reminded me of under-the-sheet farts of deeply-loved, burrito-nourished boyfriends.

And the dead-cat slippers:

“The angel paced in the confines of the room, the cats going squish and squash as she stepped (...)”

are of course my own yucky, twenty year-old slippers whose unsanitary qualities boyfriends have hinted at with eloquent stares. The angel’s puzzlingly inconstant beauty shifts during the narrator’s ordinary or un-drugged moments into the kind of ugliness that recalls the esthetic of swollen red blotches left behind after squeezing forehead pimples before bedtime, bad breath in the morning, or the baggy underwear of one’s now long-unceremonious lover at breakfast, the sound of crunching cereal amplified through his skull.

Adrian seems hell-bent to evoke the horror of love you’re addicted to, stuck with forever, whether it’s your unloving father or your really burdensome guardian angel. The unbearable love you desire so very much but wish were more beautiful sometimes. Or at least not so ugly. It’s no wonder the narrator is constantly taking hits of his father’s death-bed morphine, even giving him water instead so that he can have more for himself as he waits for him to die, not so much refusing as not deciding to “reach out” with the curing touch the angel believes he can somehow muster.

And yet, like your boyfriend or your wife, or your mucous-encrusted child or little brother with the skidmarks in his underpants, it all seems nonetheless magical, and all that sordid ordinariness worth living through again and again, and even worth—I can’t believe I’m saying it, me, ever the Atalanta—cherishing.