newyorkette

^{The Duralex tumbler is as magical as a mundane object can get. I love mine like I love my special teaspoon. Which may be featured tomorrow unless I can come up with something even better. (Image: carolita johnson)}

I’m going through a particularly hectic moment in my heretofore simple life. Negociating a contract with a prospective new agency, hedging my bets, hemming and hawing. Maybe not changing agencies after all if it’s this complicated. About to begin negociating with the IRS. Juggling different means of income. So I thought I’d just think about some of my favorite things, as the song goes.

The Duralex tumbler is French. It’s unbreakable. My favorite Duralex commercial shows a couple having a fight, throwing them at each other. They’re made of tempered glass, and are unbreakable unless you accidentally find it’s tiny little Achilles’ Heel. Then it can burst into a million smithereens just by being dropped from a height of six inches of less, which is always fascinating and a bit like seeing a shooting star.

This is the logo you’ll find at the bottom of the glass when you’ve finished your red wine:

Isn’t it beautiful?

I brought one back from Paris, not allowing myself to indulge in a six-pack from the local hardware store, where they’re typically sold. No one else is allowed to use it. Unless they’re very sick and pathetic and really want me to make them feel very, very special.

Sometimes they sell them this side of the puddle at Sur La Table (Spring Street & Lafayette, I think), for way too much.

“Drinky Crow” (above) is a suicidal alcoholic, but that’s what I like about him.

Here’s a cartoonist whose patron of the arts I’d love to be by buying this cartoon from him: “Scratching the Back of my Neck & The Editor “. Clicking on my link is a crap shoot. Sometimes you get the cartoon, sometimes it’s more like: Ha, sucka! Personally I love the machine gun-shooting maniac screaming “inhuman monsters!”, but you don’t get him every time. Try the link: you’ll get whatever you get, and you’ll like it!

I wrote him asking him for permission to link to a non-booby trapped image, but got no answer. Temperamental cartoonist? or just enjoying the holiday weekend? Knowing cartoonists (since I’m one myself), it could be all of the above, or none of the above. Maybe he’s counting trees in Corona. Maybe he’s trying on jeans at a factory in Cancun. Maybe he’s playing golf, or maybe he’s just having a life. Or getting killed… Anything’s possible with a cartoonist. It’s also possible he feels his “terms of use” are clear enough. *(UPDATE: Tony wrote me Monday morning and very kindly provided the image above.)

Anyway, perhaps if you’re more prosperous than I am at the moment you’ll find something you’d like to buy for yourself! His prices are actually quite reasonable, and worth every penny. (I just don’t have any spare pennies these days! But when I do, maybe my favorite cartoon will still be available.) Check out his original art. He’s famous for his “Drinky Crow,” as well as Billy Hazelnuts, and the ravishingly beautiful Sock Monkey books. He made a splash on Gawker, during Burklegate, and done this delightfully lighthearted SNL short!

He’s Tony Millionaire. If you like Little Nemo in Slumberland, or Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, but are a way sicker puppy than these call for, you’ll love Tony Millionaire.

^{If Little Nemo (above image borrowed from salon.com) isn’t hard-core enough for you, try Tony Millionaire.}

^{This week’s TNY fiction is available online. (image: carolita johnson)}

A sweet three pages (something of a literary milk n’ cookies) in The New Yorker this week, Henry Roth’s God The Novelist, is a segment “adapted from the almost two-thousand-page unedited novel manuscript that Roth was working on in the early nineteen-nineties.” Its opening paragraphs were particularly a propos for my travels this week. A sample:

“(...) don’t tell ’em about the bedbugs. It distracts ’em. That’s the landlord’s business.”
“Bedboogs,” I mocked. “There’s no such word.”

(Yes, I did dutifully lift the mattress at the Meridien Hotel to check for bedbug droppings.) (No, I didn’t find any, contrary to what trends predicted.)

God The Novelist is simultaneously fresh and old-fashioned (it takes place in May 1939). At some moments I imagined everything in sepia tones. Such as this marriage proposal:

She had been typing somebody’s master’s thesis on a portable—to earn extra cash. And when I said I was in love with her, and asked her to marry me, she replied, “I’m sorry. You’re out of luck,” and apparently agitated over a typing error, she slapped at the portable.

Words like “caterwauling,” eptithets like, “rummy bastard,” and “why, you horse’s neck,” and of course the reference to a typewriter provide the Norman Rockwell-ish colors and strokes. Other scenes could be taking place anytime today:

And at Forty-fourth Street, where there was a construction job for a new building going on, He (...) rolled a cigarette out of Bull Durham and admired the excavation that opened below: the wall of rock had just recently been blasted out for foundation, rock in which the long drill grooves still remained. Mica schist, He thought, Manhattan mica schist. Ah, the pristine, naked, sparkling purity of it, come to light after aeons, as if awakening.

If you’re an out of work artist and take pleasure in seeing your seedy but sublime life beneath the point of someone else’s poetic pen, or if you’re lucky enough to be happily and gainfully employed and wonder what it’s like on that romantic other side of the fence, have a look at New York through the eyes of God The Novelist.

May I also suggest Thomas Mallon’s piece on Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Big Bird, which confirms many suspicions about the work and the movie I never dared breach, since I, like everyone else who’s attended junior high school, have been indoctrinated to revere both as sacred Americana.

And anyone interested in birding or bird watching, have a look at John Seabrook’s “Ruffled Feathers,” about the “secret deceptions of a bird-world hero.” It’s a bit like an episode of CSI: Special Ornithology Unit. Page 50 of the paper version of the magazine, not online.

I wasn’t in New York much this week, but that made me appreciate our fair city ever more. It was hard to choose from the pics I snapped this week, but I settled on this one, taken at sunrise from gate 96 in Newark Airport. A woman in a tourist jacket, mom-jeans with a camel-toe and a front-butt waddled up to me as I was snapping it, and whinnied, “Excuse me, do you work here?” And I turned around in my rolled up jeans, trench coat and black patent leather mary-janes and asked her right back: “Do I look like I work here?” Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I have only my own size 6 bee-hind to blame. I didn’t turn in a batch this week because I wrapped it up a little before my car came to bring me to the airport at 3:45am Tuesday morning, and the fax machine went on strike. “Change toner,” it glibly sneered at me from its LCD display.

(“Damn you, fax machine!”)

I finally found the toner (where I’d put it so it would be “easy to find,”) but by then it was too late, as the car had arrived. The machine needs to be fed one page at a time, or else it gets all constipated. I considered leaving it to fend for itself, but images of a paper blockage, a short circuit, and flames bursting… it was too much. I decided to save it all for next week. Now I have the weekend off! (Technically. I will probably still do more cartoons anyway.)

But here’s one cartoon (above) I sent in last week even though batch day was cancelled. Extra-credit, anyone? Inspired by you-know-who, and this article. There is some debate as to whether he actually said “perch” or “large mouth bass,” as in this transcript. Some say he lied. (The President? Lie?) Read the rest of this entry »

The coffee series. My coffee-dream-come-true. Again, a rejected, “too cartoony” TNY spots submission. Don’t worry, I see what they mean and agree. Back to the drawing board!

If only!

*^{“Animate Objects: The coffee cup,” by carolita johnson.}

I’m on my way to Cancun again for two days, poor me. (Actually, the Wrangler people figured out how not to pay me to lounge on the beach this time by cutting the trip short by a day! So don’t be jealous!) While I’m away, I’ve scheduled two series of rejected TNY “spots” submissions to appear. Just for fun. The complaint was that they looked “too cartoony”. But they’re not too cartoony for here! Here’s the first one. (More “Animate Objects” tomorrow.)

(I’m more of a dog person.)

*^{“Animate Objects: The Chair,” by carolita johnson.}

Heard on NBC on the Early News (4:35am): a goose drew attention when it was discovered with a two-foot arrow sticking out of it’s “bee-hind.” (He said he’d accidentally “sat on it.”)

I’ve been lucky enough to get booked for two jobs in Mexico, fitting for a Wrangler designer at their factory for one or two days at a time. And since travelling for work always means dining or lunching alone at some point, I did have an opportunity to commune with myself for a day. Actually, I’d planned to avoid eating anything I’d eventually have to pay for myself, hoping to wait all day for the obligatory and sumptuous end of business trip dinner that the client would treat us all to.

But around 1pm after watching the pelicans gulp down their catches again and again, my stomach started growling. Foiled, I went to the Bikini Bar, where they handed me two menus. One offered items to be consumed at said Bikini Bar, while the other suggested tidbits to be delivered to one’s lounge chair on the beach, which is what I opted for. Read the rest of this entry »

^{(Image: carolita johnson)}

Partly sunny? Partly cloudy? Ask the sun!

^{This week’s TNY fiction is available online. (image: carolita johnson)}

Welcome to the real world. Lara Vapnyar’s Cinderella School appears to be the story of an immigrant’s quest for social insertion, but in fact it’s the story of anyone who’s ever tried to make it in New York. The story of your first rise and fall that nobody even noticed (lucky you!) since it all took place even further away from the big city than your place of residence…

A sort of “coming of age” for hapless adults, the story is worth reading if only to remind yourself how it feels to get a bogus job on bogus credentials, then actually begin to believe in it out of desperation just long enough to feel humiliated when it’s all taken away from you in that unjust moment when you get fired. It’s happened to the best of us, hopefully only once, but sometimes more often.

My favorite scene of course is the overheard hypnotherapy session for the sexually disadvantaged, which reads like a metaphor for every sales job I’ve ever had.

When I headed for the door, I heard a muffled conversation coming from Dr. Solomon’s office. “Your penis becomes big and hard . . . and stays that way,” he was saying. “You’re strong. You’re powerful. Nothing frightens you. Nothing intimidates you.” I stood and listened, hardly breathing, until Adella broke the spell.
“Come tomorrow at ten,” she said. “I hope to get more people for you.”

^{A photo of the postcard I sent to my buddies at the cartoon department.}

I just got back from Mexico! I finished my job in one day, had a spare day to lie on the beach in Cancun, reading my book (“2000 Champagnes“), and gazing dreamily at the horizon and it’s inhabitants. I watched some prehistoric-looking grey pelicans dive-bombing into the waves, catching fish that I must recently have been swimming with. There were a few seagulls, but really skinny ones. Probably because of this guy (see above illustration) Read the rest of this entry »

(Snapped in Corona, somewhere on Northern Blvd. perhaps near 103rd Avenue? Will update when I’m in the area this spring doing my Parks Department “Trees Count” volunteer work, which I never finished last summer (shame on me!), and have volunteered to finish up this spring and summer.)

My kind of sermon!

^{The best tequila I’ve ever tasted. I’ll be hitting Duty-Free big time for a lifetime supply.}

Well, I’m boarding my flight to Mexico as you read this, as my flight is at 6h45, and I’ll have left the house by 4h45. A gig with Wrangler, doing fittings in their Mexican factory in Cancun. Apparently I’ll have plenty of time (in the two days I’ll be there) to lounge around the pool at the hotel. Sounds good to me!

But if there’s any time for adventure, I’ll possibly be pulling my friend Luis Fernandez de la Reguera from under a whore’s bed (in a genuine bordello!) to make him drink some Gran Centenario with me. Luis directed Rockets Redglare, a beautiful documentary about the actor of the same name who inspired actors like Steve Buscemi and Wilhem Defoe.

Is Montezuma’s Revenge extinct now? I hope so!
While I’m away, there will be posts of photos I’ve taken of oddly pithy church signs in New York.
In the meantime, here’s some Tequila

It’s really hard to find decent food up here in Washington Heights. The day I moved in I was reduced by desperation to eating Caporal Fried Chicken, whose storefront right by the subway exit exudes the smell of future hardened arteries whenever I climb up those stairs to come home. I’ve experienced a bit of food poisoning here, a bit of indigestion there. There was a brief Camelot when I found Coral’s diner, but that ended with their ambitious redecorating, complete with the installation of flat TV’s, and the elimination of the cozy counter at street level.

I was at a loss till I discovered Tommy’s Pizza. It looks like a dump, yes it does. But Tommy’s regular slice gives you the thin, crispy crust that even non-crust-eaters will relish on the way out the door, the edge of which retains the rim created by the careful hand-shaping of the pie, after savouring the perfect balance of tomato sauce and “mozzarella” cheese. The ingredients may not be high end, but the texture and balance of flavor somehow is., and Tommy’s knows exactly when to pull that slice out of the oven for a perfect “cuisson.”

There’s nothing but the classic pizza here, no basil leaves or fancy dried tomatoes to be found anywhere, Read the rest of this entry »

^{Happy Mother’s Day from Janet Leigh!}

What would film be without the bad mother? Hitchcock’s bad mothers and bad mother figures are at the root of some of his best films. The mother of all Hitchcock mothers being, of course, Anthony Perkins’ mom in Psycho. Read the rest of this entry »

^{This week’s TNY fiction is available online. (image: carolita johnson)}

Adina, Astrid, Chipewee, Jasmine, by Matthew Klam. Not for the lily-livered. Serves as an interesting foil to the fascinating and well-illustrated New York Times article, One thing they aren’t: maternal, about “bad mothers’’ in nature, in its Science Times section this week.

Mother-to-be, Julia, who smells like custard and breaks her water with a vibrator after watching a Brad Pitt movie, isn’t exactly the kind of cockles-of-the-heart-warming example of maternity Al Jolson would sing “Mammy” to on Mother’s Day. I may find the idea of pregnancy with its incumbent gestation, lactation, and drooling, incontinent infants to be the ultimate birth-control, but still, I believe if you’re gonna do it, do it right! Right? Well, apparently it doesn’t come naturally to all of us. “Get it out of me,” as Julia says, is a phrase I’ve heard before. Luckily it came from a woman who turned out to be a great mother. She was just a little tired of the whole prenatal shebang.

Kevin, the father who has already grown to hate his wife after being forced into the role of stud (the requisite screwing, the livestock feeling of it, the injunction against fiddling with himself),and she into pure baby-making machine (the menstrual cycle on the refrigerator, the shots he gave her—big injections in her ass, little ones in her stomach. The pills she shoved in her pussy to make the lining more hospitable) begins naturally to explore the complications of getting rid of his wife while preserving the life of the baby. Naturally? If the main goal of their relationship has become baby-manufacturing, she is on the verge of becoming useless.

Explicit mention is made of the high murder rate of pregnant women by their mates. And yet once the baby is born, the predator in him intersects with the visceral, innate father and protector he apparently is, even beyond his own understanding. He is at once repulsed (She was entirely fishlike and more purple than Kevin had feared, her tiny private parts swollen, her eyes sealed shut, and they wiped her face off as she tried to grab and hug the air in front of her) and moved to tears. His ambivalence is summed up in these words: Oh, God, he thought as she screamed. Now there are two of them.

The way Julia wants the baby “out of her,” while the man wants the woman out of his life, imagining how he might be able to murder her while preserving the life of the baby reminded me of this article in The Onion, about the “anti-abortion pill,” that kills the mother while preserving the fetus. And the scene of carnage which is Julia’s cesarean fully illuminates the point Nicole Loraux makes about the Ancient Greek word for the blood of childbirth (mysarós) being related simultaneously to the noble blood of warfare, the deeply staining blood of particularly abominable murders, and filth.

For those of us who need a moral to the story, this story is a parable for those who feel ambivalent about reproducing. It’s to baby-making what Eric Schlosser’s new book “Everything you didn’t want to know about fast food” is to MacDonald’s.

I always admired this awning for its ambition to run the gamut of human emotion with a practical list.

Well, I’m not going to name names, but a couple of TNY softball team members, after losing the game Tuesday night to the High Times “Bonghitters” decided to indulge in some Skoal’s. See the improvised spittoon above.

^{(image: carolita johnson)}

Today I thought I’d show you what a rejected cartoon looks like before even I’m happy with it. I did it, I submitted it, but I didn’t really like it, and was relieved that it didn’t get bought. I like the idea, even though Diffee seems to think it’s not very original. But that’s Diffee, and he’s obsessed with obscene cartoons lately, keeps suggesting that I put some humping animals in this or that cartoon. (“What if they were humping? Dogs humping? Or maybe wolves?” I’m doing my best to keep him happy.)

This is my problem with this cartoon: I don’t like the composition. Perhaps this subway is not the right kind—it’s an R train, which has a different layout than then A train or the 1 train, which are more streamlined with no seats facing forward, only side-facing seats, and they’re all smooth, no bucket seats. Much more linear. On the other hand, I like the way the other passengers can hide behind the seat divider on this R train.

So you see, drawing a subway scene for a single panel cartoon is not as straightforward as you’d think! I think the perspective in this drawing gets the point across, but it’s not enough of a pleasure to look at for me. That’s my opinion, anyway. And Crawford has done a cartoon about a naked guy in Bryant Park that may be too similar for this one to get bought.

Comments welcome, as usual. (Even if I don’t say so, putting up a reject is always an invitation for boos, rasberries, encouragement, and anything else.)