newyorkette

^{(image: carolita johnson)}

Well, it took long enough, but they finally turned the lights down and got the die-hard partiers to start dancing. For some reason it’s been taking longer and longer to get people dancing at the TNY parties. I never recognize celebrities (or I forget people are celebrities, from being used to seeing them around), so if there were any there, this isn’t the blog you’ll read about them on! I did recognize a few books, though.

Speaking of which, books were 50% off for party-goers. And since taking a tour inside a woman’s life through Caitlin Flanagan’s book To Hell With All That: Loving and loathing our inner housewife, isn’t exactly required reading for a non-domestic (not to say anti-domestic) woman like me (and since I have ex-models telling me all about embracing their inner housewives all the time and expecting a medal, which I’m fresh out of, by the way), I ended up with the more manly Reporting, by David Remnick. I have the same policy for books as for movies: I want to see something that I could never have done or lived, even if I’d wanted to.

It’s going into my big bag, to nestle amongst my high heels, the agency vouchers, the sketchbook, the little red “cartoon ideas” notebook, assorted pens, markers and pencils, and the bag that contains extra bras, underwear and “cutlets” for fittings. These “cutlets,” by the way were once in Naomi Campbell’s bra during an Avedon shoot, and I inherited them when I quit my assistant stylist job. That’s their only claim to fame, so I thought I’d share it with you. Want to know what else is in my bag? A flashlight, aspirin and my CPR cheat sheet (in case anyone has a heart attack), a survival knife, and a handball. The handball is for crises of boredom.

But for now, Reporting, is going under my pillow while I take a nap before my first job today. The after-party at Milano knocked me out.

PS- I added links for the books above that lead to Amazon, but if you live in New York and want to do a good deed, buy them at the Housing Works Used Books Café, where half the proceeds go to helping HIV and AIDS patients.

Today is 666 day! The world is supposed to end, and frankly, if it does I’ll be pretty annoyed I paid my rent on time.

But if it doesn’t end, I’ll be attending the Rejection Show tonight with a fellow fit-model, a gorgeous size 8. Size 6’s can make friends with size 8’s, you see.

Barring Apocalypse, you may still be able to get tickets to The Rejection Show, which was co-created by my colleague and cartoon friend, Matt Diffee, and Jon Friedman. Check out the upcoming.org link to your right in the sidebar. Among others, there will be two fellow TNY cartoonists amongst the rejectees, shamelessly displaying their failures.

Afterwards, we’ll all go out and dance the Apocalypso!

The Ayurveda Café at 94th and Amsterdam literally has everything you need, and you don’t even have to ask for it. There’s only lunch or dinner. They decide what you get, and they have your pleasure and well-being at heart. It’s different every day, and each meal contains the six flavors that Ayurveda requires: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent and pungent. But all you’ll notice is how good it all tastes. When I arrived, I was asked if I wanted to sit down or take out. I said I thought I’d like to sit down, and was assured, “as you desire,” by a gentle waitress.

I sat down to a basket of peppery papadum accompanied by its three little saucers of Indian chutneys (including the ever-loved coriander sauce), and cold water in a modest stainless steel goblet. Dinner arrived in a round stainless steel tray in which a mound of rice (brown or basmati, as you desire) was surrounded by five little stainless steel bowls containing the five more elements comprising the main meal, all vegetarian, all perfectly balanced in terms of spice, texture and quantity. A little curry, a little yogurty raita to pour over the little salad, gently spiced lentils, some stewed tomatoes, one perfectly unimposing, not too greasy and thoroughly satisfying potato fritter. I had brown rice, perfectly cooked, which is rare for brown rice. I was also provided with a basket of nan bread, but didn’t need it.

The mango lassi? Perfect.

The café is linked to the Ayurveda Center around the corner on 96th street between Amsterdam and Broadway, offering you a complimentary meal if you have one of the Center’s “treatments,” which include Ayurvedic massage, facials, body scrubs, the like. You just show them your receipt, paying only for your drink if you had one, and, of course, leave a tip. I can’t imagine anything more pleasant than a massage and a complimentary meal that includes every taste in the Indian spectrum at the end of a hard day. Try it. You’ll like it. If you don’t need a treatment or consultation, the meal costs only eleven ninety-five for dinner, and seven ninety-five for lunch.

^{(Okay, my dear religious readers, this is your chance to look away. Please do not proceed if you aren’t allowed to look at images of Jesus or Mo(hammed). And don’t say I never did anything to help you avoid eternal suffering. Everyone else, click on the image to say hello to Jesus and Mo!)}

Me, I found Jesus and Mo in the midst of the Cartoon Riots, though I’m not sure exactly how. Not offensive enough to be included in the list of offending cartoonists, the author of Jesus and Mo asks us to take only one little leap of faith: imagine what it would be like if Jesus and Mohammed were roommates. It’s The Odd Couple prototype, brought to transcendent extremes.

The Author, as he calls himself, is to be imagined with a Mona Lisa smile as he draws them. He’s not innocent, but he’s benevolent in his bemusement and even-handed lack of judgement-passing. He’s been rather adept lately at managing to let everything take place in the mind of the reader, as in this one. Who’s to say what Mo is looking at? Maybe you’re the one with the dirty mind!

The same cartoon illustrates a point that I found was true when I began checking my own blog’s statistics. I seem to have lost the interest of my Iranian readers since I removed “sex for women” from my category list. (Oh, well!) But let’s be fair. It was also the first category link that male cartoonists clicked on when I directed them to my blog.

And what could be more simple and naïve with regard to questions of religious doubt and conviction than this cartoon?

The Author was obliged to close his comments when the Cartoon Riots brought unwelcome attention to his humble strip:

Yes, I closed the comments because people were using it as a forum to
express their hatred – not only towards me, but to each other as well.
It ran contrary to the purpose of the website which, of course, is to
spread joy

Click here to see my favorite Da Vinci Code cartoon ever.

Can you read Spanish? The “Peruvian New Yorker,” Etiqueta Negra has a new edition: “morir de risa” (die laughing). The entire issue is devoted to laughter, the how, the why, the when, the Nobel Prize for Humor, the Marxist theory (we’re talking Harpo, not Karl). To read, haga click aquí.

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

This week’s fiction in The New Yorker, Dimension, by Alice Munro, swallows the reader into the heart of another victim of abuse and stigma. Her heart is dead, as if it’s stopped cold. And the lead-up to the ending is analagous to the simultaneously brief and excruciatingly long amount of time a person can reasonably lay lifeless with a stopped heart and yet still be ressuscitated.

Oddly, I was able to forgive a rather forumulaic, verging on Highway to Heaven-like, redemptive ending. Why? I’m not usually so indulgent about redemptive endings. First of all, it may be formulaic by coincidence, like anything simple is. There are some things that there’s only one way to make. Like a boiled egg*. Perhaps it was the combination of pristine writing and the ability to describe intimately, and with such deft and simple strokes, the thoughts of a woman who for some reason submits, almost as if to a cult leader, to an abusive man. Most women have had, in varying degrees of extremity, at least one such manipulator in their lives. At best one learns one’s lesson, and never again. At the very worst, one meets something like Doree’s fate.

If you’re a woman, you’ll probably understand in a visceral way where this story is leading. If you’re a man, this story is a lesson in the kind of deadly weapon unlimited power can become when placed in the hands of a fragile man. (Or maybe vice versa too, why be sexist about it?)

Will you cry? It’s a tried and true, ever so simple and effective formula: I’d worry if you didn’t. Don’t worry, it’ll be like condensation beading and rolling down the side of a cold glass of water on a hot day. You won’t need a whole box of Kleenex, or embarrass yourself on the subway. I promise.

*I love boiled eggs, by the way. The comparison is neutral to complimentary.

As it rises into the airspace next to 4 Times Square, it decides to try and ingratiate itself to us by purporting to be “New York’s most environmentally friendly office tower,” as the sign says. Wouldn’t it be more friendly not to be there at all? It will soon block the (albeit temporary—only there since the previous occupant of this new building’s “footprint” was torn down) view of the Public Library and Bryant Park from The New Yorker. (But if it stops at the 19th floor, I’ll be the first to call it friendly.)

(image: carolita johnson)

Okay, this is one cartoon I’ll have to put a silver stake through! It’s had it’s third try this week. It just keeps coming back! It’s the un-dead rejected cartoon! (Possibly what Bob Mankoff has started thinking, though Zach, the assistant cartoon editor seems to notice these things even more).

I actually know nothing about jobs with benefits because I avoid them like the plague. But this cartoon is what I imagine it’s like negociating one. I dug this one out of the pile because I’ve been thinking about getting a “real job” lately, which of course is never gonna happen. I promised myself I’d go to South America and help dig irrigation ditches or teach literacy, rather than ever work for someone making exponentially more money and working exponentially less than me again. Just a matter of principle.

(There are, after all, people who deserve my sweat and tears more than my last boss did. And he was a nice guy! Put up with my dog pooping right in front of him—several times—on the office carpet, and everything!) (And yes, I believe my dog, who was always the epitome of intestinal self-control, pooped thusly on purpose to make a statement about my employement benefits.)

And speaking of bosses, I was shocked to find out that The Who’s “Don’t get fooled again” is apparently the number one conservative rock anthem! How can that be? That cynical last line (“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!”) seemed to be a warning never to be content to be employed again! I never understood it to be a comfort to conservatives. How odd! But check out the top 50 conservative rock songs according to this article in the National Review and you’ll see it’s true. (Though The Stones’ “You can’t always get what you want” was no surprise).