newyorkette

^{Almost home-made. Maybe better.}

Tables for One isn’t just about eating out alone for one’s pleasure. It’s also about necessity. This week, we’re dealing with The Summer Cold. But winter or summer, if you come down with a debilitating cold, there are many reasons you may find yourself stranded alone and foodless (or with nothing but junk) at home. For one reason or another there may be no one to bring you some chicken soup, or you’ve run out of cash to tip the delivery boys. Below you’ll find a list of ingredients to keep on hand for such emergencies, as well as a list of easy to find ingredients you can buy on your way home from work to make your own very deliciously nourishing and easy to make cold/flu soup treatment. And you can make it in about the same amount of time — or less — as it would take to wonder what you want to eat, order it, and wait for it to be delivered.
Read the rest of this entry »

^{(I’ve had to shrink all the images a bit to fit on my template, but clicking on them will bring you to the larger original on Rees’ own website.}

I was referred to David Rees by Dave from Jesus & Mo, who I’ve featured here now and again whenever one of his cartoons particularly moves me. About Rees, says The Author, “Like me, he can’t draw. But unlike me, he doesn’t even try. He uses clip art.”

For all that he uses clip art, I haven’t gotten tired of the re-used images yet. Consult his website for yourself, choose a strip (there are four), and click on the “next” or the “previous” links, to view them in chronological order. Here are a few of my favorites, starting with the one above that I found the most touching of all, from Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear, or AOCOSAB.

From his My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable strip, the answer to life’s eternal question:

Not to be confused with his My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable strip. This is an approach to life:

that will lead to this.

And finally, with his Get Your War On, or GYWO strip, which has been well covered by the press, what we’ve all been thinking:

You can actually buy a t-shirt with that cartoon on it here. “Get Your War On” book royalties are donated to land mine removal. (Mine Detection & Dog Center Team #5 of Adopt-a-Minefield), so there’s no need to feel like you’re laughing at the expense of the less fortunate than yourself. And I’m so sorry that my cold has knocked me out to the point of missing his appearances in Manhattan recently, but click here to see upcoming ones: events. For some reason his August 1st appearance at Bar on A isn’t on that page, but it’s on his home page.

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

Stacy Schiff’s “Know it all,” is everything you ever wanted to know about Wikipedia, but were afraid to ask Wikipedia themselves about because you weren’t really sure how far you could trust them. I have been known, when needing a reference to point to, to use Wikipedia in order to avoid using other more commercial sources, but have often wondered if I did well. Schiff brings Wikipedia’s birth amongst the dusty encyclopedias and encyclopedists under scrutiny, with points of view from Encyclopedia Brittanica (who Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales would consider a competitor, “except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within five years.” The article also affords a revealing glimpse into the origin of the first European encyclopedias, which I’ve heard had some very strife-filled moments no less earnest than today’s struggles.

For good measure, read Wikipedia’s history of the encyclopedia up to Wikipedia’s times here.
UPDATE as of 8/4/06: just heard from Ken Berard at The Atlantic, who kindly sent me this link for your further enrichment on the subject , while assuring me that “the article is supplemented with several interesting sidebars and Wikipedia links.” And indeed it is. Enjoy! For Wikimania, see this, via Emdashes and her great pun: Oh, Wiki, you’re so fine.

In Shouts & Murmurs: Paul Simms’ Ambien Cookbook for you hungry somnambulists, features the Licorice Surprise, among others. Here’s my favorite part of the recipe which calls only for a couple of ambien and a plugged-in black extension cord:

Roll out of bed, wake up on floor.
See extension cord, think, What a big delicious licorice rope that is!
Chew on essentially flavorless cord until you get to the metallic center, where the surprise is.

Alec Wilkinson’s fish story, The Lobsterman, about a fisherman who turned “oral history into science,” isn’t online, but an interview with Wilkinson by Blake Eskin is available in the Online Only section of TNY in “Q & A: At Sea.” If you read it, you will want to read the article it spins off from. It’s not Pirates of the Caribbean, but it’s salty. (And I’m sorry, but it did make me want a nice piece of fried cod and chips.)

Alberto Mendez’s “First Defeat” (1939), translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews, is an exercise in surrender, and not the good, Harlequin Romance kind. If you know any Spanish, you’ll know from the start that the main character, a Franco soldier who surrenders to the Popular Front as soon as he hears that their surrender to Franco is imminent, is named after Joy, or Happiness. It is the story of the whittling down of the act of war, particularly civil war (but if you think about it, all wars on the Earth are civil wars between earthlings), to the one sad fact that wars begin with an ideal and end with only one objective, which is to kill the enemy. Here is a scene from Alegría’s courtmartialling:

“When asked what our objective was, if not to win the Glorious Crusade, the accused replied, ‘To kill them.’ ”

I’ve always thought that if instead of celebrating wartime victories , we’d mourn all those who died in order that we might win (including the enemy’s dead, because we did regrettably have to kill them, didn’t we?), we might be less inclined to go to war and work things out in more peaceful ways. As Alegría says,

“All wars cost human lives, of course, but this war has become a form of usury. We will have to choose between winning the war and conquering a cemetery.”

^{A church, caught trying to sneak it’s way through the cross streets, snapped from the 20th floor of the Conde Nast building.} Read the rest of this entry »

^{(photo: a hypothetical variant that we could call Rhinovirus Littlesnoticus)}

Lying here aching and sweating, unable to breathe through my “dose” (that’s rhinovirus for “nose”), I have come up with a solution so that others may avoid similar, needless suffering. With a little genetic engineering, we can arrange things such that whenever someone catches a cold they develop a colorful, striking pattern across their face. Like plaid, or gingham, paisley, or florals, what have you. The more severe the cold, the tackier and more tasteless the pattern. Read the rest of this entry »

^{(Click on the image to reach the cartoonbank.com)}

The second sign says, “Non-Employees really ought to wash their hands, too.” (Sorry, the cartoonbank shrinks them so that sometimes you can’t read text inside the cartoon, so I enlarged it a bit, which made it a little fuzzy.)

I’m sick as a dog, having caught some kind of cold or flu from one of my lovely clients (one of the hazards of the job, and bound to happen sooner or later when you deal with so many different people), but the spoonful of sugar helping me draw my batch today (had to crash last night, the fever took over), and maybe even finish it on time, is the above cartoon, sold over a year ago, and finally published this week!

It was the result of a hallucination one day in a restaurant restroom. I could’ve sworn I saw a sign just like the second one in the cartoon, out of the corner of my eye. Also, this cartoon had been rejected several times when I finally thought re-drawing it more nicely might help. And it did.

Paranoia, hypochondria, too much coffee, and a little diligence: all these things contribute to the creation of a cartoon. That should raise my morale enough to drag my butt to midtown today for a one-hour fitting at least.

^{The view when you’re coming from the beach, past the playground on the left, and the rehabilitated Mr. Softee truck on the right.}

After a day of bikini-watching (male and female bikinis) at Brighton Beach, you might work up an appetite. And if you’ve watched the sun set, or simply disappear behind some clouds, you might even hanker for something warm. I have just the place. It’s between the beach and Brighton Beach Avenue, on a side street called Brighton 2, midway between Ocean Parkway station and Brighton Beach station.

Look at the photo above. The name of the place is Varenichnaya, and the word on the side of the yellow awning is “Varieniki” (in Russian letters, no, not “Bapehuku!”). My friend Elena says this about the name:

“Technically, varenichnaya is a place where they serve varieniki (varieniki is another word for pelmeni or certain sort of pelmeni)”

Both varieniki and pelmini are a type of ravioli or dumpling. Varieniki usually contain only vegetables, and pelmini (apparently of Siberian origin) will usually contain potatos and beef. Both are served, at Varenichnaya, with beautifully caremelized onions spread like lace over them, and they will literally melt in the mouth, testifying to how freshly made the homemade the pasta envelope around your beef or vegetables is.

You can accompany your varieniki or pelmini with other Russian specialties, such as a refreshing compote, which is basically homemade fruit punch with some fruit (cooked) at the bottom of your glass, which I find makes a fine dessert when you’ve finished. The homemade Russian soups are satisfyingly hot, but not the best my friend Elena has ever tasted. (For soups, I’ll post another T41.) Elena also thinks the management is a little rude, but being less sensitive I found them sufficiently civilised myself. (Basically, if you feed me, I will think you’re nice, even if I have to pay you.)

Once you’ve warmed up and appeased the growling gods in your stomach by throwing some russian dumplings into it, you might enjoy a walk. Read Paul Berger on the traditional Russian promenade on the boardwalk. It’s just as pleasant after dinner, and if you’re not on a budget and don’t need to get home sober, you might also stop somewhere along your promenade for a nice shot of vodka before you take the subway home.

And yes, I realize I didn’t go alone, I went with my trusty friend and translator Elena. But Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a reason mannequins have no heads. I don’t know why, perhaps a neurologist or a brainologist could tell me more, but day after day of being a model (it doesn’t often happen) leaves me completely disconnected from my wit and intelligence (there have been scattered reports of their existence). I’ve been working as a “fit model” quite a lot more than usual these days, and while my bank account is recovering from previous dearths due to honesty in tax-paying, my brain is mush. The week has been a blur of flesh colored bras, thongs, various necessary bodily functions, and people so stressed out about their dresses hemlines and minimum requirements that they develop dandruff and cold sores before my very eyes….

So, this week’s TNY weekend reader is DIY (Do It Yourself). I know you can do it. You can even feel free to tell me about what you think I should read in TNY this week. I’m currently reading the Hollywood Ending piecce by Ken Auletta, on the subway ride home, if I’m able to refrain from falling asleep (from sleeplessness, no fault of Auletta’s).

The above is a rejected “back page” submission, from the days there was a back page! I reject it myself, it’s not exactly what I wanted it to be — I was experimenting with water colors, and it came out a little “hallmark card-y” for me. But I still love the concept, and plan to re-do this one in something a little closer to my original vision.

Thanks to Lauren of Lux Lotus, I have this news:

Gary Shteyngart and Sondre Lerche are appearing at Barnes & Noble (Union Square) this Wednesday, July 19, as part of its new series, ‘Upstairs at the Square,’ (33 East 17th Street at Union Square).

I hate to admit it but I know nothing about Sondre Lerche, but I do know this about Shteyngart: he was responsable for one of my favorite pieces in The New Yorker’s fiction section, “A Love Letter,” excerpted from his novel, Absurdistan. For a taste of it, see my post on it here.

Click on the image above to get the next two frames of the strip on Kaz Underworld, and you’ll see that this cartoon (above) is the conceptual opposite of this one of mine. And yes, I do remember feeling that way in the third grade. (Funny how growing up makes you feel so much younger than you did when you were actually young! Thank God that’s all behind me!)

Kaz Underworld is, well, as I was warned by the person who recommended it to me, not for everyone. (On the other hand, neither is Dennis the Menace.) Have a look at the archives yourself. Basically you pick and choose, but it’s all take it or leave it. It offers no apologies, and I don’t know if it’s low-brow or no-brow. But every now and then one of those strips makes me laugh, and I do like the line and the contrast. Kaz Underworld has it’s environmentally conscious side, too, for all you greenies out there: see Walrus Lad.

PS- let me know if you’re having trouble viewing them, as it’s the same archival system as on Tony Millionaire’s site, and you might get an error message. Here’s a direct link to that error message, and if it’s what you get when clicking on the links I’ve provided above, I’ll re-post this piece with some downloaded pix that you will be able to look at, at your leisure! In the meantime, enjoy that error message, it’s the best one I’ve ever seen.

^{There’s a more online in TNY this week than last week, because it was a double-issue. (image: carolita johnson)}

This week’s The New Yorker is last week’s The New Yorker. But it’s not exactly the same online — there are a few more articles online than there were last week. I know this thanks to Blake Eskin, who told me why on the way to the after-softball pizza and beer event. (We beat the NYTimes Magazine!) Why, then? Well, because it was a double issue, so they had to spread the joy over two weeks. A little last week to whet your appetite, and a little more this week to keep you happy till the next issue comes out, perfectly logical.

Of course if you had the paper magazine in hand, you may have read it all by now. Perhaps you haven’t and it’s all in tatters from bopping around half-read in your handbag or briefcase. In either case you still have the online, alternate personality of The New Yorker. I recommend it, even if it’s a little hard to navigate the archives as of yet (reforms are coming, never fear).

If you missed last week’s Weekend Reader, or still haven’t started last week’s magazine, I recommend everything I recommended last week. Plus, if you’re an online reader and didn’t know that Ben MacGrath’s “Where Hip-Hop Lives: Hot 97 is in the building” is now online, click here for the Gravy.

In the Online Only section, Amy Davidson interviews Lawrence Wright about his (not online) piece, The Agent, which profiles F.B.I. agent Ali Soufan as the man who “had the best chance of foiling the 9/11 plot” but who was thwarted by the C.I.A., in Q & A: Missed Opportunities. Compare the interview format to the essay in the paper magazine. Sometimes it’s an interesting complement to the essay, and sometimes it’s almost like reading the Cliff Notes the right way (ie. after reading the source material, rather than instead of). See how you like your bread buttered. I’d love some feedback. I’m curious to know who reads paper and who reads pixels and why.

For all of you who have read everything and still want more New Yorker, check out The New Yorker Near You, which lists New Yorker-related readings, appearances and events.

^{The view from West 40th Street, over Bryant Park and towards Times Square.}

I had the opportunity to snap a picture of the building growing up next to the Condé Nast building from nearly the opposite point of view as June 30th’s Postcard from New York. Voila!

(image: carolita johnson)

Happy Bastille Day! It’s French Independence Day! Yes, I know all about the Nazi Occupation, we all like to make fun, but the capitulation was the government’s, and the French people had “La Résistance!” That was nothing to sneeze at, and as you can see from their national anthem (translation here), they’ve got a history of bloodthirstiness that perhaps they prefered to leave behind in favor of verbal argument, French bureaucracy (a weapon of mass destruction in itself), and few well-placed bullets. I’ve always favored a combination of diplomacy and subversion myself, having been deeply affected by some graffiti on Canal Street and West Broadway twenty years ago that exhorted me thusly:

“Don’t despair! Subvert!”

(If anyone has any pictures of that, I’d love to have them.)

I did the above drawing (brush & ink, and pastels), and it’s second version here, for a French calender my friend Sergio was doing a couple of years ago, called “Jet Lag.” The principle of the calender was that it started in July instead of January (thus the “lag”). I think the idea was that there’s always someone looking for a calender in July but can’t find one (?), in any case I was happy to contribute. But it was rejected on the grounds that Read the rest of this entry »

(image: carolita johnson)

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m eating meat when the forensics scenes come on during CSI, and I find it a little off-putting. Many a meal has been spoiled this way, particularly when they include squishy sound effects. I try to avoid these crime scene investigations shows during dinnertime, but the problem is that I dine at very irregular hours, and I actually have no idea what time these programs come on the TV, which I usually have playing in the background while I eat, read, or work.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I haven’t been posting many cartoons in the last week and a half. The reason is simple. The cartoon department has been on vacation for the last two weeks, putting us cartoonists out of sight and out of mind. So I took the opportunity to forget about cartooning myself for a while. I’ve been reading, writing, watching the World Cup, socializing, or busy with non-cartoonist jobs, going to the beach, planning the next six months of my life, thinking about buying a taser, and making much use of my new airconditioner! (Taser is being considered for my next possible move, to a dodgier neighborhood, not for my social activities, never fear. And yes, I know they’re illegal. But so are strung-out junkees.)

^{A shot of the article, on the printed page, complete with my own underlinings and marginalia, and shadows cast by the setting sun.}

The July/August issue of Print Magazine features an article which aroused my fellow subway riders’ interest in me as I tore the top, folded edges of the pages in order to unseal them (I admit to thinking, what the…? Till I got the point), the way one used to be obliged to do with fresh-off-the-press hardcover books in the old days. Ripping away, it was at least a kind of attention that didn’t involve my legs or cleavage, so I appreciated the refreshing difference. (It was fun to be the crazy lady ripping up her magazine, an impression which can prove not disadvantageous on a New York subway.)

UPDATE: it turns out I had one of a few rogue issues whose pages had anomolously not been split at the top, with the unintentional effect of adding even more authenticity to the “bound book” effect, so don’t be disappointed if yours isn’t like mine!

The piece, called, “Bound for Glory,” by Mark Dery, and photographed by Michael Heiko, is about the transition from bound, printed books to the digital image. Its presentation, once you gently break the pages open (a bit like a deflowering), is a virtual book. The image of a book was printed on the magazine’s pages, from the book’s bound cover to the text of the article printed within the “book”’s pages, which succeeded in looking very three-dimentional. Have a look below:

I remember watching Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” on TV as a child (in 1979), and being fascinated by the digital books it foretold. I’m sure I saw the prototype of the Palm Pilot (or at least of the electronic book) in one episode, a dark, smooth tablet of about the same dimensions as an iPod, as I recall it. And for a while, in the spirit of it all, as soon as I learned of their existence, I did own a Palm Pilot into which I downloaded whatever decent digital books were available, and read them on the metro on my way to work. It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped (particularly tough on my LED, grey and black display!). But still, it was better than nothing on an airplane, particularly when a few “real” books would have weighed further upon my shoulders in a backpack than a bit of plastic enclosing some circuitry and two AAA batteries.

I’m still on the fence. I love the idea of an entire library in a doodad as small as a bar of Côte d’Or chocolate (smaller!). But I will also never forget the experience of reading medieval manuscripts in the Bibiliothèque Nationale in Paris, and discovering red candle droppings on the pages, leading me to wonder who had been reading them before electricity came to the BN. Rousseau? Diderot? I was sharing these texts with not only the original author, but also the scribe of the manuscript (or in the case of some ancient books, the earliest typesetters), as well as the many readers whose hands had touched them over the centuries. A germophobe’s nightmare, perhaps! But a researcher’s dream.

Here’s an example of what you can’t get from notes typed into Filemaker Pro as I eventually did during my doctoral studies: notes.
And here’s a virtual panoramic tour of the gracious old (not the new) BN, where I had the privilege of studying all those old books and manuscripts. (You might want to turn your sound off first, if you don’t want to hear the French guy talking about it).

Other pieces of great interest to me personally in the July/August issue of Print:
- “Agitprop Primers” (about children’s books and illustration styles thereof during the Cold War, just beautiful) by Steven Heller.
- “Acrobat Reader”, by Anna Gerber & Teal Triggs, (about the visual possibilities of typeface and the printed page from the surprisingly ornate Tristram Shandy, to Perec’s famous “e”-less “A Void,” to Rick Moody’s The Diviners and Jonathan Safrans Foer’s particularly transgressive use of typeface in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.”
- Emily Gordon’s Another Round, which brings us a meeting of the minds of Milton Glaser (I “heart” NY), and Stephen Hindy (of Brooklyn Ale fame), the result of which is naturally in the kind of good taste that both your taste buds and mind-buds can appreciate.

^{(This photo of the “Coma Cluster” of galaxies might lead you to speculate that you’re not the only one.)}

Well, don’t! Look at this picture. You’re looking at thousands of galaxies. Can you imagine the possibilities? Gazillions of life forms on zillions of planets, zillions amongst them no doubt broke and forlorn, and not on vacation, working all summer, thinking their bosses are dumbasses, wondering what the meaning of life is, asking themselves if there’s anybody out there… Kind of makes you feel silly, doesn’t it? If only we could have a party and invite them!

This site, “Discover the cosmos,” posts photos of our universe (and others’) every day. Some are as objective as the above photo, and others, like the one below, are more personal. Yes, today, if the clouds clear, this is what we’ll be able to see in New York City at sunset tonight! (That is, at 8:27pm). We’ll be our own Stonehenge. Click on the photo for more information about this wondrous phenomenon.

Other must-sees:
The Alaskan Volcano Eruption (taken from outer space)
The thrilling and terrifying image of Bruce McCandless floating in space 100 meters away from the cargo bay of his space shuttle. (Click on the image when you get there, for the full, panoramic effect.)

Update: looks like Gothamist found this website today, too! Here’s their lowdown on Manhattanhenge, with more photos.

^{The three of us in our backyard in Flushing. (Don’t ask me what those things are I’m holding, I only remember spending hours making them with aluminum foil.)}

It’s my little brother’s birthday today. He’s a good boy. Me and our brother, Johnny, agree. Henry’s the one in the middle, sitting on the lawn chair above. He used to have the most spectacular crying fits, turned red like a tomato. We used to try to make him cry, just to see it. (Sorry, Hen!) But then, he was also the first one amongst us to curse in front of adults (at about the age you see him here), an act which he followed by laughing uproariously while getting spanked (inspiring a certain awe in his older, more crybaby or slow-boiling siblings), thus further confounding the authorities in question. Below is my favorite Henry and his big sister pic.

NB: just because I wasn’t blogging regularly enough in January to have done the same for Johnny, below is a big sister and Johnny pic, in the interest of equal exposure! (We look like we’ve just come up with an idea for getting Henry to do his tomato act…)

^{This image, and others you’ll find on Oliver Oyl lately, is what made me want to contact John Adcock. Click on it for his post about it.}

I’d been following this blog, whose name started out as Ink-Stained Wretch (I think!), and whose URL is actually “yesterdays-papers.blogspot.com,” when its title suddenly changed to Oliver Oyl one day. (Although a google of “ink stained wretch” will still pull it up in some of the results). I wondered if I’d been imagining things, and when I decided I hadn’t, I tried to figure why the name would change. Then I found a blog called “Ink-Stained Wretch” (found a few, actually), which was totally unrelated, and figured that might have something to do with it.

Anyway, I tried to post a question in the comments the other day, regarding the “it didn’t hurt a bit” kid, and encountered the obstacle of not being a “team member!” Now that’s an idea! Read the rest of this entry »

(Click on the image to get the full-sized cartoon and be on Jesus & Mo’s own website.)

Peace on Earth!
…or should I say POE, OPE, EOP…? Can you guess what I’m alluding to?Dr. Strangelove is playing at Symphony Space tonight as part of a three-films for $10 special marathon!

Previous J & M on newyorkette: Jesus & Mo spread the joy

I normally don’t find anything worth repeating in the New York Post, so when I stumbled onto this photo of one of my favorite Coney Island personalities, I had to point it out. It was a rare moment of beauty in the rag: Coney Star Shines

Also, I love Coney Island — the old Coney Island, the less lonely than aloof, desolate, mysterious Coney Island — and am pleased that at least a few of its original monuments is being preserved as it proceeds to become (most likely) Disneyfied.