newyorkette

(image: carolita johnson)

During a fitting yesterday just off Bryant Park I noticed through the 12th floor window that the park was covered in some sort of white substance, like a giant spider web. It was the fashion tents! Fashion week starts tomorrow! For anyone who likes that kind of thing, here’s the schedule, thanks to NY Magazine.

For me, all it means is that all my usual haunts will be crawling with very skinny women in very silly outfits. Actually, the outfits are not so bad, it’s just the way they’re worn that’s silly. Seeking attention and approval. Well, it’s all right for some, and I love the parade it all constitutes, but I think the thing that carries off a look that might otherwise be silly is a person’s innate sexiness. Being sexy starts where self-consciousness ends. Be sexy, and you can wear a burlap bag and pull it off (or have someone else pull it off). (Burlap bags are very inexpensive, by the way, and one size fits all, just ask Sue Spiegel.)

Which brings me to this rejected cartoon. It has not only been rejected by The New Yorker, but it’s even been rejected by fellow cartoonist Matt Diffee, when submitted to his “Rejection Collection,” coming out on October 3rd! (I’m in it!) How rejected can you get? I’ve been told it’s a “ladies’s cartoon,” and that may well be the case, because only ladies know just how ridiculous that phrase, “I think I’ll go slip into something more comforable” really is. Something more comfortable might be: sweatpants.

NB: By the way, in case you’re getting revved up to complain that the clothes being shown in the tents aren’t made for real humans, rest assured, they will all be refitted afterwards on people like me, bringing the fit closer to the average reality.

Also, this might make you feel better (Spain is banning models with abnormally low Body Mass Index results).

What is a cartoonist wearing today? Today, in newyorkette style, we’re featuring the author herself, but we are hoping to enlist other guest cartoonists now and then, just for a different kind of insider knowledge, and to save them the trouble of answering the typical cartoonist questions we’re all asked all the time.

Today’s weather permits me to wear one of my favorite outfits (I’m on my third day wearing it! Of course, I’ve washed the tee shirt every night!), and that’s what made me think all my fellow cartoonists might have a favorite little outfit that may or may not be particularly fashionable, but still be a favorite, whether it be a pair of pajamas or just a comfortable pair of paint-stained boxers. So here’s mine:

– last season’s Urban Outfitters’ striped “boy-cut” tee – old H&M brown tweed skirt (circa 2002) – old Cynthia Rowley blue leather pumps (bought at Century 21, circa 1998) – new Fjallraven Kanken red swedish canvas knapsack (bought at Salvor Kiosk to replace the fifteen year-old black one that died this summer) – old Santa Novella’s Aqua di Colonia, “Rosa” (a little goes a long way, for years).

What I like best, and other personal notes:
The bag is red because everything I need to remember to take with me is red. The reason is that I am extremely absent-minded. (Inside the bag, my purse is red, my keychain is red, my cartoon idea notebook is red, my modelling voucher case is red, my umbrella is red, and so on.)

If this was a guest writing, instead of me, I’d have used this bottom space to link to websites, online works, etc. for the reader to peruse at his/her leisure. But it’s just me today!

NB: this is in no way a post comparable to anything on Ms. Richards’ (aka. “Jeepers”) wonderful little blog called “what2wearthisvery2nd“, or “What to wear this very second,” the link to which is always in my “cartoonist’s blogroll in the sidebar, and which will give you all sorts of fanciful advice about what you should wear, cartoonist or not. (Newyorkette makes a point of not caring what anyone is wearing unless they care themselves, and rather prefers naked people to clothed people! Still, we must all remain curious and see what other people are wearing, as we are not alone in this world! So go see Jeeper’s site!)

Subject: times select needs reform

Dear Mr. Calame,

I’m a reader of the NYTimes, who has refused to sign up for Times
Select for the good reason that I buy the paper version of the
newspaper quite often already, and do not wish to double-pay for
articles I already have access to. Further, the online version often
doesn’t satisfy me in terms of graphics and photos the way the paper
version does. Lastly, I cannot sit on my computer in Central Park,
whereas I can sit on my paper on the Great Lawn.

I’ve been patiently hoping that the NYT would finally become
reasonable and offer single articles the way iTunes offers single
songs. If you use iTunes, you’ll have noticed that a single song
costs 99 cents. For 99 cents I can listen to a song as much as I
want, save it onto my computer, and transfer it to my new computer
when the time comes.

But Times Select seems to think that $4.95 is a reasonable price to
pay for the reading of a single article! What level of presumption
makes the NYT think that one article is worth nearly five times a
song, which is actually the result of talented writing, plus all the
production costs, and the work of more than one person?

When is Times Select going to become more reasonable? $4.95?????
That is simply obscene. The more I learn about TS, the more I refuse
to join in.

I’m an artist, a writer, a blogger, and I’m waiting for the NYTimes to
stop being an elitist newspaper. The introduction—and evolution—- of TS seems to indicate a setback in that dream. What you have is
online readers of first class and online readers of second class, not
a very gracious situation.

kind regards,
carolita johnson
——————————————————————————————————— “NYTimes.com Billing Help”
to me

More options 9/7/06
Dear Ms. Johnson:

Thank you contacting The New York Times on the Web.

At this time, our readers who purchase The New York Times at newsstands are not eligible for the free subscription to
TimesSelect. However, we are looking into ways for these readers to have access to TimesSelect in the future.

Currently, we are offering a 14 Day Free Trial of TimesSelect. We hope you will decide to take advantage of this offer
to try the service. For more information, or to subscribe, please visit:

www.nytimes.com/ts

In regard to your comments concerning single article purchase, we would recommend a monthly subscription of TimesSelect. At the monthly rate of $7.95, you would be granted access to up to 100 articles free for the month. With that subscription, the single article value would be closer to .8 cents at the monthly rate or .3 cents at the annual rate of $49.95.
This is inarguably a better rate than Itunes.

With this concept, TimesSelect subscribers wouldn’t pay $4.95 for an article, only non subscribed customers who wish to purchase a single article. We believe TimesSelect offers a great value to customers interested in our Archives as well as our expanding unique content. Also, we have recently extended TimesSelect access to include articles dating back to 1851. Previously TimesSelect content only included content between 1981 to Present.
We deeply appreciate your readership, both online and off, and we hope you will continue to be a frequent user of our Web site.
Regards,

Andy Salinger
NYTimes.com
Customer Service
www.nytimes.com/help

———————————————————————————————————carolita
to NYTimes.com

9/7/06
Actually, Mr. Salinger, the monthly rate is great for anyone who
EXCLUSIVELY uses the online version of the NYTimes, and NEEDS to look
at a hundred articles a month.

That is simply not the case for someone like me, who uses both online
and the paper version of the newspaper. So the 99 cents option is
still more attractive to me, the punctual user of the online version.
If I ever needed to look at more than a hundred articles a month, I
might think of upgrading from a cheap 99 cent a cart rate. But 4.95
is ridiculous. You have to admit an article by Maureen Dowd isn’t
equivalent to a song by David Bowie, even if you don’t like David
Bowie. A lot more work went into that song. (And talent, but that’s
only my opinion!)

Think about it.
You should offer both options.

Carolita johnson———————————————————————————————————Reply

“NYTimes.com Billing Help”
to carolita More options 9/7/06

Dear Ms. Johnson:

Thanks again for writing.
Both an article and a song/composition are considered intellectual property. Our intention is not to purport that our archive pricing reflects a greater artistic or financial value. However, the business model of a print organization cannot be examined in the same way.

You may also note that other online news organizations charge within the same range for archival purchases.

We do however appreciate your feedback and will share it with our colleagues.

We hope this helps.

Regards,

Andy Salinger
NYTimes.com
Customer Service
www.nytimes.com/help
———————————————————————————————————
Reply

carolita
to NYTimes.com More options 9/8/06
Dear Mr. Salinger,

Just for the record, I did take up the free trial offer of TS, and
found it was not worth the subscription price. I found that the
character of TS pieces was not very edifying. In particular, I was
rather offended by Joyce Purnick’s appeal to the public (through
TimesSelect, which isn’t available to the entire public!) on behalf of
two murdered Chinese women who she felt had not received enough
attention from the press, in comparison to murdered white women.

Why would she go TS in a bid to reach more people, when less people
can read it? Being in TS is like being in someone’s cozy living room,
safe from everything real, listening to some insulated journalist feel
free to blather on how he or she pleases, confident that someone has
paid to listen.

Yes, I have noticed a few other online news organizations charge
within the same range, but I don’t think they’re right either. I
think that online news organizations are not doing as well as they
could, and the reason is because someone thinks that charging a lot
for access (or making double-payers bear the burden of paying your
bills) is going to somehow make up for the drop in readership that
most newspapers are experiencing in modern times.

I do not think becoming greedy is going to help the situation. Maybe
I’d pay 4.95 for ah archival piece, but not for a piece that is out on
the newstands right now, today. That is TS. That’s just greedy.

I think that the new business could learn a lesson from the music
business, which finally sought a broader market by lowering its
prices.

But I appreciate you allowing me to engage you in this argument, since
there is no “fat chance” button on the Times Select page that offers
me a chance to pay or subscribe.

I wasn’t here when it all happened. I was living in another country where terrorist attacks had got me used to the idea that something could happen at any time—and had, several times— in my subway, my outdoor market, or in other public places. I got used to seeing the occasional sadly mutilated person afterwards, moving on with their life while bearing the marks of one of those explosions. Still, I was duly horrified by the human tragedy I saw unroll on the September 11th we’ve all come to call “nine eleven.”

I looked at the excerpts of the comic strip style illustration of the 9/11 Commission Report by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, called The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, with some reluctance. Why? Because I don’t particularly like anyone playing my heartstrings, even if they think they’re doing something good.

Jacobson and Colon are veterans of the comics world, Colón having overseen production of Wonder Woman (among others), and Jacobson having created the character of Ritchie Rich, so I was curious to see their graphic treament of the subject. I was reassured by a graphic style I found to be reminiscent of those glossy emergency instructions cards we find in the pouch in the back of the airplane seat we sit behind on a commercial airline flight. Cold. Not very human, people almost appearing to pantomime the moments of panic depicted, such as on page 97. A “blam!” here and a “flam!” there, but it all looks rather institutional, or like “progressive” educational materials that might be provided to American public school students disinclined to reading straight text. But, being a graphic adaptation of the 9/11 report meant for anyone who couldn’t bear to plow through the original report, I suppose this is appropriate.

Still, I did not find myself being drawn in, and found the occasional “fly on the wall” detail (such as Mr. Hazmi’s English teacher saying, “you are still not pronouncing it correctly” on page 67) left me nonplussed. The truth is, you have to want to know what’s in the 9/11 report in order to read even this visual aid.

Brooklyn Heights Blog says:

In light of the the administration’s almost surreal actions before and since the attacks, it’s strangely appropriate for the commission’s findings to be outlined in this medium.

Have a look here, on Slate’s post, which I found thanks to Gothamist. They’re posting a chapter a day, and there were already 106 pages up when I looked, so there’s plenty to see. Somehow I missed the preview last month in the Washington Post.

That’s what I think of the overall look of the book so far. Mind you, I have nothing to say about the politics or the war, preferring to keep my opinions to myself on this blog. I happily spout all sorts of contradictory political sense and nonsense over drinks with likeminded fools.

NPR’s interview of Colon and Jacobson: here.

(image: carolita johnson)

Malcom Gladwell’s “No Mercy” shows us the dangers of letting students off easy who have been caught trying to poison their tutor by spiking their apple with “noxious chemicals”: they go on to split the atom and poison the entire planet with the consequent nuclear proliferation, giving new meaning to the word “occident.” (Actually, that’s not how Gladwell put it. That’s just how I put it.)

In “Bob on Bob,” Louis Menand loosely quotes Terence (Terentius for some) with:

“Dylan nil a me alienum puto,” as Terence put it (or would have put it, if he had lived long enough): nothing having to do with Dylan can be alien to me.”

For those of us who haven’t taken Latin, here is the original quote and a translation:

Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto.

I am a human being; I consider nothing human alien to me.

Menand gives us a great sum-up of everything we need to know about Dylan and his interviews (and interviewers) before we take the plunge ourselves, by reading “Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews.” I watched the Dylan documentary on PBS, directed by Martin Scorsese, which I recommend. The documentary was wonderful for the musical footage, but the interview with the cadaverous Charlie Rose and the grizzled and piliferous Scorsese that came on afterwards was rather unsettling after gazing at Dylan’s fresh, idealistic face in the archival footage. I’d like to read the book just to purge my memory of that lasting image.

Michael Crawford’s cartoon this week, “World’s best…” surely rings true to many an apartment house dweller. And Koren’s “Proud parents…” cartoon is a good counterpoint to Leonard Lopate’s NPR special on “hothouse kids,” called “Preparation Anxiety.”

(Disclaimer: Crawford is my best friend this side of the Atlantic, so yes, I’m a little biased. On the other hand, I don’t know Koren at all. So, perhaps I’m not biased.)

Burkhard Bilger’s “The Lunchroom Rebellion” (not online) reminds me that I was rather thin as a child because I was a “hot lunch kid.” The food was disgusting. I ate only what I needed to eat in order to no longer be hungry. And that’s a very healthy regimen for a creature that sits on its ass in a classroom for much of the day, then goes home to watch TV for a few hours before doing homework. I guess I’m just old fashioned!

Antonya Nelson’s “Kansas” is a sort of inside-out Wizard of Oz without the Wizard, and without the shlocky ending. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Wizard of Oz. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with “Kansas.”

*Per ardua ad astra.
Translation by Carolita Johnson: “Work your ass off, and you’ll be a star someday.”

A dragonfly on the edge of the lake, Central Park.

The last dragonfly of summer!

I forgot to let you know that I had a cartoon published in The New Yorker last week! It’s not that I like to toot my own horn, but I love to tell the stories behind a cartoon that has struggled a little to get onto the pages of TNY. Formerly rejected in several versions of itself, this cartoon was finally bought after a few re-draws and several re-workings of the caption. (The accepted caption is actually the first version of the caption that I went back to).

Once I sold it, illustration editor Owen Phillips (now at Mens’ Vogue), who had been placed in charge of making sure the cartoonists didn’t slack off—no missing fingers on hands, no blobs in the place of feet, no weird proportions that could just as easily have been not weird—made me re-do the arm on the bride several times. (I’m going to give Owen the Golden Arm award!) He didn’t like the arm being one continuous line on the outer silhouette. I, of course, did like it. Particularly because continuous lines are hard to achieve with the kind of pen you need to dip into ink several times a minute, like the one I use.

Then, once I’d redone the arm to his satisfaction, he noted that the peripheral figures (best man, and maid of honor) weren’t as nicely drawn as in the first, bad-armed, drawing. I decided to push my luck, and pleaded with him that chances were there would always be a shifting of good points every time I re-drew it, and that the peripheral figures were just that—peripheral. He magnanimously let me keep this last version. (Phew!)

So, please note the line break near her elbow. It took all my self-restraint to pick up that pen and start again where I could have kept going and not wasted any ink or movement of my own elbow! And thanks Owen, for making this cartoon very pretty. We miss you! (But you look so good in a tie!)

For an interesting variation on the campfire story of The Golden Arm, see here.