newyorkette

The view from my kitchen window, when I lived in Washington Heights, last year.

If you’re looking for a Halloween party, see the post from yesterday!
Have fun, kiddies!

If you haven’t made plans for Halloween night yet, and want to wear a costume and drink champagne (who doesn’t?), get thee to The Bubble Lounge! They’ll give you a drink on the house if your costume impresses, and it’s a nice, grown-up venue, in Tribeca, run by genial French people (the kind you like, not the kind you rename your French Fries for).

Have fun! (That’s my cat on the invitation! There will be postcards of it at the lounge.)

The Bubble Lounge
228 West Broadway (at White Street)
Take the 1 train to Franklin Street station, or the A to Canal Street.

I used to go Bus Stop whenever I was in the neighborhood, mainly because it was convenient and because one of my favorite movies has the same name. Perhaps because I never ordered anything but bacon and eggs, I never thought to do a T4One on it. Before you get to know Bus Stop, it seems to be the usual, run of the mill “greasy spoon,” but in fact, I’ve never actually seen a greasy spoon at Bus Stop: they’re impeccably clean as far as I can tell.

Yesterday, having forgotten to eat my lunch, I arrived seeking a remedy to my hunger pangs and lightness of head. Sitting at the counter I spied what looked like a tray of perfectly cooked and seasoned roast chicken with broccoli. The short order chef (no doubt feeling my eyes boring through his head as I tried to get his attention and ask about it) turned to ask the usual question: “French Toast with bacon?” — I’d been eating a lot of French Toast with bacon in the last weeks because I’d lost weight (a no-no in the fittings business, if you can imagine such an ironic misfortune!). No, not this time, I grinned, as he feigned shock. I went for the special. It was $6.95, and the roasted salmon next to it was $8.95, looking just as come-hithery.

My roast chicken came (hither) with rice and beans, and a few stalks of bright green, just crunchy enough broccoli. The chicken was tender, the skin nicely roasted, transparent, supple, and bronzed. I’m not sure if they added the extra leg just for me (diner folks seem to enjoy overfeeding me), or if you’ll also get two legs, instead of just one, and a thigh. I’m fairly sure you can ask for white meat, if you prefer it. As far as white rice with red beans goes, it’s made by and for people who know how it should be done.

Today I had perfectly done grits with my fried eggs and sausage, but I usually have it with home fries, which I invariably finish. That means they’re not dry and cakey, like at some other diners. But I’ve said before that what makes a diner is the people: here, we have convivial Greek owners who speak perfect Spanish (who yet appreciate a cheerful “kalimera” now and then), and extremely affable Spanish-speakers, working together like a well-greased pit-stop team (and sometimes at the same pace).

The two languages are semi-interchangeable, with the Spanish-speakers pitching an occasional jesting “malaka,” and Kosta rattling off prices and menu items in Spanish. As is the coffee: there is café hispanico, and café americano. The Spanish coffee is better, of course. Being made with half and half, I believe, it is not good for you. But it is delicious.

Even worse for you and more delicious is their homemade flan, which is worthy of buying, repackaging at home, and pretending you made it yourself for your friends. Hehehehehe.

Last apparent endorsement: the cops eat here (burgers, usually), as does the very cool, rastafarian mailman.

Bus Stop Restaurant
3341 Broadway
on the corner of 135th and Broadway
(take the 1 train to 137th street station).
(212) 690-2150

(a sketch I started years ago on a trip to the Abbaye de Fontevraud — because I had no camera at the time! Check out this photo, which must have been taken from the exact same spot where I sat and drew it — the herb garden, perhaps?)

Quasimodo called: he wants his bells back! “Bells on Sunday” was the show that used to bewilder me back in Paris, in my BBC World Service days. The first time I heard it, I wondered what on earth had possessed my radio. It seemed to last for hours! I actually remember asking myself out loud, “Am I going crazy?” Apparently it only lasts three minutes. Knowing it’s only three minutes never seemed to help, though.

Try “Bells on Sunday,” if only to see how long you last before clutching your head and doing your best Quasimodo imitation! It might come in handy for Halloween!

(image: carolita johnson)

Jack Handy reports in “My first day in Hell,” that:

The food here turns out to be surprisingly good. The trouble is, just about all of it is poisoned. So a few minutes after you finish eating you’re doubled over in agony. The weird thing is, as soon as you recover you’re ready to dig in all over again.

Good to know, since I plan on doing Hell rather than Heaven. I am a New Yorker, after all. Heaven would bore me, so I’ll leave it to all the good Californians, and wish a bon voyage to the various other aspirants (including the Jehovah’s Witnesses whose departure thereto I magnanimously offered to expediate last weekend when they woke me up at the ungodly hour of 10 a.m.)

In the fiction section we have, “Republica and Grau,” by Daniel Alarcon. On first glance I was afraid it was going to depress me, but it turns out it’s my favorite kind of children’s story for adults: the kind where the kid goes bad, in the good way. I spent the whole time reading it from inside the mind of Maico, wondering how we were going to give the slip to the adults in whose hands our fate rested. The ending left me pretty impressed at our chutzpah, and I was imbued with a sense of mean, fiery optimism that made my subway ride seem more of an adventure again.

The transcript of David Remnick’s interview of Senator Barack Obama at the American Magazine Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, “Testing the waters,” is available online, as is the downloadable audio recording. You’ll be glad to know that our esteemed editor-in-chief bares his prickly side now and then (but only to those who can take it in good stride):

Reminick: Let’s go back to my President Bush question. Obviously, you want to answer it in quite the—
Obama: [to the audience] He’s a troublemaker, you notice? He sounds so much nicer in his columns.
Remnick: Yeah. Sorry to disabuse you of that.
Obama: [to the audience] He turns out to be kind of a prickly guy.

And Michael Schulman used to be afraid to play softball, but lo and behold, he overcame and got good enough at it that I won’t be dressing up as a softball and trick or treating at his door. (He’s a fiercer right field presence than I am, I’ll add.) He brings us the five-borough wide Halloween “haunted house” extravaganza based on a survey of each borough’s most popular (or most dire) fears in “Worst Nightmare.”

Last, but not least, Georgina Bloomberg has followed in her father’s footsteps in the philanthropy department, bringing joy and jodpurs to impoverished equestrians: Gift Horse. Very inspiring. In fact, I have many “one size fits all” flesh-colored thongs which I plan to offer to needy models.

(image: carolita johnson)

Writes Janet Maslin, in her long-titled and not very encouraging review (“In search of the Dark Muse of a Master of the Macabre”) of Linda H. Davis’ biography of Charles Addams (New Yorker cartoonist extraordinaire):

“One of the sadder events in Mr. Addams’s life was the transformation of The New Yorker’s policy regarding material for cartoon artists. When he began freelancing (and he was still a freelancer 50 years later), writers supplied some of the premises for cartoons. Later, these writers could illustrate their own work, and Mr. Addams, who died in 1988, had to rely more heavily on his own inspiration. “Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life” never quite fathoms what it was.”

I involuntarily found myself wondering if there was a piece of the sentence that accidentally got edited out. Davis may or may not have written the best biography of Addams, but what is that closing paragraph supposed to mean? Could Maslin be in cahoots with Rex May (apparently also known as “Baloo”), who wrote to me just a day ago proposing to sell me gags for my own TNY cartoons? Every now and then I get an email from a gag writer peddling his wares and understand that they wouldn’t exist if they weren’t making a living somehow, but I don’t know anyone who uses them.

You won’t believe this, but I’ve found God’s telephone number! I took a picture (see above), just in case you wanted to give him a call for a free consultation. Apparently he’ll also be at the Iglesia Cristiana on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, on the corner of 157th and Broadway! Comb your hair and wear something nice.

Emily of emdashes has been pushing me to submit something to Threadless.com, so I decided to use my high-heeled Manolos image for a t-shirt submission, and was pleasantly surprised to see they’re actually running it. If you’d like to vote on it, or throw rotten tomatoes at it, feel free! Here it is. I’ve submitted a “reworked” version, without signature, and with the text placed differently, but it’s not up yet.

The inspiration? On a recent eight-hour fitting for Calvin Klein, one of the technical designers couldn’t get enough of that phrase. Since it was one of those fittings where the model is supposed to keep her mouth shut for 8 hours, I spent that time wondering what I could do with it. Here you go! I figure, it’s not nice to call someone else a high-heeled lowlife, but there’s no harm in calling yourself one by wearing this T-shirt, is there?

(image: carolita johnson)

This cartoon was inspired by my being obliged to buy myself a pair of this season’s requisite “skinny pant.” No, not because I’m a fashion victim. (Well, not that kind, anyway!) I bought them as part of my modelling uniform. I have to prove I can do fittings for whatever the fashion industry will be feeding the masses for the next couple of seasons. I also can’t show up at my “go-see’s” looking like last year’s leftovers, unfortunately. (I spent many years happily looking like several years’ leftovers, having thrown away my flesh-colored thong and quit the fashion industry, for the third time… how I miss those days! But perhaps I don’t miss waiting on line with the homeless and displaced to take a tepid 12-minute shower for 7 francs at the municipal baths quite that much.)

I thought this cartoon was an apt observation about what fashion does to a woman. This season’s hottest new thing is always the opposite of last season’s hottest new thing. It’s the most annoying thing about fashion, really, besides the expense. I knew this cartoon didn’t stand a chance when I opened up this week’s New Yorker and saw Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s skinny-pant cartoon, which, I have to admit is better than mine!

What’s odd about her cartoon is that I have the exact same haircut and often wear the very outfit the shopgirl is wearing (but Marisa assures me she was not thinking of me when she drew her). And, I’m proud to say, I’m not that skinny, either. I eat my Wheaties.

And as much as I hate to admit it, the skinny pant is really very handy for tucking into my rainboots, a lot easier than folding my boot-cut jeans into socks, and a lot easier on the ankles (no bunching). So I bought another pair. What a fashion victim!

BTW: let this be an example to paranoid cartoonists everywhere — Marisa and I never see each other’s cartoon submissions. (I just cringe whenever I hear of someone whining that they submitted a cartoon and then saw a very similar cartoon appear soon afterwards. It’s not even coincidence: we’re all exposed to the same current events and trends, and surrounded by the same cultural tics and contradictions that make for humorous situations and gags. We’re bound to come up with similar cartoons!)

(image: carolita johnson for The Bubble Lounge)

Well, I’ve been working on a Halloween invitation, as you might have guessed! This is just the basis for it, it’s going to be very Halloween-y on the invitation, complete with bright orange background and gothic type. I’ll put it up next week, for anyone who wants to go to a Halloween party in Tribeca!

This little kitty was originally a yellow cat, done in watercolor, not my best work. I scanned it, and began reworking it with my measly little Photoshop Elements. I’ve discovered that there’s not a lot missing in the much cheaper Elements than in the full version! All I want is to be able to create a certain old-fashioned look, without needing a printing press. And while I don’t like working fully digitally, it’s nice to be able to use a paintbrush to create a template for a drawing, scan it, and then really start playing with it in a way that doesn’t require a lot of wasted paper.

Apparently I’m not the only one! Read this interview of Bob Staake (whose latest TNY, “The Wind-up,”cover I loved), and see how his “organic” use of software evolved. Very reassuring for naive digital artists like me.

Here is Bananita sitting with her friend Lola at a Paris café, the only place where dogs can have their own seat at a table on the terrace.

My friend Juan wrote to me to ask for more of Bananita’s adventures, but I haven’t written the book yet! It’s coming, but in the meantime, Juan’s been using the odd image to make up his own stories for his daughter Lucrezia. So, in response to his request, here are a few images I found on my computer. They’re very rough, because they were sketched with a Sharpie at work (my old software testing job, in Paris), then furtively scanned on a PC, which for some reason only scanned in bitmap format, taking away all the grayscale. But I like them as is, if only as artifacts for comtemplation.

And here is Bananita with Lola, meeting Nono, the bird who will only say “no, no!”

Lola, Bananita’s friend, has her own adventures, too:

Lola loves a nice, smelly garbage can. Her favorite scent is “Poubelle du jour”

Unfortunately, nobody else likes it….

Lola, all wet, and much too clean for her own tastes.

But Lola knows how to shake off a bad experience and move on…

Related: “Carmen.”

Feeling ugly? Go to Tomo!
All kidding aside (and explanation forthcoming), I went to Tomo once, this past summer, on the recommendation of my friends at Takahachi Tribeca. But I was not inclined to give it a review in T4One, because I’d gone on a Friday night, and been surrounded by collegian daters, all rather annoying. I gave it another try last night, because it’s only a few subway stops from home, and I’d decided I needed to treat myself to some sushi to cure my blues after paying a photographer nearly six hundred dollars to try and make me look like a model. (My agency has insisted that I need to cave and get what they call a “comp card.” This is essentially a 4 x 8 card with several cheeseball photos of a model posing in different outfits, trying to look marketable. Somehow, there’s nothing more depressing than trying to pass yourself off as marketable, based on photos of your face and body in different unreal situations, taken by a guy who’d much rather be shooting Halle Berry for a cover for “Vogue.”)

So after slowly and fitfully beginning to recover my dignity (and my own, more merciful self-image) at home for a couple of hours, I ran to Tomo. And voila, on a Sunday night: much more cozy. Read the rest of this entry »

(click on the image to link to the iMix)

Just a short one today. The sun won’t be out long, apparently — clouds and rain predicted for later. But no matter, these versions of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” will brighten your living room (or bed, if you’ve decided to stay there)!

Other “njs” mixes: here.

(image: carolita johnson)

Gopnik’s piece on Darwin, “Rewriting nature,“ (not online) compares “Darwin’s Delay” to Hamlet’s own sitting on the fence problem. The usual seesaw of oxymorons and frolicky comparisons to popular and iconic characters and situations follows, and the word “fun” is even applied to the activity of reading (leading me to suspect he plans on testing his own dear children on the piece later), but it’s an informative piece, and well worth reading, if only to wonder what if the Inquisition had been in place in Britain, or what if TS Eliot or Trollope were biologists, or imagine Darwin and Huxley as a good-cop, bad-cop team. (Or perhaps, the atheistically ambiguous duo?)

You’ll never leave the water running while you brush your teeth again (at least I hope you won’t!), after reading Michael Specter’s “The Last Drop.“ It’s not online, but Amy Davidson interviews Specter in her Q & A piece, “Not a drop to drink,” online only. The link isn’t hooked up properly on the contents page, so click on my link above for the goods till it’s fixed.

If you do click on the bad link, you’ll get something good anyway: “The voice of the morning,” to listen to Renán Almendárez Coello, who I’d describe as an activist hispanic radio DJ to the people who do all our grunt work. And whom Dan Baum writes about in “Arriba!” My only hesitation about this wonderful, inspiring piece is that Dan has him saying “Aye!” as if he were a pirate and not a Hispanic, who would spell his exclamatory thus: “ay!” As in ¡Ay, caramba! This amused me to no end, aye, it did, arr, arr! Read the rest of this entry »

(image: carolita johnson)

You know who you are, ya little snot!

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

My week was spent in home improvements — basically filling holes, spackling, calling the cops every night about the homeless guys sleeping in the stairwell or the crackhead creeps loitering in the lobby. Read the rest of this entry »

(image: carolita johnson)

Ever notice those guys who walk around in impeccably pressed, untucked “dress shirts” on a Friday night? This is what I always think is going through their minds. Or else, they’re thinking, “Woah, I’ve taken off my tie and not tucked my shirt in! That means I’m up for anything! I mean, almost. Ha ha.” It’s kind of sweet.

I’ve found a lot of lost things (and lost a lot of things as well), while unpacking in my new apartment. One of the things I found was this photocopy of the image that inspired my “I never thought turning eighty would be so much fun,” cartoon:

This image had been tacked to the “idea board” at Peter Som’s, where I’d been fitting at the time. Read the rest of this entry »

(Click on the image for a larger size.) Image: carolita johnson

Well, I can’t complain, I’ve nearly finished unpacking — just one room left to clear before getting down to painting — I’ve sold a cartoon today, I have a cartoon published in The New Yorker this week (yay!), and I’m eating my dinner as I type this, thus combining two of my favorite activities: eating and writing.

First, the reject. It’s a cartoon I’ve been meaning to do for at least a year, since the last time (or should I say, “umpteenth” time?) someone managed to squeeze a mention of Proust’s madeleine into their writing. (If I had a penny! Or better yet, a madeleine!) I imagined poor Proust, turning in his grave every time someone refered to that madeleine. I imagine him snarling, “Why, why, why did I ever write about that saloperie de madeleine,” as he gnashes his teeth. Whenever someone wants to put a highbrow touch to their literary laziness, they get out a can of madeleine. I’m all for handing out tickets with fines. The madeleine has become literature’s “Freebird.”

Play “Freebird,” Marcel!

As for the published cartoon, here it is! It’s the result of considering a frequently heard question that I’ve always thought was very very silly to ask. After all, you really are only expecting one answer to that question when you ask it. The answer that you really don’t want to hear, I mean. Why ask, when accusations serve one so much better?

That’s me in the mirror. And just in case you doubt it, this story has a happy ending.

In a bid to furnish my new apartment, I made the journey on the free shuttle from Port Authority to Ikea yesterday. I came back burdened with just enough stuff to make me very, very sorry that the 1 train route suddenly developed “signal problems” at 96th street, spitting me out 30 blocks and two buses away from home. Starving, my muscles aching as I strained to hold onto three heavy wooden venetian blinds, a backpack and giant tote of indispensable doodads I’d spent too much money on, I climbed up the stairs to the street and asked a man walking a fat black labrador (which is how I knew he was a local) where the closest diner was. He pointed me to Key West Diner.

Having spent the last two weeks breakfasting, lunching, and even dining at my local diner (which I’ll review next week), I’ve grown to see the diner as the weary artist’s refuge and solace. At my diner, the greek owner calls me “kukla.” So what if the eggs are a different price every day? They know how to make a girl feel at home-away-from-home.

So I pulled open the first door to the Key West Diner seeking similar hospitality. As I struggled with it, the manager, a portly man with a goatee, watched me from not four feet away on the other side of the second door. He took a half-hearted step forward, then changed his mind and let me struggle towards the second door as he leaned back against the counter of the cashier. As I proceeded to wrestle with this door, he looked as if he might yet come hold it open for me, but again changed his mind and stayed put. When I was finally inside, I was peeved.

“Thank you,” I said, “You’re so helpful.”
“What did you say?” he shot back, apparently expecting me to back down. Read the rest of this entry »

(image: carolita johnson)

Having moved to a new apartment, I haven’t received my last two issues of The New Yorker (and have duly notified the proper authorities).

As a consequence of this gap in my service, I began the week by reading half of Atul Gawande’s “The Score” on my cell phone on my way downtown. I read the other half (on the same cell phone) on the ride back uptown (it’s a long ride!), and by the time I reached my new address in Hamilton Heights, I was congratulating myself on having successfully avoided pregnancy all these years. (Horrifying!) See Emdashes for a “Letter From a Pregnant Person on Atul Gawande,” and while you’re at it, check out her “Pick of the Issue.”

The next piece I read on my cell phone (and I’d like to point out that the screen is exactly one and a quarter inches by one and five eighths small), was Joyce Carol Oates‘ “Landfill.” Those who pay tens of thousands of dollars — or more! — to enter university sometimes prove they are worth the investment, but sometimes they don’t and they end up in the landfill along with all that moola, metaphorically speaking, usually. But, in this case, a real landfill is where we meet the hapless, sadly incompetent but dearly paid-for remains of Hector Campos, Jr.

Next, Ian Frazier speaks to us about his tragic eating disorder, in “Thin Enough.” His irony veils his pain. Yes, in fact, it blankets it, like a layer of melted american cheese over a huge tuna salad on rye. Mmmm.

I would have liked to read Milan Kundera’s “What is a novelist?” But I’ll have to wait till I nick a copy of the magazine from someone, because it’s not online. Same goes for Mark Singer’s “Escaped,” although the inspiration for the story is the star of the video you can see online only, in “Runaway.” See escaped killer Richard McNair give a cop two different names (Robert Jones, and then Jimmy Jones) within 10 minutes, and still get away with his blessing. Slick.

Lastly, as is usually the case for sports, Matt Dellinger (also our well-loved TNY softball coach) interviews Roger Angell, in “The Veteran.” Here you’ll learn what makes Dellinger feel nostalgic. Also, what Angell thinks of the chances of a Subway Series this year, and what makes a good fiction editor. He should know.