newyorkette

(“Valentine Attack,” by Carolita Johnson. Click on the image for a larger version.)

Working on this. Originally a watercolor, it’s going to undergo some digital retouching. As it is, it already has, since it was too big go be scanned all in one go, and has been stitched together for now in a rather Frankenstein-ish way.

Be careful out there!

(image: carolita johnson)

I like David Sedaris, but I have heard from those birds (The Birds), who say yes, there was a window-pecking incident, but nowhere near as escalated as he depicts it. They watched him fill a couple of windows with record albums and terrorist mug shots, and then saw him get down to writing about their so-called “attack” with a bowl of ice cream and the TV on.

“Pure exaggeration, and furthermore, we’re titmice, not chaffinches. Gah.”

When I asked the birds why they were pecking at his window for so long, they said, “We have our reasons, and we don’t need to share them with anyone.” The fact is, they’re just too embarrassed to admit the true reason for their apparently irrational behavior. And they should be. Wouldn’t you?

Needless to say, when you know why they do it, you know why I doubt Sedaris’ story. If the birds were pecking at their own reflection, it means they couldn’t possibly have seen the record albums behind the reflection. If anything, the record albums placed behind the window would produce an even more effective mirror effect. The images would only have had an effect if placed on the outside of the window, eliminating the reflection. Nice try, David.

The view from the 25th floor of the Chrysler building, whose shadow you see projected upon the Met Life building. At about 10am, Wednesday.

(Quick sketch: carolita johnson)

Thanks to Andrew Krucoff, got to have some free wine and cheese with some other bloggers before seeing New Yorker contributors Patricia Marx and Adam Gopnik do a chat/reading at the 92nd Street Y Tuesday night, and doodled a little. Nice way to bring some fresh blood to the Y, and bring the median age down slightly from 92! (Not that I’ve got anything against older folks, since I’ll someday be one of them.) (Not quite yet, though, so it was nice to see some people closer to my age in the audience, in rows A to G. I hope this is the beginning of a fresh new Y.)

(Willow tree, by carolita johnson. Oil on canvas.)

This is oil on canvas (48” x 48”), in an attempt to use oil paint much the way I use my ink and brush when doing cartoons. My first try, and it’s not quite done yet, but very nearly. I just needed it to try a little more before adding a tiny bit more foliage that would obscure a little bit more of the tree trunk in places. (It was just smudging, while wet.)

(Click on the image for the cartoonbank’s page.)

I was pretty surprised to see this week’s “new arrivals” already up on a Monday! Snappy work, Trevor!

About the inspiration: it seems whenever I do a cowboy cartoon, I start out with an image (usually based on a movie, since that’s where I get my cowboys—this one was came from a John Wayne movie), that looks good till I do something to ruin it, like give the curtains a ridiculous polka-dot pattern, and then one of the cowboys gets sassy with me thus providing the caption. I like it when that happens.

The printed version is a lot less contrasty in the shading, by the way, and looks a lot smoother.

(“Hump-on-Hudson” or Bear Mountain, by carolita johnson. Oil on canvasboard, 14×18.)

I suppose it’s better that it’s called “Bear Mountain,” rather than what I’ve been calling it in my ignorance: “The Hudson Hump,” or alternately, the “Hump-on-Hudson.” It’s fascinated me from the train window so often that I took a picture of it during a particularly dramatic weather condition which I then tried to render in a small oil painting. Here it is. It has place of honor in my oddly palatial bathroom, where the flourescent light actually becomes it. I’ll do a bigger one when I have the extra cash to splurge on inordinate amounts of oil paint.

It’s part of my planned “Train views” series. Here’s another train view, this one on the LIRR line near Woodside.

(image: carolita johnson)

Anyone read “Vegetable Love,” or did you, like me, spend a lot more time ogling the breasts on Eve in the illustration by Exem Story? She looks like Tintin’s stripper sister. And I sincerely mean it when I say: those breasts are magnificent. (Notice, while you’re looking at boobs, that Adam looks like he’s wondering why he has no nipples at all. ) But what do exquisite double-D breasts have to do with vegetarianism, you may well wonder. Who cares!

For the record, I have eaten black pudding in Scotland, and enjoyed it immensely. I couldn’t do that if I was a Pythagorian: Steven Shapin explains everything you need to know about the moral, practical, mathematical, and religious implications of vegetarianism throughout the history of mankind.

Ian Parker’s “Digging for Dodos,” not online, contains one heart-wrenching line in it, written by a Dutchman in the 1500’s: “Because there were no inhabitants living there who made them afraid, so nor were they afraid of us, but just remained sitting, allowing us to beat them to death.” And so begins the end of the “dodoarsen” (“fat-ass”), or Dodo Bird.

Amos Oz’s “Heirs” left me agog. Which isn’t a bad thing. Shades of Kafka and Camus. Self-sufficient as a story, with or without explanation, but if you know what went down in that story, feel free to let me know. My paranoid literary criticism skills (which require placing myself in the author’s head, a very disagreeable sensation after years and years of it) are on strike these days, allowing me to enjoy a story or not, as the case may be.

“Azzam the American,” by Raffi Khatchadourian left me agog in the bad way, though. A brilliant reportage on a young American turned terrorist, extremely insightful, but somehow leaving one feel even more helpless to understand at the end.

(The view from 1441 Broadway, on the West side.)

Have a nice weekend everyone!

(In this week’s The New Yorker magazine, click on the image to reach the cartoonbank.)

I don’t even know when I came up with this one, it just sort of came out under my pen without me thinking about it. I’m one of those people who will say to you, if you are sitting in my window seat, even if you are pretending to be asleep, “Excuse me, you are in my seat!” And when you say, “Oh, what does it matter?”, I will say in a no-nonsense, take no prisoners tone of voice, “I went to a lot of trouble to get that seat, and it matters to me, thank you.” There will be no blushing on my part, either. I will not be shamed out of my seat, no matter how long you take to grudgefully gather your belongings and move to your assigned seat.

So, watch it.

(Barack Obama by carolita johnson)

Well, I was as surprised as anyone when I heard about Barack Obama’s presidentially exploratory intentions this morning. Thought about it all day, and my only response was to give his portrait a shot, since I’ve been meaning to work on my portraits lately. This is just a crop (original is bigger and less close-up). He’s sort of an attractive cross between James Stewart and an Easter Island head, don’t you think?

Anyway, it was originally drawn in 6B pencil, scanned, with color added by Photoshop. Usually I work in ink, but I liked the way the pencil looked this time.

Had a cartoon published in the magazine this week, but again, because of the holiday on Monday, they’re late getting it online, so I’ll have to wait till it’s on the cartoonbank to put it up! Maybe tomorrow!

(Cartoon by Caroline H. Dworin, The New York Times)

I missed the photo op last Tuesday, but I’m mentioned (and thank goodness there’s no photo of me to belie Caroline Dworin’s unbelievably flattering description!) in “Doodles à la Carte,” about the Tuesday cartoonist lunch gatherings, in today’s Sunday Times.

Pergola des Artistes is a wonderful little place, cheap and cheerful, which is why we cartoonists like it. I’ve been a fan since way before I joined the TNY cartoonists—found it with my friend Vania Leveille when we were seniors in High School (I believe we played hooky to go). It’s a great place to go with a dinner date if you don’t want to spend too much, and yet don’t want to look like a tightwad who’ll eat at any old dive either. The atmosphere is cozy, and the food is always good: the lobster special can’t be beat. It’s one of those places you don’t want too many people to know about, lest it spoil the pleasure of having a great secret.

I’ll never forget the $4.95 lunch special (in 1983), and how Marie-Rose, the owner, responded to my question, “What’s the vegetable that comes with the meal?”, with, “Do not worry, ze chef will geev you a very nice vegetable.”

(Mind you, stalkers will be fricasséed!)

(image: carolita johnson)

I made myself dizzy trying to figure out the vantage point of this week’s cover. Maybe the modelling numbed my mind, or maybe this vantage point doesn’t really exist? Anyway, this is the best I could do: if that’s the Empire State Building in the background, then in order to see the Chrysler Building in the midground from the bird’s position in the foreground, we must be northeast, possibly somewhere in the mid to upper 40’s, maybe around Third Avenue? Anyone else have an clue? As far as details go, I love the pigeon droppings, which are, of course, pigeons’ sole reason for existing.

Shalom Auslander’s “Playoffs,” not online, started out slyly amusingly, and then overwhelmed me with contagious paranoia. Paranoia and feelings of persecution can be very amusing to those who didn’t grow up with it, or to those who embrace it as their heritage. For my part, it was just too close to home and by “home” I mean the home I fled from without leaving a forwarding address. (And yet they always find me!) Enjoy!

What can I say about “The Chappaqua Three”? When I did live at said home, I often commuted home with such imbibers, and did not appreciate the alcoholic stench and vaguely degenerate postures. Remembering them dredges up other bad memories, like that of the “smoking car,” where one often suffered during peak hours when the non-smoking cars were too full. These memories don’t even seem plausible now! They’re like memories of whalebone corsets, children working as chimney-sweeps, or people smoking in restaurants!

(The view from 1441 Broadway, from the fire escape, (aka, the smoker’s sanctuary): that’s the Empire State Building in the reflection!)

I took pics of all the views I could see from the 25th floor of 1441 Broadway, where I spent the week doing showroom for Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans. They were very nice to me, fed me for free, which is really all a person wants from a client, besides getting paid! I even got a Tables for One out of it (coming up on a Monday near you).

CORRECTION! Below is the view from the fire escape! The view above must be the view from the other side (where the Empire State building is reflected). Whoopsie!

(copyright: carolita johnson]

It’s just so easy! When New Jersey was looking for a new slogan, I called in with, “New Jersey: what’s that smell?”
(This cartoon ended up published in The Rejection Collection, and is also part of the Cartoonbank’s repertoire now. I’m pretty sure they can make t-shirts and other prints of images from the RJ, even though they’re not in the catalogue yet. Will check on that today.)

Anyone not from New York will know that I’m referring to that infernal gas smell that overtook the city yesterday. I was working at Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans, and at around 9am was to be seen sniffing around the kitchen, wondering where the gas leak was. Of course, there was no stove so I was mystified! Spent the morning looking at Gothamist on my cell phone.

We still don’t know for sure where it came from, but urban legend leads us to blame New Jersey.

(image: carolita johnson)

Am I the only one who noticed that this week’s TNY contains a cartoon with the word “bullshit,” another with a Hindu deity giving someone the finger, and my own rather insolent horse-whipping fantasy cartoon, making it a rather naughty issue, cartoon-wise? It warmed the cockles of my heart, naturally.

On the other hand, the reading is very urbane. We have Milan Kundera, in “Die Weltliteratur” (not online) waxing rather emotional—and justly so—about the state of literature in the world, or the world of literature in the State. I never knew Kafka was considered a Czech writer in France, but if he says so… In any case, the Germans seem to have wholeheartedly adopted him as their own.

The only thing I disagree strongly with Kundera about (that sounds very presumptuous somehow, so let me add, “humbly”) is that “to judge a novel one can do without a knowledge of its original language.” While I enjoyed Dostoyevski’s “Crime and Punishment” (in the now discredited Constance Barnett translation) as a suspense novel, I am quite sure I did not appreciate the author’s purportedly beautiful writing. I read Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” in English first (and second, and third) and despised it each time as a soap opera. Only when I finally read it in French did I appreciate Flaubert as an author. Don’t even get me started on Proust. If you’re not in love with the French language, you’re just a frimeur if you’re reading Proust in translation.

Kundera does say one thing that could be a response to David Denby (who laments the new age of digital transfers, or “betrayals” of certain movies in “Big Pictures“): “(...) only a person who delights in being modern is genuinely modern.” I’ll watch a movie on an iPod if that’s all I have—and maybe even like it, the way I’ve always loved polaroids for what they don’t capture. But maybe I’m just an old-fashioned whippersnapper.

NB: anyone notice my em dashes up there? To make an em dash on Mac, do this: option+shift+hyphen. Voila! No need for spaces between the em dashes and the enclosed word(s), according to Em, of Emdashes.

I’m going Saturday morning with my little tree! Click on the image for the Parks Department info by borough.

The view downtown from the Metro-North Harlem-125th Street platform.

I’ve always loved outdoor train platforms. Here’s my new favorite one. Views of the Hudson from the train next time.

And I’ve been dying to point to my latest cartoon in The New Yorker, but the Cartoonbank hasn’t received its magazine yet (it got lost in the mail), so it hasn’t been able to scan this week’s cartoons into their database yet! That may make anyone out there who’s still waiting for their magazine to arrive in the mail think “ha ha!” I’ll put it up as soon as they do! Or maybe scan it myself after work.

PS - ATTENTION ALL NEW YORKERS! If you still have your Christmas tree, this is the weekend to bring it to one of the Parks Department’s mulching centers! For all you RSS-ers, just click on the “Mulchfest” link on the upper right of newyorkette’s main page for more info. (To reach the main page, click on the newyorkette heart above).

UPDATE:
here it is! Here it is, finally!

The inspiration was the movie, In the Heat of the Night, the scene where Rod Steiger says to Sidney Poitier, “Boy, it would give me great pleasure to horsewhip you, Virgil!” It just sounded funny. And the next time I got mad at a friend of mine, I thought of those words, and then the second clause (“but it’s not sexual” came to me).

Effigy by Joel. (I think that was his name!)

What did you do on New Year’s Eve? I went upstate, and helped build a bonfire! Then, during the countdown to midnight, we burned effigies of Condi and Rove. We saved President Bush for the stroke of midnight. Here he is waiting his turn: the little snot. And here he is on his way to the bonfire! One more, here, of him burning, in case you can’t watch the video. (Last two pics are from Farley Crawford’s website). All in good fun, mind you!

Click here for the video!
(If the video looks pixelated, click on the arrow on the lower right, and choose “smooth video” or “original size.”)

Happy New Year! May it be better than last year, and still not as good as next year!

PS- HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my little brother, Johnny!