newyorkette

I did not do my “batch” this week, mainly because I couldn’t even find a place to sit and draw in my apartment since last batch. Without going into details (the emotional ones are all documented in my “status” on facebook), a two-day paint job offered by our building manager turned into a two-week ordeal. My sofa will be wondering where I am tonight. My bed will be saying, “Where ya been, baby?”

Anyway, here’s a reject from last week’s call for “reverse caption contest” cartoons. Someone had suggested the caption, “For a number of reasons, this probably won’t work.” So I came up with this. Since Bob didn’t take it, the proud owner will be Emily Gordon from Emdashes, who is partial to cat cartoons.

And on the subject of cats, let’s hear from Minor Tweaks.

No, this isn’t a repeat! I submitted my “Outspoken bass” as a t-shirt submission on Threadless, and it’s in the running! People will vote on it, and so I’d love your vote! Have a look, and please vote! Here! Thanks!

I love neon drawings.

Talk like Yoda Carolita lately likes to do when she sells a cartoon. (Ask don’t.) Happy I am.
Rejected cartoon from same batch here is, to celebrate. Bumper crop two sales in two weeks that is.

The brush is beginning to do what it’s supposed ‘ta. Basically, it needs to be a little roughed up.

Did a double feature with a buddy last night, “Design for Living” and “Trouble in Paradise.” Miriam Hopkins and Edward Everett Horton, above, are favorites of Lubitsch, and favorites of mine. Gary Cooper and Frederic March used to be the attraction, but I gradually began to appreciate these two as the real soul of the films.

Hopkins and Horton are experts of the double-take. This one below is from Trouble in Paradise:

All these images are done by ink and brush, scanned, and then retouched digitally.

(image: carolita johnson)

Regarding Silent Minds, by Jerome Groopman, if I’m ever in a coma or vegetative state (and I don’t mean New Jersey, which is the Garden State, silly!), please, no matter what you think, just pull my plug. I’ve had a great life, and am not greedy about staying alive at all costs. That said, till science can really tell whether I’m truly not consciously listening to whatever you say, kindly be gracious about it. Just in case.

I handed in seven cartoons this Tuesday, and was informed today that I sold one! That’s 100% better than last week! And one out of seven is better than one out of ten, which is why I don’t submit ten every week anymore! That’s the secret to my resilience, a smaller proportion of rejects! And the secret to feeling well-paid? My “finishes” only take about fifteen minutes to do, once I get around to them. Those that spend hours on their finishes get paid proportionally much less than me, even though technically they get twice as much per cartoon than me, being contracted (I’m freelance, half-price! But not really, when you think about it).

Happy Carolita is today.

Do you like this cartoon? Well, it was inspired by an idea that Emily from Emdashes provided. If it sold, we were going to have drinks at Bemelmans!

(This rejected cartoon was inspired by that particular cöinkydinky.)

When I stayed with a friend for a few months upon my repatriation from Paris, her apartment was undergoing a years long cockroach plague. (It really says something that I prefered the cockroach plague to my parents’ house.) It’s a miracle the entire apartment didn’t just crawl away. You’d never seen quite such an array of cockroaches — surely all the different subtypes were represented. They were everywhere, and got into everything. They were aggressive — they chased me out of the bathroom many times, running at me instead of away from me. The culprit, I always said, must be the old lady next door whose apartment smelled like a giant litterbox. You smelled it as you walked up the stairs to my friend’s apartment door, where you gagged a little as you got your keys out.

“When she dies, you’ll see.” And sure enough, she got hit by a bus, her apartment was gutted and renovated, and voila! No more cockroaches.

When it comes to plagues of cockroaches being due to one’s neighbor, it seems to always be an elderly lady. What does it mean? Sometimes I wonder if the cockroaches become their only friends. Are they good friends, or greedy, uncaring friends? Sad!

The Ansonia Is Plagued by Cockroaches, a Lawsuit Says

(Click on Eddie’s face for a larger image.)

Watching Alphaville while breaking in a new brush. The new brush is way too smooth, driving me a little nuts. I was getting worried that my old, prickly, scratchy one (perfect!) was going to expire, so I bought six more to break in. Above, that’s Eddie Constantine. I love how he looks like some old craggy tough guy who’s been crying his eyes out all night. Look at that eye!

Here’s another Eddie. He has a million faces. Particularly when he takes his hat off.

Here are some great lines from Alphaville:
“Why don’t you hurry up and commit suicide already? We need your room for our cousin from the south.”
“And Dick Tracy? Is he dead?”
“Professors Eckel and Jeckel.” (Talk about bad translation by some subtitler with no cultural references! Heckle and Jeckle, s/he means!)

I don’t know. When I woke up, I just felt like drawing lightbulbs. Why not? Maybe they’re symbols of leftover ideas from the Monday night cartoon drawing extravaganza? (As you know, we TNY cartoonists often stay up all night Mondays, getting our “batches” ready for Tuesday morning’s deadline. I faxed my batch in at around midnight, because I had a couple of jobs to go preventing me from dropping them off in person).

I’m working on my batch. But sometimes distractions actually help. I drew this while eating my lunch. Now, back to work.

UPDATE: by popular demand, the photo of my largemouth bass catch yesterday, here.

Did you, like me, miss the New Yorker Festivities this weekend? Well, don’t be sad! Read up on Emdashes! Full frontal coverage.

Typically, I did not notice the dates, neglected to get tickets, booked other things way in advance. I need a manager. Anyone?

At least while I was missing the TNY Festival, I did catch a big fish! (But I do have to give more credit to the fish than me: it practically swam into my arms! So friendly! We put her back in the lake, rubbed her tummy to revive her, and she swam away, seemingly oblivious to how close she came to being dinner. Made me feel rather wistful.)

(image: carolita johnson)

You know what? I didn’t think I was going to like Jane Kramer’s article on Elizabeth Lecompte, “Experimental Journey” (not online) but I did! My favorite lines are right at the very end, where they tumble down head over heels to the bottom of the column:

You know what I want? I want a dog. A dog who’s out hunting all day, and he comes home, pant, pant, and I know he loves me. How do you define pleasure? Sometimes I just want to stare at the sky, to sit in a beautiful space and stare at the sky through trees. Am I just lazy? I’m guilty even feeling that way. Well, not so much guilty but anxious. And now – all the work I’m doing–I’m not even anxious, because I know I could walk away. I see my friend Alex Katz, painting, painting–probably he’ll die painting. “Oh, move over here,’ I say. ‘Tell me your secret.’

I read it after managing to tear my eyes off that photo of Rudolf Nureyev, adorning Joan Acocella’s, “Wild thing,” reviewing Julie Kavanagh’s new bio. I saw Rudolf perform several times when I was a child. I remember taking the 7 from Flushing, Main Street with my mother into Manhattan to go see him. I was too young to be drooling over him, but looking at him made me understand what all the drooling would one day be about. I don’t care if his biographer didn’t like him. What’s to like? Some people are made to be adored, not liked.

“Married love,” by Tessa Hadley confirmed my expectations of the homeliness to come of the comical, idealistic marriage between Lottie and the old guy. But all my cynicism was erased with the last line (not a spoiler, don’t worry):

(…) Lottie followed the ordinary kitchen music–the crescendo of the kettle, the chatter of crockery, the punctuation of cupboard doors, the chiming of the spoon in the cup–as if she might hear in it something that was meant for her.

And snip, snip! Definitely read The Shadow Act (not online), Hilton Als on Kara Walker. Here’s a slide show.

This guy in front of my laundromat reminded me of a Spanish joke that either my friend Juan or Pajaro told me:

A man goes to a famous sculptor and asks to become his apprentice. The sculptor gives the apprentice a block of marble and a chisel and says: ” ¡ Sácame San Francisco ! ” (transl.: Get me Saint Francis out of that piece of marble!) So the apprentice begins chiselling away. Days later, he’s still chiselling. Two weeks later he’s chiselled the block down to a rod as thin as a pencil. “But what is this? What are you doing? Are you crazy?” asked the sculptor. And the apprentice says, “Don’t worry, boss! If Saint Francis is in there, I’ll find him soon!”

And while we’re on the subject of Hispanophones, Viva Ecuador!

(Click on the map for a larger version.)

I thought I’d had a hellish week, so I wondered what I would think Hell would be like if I thought it really existed.

(In the wringer, but long, long ago!)

I was searching my “archives” for something and found this drawing I did years ago. Or as my friend Juanny would say, “ears ago.” I did this while I lived in Spain, that much I remember. And I lived in Spain sometime around 1991. This drawing is interesting because it reflects the bipolar life I lived. One minute I would have gladly buried myself alive, and another minute found me drawing elated, naked Virgins on top of the world, the devilish snake carousing freely amongst swishing missiles. Often there would be Doris Day singing in the background.

I certainly don’t miss those days!

But I do like this drawing. It was part of a series, the best of which was an oil pastel on wood, which is probably in the storage room of one Madame de Betak, in Paris. She was the kind of lady who would take stuff out of storage when the artist was visiting, and put it on display till they left. Which is kind of polite, really. I used to fantasize about stealing it back from her. I still do!

This cartoon, which appears in this week’s TNY, is inspired by my own total incompetence in the realm of time management.