newyorkette

I had my “recipe comix” moment at saveur.com! Click on the excerpt below for the full strip (and recipe)!

My quirky, haunting story about a unique kind of friendship between a man and some birds.
(click on the drawing, for the story!)

I did this little strip to help promote Adam Wade’s wonderful, exquisitely funny show. Go see it, you’ll laugh a LOT. He is a sixteen-time Moth storytelling slam winner, and was my teacher this summer at the Magnet Theater. After seeing him, you might want to take a class with him yourself.

This weekend on Studio 360’s “Aha moment” segment you’ll hear me! I’m being interviewed about my own “Aha!” moment. The work of art was the movie “Holiday,” with Cary Grant as Johnny Chase, the idealistic young man who wants to “retire young, work old.”

I’m very grateful to Britta Conroy-Randall and Jenny Lawton at Studio 360 for patiently helping me remember not to bump the microphone, not trip over my words, and not repeat myself unless requested to. One little correction to the intro, the discussion with my dad happened when I was a really little girl of about 8, not when I was a teenager!

Click here for the interview.

illustration by carolita johnson

I try to avoid the topical, but sometimes I come across something that’s too good to keep under my hat.

www.thedailyshow.com

Go see it, it was GREAT! Here’s some drawings I did in the dark from the seat that was so kindly given to me by a friend who couldn’t make it.

Hey, lady, there’s three giant dames standing behind you trying to give you sound advice, but you’re feeling so sorry for yourself that you’re going to settle for Bacchus on the rebound.

But seriously, if you can make it to the Met for “Ariadne auf Naxos,” by all means go see it. It’s a beauty. And Kathleen Kim’s Zerbinetta gives a way better performance than Nina Stimm’s Ariadne. She’ll make you laugh, just like she promised, and Ariadne will put you to sleep a little (just like Zerbinetta promised, too). I very much disagree with the Times’ review, particularly on the subject of Kathleen Kim and Sarah Connolly, who as far as I could hear, both outshone Nina Stimm that night. I wonder if my ears aren’t cultivated enough anymore from not hearing enough opera lately to appreciate Stimm. And if so, I don’t see what’s wrong with it. Maybe opera singers should appeal to less cultivated ears a little more.

Rough sketches with my new brush pen:

Above, the George Washington Bridge as seen from one bank of the Hudson River (the bank that’s popular with geese).

Below, a broader view:

I spent February packing for my move and doing these illustrations for a book called “The New Vampire’s Handbook: A Guide for the Recently Turned Creature of the Night” by Joe Garden, Janet Ginsburg, Chris Pauls, Anita Serwacki, and Scott Sherman. You may already know Joe Garden’s other work (done with the same or pretty much the same team, and another brilliant illustrator, Emily Flake), The Devious Book for Cats, and The Dangerous Book for Dogs, and The Dastardly Book for Dogs.
 
Here are a few of my favorite illustrations, based on how much fun I had drawing them, or how much better they looked when they were done than I expected!

Below is the classic vampire stance: arms thrown up in the air, fangs bared, pure intimidation meant to freeze you in your tracks. Used mostly to buy time when pursued by vampire slayers.

Below is a sequence, in which the small, dainty vampire bides her time, taking advantage of a lunar eclipse in order to get herself a little werewolf blood. The werewolf is wondering, “Me no feel so good! Did me eat something bad?”


(I liked basing my characters on people I know. The idea was that anybody could be a vampire, not just surprisingly goodlooking teenagers, or scary, Bela Lugosi types.)

Below is a very happy, bloodthirsty vampire who really believed in vampirism as a lifestyle.

And here is why you should be super careful in the subway, ladies!

To see more, here’s a public link to a folder on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=80636&id=726599530&l=8d819c5c58

The idea is that if the water levels are at equal levels (from the floor) at the outset, the tree will drink the water from it’s reservoir, causing the water level in the reservoir to lower, which in turn will cause the tube to suck in more water from the number 2 reservoir automatically. It’s basic physics!  All you need to do is check the water level in the reservoir doesn’t get too low for the trick to work.  Put a mark at the good high level. My tree seems to drink it down to about a quarter inch below that marker a day.

The hardest part is getting the water to go through the tube and into the tree reservoir’s pan without an air bubble. To do this, suck the water from reservoir 2 into your mouth (just a little, no need to chug it), then quickly block the end of the tube with your thumb without allowing an air gap, then insert that end into the water in the tree reservoir’s pan. Pin it under the tree trunk if there’s a little space there, the opening needs to be in the lowest part of the reservoir. 

Check on the water level every now and then.

UPDATE: it works! the water level in reservoir 2 has gone down by a quarter inch. Success

NEW UPDATE: put the tree trunk in a bucket of water the first night—it really drinks like crazy the first night or two. Then put it in the tree stand.

ALSO: if you notice the water is not moving in the tube once the water gets to a certain level, put a towel under the tree stand, and fill the reservoir to a point a little higher than the tree stand. This will cause it to overflow very slowly onto the towel. By slowly, I mean you won’t be able to perceive it if you watch it. Go take a shower or something. When you come back, just skim off the excess, and it should be sipping away fine for the next few days.

(Doodle drawn while waiting for my backup to finish, sorry if it’s rather offhand! Just fooling around with Photoshop again!)

Okay, I know this movie, The Duchess, was not meant at all to be historically accurate or informative, it being a chick-lit version of the life of the original Duchess of Devonshire (see what she really looked and lived like, here). So when a vision of beauty that modern viewers could relate to was called for, what better choice than someone who looks and acts like a fashion model? But really, aren’t models being advised to eat more these days?

This Duchess was rather painful to look at, not only because Keira Knightley’s acting ability has all the depth of one of the film’s posters, but also because she is just as thin! Her hollowed out cheeks, accentuated all the more with tons of rouge, made her look like an emaciated clown. When the Duke helps himeself to her more tenderly buxom maid, and then her succulent new friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster, I began to muse that perhaps he was simply seeking the solace of a warm, soft body underneath all the skirts and bustles.

The byline I keep hearing on NPR, which mentions “the secret story (...) of the courage inside a woman,” seems the more ridiculous when I wonder where inside her? In her stomach, shouting, “echo”? If anything, looking at the spectacle of The Duchess of Devonshire as played by Knightley, I did feel a pang of pity for the plight of womankind in her era, painted and propped up like helpless dolls, starved for love and recognition, and trivialized for posterity by this film.

Ralph Fiennes was excellent as the husband rendered nearly autistic by society’s expectations of men. And Hayley Atwell, as Lady Foster, certainly has a nice rack on her. An interesting factoid: Anna Wintour is apparently a descendent.

This rough little cartoon was inspired by an exchange in which I friended someone on Facebook, forgot, then thought I had been friends with them all along, and then realized I had not. We are friended now.

In related news, I will be unfriend anyone who joins those Facebook ad networks that put every goddam purchase you make in my newsfeed.

The literal one, I mean.
I’ve decided that I will only draw the page turners at concerts (when there is one). Here is the page turner from Friday’s Movado Hour at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, drawn on the program on site. She had a couple of embarrassing moments during which Fred Sherry, the pianist, revealed himself to be perfectly capable of turning his own pages.

For more on the free recitals at the BAC, click here.

(Opera glasses, by Carolita Johnson)

It’s not often I get to the opera, because, hey! it’s expensive, right? Luckily I was offered the chance to see the opening night of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, gratis, this past Thursday. You lucky ducky, you’re thinking. Unfortunately I accepted the tickets on the assumption that my flu symptoms had abated, and halfway through the performace I was overtaken by a relapse and obliged to leave. So I plan on using the New York City Opera’s very democratic (practically socialist!) “Opera for All” program to buy myself a ticket to see the other half, as soon as I’ve done coughing!

Madama Butterfly opened with giant Japanese sliding doors lit to look like they were made of glass, or ice. A good metaphor for Cio-Cio San’s world whose fragility will be made evident by Pinkerton’s selfish, horny stomping around in her life. Clearly Valenti’s Pinkerton was channeling blue-balled frat-boy. “I’m aflame over her!” on the over-titles translates in modern terms as, “OMG! She’s so hot!” There were moments when he was kneeling to Cio-Cio San in his foreplay, singing with his pelvis gently pumping that familiar way of boyfriends who wake you up in the morning, with, let’s just say, ideas. It was pretty obvious where Pinkerton was coming from, and yet it was still jarring when the hubris moment came as he toasted is “real” wife-to-be, even as he awaited Cio-Cio San (his actual wife-to-be, but only in the unreal land of Japan). The rest of the first act showcased Pinkerton as the unwitting cad. (Because cads rarely set out to be cads, do they?)

The idea that one can go to Japan and do things that don’t “count” anywhere else—as Pinkerton does—is a theme I’m familiar with, having modelled there. Only twenty years ago it was a common phenomenon to see models arrive in Tokyo, find themselves instantly rich and adored for their Western beauty and simply go quite mad, behaving as if they think nothing they say or do will have any consequences in their “real” country back west. It’s a form of temporary insanity, and to see Pinkerton do the same is to understand him as a human being under the influence. The only thing I could possibly reproach James Valenti’s Pinkerton is that his voice sometimes didn’t project well—but only when he was not facing the audience. It’s possible that the acoustics in the NYCO are at fault. Anytime anyone did not face the audience they were hard to hear over the orchestra. Perhaps the conductor should take note.

Shu-Ying Li’s first appearance on stage as Miss Butterfly nearly brought tears to my eyes. Actually it did bring tears to my eyes. But that’s probably because I had a fever—normally tears almost come to my eyes. Still, why begrudge Shu-Ying Li the slightest tear? Her voice carried through the music and the stage space in the organic way a whale’s song cuts through the waves—there was something not just operatic about her voice. It’s a natural sound that Shu-Ying Li has, something visceral, which is rare in sopranos, who are often mostly artifice. I could only ask her to be a little more fluent with her geisha-like movements, which seemed to come only now and then as an afterthought.

The Gonze’s first appearance seemed to run into a little technical difficulty with his fan-opening technique which resulted in making him seem that much more blusterous, which was fine.

All I ask of this opera is for the audience to lighten up a little! There are moments when I was chuckling at the dialogue and noticed I was the only one. Yes, opera has plenty of tragedy in it, but every tragedy has its laughs. All the better to contrast with the tears when the moment comes.

NYTimes’ review of Madama Butterfly, same night, here.

(Click on the image to go to Maria’s photoblog.)

Here’s a polar bear, snapped in a photo by my friend Maria Winter, medievalist and photographer extraordinaire. Maria was a classmate at the EHESS, and underwent 9am latin theme courses with me. She was one of the only other students who actually laughed during a latin reading now and then, and so I guess we were meant to be friends.

I don’t have the game on, but something tells me it’s not going well. I can’t watch. No, seriously. I have too much work to do. I’ll be rooting for them, though.

(Though I know what feminism has done for me, my boobs wouldn’t be where they are today without the proper use of brassieres.)

I realize that Rebecca Traister is trying to help, but her article in Salon, The Feminist Who Made Me Blush, made me blush.

I never knew Katha Pollitt was a feminist because I have a blissful ignorance about certain personalities, not having lived in the United States for most of my adult life. That means I’m able to read and hear things without knowing who the author or reader is to, for example, a lot of curmudgeonly, more-militant-than-thou feminists. Who did I think Katha Pollitt was? I thought she was a very interesting human being. Read the rest of this entry »

(Opera glasses, by Carolita Johnson)

When I was a kid, my dad often had season tickets to whatever was going on at Lincoln Center. He usually managed to get on the bad side of my mom on the night of a performance, and I’d be enlisted in the cause of not wasting a ticket. Thus I saw a lot of opera, ballet, and symphonic art that I found diverting, but mainly because it meant getting away from my disgruntled mother and immersed in more gracefully conducted or choreographed drama. My knowledge of opera was passively acquired, and it still takes great props and special effects like huge, stomping statues of Commendatores with sepulcherous bass voices to get me truly excited.

This weekend the New York City Opera invited me to see a Commendatore once again, in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, arguably one of Mozart’s best operas, and part of this season’s offering, which also includes La Boheme, and the tragic Margaret Garner. And here’s the sweet spot: as part of their Opera For All promotion, every performance will be offering at least fifty $25 dollar orchestra seats all season.

This Don Giovanni doesn’t disappoint those (dorks like me) that spend the entire opera giddily awaiting the statue’s portentious response to Don Giovanni’s invitation to dinner. Since I’ve made it my mission to see as many different versions of Don Juan as possible, I can tell you that Mozart’s Don Giovanni character is not quite as constantly witty as Moliere’s Dom Juan, but he’s just as tragically seduced by his own fear of abandonment. Which is to say, he’s actually pretty desperate. And I mean in the date-rape way. It’s only natural that he invites the Commendatore in; Mozart seems to have been way ahead of Freud in identifying the Death Drive.

Besides the singing statue, Julianna Di Giacomo is definitely the star of this show, and deserved every “bravo!” Everyone else seems to need a little more coaching, and there seemed to be a problem with one of the speakers behind me (it was vibrating to certain notes in the overture). But this was the first performance of the season, and I don’t doubt things will improve. Why not check their progress yourself, for only $25? That’s what they’re there for—there’s nothing like a live performance, because good or bad (or good and bad) they’re there for you. There’s no rarer treat.

If you’re stubbornly anti-opera, here’s a cartoon for you, instead:

“Black & Decker meets Jimmy Choo: multi-bit/patent leather” (Original shoe idea by Carolita Johnson)

Zach Kanin, Matt Diffee, and I got booked to do a cartoonist appearance at Saks today. We were all on separate floors, and I don’t know what Matt and Zach did, but I always end up doing people’s portraits, which I really don’t mind—much easier than coming up with original cartoons for four hours!

Nevertheless, during a ten minute lull, I invented this shoe—since the store was celebrating it’s new shoe department, which apparently has its own bona fide zip code (quite impressive, I must say, more pics of the event here). It was drawn for a lady who asked me to come up with something original for her daughter, who “knows about everything.” What would a girl who knows about everything need? I figured maybe she needed to know the further possibilities of hybrids. Like my stiletto/cordless drill.

(Green onions, by Carolita Johnson.)

Last June I was given an assignment by a nice lady who wants to be my literary agent. I was to come up with a couple sample chapters (with illos) by the end of the summer. What time is it? Oh! It’s the end of the summer!

I’ve been writing sample chapters for two projects. One is for what I suppose would be called an autobiographical account, a memoir, of sorts? With illustrations. I want it to look a bit like a Nancy Drew book, or basically the way books looked just before we all graduated to books with no pictures at all in them. I’ve always missed those books!

The other is a kids’ book. The story has already been written, and has been sent to my most accessible English-speaking father and small child (in Paris), for a test run and appraisal. (Most of my stateside friends got busy reproducing a good 20 years ago. Thank goodness for later bloomers like Juan.)

Why the green onions, you may well ask? Well, dredging up stories from my past without just turning them into flat “hilarious anecdotes” devoid of any actual human empathy, or only just hinting at their real significance in a life, well, it’s just a little unnerving. It means I have to feel something. I’m used to just mining for laughs. (What have I got in my pocket that I can use to make you laugh? Oh, look! Here’s a very sad story that I can turn on its head.) Making funny is a good distillation process. But if all you do is laugh, and forget to collect the distilled product, well? It collects. It overflows. Gets on people’s nerves.

So the idea is, you write a book (or do something) and put some meaning back into it all, but without turning it into a huge tearful blob of pathetic sadness or self-pity either. Yuck! You all have permission to put on a nice, big boot and insert it ungraciously in the appropriate place if I do.

But I digress! Green onions! Read the rest of this entry »