newyorkette

(Click on the image to go to Blackle)

Check it out! It’s the black version of Google, created heedful of the fact that “…If Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved.”

Sean Walsh, one of my TNY friends and organizers just sent me this pic from the Humor on the Slopes trip: me, Drew Dernovich, and Chad Darbyshire pretending to have a hard time judging the caption contest. It wasn’t that hard, it was actually every educative.

The winner of my cartoon was something along the lines of “UVA, UVB, what does some university in Virginia have to do with anything?” I thought it was clever. (Other entries showed too much obvious foreknowledge of the original caption.)

(This is where Carolita was from 22 feb to 26 feb 2006, Beaver Creek, for the Humor on the Slopes event!)

Humor on the Slopes (or “HOTS”) was a lot of fun in spite of my altitude sickness! Not to be discouraged, I discovered other activities that I could enjoy to the fullest while undergoing the acclimatizing process: the jacuzzi, snow shoes, and the chair lifts. I took many, many rides on the chair lifts just for the fun of it. Went snowshoe-ing once, but found I was still breathless and had to cut it short. Was glad to see the Aspen Pines, even so.

I certainly enjoyed Colorado hospitality along with the likes of fellow TNY cartoonists Harry Bliss, Drew Dernavich, Matt Diffee, Mort Gerberg, and C. Covert Darbyshire. Enjoyed cartooning, theological debate, the Oscars, and the snow with them! The New Yorker team (sent to make sure we actually did our jobs, no doubt!) were top flight, and without them I’d never have known where to go next! Thanks Tracy, Lisa, Ed, Janine, Sean, Melissa, and that other guy (whose name I forgot to ask! but he’s swell!). Also, thanks to Sharon Fialke for suggesting me for the gig! Have I forgotten anyone? If so, it’s only because they’re no longer around me to remind me of everything!

And of course, a huge thank you to all the folks at Beaver Creek!

Please note:
Newyorkette is on a temporary hiatus, which started on Feb 21st, when her beautiful but ailing computer had to go to the shop (namely, the wonderful world of Tekserve) for repairs. Reunited with her computer since last night, Newyorkette must nevertheless now take care of both her corporate taxes (yes, newyorkette was silly enough to incorporate, for no apparent reason) and personal income taxes, with no distractions. Poor Newyorkette!
Newyorkette has no head for numbers, not even the ones she doesn’t have to add up. Numbers give her a stomachache, no doubt due to the abuse she took for being bad at math when she was a child. (Newyorkette’s parents are not to blame, however, since they didn’t know any better and, sadly, are nearly as bad at handling their money as their offspring are. Their come-uppance will come when their children have no resources to take care of them in their old age! Poor newyorkette’s parents!)

Newyorkette will be back as soon as business is taken care of! (Or at least till she files for a corporate tax extension). Or unless she begins using this blog as a procrastinatory device…

More photos from Beaver Creek here.

(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.)

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.

(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)

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.

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.”

(quick little sketches in the dark at Birdland by carolita johnson)

It was Emily’s (of Emdashes) birthday last night! So to celebrate, we had a luscious dinner at Pergola des Artistes on 46th and 8th Ave., and proceeded around the corner to Birdland to see Todd Londagin’s Big Band, for some superb trombone playing (by Todd). There was also the gorgeous Toby Williams, singing Billie Holiday’s “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You,” which she did after hitching up her bra on her way up to the stage, making us all feel human.

What a band! A fabulous blond who looks like one of Charlie’s Angels on the baritone sax, three more saxes, three trombones (including J. Walter Hawkes and Todd), drums, bass, electric guitar, three trumpets, and a piano! Not to mention Todd’s singing and tap dancing. Gershwin, Mose Allison (“If You’re Goin’ to the City”).

I did a few drawings in the dark, which I’ve posted above. I dunno, Emily thought they were decent but I was almost too embarrassed to put them up. I guess we all like to see how someone draws in the dark without any help from white-out or lightboxes. So, why not?

(images: carolita johnson)

For the sophisticated sports fan, for the unknowledgeable but titillated-by-a-recent-event sports ogler, for the cartoonist who likes her sports news buffered by the spoonful of sugar which are Marshall Hopkins’ illustrations, and for everyone in between, the venerable promoter of slacking off, Austin Kelly, has announced The Modern Spectator.

This self-portrait didn’t make it into the show. And my hair actually looked much better than this, thanks to Randall from Ultra, and a few well-placed snips of the scissors before the show. Thank you Randall!

The Chicks & Giggles edition of The Rejection Show was an experience I’ll never forget. Everyone was great, everyone put it all out on a limb, and I felt honored to be amongst:
Carolyn Castiglia (rejected from The White Rapper Show), Wendy Spero (of Microthrills), Desiree Burch (Comedian, Host of SMUT), and Negin Farsad (Comedian, MTV, Sirius Radio).
And of course, Jon Friedman, who is a man, and his “Why Michael Winslow is mad at me” story.

My audience was very kind to me! Thank you, kind audience! (I was very nervous!)
I created that act especially for the Chicks & Giggles merging with The Rejection Show, so it was all new. It was also only my second time speaking in front of an audience!

If you missed it, at least part of the show was recorded, and will be up on ABC’s website soon (I’ll link to it when it’s up). And I’ve put all my drawings from last night up on my flickr page, here: Ape-Face and Me.

If you know how to use flickr, you know what to do. If not, just click on the first thumbnail image to the right of the large image, and it will open up with the text that goes with it. To see the next image, click the right-hand image in the little box to the upper right of the opened image. The next one will appear with text, and so on and so on.

Comments welcome, as always!

Links:
Chicks & Giggles.
The Rejection Show
Ape-Face and Me, on my flickr page.

(image: carolita johnson)

Today I’ll be organizing my bit for the “Chicks & Giggles” special edition of The Rejection Show tomorrow night. I’ll be telling the story of my failed attempt to validate my looks twenty years ago by becoming a model. Beforementioned “looks” having been under siege in both the public sector (I was “Ape-Face Johnson during junior high through high school) and the private sector (my mother offered to pay for lip reduction surgery).

(By the way, Johnny, Henry, Dad, if you’re reading this, don’t tell Mom.)

The drawings you see here are samples of what I’ll be using to illustrate my story of how Ape-Face became a successful, albeit ugly, model in Paris. Yes, I was once asked if I was with the “Ugly People Agency” by a photographer who spotted me on a tram in Milan.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Lauren of Lux Lotus, I have this news:

Gary Shteyngart and Sondre Lerche are appearing at Barnes & Noble (Union Square) this Wednesday, July 19, as part of its new series, ‘Upstairs at the Square,’ (33 East 17th Street at Union Square).

I hate to admit it but I know nothing about Sondre Lerche, but I do know this about Shteyngart: he was responsable for one of my favorite pieces in The New Yorker’s fiction section, “A Love Letter,” excerpted from his novel, Absurdistan. For a taste of it, see my post on it here.

^{A shot of the article, on the printed page, complete with my own underlinings and marginalia, and shadows cast by the setting sun.}

The July/August issue of Print Magazine features an article which aroused my fellow subway riders’ interest in me as I tore the top, folded edges of the pages in order to unseal them (I admit to thinking, what the…? Till I got the point), the way one used to be obliged to do with fresh-off-the-press hardcover books in the old days. Ripping away, it was at least a kind of attention that didn’t involve my legs or cleavage, so I appreciated the refreshing difference. (It was fun to be the crazy lady ripping up her magazine, an impression which can prove not disadvantageous on a New York subway.)

UPDATE: it turns out I had one of a few rogue issues whose pages had anomolously not been split at the top, with the unintentional effect of adding even more authenticity to the “bound book” effect, so don’t be disappointed if yours isn’t like mine!

The piece, called, “Bound for Glory,” by Mark Dery, and photographed by Michael Heiko, is about the transition from bound, printed books to the digital image. Its presentation, once you gently break the pages open (a bit like a deflowering), is a virtual book. The image of a book was printed on the magazine’s pages, from the book’s bound cover to the text of the article printed within the “book”’s pages, which succeeded in looking very three-dimentional. Have a look below:

I remember watching Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” on TV as a child (in 1979), and being fascinated by the digital books it foretold. I’m sure I saw the prototype of the Palm Pilot (or at least of the electronic book) in one episode, a dark, smooth tablet of about the same dimensions as an iPod, as I recall it. And for a while, in the spirit of it all, as soon as I learned of their existence, I did own a Palm Pilot into which I downloaded whatever decent digital books were available, and read them on the metro on my way to work. It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped (particularly tough on my LED, grey and black display!). But still, it was better than nothing on an airplane, particularly when a few “real” books would have weighed further upon my shoulders in a backpack than a bit of plastic enclosing some circuitry and two AAA batteries.

I’m still on the fence. I love the idea of an entire library in a doodad as small as a bar of Côte d’Or chocolate (smaller!). But I will also never forget the experience of reading medieval manuscripts in the Bibiliothèque Nationale in Paris, and discovering red candle droppings on the pages, leading me to wonder who had been reading them before electricity came to the BN. Rousseau? Diderot? I was sharing these texts with not only the original author, but also the scribe of the manuscript (or in the case of some ancient books, the earliest typesetters), as well as the many readers whose hands had touched them over the centuries. A germophobe’s nightmare, perhaps! But a researcher’s dream.

Here’s an example of what you can’t get from notes typed into Filemaker Pro as I eventually did during my doctoral studies: notes.
And here’s a virtual panoramic tour of the gracious old (not the new) BN, where I had the privilege of studying all those old books and manuscripts. (You might want to turn your sound off first, if you don’t want to hear the French guy talking about it).

Other pieces of great interest to me personally in the July/August issue of Print: – “Agitprop Primers” (about children’s books and illustration styles thereof during the Cold War, just beautiful) by Steven Heller. – “Acrobat Reader”, by Anna Gerber & Teal Triggs, (about the visual possibilities of typeface and the printed page from the surprisingly ornate Tristram Shandy, to Perec’s famous “e”-less “A Void,” to Rick Moody’s The Diviners and Jonathan Safrans Foer’s particularly transgressive use of typeface in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” – Emily Gordon’s Another Round, which brings us a meeting of the minds of Milton Glaser (I “heart” NY), and Stephen Hindy (of Brooklyn Ale fame), the result of which is naturally in the kind of good taste that both your taste buds and mind-buds can appreciate.

^{(This photo of the “Coma Cluster” of galaxies might lead you to speculate that you’re not the only one.)}

Well, don’t! Look at this picture. You’re looking at thousands of galaxies. Can you imagine the possibilities? Gazillions of life forms on zillions of planets, zillions amongst them no doubt broke and forlorn, and not on vacation, working all summer, thinking their bosses are dumbasses, wondering what the meaning of life is, asking themselves if there’s anybody out there… Kind of makes you feel silly, doesn’t it? If only we could have a party and invite them!

This site, “Discover the cosmos,” posts photos of our universe (and others’) every day. Some are as objective as the above photo, and others, like the one below, are more personal. Yes, today, if the clouds clear, this is what we’ll be able to see in New York City at sunset tonight! (That is, at 8:27pm). We’ll be our own Stonehenge. Click on the photo for more information about this wondrous phenomenon.

Other must-sees:
The Alaskan Volcano Eruption (taken from outer space)
The thrilling and terrifying image of Bruce McCandless floating in space 100 meters away from the cargo bay of his space shuttle. (Click on the image when you get there, for the full, panoramic effect.)

Update: looks like Gothamist found this website today, too! Here’s their lowdown on Manhattanhenge, with more photos.

^{This image, and others you’ll find on Oliver Oyl lately, is what made me want to contact John Adcock. Click on it for his post about it.}

I’d been following this blog, whose name started out as Ink-Stained Wretch (I think!), and whose URL is actually “yesterdays-papers.blogspot.com,” when its title suddenly changed to Oliver Oyl one day. (Although a google of “ink stained wretch” will still pull it up in some of the results). I wondered if I’d been imagining things, and when I decided I hadn’t, I tried to figure why the name would change. Then I found a blog called “Ink-Stained Wretch” (found a few, actually), which was totally unrelated, and figured that might have something to do with it.

Anyway, I tried to post a question in the comments the other day, regarding the “it didn’t hurt a bit” kid, and encountered the obstacle of not being a “team member!” Now that’s an idea! Read the rest of this entry »

I was getting wet, with several rainshowers punctuating the game (Serge, of La Esquina, kindly handed out several umbrellas and a tarp to the unequipped cupsters—the hipsters had umbrellas, or stood under the awning). And I was getting bored, all those sort-of-near-goals, nothing ever really getting too close or unblockable, the crowd seeming desperate to get excited over something, even the not so close shaves—Germany and Italy were that well matched.

And then came that first goal in the last ninety seconds! I slowly walked around the cheering crowd to the other side for a better view. By the time I arrived at the east corner, the second goal had just penetrated the now loosely knit, still stupefied Germans and basta!

I managed to get a shot of the crowd’s pleasure (even the German I was standing next to was happy for some reason). See it above. The hipsters do like sitting and cheering with the cupsters, I think it makes them feel authentic. (Nothing more important to a hipster.)

There was a guy there who I thought, “Hey, he looks like Moby,” and who I didn’t think was actually Moby till he acted skittish when I got my camera out to capture the crowd. Was it Moby? Who knows? Who cares? If it wasn’t, that guy should rethink his look.

I had two 4th of July BBQ’s to attend, so I walked around the corner and bought some wine at Wine Therapy (Elizabeth Street), where I found two excellent and not so common Italian wines to celebrate.

Tomorrow: Allez les bleus!

Related: newyorkette’s previous coverage of Cupsters at La Esquina.

^{(I once did several studies of my tape dispenser while my boss was lolling around the beach in Aruba. At least for an artist, that’s sort of like getting paid to do what you like. I also used his beautiful vintage sx-70 polaroid camera to do this photographic study of my little green kewpie doll on the Lucent phone.)}

I, too, used to look for employment in the classifieds, which is how I learned that the line in the job requirments that says, “must be a self-starter,” usually translates into, “must work harder than your boss, and for a lower salary.”

Well, it’s the July 4th weekend’s Monday morning today, and if you’re one of the poor souls that have to work, you’re probably not that happy about it. I can’t really relate, because I’m a freelancer and the two days that I didn’t work last week were vacation enough for me! I went to the beach. I’m rearing to get back in the saddle again.

Not so for you employees out there that didn’t have enough seniority to have the day off. Not that I want to make you feel worse, but all this working and overworking, the fear and trembling of the gainfully employed, well, it brings out my subversive tendencies. So, while your boss is in Sag Harbor, leaving you to toil at the computer and dally at the phones, why not let me share with you all my references on work, as well as what work was supposed to be like in the wake of the industrial revolution? Read the rest of this entry »

^{Who am I kidding? I’ll be doing my reading at the laundromat. (Image: carolita johnson)}

Well, someone pinched my Fiction Issue. And then someone bought me David Remnick’s “Reporting: writings from The New Yorker,” at the Spring Books Party at the Housing Works Used Books Café the other night. I haven’t had a spare subway moment to read anything else since. So this weekend reader is going to introduce you, if you haven’t already met, to David Remnick.

But first, let me introduce you to Paul, the bra salesman I ran into today, who I knew from my days fitting at Warnaco. He asked me how the cartoon business was treating me, and I asked him if he hadn’t seen my last cartoon a couple of weeks ago. He said, “Nah, I don’t read The New Yorker, it’s too high-brow for a guy like me.” I’ve double-checked my copy of Reporting, and found that the only high-brow aspect of it is it’s connection to The New Yorker (which, well, people do think is high-brow).

And maybe TNY is a bit high-brow. But Remnick’s essays are a smooth read, with only the occasional need for a dictionary (always worth it), and written in a style that I can only compare to a long drink of water. Hardly a hitch, you just keep reading, because it’s easier to keep reading than to stop. If you doubt me, just give it a try. The only reason I’m insisting is because on the subway today, I found myself wishing the history books I barely read in High School had been as easy and pleasurable to read as the articles in this book. I might have learned something about History! Or at least wanted to learn something! Click on the link at the end of this post for a sample.

Reporting is a compilation of essays Remnick has written for The New Yorker over the years, starting, in the first section, with the recent past, with the second section appearing to be a “best of” of previous years, and the third section being devoted to his boxing articles, which seems appropriately situated at the end, mirroring the way the sports appears at the end of the nightly news on TV.

The first section, for anyone who reads The New Yorker regularly, is an experience akin to watching your favorite old movies on video. If you ever wanted to read those articles again and couldn’t remember which issue they were in, or were so buried in unread issues that they were impossible to find, Reporting is where you’ll be able to savour “The Wilderness Campaign: Al Gore” again. It came out not long after Al appeared on Saturday Night Live, in which his self-effacing sense of humor and lack of self-consciousness (or shame, for that matter) frankly blew my mind. Once content to vote for him on the basis of competence (rather than personality), Al’s appearance on SNL is possibly the one thing he did to endear himself to me as a human being and make me wonder, “who is this man?” Remnick’s piece on him is a sparkling portrait of a man who none of us particularly wanted to know before.

A good chaser to the Al Gore piece is, of course, “The Masochism Campaign: Tony Blair.” I wondered why it didn’t appear immediately after the Al Gore piece, but perhaps that would’ve been too obvious, a little too neat, like wearing matching shoes and handbag (which I’d never do). Also, the Mrs. Graham article, an education for people of my generation who took the Pentagon Papers and Watergate for granted (or as a bit of pop culture), as well as an education for anyone who ever thought being a woman before the seventies was an excuse for anything, also works well to clean your palate and prepare you for Tony. You’ll need it. Tony’s portrait is excruciating, not because it’s particularly unmerciful, but because just observing the truth seems to be cruel enough. “The punishment is daily and takes many forms.” And that’s all there is to it. There’s no exaggeration, no need for it. Is there any need to embellish the sound of fingernails being dragged across a blackboard? Read it and realize how lucky you are not to be Tony Blair.

It made me want to return to “Mrs. Graham,” and I did. For some reason I’d missed “Mrs. Graham,” (possibly having snubbed the magazine for one week for not containing one of my cartoons?) After the deaths of Wendy Wasserstein and Betty Friedan this year, Katherine Graham’s personal history (so well put in her autobiography, “Personal History,” is the story of a woman’s coming of age in middle age, after breaking out of the “little woman” mold she hadn’t realized had shaped her till the Washington Post was deposited into her inexperienced hands. Her autobiography, cited often in the piece, is the expression of a woman who understood her limits and her challenges, and apparently blames no one but herself for being duped by the preconceptions and expectations imposed on her by society. She seems to have prefered to admit her error rather than bitch about the unfairness of it all, and I don’t believe I saw the word “feminist” in the piece (correct me if I’m wrong). And if I’m not wrong I’m glad of it. Mrs. Graham was a human being that anyone, man or woman, would not do badly to emulate.

I’m still in the middle of the Post-Imperial Blues: Vladimir Putin, in which I’m learning all about the news that I didn’t pay attention to during the last part of the last century. And I’ll tell you my secret to this ignorant bliss. When I was about eleven, I saw a hostage get shot on TV. I’d thought I was watching a movie, but then the anchorman came on and apologized to the family of the shot hostage, followed by the “You heard it here first” and station identification. I was so disgusted that I swore not to watch the news ever again. And I didn’t. I only started watching the news again when I came back to the USA. To see what everyone was believing. When everyone says the same things, and talks about the same news, you have to see for yourself where they’re getting their information.

For years I only got my news from watching muppet, or French cartoonist’s versions of it. “Les Guignols de l’Info,“ “Spitting Image,” SNL’s “Weekend Update” were all I watched. I eventually dipped into the newspapers, and got hooked on the AP website for a while, but nothing beats a Remnick article to bring history, the history that’s going on around you right now, into limpid focus.

For a sample, click here: All Things Considered (NPR)

Today is 666 day! The world is supposed to end, and frankly, if it does I’ll be pretty annoyed I paid my rent on time.

But if it doesn’t end, I’ll be attending the Rejection Show tonight with a fellow fit-model, a gorgeous size 8. Size 6’s can make friends with size 8’s, you see.

Barring Apocalypse, you may still be able to get tickets to The Rejection Show, which was co-created by my colleague and cartoon friend, Matt Diffee, and Jon Friedman. Check out the upcoming.org link to your right in the sidebar. Among others, there will be two fellow TNY cartoonists amongst the rejectees, shamelessly displaying their failures.

Afterwards, we’ll all go out and dance the Apocalypso!