newyorkette

I was on the radio this morning with Diffee, discussing a couple of rejected cartoons! More specifically, on NPR’s Bryant Park Project, which is direct from the web!

Here is their blog post with our cartoons on it.
And here is the show, of you care to listen!

Be forewarned, that is definitely my morning voice. Cheerful, but not quite fully of this world yet.

For more of Diffee, see Emily Gordon’s interview for Print, here!

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.

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

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.)

(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.

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

(Rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson.)

This cartoon is somewhat embarrassingly perverse, and yet I’ve always loved it. It’s been rejected for the last time today. (Sorry for the scan of a photocopy, but the original is still in the reject pile at the magazine—which, hearteningly enough, means that it actually was considered.)

(The signs say: “Employees must wash hands,” and “Non-employees really ought to wash their hands, too.”

This article in Reuters is what made me think of this old cartoon. And all I can say is, yuck!

(Funny how I got tired of kissing people on both cheeks in France and decided I’d only shake hands! Now I think I’ll simply salute people.)

That’s my subway/style cartoon in this TNY “Style Issue.” Today is night before deadline for all TNY cartoonists, so that’s all I have to say for now! Back to work!

(Rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson.)

This one goes out to all those sweet, naive souls who think God’s job is to help them get a raise, or a car, or help them pass an exam. Snap out of it! Let him get on with his work—it’s not as if the world is taking care of itself!

And here’s a cartoon not by me that I like very much, for all you temp workers out there, from Pictures for sad children.

“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.

(Dancing flowerpot, by carolita johnson)

Today is “Carolita sold a cartoon day!” So, to celebrate, here is a dancing vase of flowers—this scan is all I have left of it now, as I gave the original as a wedding present. It’s one of my very first ink and brush drawings, and the little guy got me through many rough days, always made me smile. I hope it’s not slacking off just because it’s in a happy new home! It must keep on its toes. Goodbye, little dancing vase!

And below is a rejected cartoon, for good measure! It is truly hideous, sorry! But we all have a hideous cartoon or two (or ten) in us, at any given moment. The best place to get rid of them is slipped furtively amongst better efforts. It’s our editor’s job to take this crap from us, to know our best and our worst.

(Un-sold cartoon, by Carolita Johnson)

Here’s a cartoon that was bought, then un-bought! Yes, it happened again. It should be noted that most of the time we cartoonists are unaware of such un-sales. Farley (the new assistant to the cartoon editor) does not call up and say, “Hey, you got an okay,” and then call back a little while later and say, “Scratch that.”

The sales go to the notoriously bully-like fact-checkers (ha ha), where they make sure they haven’t got another cartoon in their database that’s too much like the one they’re vetting. A cartoon must be original, or at least not resemble a cartoon published in recent history by a famous cartoonist. It might pass if the cartoon resembles a really old cartoon by a cartoonist who isn’t a household name.

Anyway, here is the cartoon (by Lee Lorenz, no less! It was hopeless!) mine resembled way too much. I only knew about its un-sale because I discovered the doppelganger myself, only after submitting the above. Sigh!

Speaking of “okays,” here is Mick Stevens’s compilation of “first okay” stories. Mine is among them, accompanied by a caricature that I have only myself to blame for, since I drew it myself in the morning before drinking enough tea. Do I look like that in the morning? Possibly.

Above is the sign I put in the elevator when I first moved in. I’d got tired of calling the cops, and thought: “Hmmm. Maybe all I have to do is ask.”

It’s worked many times for me before!

I’m not sure if the subsequent decreased population of crackheads in the hallways was due to the crackheads reading the note, or the super reading the note, but here is a rejected cartoon inspired by those days:

It’s a first version of a cartoon that was eventually bought. Here you can see what’s buyable, and what’s not, in basically the same cartoon.

(rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson)

My dad, who was a sound engineer at Columbia Recording Studios (later absorbed into Sony), used to regale me with stories about Glenn Gould not allowing his off-key humming to be erased from the recordings, and refusing to play while sitting on any other piano bench than his own. Said piano bench apparently held together by bits of tape and string, Gould reportedly said he’d quit performing when that stool broke. We wondered who would go first, the stool or the pianist. One day my dad came home and announced that Glenn Gould had decided not to perform anymore. The fate of that stool and its influence upon Gould’s decision remained a mystery to me.

The Well-Tempered Clavier was in any case one of the pieces I loved to hear interpreted by my two favorite performers at the time (I was about 9): Glenn Gould, and Walter/Wendy Carlos. Walter/Wendy was also part of the mythology of my childhood. When my father told me that Walter was now Wendy, due to a scientific breakthrough (that’s how I understood the operation), I was amazed. How cool was that? Science could do anything, and Wendy’s “Well-Tempered Synthesizer” seemed to reiterate that amazement to me every time I thrilled to a newly noticed synthesized sound.

This cartoon, therefore, was a long time coming, conceived in early childhood. It needed to get out of my system, and so there you go. Out with the old! In with the new!

(Rejected cartoon, Carolita Johnson)

Today is very silly rejected cartoon day.

(For background info on the gag, see J. Peterman’s catalogue of disembodied clothing.)

(Rejected cartoon, Carolita Johnson.)

(The post that was here was simply much to grumpy! It has been removed by the author!)

Rejected cartoon, Carolita Johnson. (Click on the image for a larger version).

I’ve always been fascinated by the bodies and poses of the baseball players, neglecting to learn the rules of the game. Still, it’s a lot more interesting to compare buttock size (what is it about baseball that gives players such meaty butts? It is all muscle, or all tucked-in shirt?) and pitching stances, so I celebrated my esoteric interest in baseball with this cartoon.

Rejected cartoon by Carolita Johnson. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

Rejected three weeks ago, by now it’s already old news, if it’s on NPR and in the Times! Still, don’t go buying your toothpaste at the 99 cents store again yet!