"A great cartoonist creates a whole world" (Bob Mankoff): Celebrating "New Yorker" greats Wm Hamilton and Roz Chast

Update: Adding the caption to that final Wm Hamilton cartoon (oops, didn't realize it wasn't included with the graphic!)

by Ken

Some readers will have noticed that after goodness-only-knows-how-many years of daily (and even twice-daily) posts here, I pretty much disappeared from this space -- and even, sometime after that, from my own Sunday Classics with Ken from DWT blog. There were lots of reasons, but overshadowing them all was the deadly combination of deadline exhaustion and a profound sense of purposelessness.

Of course, the habit of scrounging each and every day for a post-worthy subject (often defining "post-worthiness" really, really broadly) doesn't die easily, and in the ensuing time I've been constantly beset by ideas I thought I really should write about. But I learned, not at all to my surprise, that once I didn't "hafta" write, I pretty much always didn't write. So while the profound sense of purposelessness hasn't lightened -- nor, for that matter, has the dread of that implacable looming deadline, even if it's just for some crappy blogpost -- I found myself with lowered resistance the most recent time Howie broached the subject. And, tough negotiator that he is, he pinned me down to a thrice-weekly schedule (Wednesday, Friday, Sunday) of, well, something.

And the obvious starting point is with a post idea I tried to execute a couple of months ago: a remembrance of the great New Yorker cartoonist William Hamilton, who died April 9 after a career at the magazine (among other places, of course) spanning "more than 50 years" and "more than 950 published cartoons" (these numbers according to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, from whom more in a moment). That remembrance proved hard going, though, because I felt obliged to explain first how it happened that, for all the blogfootage I've devoted to New Yorker cartooning and its greatest practitioners, from James Thurber to Roz Chast, I didn't recall ever having mentioned WH. And what could I say except that over my decades of New Yorker readership, I had become so used to his presence that his work came to feel like simply part of the natural landscape rather than an act of human endeavor.


William Hamilton (1939-2016)

The first note Bob Mankoff took of the passing was in an April 10 post called "Remembering the New Yorker cartoonist William Hamilton," whose entire text read:

The New Yorker cartoonist William Hamilton died on Friday. When someone as witty and clever as William Hamilton passes, you feel the obligation to come up with something commensurately witty to commemorate those great cartoons. I’d rather let some of his best work do that.

Bob's instincts in such matters tend to be impeccable, and the slide show that formed the rest of the post was pretty breathtaking. I've included one sample up top, one that happens to speak really loudly to me at the moment. (It might be said to be shouting at me.) And here are a couple more that also, in my present state of advanced age and unemployment (a state I may want to talk about a bit more one of these days), have seismic resonance for me:




Of course that April 10 post hardly exhausted the subject, and the very next day Bob returned with a post called "The World of William Hamilton," which began:

What separates great cartoonists from really good cartoonists is not any single cartoon—many really good cartoonists have done individual cartoons that are great—but that a great cartoonist creates a whole world.

Like Peter Arno, Charles Addams, James Thurber, and Roz Chast, the great and now, so very unfortunately, late William Hamilton did just that. In more than nine hundred and fifty cartoons published over five decades, he skewered the comfortable class he was a member of with the acerbic wit of an insider.

His drawings were a delight, effortlessly fashioned with an old-fashioned Crow Quill pen dipped in India ink. Above is an image from an episode of “Nightline,” in 1997, catching the master in the act.

Of this particular image, he remarked that he had no idea where the woman he was drawing came from. But one thing he did know was that she looked pompous, and that “being unaware of your own pomposity is always funny.”

This led Bob to an interesting take on his subject's cartoonistic genius:

On “Nightline,” Ted Koppel said of Hamilton, “He looks every inch the patrician Wasp—all six feet five inches, in fact. He could be one of his own upper-crust characters.”

No way. That elegantly attired six-feet-five frame was both imposing and proudly pompous, but certainly not unaware of who he was and the foibles and failings of his tribe.

There’s much talk these days of what the purpose of humor should be. The general consensus is that it shouldn’t kick down but punch up. When I think of Hamilton’s cartoons, neither of these descriptions comes to mind. Rather, I think of him vigorously elbowing to the side—with very sharp elbows, indeed.

Finally, Bob invoked a name that has been plastered all over this space:

Not unexpectedly, tributes from his fellow New Yorker cartoonists are flooding my inbox right now. Here’s one from the inimitable Roz Chast, which I think captures his work and meaning perfectly.

“William Hamilton was the real thing. His cartoons had a distinctive visual style and voice. They took place in a specific world: that of upper-middle class, socially ambitious, attractive men and women, at home, at cocktail parties, and in restaurants. They were ‘Hamilton people.’ His cartoons were funny, but they were not just jokes. They were closely observed social critiques done by someone who was both inside and outside of the world he was critiquing. I often think of one or another of his cartoons. One of my favorites is of a Hamiltonesque couple at a restaurant with their adult son and daughter and they all have cocktails. The mother or father says, ‘It’s so much easier now that the children are our age.’ ”

For the record, Bob added one more Wm Hamilton post, an April 25 "Postscript," noting the publication of one final cartoon:

William Hamilton had a lot to say about the nation’s country-club class and how it viewed itself. His cartoons were peopled by ladies and gentlemen of the Park Avenue variety, speaking confidently about their place in the upper crust, even as that crust was crumbling. Hamilton first found a place at this magazine in 1965, when he was only twenty-six. At the time of his death, last week, at seventy-six, he had published more than nine hundred and fifty drawings that lampooned sophisticates and pseudo-sophisticates with dry, incisive jabs. He was that rare artist whose style suits his humor perfectly; a Hamilton joke is unimaginable rendered any other way. A final one, alas, appears here.

And here it is:

"What the hell are you trying to do?"

Now, speaking of Roz Chast . . .

For a while, while I was grappling with the Hamilton nonpost, I thought maybe it could be combined with exciting news about and from the amazing Ms. Chast, who was to be the subject of an elaborate exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York scheduled to open in May, and scheduled to include an appearance by the artist herself, on May 6.

If that last sentence suggests some uncertainty as to whether the events eventuated, rest assured that they did. The exhibition is open, and will remain so through October 9, and is obviously self-recommending to anyone who is within striking distance of the museum (in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street) and has any curiosity about the absurdities of life as we know it, including a lot of laughter at them.

The exhibition Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs continues at
the Museum of the City of New York through October 9.

Myself, I will have to get back to the exhibition, as there was simply too much to take in after the May 6 event, when we in the audience had an opportunity to go upstairs and peruse it. It's also possible that I was in a state of imminent collapse from all the roaring laughter I did, pretty much nonstop, during Roz's abundantly illustrated presentation. I was hardly alone. The whole overflow audience had been reduced to a state of near-collapse reminiscent of the killer joke in the classic Monty Python "World's Funniest Joke" piece.

The only surprise was that Roz didn't seem, as I expected, in any way reserved or retiring, an impression I'd formed in my head from all her years of self-portrayal, including in particular her 2014 book Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, which featured prominently in the presentation. (In this space we looked at some of it, in a pair of 2014 posts based on the portion of the book that appeared online in a newyorker.com "sketchbook" and then in a 12-page spread in the March 10 issue of the magazine.)

Here, for example, are just a few bits of her portrayal of her parents, who were born 11 days apart in 1912, had known each other practically all their lives, and "had tough lives," says Roz, "way, way tougher than mine."





Roz ventured that, "between their one-bad-thing-after-another lives and the Depression, World War II, and the Holocaust, in which they both lost family,"



OF COURSE WE'VE SEEN LOTS MORE OF ROZ'S WORK

Just hit the "Roz Chast" label below.

#

Further thoughts about Roz Chast's "HAMLET vs. AMAZON PRIME"

With updates on my New Phone Day Maybe and
Calvin Trillin's New Yorker Festival eating tour

Surely Roz Chast's "Hamlet hat" will henceforth be de
rigueur for every actor who takes on this marquis role.

by Ken

I'm still preoccupied by this Roz Chast cartoon, from the September 14 New Yorker, which I presented the other day:



I mean, there's just so much to think about here. Like that, um . . . what would you call it?, that heavenward eye roll Hamlet executes as he thinks that soon-to-be-immortal thought: "And yet: FREE SHIPPING." What subtlety, what poignancy, what hope, what inscrutability, what depth is incorporated here! Going forward, how can any actor who tackles the role fail to take it into account? How challenging it will be, though, to make this real and convincing as an expression of the prince's rich inner life.


AND THERE IS, OF COURSE, THE "HAMLET HAT"

From now on, what Hamlet director, what costume designer will feel able to send their Hamlet out onstatge without it?


THEN CONSIDER THE  TOUCH OF THE POWER
CORD SNAKING OUT FROM HAMLET'S LAPTOP

Surely this is a recognition of the historically accurate reality of the primitiveness and unreliability of the battery technology of the prince's time.


FINALLY, THERE'S THE COFFEE MUG THAT'S SO
STRANGELY DISTANT FROM OUR PROTAGONIST

Finally there's the coffee cup so strangely distant from our protagonist, as if it had perhaps been shoved out of reach. Interestingly, we can't tell whether the mug is empty, perhaps expressing the prince's resentment or even disgust at having no one in the castle to refill it, or it contains a quantity of coffee that has cooled to undrinkability, thereby reflecting Hamlet's agonized knowledge that the microwave hasn't been invented yet for convenient reheating. Looming over the whole mug question is the suggestion that overcaffeination is a contributing factor, if not perhaps the root cause, of Hamlet's considerable behavioral eccentricities.

#

SOME OTHER NOTES FROM THURSDAY'S POST

As I thought would be understood from the post title, "Nothing to read here -- go on to whatever you had in mind," readers weren't really intended to read the post, except maybe to look at the cartoons -- this one by the great Roz Chast and the "Cocktail Party Heckler" one ("You call that a bon mot?") by Dan Roe. I realize, however, that this may have been taken less as a strict injunction than as some sort of advisory, and so I can't be as harsh as I might otherwise be with readers who apparently went right ahead and read the thing.

For those readers, in the improbable event that they're wondering, I should perhaps report that:

(1) With regard to the event I was celebrating that day, my personal New Phone Day Maybe:

No, I'm no closer than I was then to figuring out what to do upon the completion of my two-year contract using a Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. I suppose this qualifies, at least for the time being, as the option I described like so: "I could, of course, spend nothing on a new phone and continue 'using' (for want of a better word) my S4 -- with the same probable outcome," namely pretending that this time I'm gonna learn how to use the damned thing, déjà vu all over again from two years ago, when I upgraded from my defunct S2 to the S4.

Yeah, let's say that I'm invested in that option, while keeping my future options open. That sounds more like a decision and less like abject whiffing.

(2) With regard to the decision about whether to even try to secure a precious spot on Calvin Trillin's 14th-annual Village-to-Chinatown eating tour:

No, I didn't even try, and maybe that was just as well from the standpoint of my psychic well-being. I've just dug out a report I recalled from the Grub Street website, in which Sierra Tishgart began her "Dispatch from Calvin Trillin's Always-Spectacular 'New Yorker" Food Tour," 2013 edition:

Gaining admission to Calvin Trillin's eating tour for The New Yorker Festival is pretty much the real-life, adult equivalent of scoring a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. The 40-person event always sells out online within seconds (though several lucky attendees actually scored tickets in the last-minute standby line).

Sierra proceeded to offer a stop-by-stop account of the event, from the day before:

Trillin led everyone from Greenwich Village to Chinatown over the span of three hours, pausing to snack at his favorite shops, markets, and parks while narrating New York's culinary history. The stops on the tour have changed over thirteen years, but recent additions include Xi'an Famous Foods and Full House Cafe. For anyone who wants to re-create the tour themselves — or simply would like some recommendations for awesome places to eat — check out the full list, straight ahead. [Note: Food-source links onsite. -- Ed.]

Stop 1: Murray's Cheese Shop and Faicco's Pork Store
To Eat: Pecorino Toscano and soppressata
Trillin's Take: "I used to go to a meat shop around here where the guy would spook customers by popping pieces of raw pork into his mouth."

Stop 2: Blue Ribbon Bakery Market
To Eat: Savory matzoh cracker
Trillin's Take: "If matzoh actually tasted like this the Jews would have never left Egypt!"

Stop 3: Delivery from an unidentified store at Forsyth and East Broadway
To Eat: Greens sandwich
Trillin's Take:"I don't actually know what kind of greens are inside. Some people love it, and some people hate it. The sandwiches used to cost $1 — not that there's a big profit margin on this trip."

Stop 4: Despaña
To Eat: Tortilla Despaña
Trillin's Take: "The biggest change in eating in America was the Immigration Act of 1965. If you're excluding the Chinese and allowing English people, it's sort of suicidal. It made it okay for middle-class kids to become farmers and chefs."

Stop 5: Saigon Vietnamese Sandwich
To Eat: Vietnamese summer rolls with peanut sauce
Trillin's Take: "Most summer rolls taste like grass. These people make them as they go, so they're not sitting in the fridge for days."

Stop 6: Di Palo's
To Eat: Fresh mozzarella
Trillin's Take: "One of the other things that I used to get here is butter inside of cheese. It's an old way of preserving butter. We used to do this when we had parties: If you cut it in half, you can serve the butter and then eat the provolone cheese."

Stop 7: Bánh Mì Saigon Bakery
To Eat: Vietnamese pork sandwich
Trillin's Take: "Bánh mìs are really the only good argument for colonialism."

Stop 8: Xi'an Famous Foods
To Eat: Spicy lamb burger
Trillin's Take: "This young man [Jason Wang] is very entrepreneurial!"

Stop 9: Full House Cafe
To Eat: Soup dumplings (and a side of jellyfish!)
Trillin's Take: "I heard about this place from reading a piece by Robert Sietsema from the Voice about the soup dumplings here ... and eating jellyfish is [my] revenge for whenever they've frightened me."

Of course I have no idea whether the itinerary was changed in last year's edition of the tour, not to mention what Trillin may have in store for this year. Still, isn't this the next best thing to actually being on the tour? Belated thanks, Sierra!

Plus, for me it offers the advantage that it spares me the potential humiliation of trying to express my admiration to the tour leader for his body of writing -- and I don't mean the food writing and the humor writing, or not just the food writing and the humor writing. In his big-boy capacity as a reporter, he has probably taught me more about the way humans live and deal with each other than any living writer.

Still, as an example of the kind of question I would be apt to ask, I have it in mind to offer a demonstration ripped from history, perhaps tomorrow.

#

Nothing to read here -- go on to whatever else you had in mind

I know you won't have any interest in what follows, which is just for me. I feel bad, though, so I thought you might enjoy this Roz Chast cartoon from the same issue of The New Yorker referenced below. (Click to enlarge.) Oh, and also the Dan Roe one below.

by Ken

I know there are important things happening in the world which demand comment from me, but they'll just have to wait another day (or possibly more). Because today is 9/10.

I should explain that on the subject of this momentous date I wrote approximately two versions of a post in my head and then decided to omit them, under the influence of John McPhee's latest New Yorker "Writing Life" piece, "Omission: Choosing what to leave out" (September 14), which I read on the subway ride home from work, while I was also writing those posts in my head. McPhee's new piece is a miraculous turnaround from his last, deeply obnoxious "Writing Life" piece, "Frames of Reference" (March 9), which I wrote about here and here. My resulting omissions represent a benefit not just to readers but to the writer as well -- since those pieces hadn't actually been written yet, there is a significant saving in labor.

So, what's 9/10? you ask. Of course yesterday, 9/9, was Bridgegate Anniversary Day, and tomorrow, 9/11, is, well, you know. But 9/10? Well, for me it's New Phone Day Maybe --the day when I can upgrade my smartphone without having to pay a $50 upgrade fee (but apparently not without paying a $30 activation fee). I have a number of options, and I can make a strong case against all of them.

The smart thing to do would be just to deactivate the thing and save both the $78/month and the bargain price I'll be offered on, say, a not-quite-current model Samsung Galaxy or iPhone. (No, of course I'm not being offered one of the brand-new iPhones.) This would be especially smart because it's looking like a really tough financial year ahead, as I continue paying off a dental bill I thought I'd paid off, except that there turned out to be a whole bunch of other charges that hadn't been billed yet. By the time the thing is paid, it will have consumed, by my rough calculation, more than a third of my humble yearly take-home pay.

And it's not as if I couldn't live without a smartphone. In the two years of my current contract I've hardly ever used my Galaxy S4, which I understand even less about than its predecesor, an S2 that I'd actually started to use -- at least as a telephone -- before it succumbed to supposed water damage that the Samsung people in Texas declared beyond repair; I thought it was kind that they paid shipping both ways, though. (Based on one phone call I attempted with the then-new S4, it sucks as a telephone, except maybe if you use earphones to hear and speak right into the mic, as I notice people doing.)

Or I could instead do one of the above-hypothesized upgrades. After all, everyone insists that the iPhone is way easier to learn to use than an Android. I might actually have gone that route two years ago, except that my carrier, Credo Mobile, didn't offer iPhone service. (Naturally they began not long after I made my two-year commitment to the S4.) Now, however, I have reached the point in my mounting loathing of Apple and everything it has come to stand for (can you tell I'm an old-time Mac user?) where joining the iPhone legions is, shall we say, burdensome.

An upgrade to whatever Galaxy model Credo is offering might make sense, except that it would be based on the same theory as my last Galaxy upgrade: that this time I would learn how to use the damn thing. In my defense, I actually attended a class in Android basics at the public library, and came away knowing approximately less than when I went in. I could, of course, spend nothing on a new phone and continue "using" (for want of a better word) my S4 -- with the same probable outcome.

Before I left work today, I went online to see what's actually on offer now that my New Phone Day Maybe is here, thinking that perhaps this would make it all become clear. Instead, it became murkier, if possible -- except for the part about my having to pay the $30 activation fee this time, which I didn't two years ago. That part seemed pretty clear. (I don't know, maybe it was waived then, and might conceivably be again. This hardly qualifies as movement in the direction of clarity, though.)

So it looks like New Phone Day Maybe is going to have the accent on the "maybe," or maybe the "maybe not."

I can't think about it anymore, especially since now I have another situation to worry about. On this evening's subway ride, after I finished the McPhee New Yorker piece, I was thumbing through the issue and noticed that, along with all the other New Yorker Festival events for which tickets go on sale tomorrow, there's Calvin Trillin's 14th annual Village-to-Chinatown eating tour, which I know sells out immediately if not sooner -- even assuming I'm prepared to pay $150. I might be, partly because it's by all accounts a great event, but also because Trillin is probably my favorite living writer, and who wouldn't pay $150 for the privilege of making a tongue-tied gibbering idiot of himself in the presence of his idol?

How cool, though, that I discovered this the day before registration starts! Or maybe not. Because I also learned that there's a full day of early registration, like today, for MasterCard users, and by consulting a financial self-cheat sheet I keep, I was reminded that no, I don't have a MasterCard anymore, since CitiBank -- another of my great corporate hates -- canceled mine because I wasn't using it. So in all likelihood by the "start" of registration tomorrow the event will be sold out anyway.

"You call that a bon mot?"

#

Lifestyle Watch: Roz Chast shows us "How to Take a Nature Walk"

by Ken

Possibly this won't be of interest to you country-livers and fitness fanatics, though wise people know that they can always learn something from, you know, everything. And many of the rest of us would like at least to make a gesture toward a fitter lifestyle, and where better to start than with a nature walk? By amazing coincidence, The New Yorker's Roz Chast, that fearless embracer of all things new and improved, has lately tackled this very subject, and as a public service we pass on Part One of what looks to be an ongoing project -- though perhaps extremely ongoing judging by the portion of the material covered so far.

Herewith, Part One of Roz Chast's "How to Take a Nature Walk" (note that each of the panels is clickable):

Here at last is the TRUE story of Creation (courtesy of Roz Chast)

HERE'S ONE VERSION OF THE CREATION --
from the Fourth Day: The lighting of the firmament

THE ANGEL URIEL: In full splendor rises now
the sun, streaming:
a wondrous bridegroom,
a giant, proud and happy
to run his path.

With gentle motion and soft shimmer
the moon steals through the silent night.

Waldemar Kmentt (t), Uriel; Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Eugen Jochum, cond. Philips, recorded July 1966

NOTE: We originally heard this excerpt, along with a snippet from the First Day ("And a new world, and a new world springs up, springs up at God's word"), and then fuller versions of both, in February 2013. We heard the orchestral introduction to Haydn's Creation, "The Representation of Chaos," and the ensuing first steps of the Creation, in August 2012.

by Ken

I had an interesting encounter in the comments section last week growing out of my post "How nice to have a straight person point out that "marriage is for procreation" isn't just legal but religious BS." In the post I tried to explain that as long as religious cultists pretend to have a "definition" of marriage that's based on a link between marriage and procreation, it's moronic, lying bullshit, since no denomination I'm aware of makes any effort to require procreation as a condition of marriage. (Sure, banning contraception is a step in that direction, but it's a small step. The right to marriage isn't altered if a couple is unable to procreate or even chooses not to.) Which elicited this (anonymous) comment:

Marriage was established by God and is a ancient tradition. It cannot be defined by the state. Thus, by pure definition of the original creator, same sex people cannot create a union of marriage. It is just not possible.

I replied focusing on (a) the commenter's apparent unawareness that in fact marriage is defined by the state, in vast quantities of federal, state, and local laws; and (b) the utter bogosity of the non-defining "traditional" definition of marriage. What I didn't get into was the commenter's touching, idiotic, and ultimately pathetic notion that he has the basis for any idea of what God may have said about anything. All our commenter has to go by is a pile of gibberish and lies smooshed together over a long period of time by a daisy chain of clueless drudges and purveyors of gibberish and lies. Having faith is one thing, but being a total ignoramus and tool is another.

Since there aren't many aspects of religious faith more controversial than the Creation, I thought it would be entertaining to juxtapose a couple of versions. Above we've heard a snatch of one, which I hasten to add isn't biblical, although Haydn's great oratorio The Creation is of course based on the account in Genesis. It is, however, the vision of a great artistic humanist.

SO HERE'S OUR OTHER VERSION
OF THE CREATION -- THE TRUE ONE
(from the August 11 and 18 issue of The New Yorker)

#

Hot enough for you? Summer blasts its way in -- and we've got it in cartoon form

New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff adds a note of caution to this vision of paradise conjured by Roz Chast: "Don’t try this at home unless this is in your home." (Note: You should be able to enlarge tonight's cartoon's a little -- like from 420 to 465 pixels wide -- by clicking on them. You'll have to make this call for yourself.)

by Ken

Sorry, this is just another of those days when the thought of any of the things I could and perhaps should be writing about just makes me too crazy, and it's a day when I felt obliged to take off from work even though that meant making the tradeoff of settling for a fan blowing in my face rather than the frigid air conditioning of my office, on one of those days when the frigid air conditioning feels like a blessing, at least when you first come inside. (We all know that when winter is safely behind us, it's time to schlepp all the cold-weather gear -- the sweaters, the woolen caps, the parkas -- into the office.)

Luckily for me, New Yorker cartoon editor today served up a summer-themed weekly blogpost-slash-e-newsletter, "Summer Is Icumen In," leading off with the above-posted Roz Chast vision of summer paradise.

Since we already have a sort of "office motif" going, let's start out with a cartoon of Bob's own:



And as I contemplated dragging my torpid body to work for the sake of the summer deep freeze, David Sipress seems to have capture something close to what I was feeling about the stay-at-home alternative:



There are, of course, inconveniences here in the city particular to every season:



Meanwhile, for those who are able to escape the mean city streets of summer, I assume you've got your Summer Reading List assembled for the beach. Here's a title you may want to add:



It's not true that New Yorkers don't drive. Lots of us don't, but then there are the unstoppables who do, and who -- especially in Manhattan -- regularly confront the ongoing horror that is NYC parking. But as with many things, there are seasonal variations:



Stay cool!

#

Amidst the abiding craziness, we channel some cheerily crazed communications beeped by the Zeitgeist

Tom Toles, Washington Post [click to enlarge]

by Ken

The political craziness level has, at least for the time being, flipped me out, and I refuse to let it crowd out some swell times I've been having on to such nifty places as The Players, the theatrical club founded by the great actor Edwin Booth on Gramercy Park South (a Municipal Art Society Tour with Matt Postal), Coney Island (a Municipal Art Society walking tour with Norman Oder), and the former Brooklyn Navy Yard (now a burgeoning industrial park, with tours offered by Turnstile Tours in conjunction with the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. And that's just yesterday and today, with the first of the New York Transit Museum's "nostalgia rides" this season on tap for tomorrow, this one to the site, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, of the 1939 and 1964-65 New York World's Fairs (the meet-up time is 10am, and if you read this in time you may still be able to book it online -- be sure to bring your receipt -- as no tickets will be sold at the event).

Some of this stuff might be worth writing about, but for tonight I'm just going to channel a bit more of the crazinesa through some of the best Zeitgeist filters.

David Sipress, The New Yorker [click to enlarge]

Roz Chast, The New Yorker [click to enlarge]

Today's DILBERT by Scott Adams

[click to enlarge]

Tomorrow could be better. But don't bet the farm.

#

To return for a moment to Roz Chast's new graphic memoir, why don't we START with the punch line?

Okay, this isn't exactly the "punch line" of a "joke," but it's sort-of. And we're going to work our way backwards, starting with the sort-of punch line and working back to what the hell the whole thing is about. Just trust me here, please. (With how many humorists can you perform this stunt?)

by Ken

If you happen to have looked at my Monday post ("in a 'graphic memoir,' Roz Chast looks back: 'Can't We Talk About Something More PLEASANT?'") lately, you may have noticed a couple of updates, most importantly this one:

I sort of assumed that what was posted on the New Yorker website was destined for publication in the print edition. Now that I have my March 10 issue, I can report that Roz's Can't We Talk About Something More PLEASANT? "Sketchbook" fills 12 pages of the issue.

[Here's the link to the Web version.]

The other update concerns a sequence from Roz Chast's remarkable "graphic memoir" that I described but didn't show. It's been on my mind, and tonight we're rectifying that.

The memoir, you'll recall, concerns Roz's parents, George and Elizabeth, who were born 11 days apart in 1912, both children of really-hard-luck Russian immigrants, and who grew up two blocks apart in East Harlem. ("Tenements!" cries her mother. "We had nothing!" cries her father.) The memoir goes back generations before the parents and carries them through the end -- both parents lived into their 90s.

How close were they? This close:




Here (crudely ripped out of its original format
by yours truly) is the sequence in question --

The book version of Can't We Talk About Something More PLEASANT? is scheduled for publication in May.

#