Lots of good NYer cartoons this week. This was the best.
On Board has its first case of syndication, this time at The Awl:
New Yorkers are in a unique anthropological position to observe their fellow citizens divided into two bitter factions, rooting for athletic blood enemies. I chanced upon a meeting of the dueling tribes last night, in the wild, on a packed 7 train from Vernon Jackson Boulevard to Citi Field. This is what I saw.
Read my full account of the ride here. I would have preferred that my author bio read “Reeves Wiedeman was most surprised that no one mocked his Kansas City Royals hat,” but we can’t have it all.
This should be all the more motivation for you to get your On Board submissions in.
It’s always greener:
Talking like a jerk
Except you are an actual jerk
And living proof that sometimes friends are meanPresent company expect it
Present company
Just laugh it off
It’s better than it seems
A whole story there, from James Murphy, of LCD Soundsystem. It’s called Dance Yrself Clean:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoA0cTC228M]
They didn’t play it the other night at Terminal 5, when I was in the audience. Regardless, the band puts on the most tightly-produced show I’ve seen in ages. Worth every penny.
Polygamy sounds great, unless you’re a woman. It’s not all peaches for the guys, either:
It’s not a normal day if Bill doesn’t get himself completely confounded in one way or another. When Bill raises his head from the pillow after a night of sleep, he sometimes has to ask himself a couple of questions well-known to any man who’s ever picked up a woman in a bar: “Where am I?” and “Who is this person next to me?” Every once in a while, he’ll get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and, not really sure which house he’s in, will bumble around in the dark, clutching at walls, until he finally ends up trying to locate the toilet in a walk-in closet.
When you live in four separate houses, it’s tough to keep track of your stuff. You’ve misplaced your favorite golf shirt? Start looking, buddy, because you’ve got four houses, each ten to fifteen miles apart from the next, to choose from. Many times, Bill has awakened on the morning of an important business meeting to find that he’s missing his dress shoes or a suit jacket and has to race around town like a crazed cabbie to track down the lost article and get to work on time.
This is from Brady Udall’s 1998 Esquire profile of “Bill,” a polygamist. Bill’s not in it for the sex:
Bill doesn’t have sex for fun. He says that he and his wives believe that sex should happen for one reason and one reason only: procreation. It’s written in the Bible–don’t spill your seed unnecessarily; keep it for when you need it. It’s hard to imagine a man in a regular marriage coming right out and admitting to a boring sex life. And women’s cycles being what they are, it is the woman who makes decisions about the goings-on in the marriage bed. “It’s the girls who are in charge of all that,” Bill says. Bill is a man of God.
That’s right. He does it for God. Explanation to be found in the article. Aspiring polygamists beware.
For the board game fan who thinks board games are too fun:
Game Play: Traverse the board, one square at a time; violations will result in immediate loss and permanent expulsion from the host’s home. Players may not fidget, sneeze, blink, or think about carefree moments from childhood. Laughter shall be penalized by the deduction of one point per episode of frivolity. Laughter after the conclusion of the game will be met with retroactive penalizations and may alter the game’s outcome.
It’s Benehmen!, the German game of board game of discipline.
to keep shining in your eyes, then take a look at this week’s best New Yorker cartoon.
A few weeks back, I decided to submit to 48 Hr. Magazine, which you can read all about here. The theme of the issue was “Hustle,” and my submission was about ticket scalpers:
Scott used to scalp at the Stadium almost exclusively, but he said the cops started cracking down too hard to make it worthwhile. As he tells it, he had 400 tickets a night and would supply other scalpers as his grunts. I told him I scalped a ticket in the grandstand for 30 bucks during the regular season. He told me I did well. I asked if I could have haggled for less.
“See, you kids, you come in and say, ‘I want a seat and I’ll give you 10 bucks for it,’ and I just wanna crack you in the fucking head,” Scott said. “Do you go to your job and work for free? Show some respect.”
You can read other selections here, or if you’re in the mood to support crazy publishing experiments, buy the whole thing here (Full Disclosure: I might get, like, one penny of that 10 bucks). But do so quickly, a TV newsmagazine that I didn’t know was still on the air has issued the magazine a cease and desist order. What a world.
Full details here; full accounts to be sent here.
May 13, 9:42 a.m.
B Train – 7th Avenue to Atlantic Avenue
The best dressed man on this train is reading a Metro New York. He’s in a blue and gold and brown striped suit, with a tan base color and is flanked by two older white men, one in a hoodie, the other in a CNN-embroidered parka. Our man’s straw hat is circled by a brown ribbon that goes with his peaked button down and glossy tie; all of which match his shiny brown pocket square, crimped neckward like a pyramid. His pants are loose but not unkempt. He looks like a 70′s don, but his jewelry – a small stud in his left ear and a jangly gold band covered by his right cuff – are understated. He reaches down as if to dust off his already shined wingtips (lustrous chocolate, of course), but instead picks up a briefcase and plastic Duane Reade bag, and departs at Atlantic. Manhattan might need style, but style does not need it.
A recently uncovered rejection letter sent to Anne Frank:
Thank you for your submission of your memoir to us, as delivered by your literary agent from a cardboard box unearthed in a dusty Amsterdam attic. Unfortunately, we receive so many Holocaust teenage diaries composed in European attics that it is impossible to accept each one. We are passing on your diary with regrets, but would like to offer various suggestions for revision.
Those suggestions can be found here.
No offense to the finished cartoons, but even without a caption, this week’s contest entry is my favorite New Yorker cartoon.