January 30, 2004
whiskytalk
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
Archive for January, 2004
the future of big media v4056.02
A lovely little post by Jason Kottke about a guy who predicted blogging (or “metajournailsm”, as he called it) over six years ago.
This is what caught my eye: “The beautiful thing about this new meta-journalism is that it doesn’t require a massive distribution channel or extravagant licensing fees. A single user with a Web connection and only the most rudimentary HTML skills can upload his or her overview of the day’s news. If the editorial sensibility is sharp enough, this kind of metajournalism could easily find enough of an audience to be commercially sustainable, given the limited overhead required to run such a service.”
Exactly. With the software basically free and the internet already in existance, why do we need Big Media’s sorry ass in the equation?
Purists will say “we don’t”. I disagree. There’s too much money to be made.
Whether it’s old media (TV, newspaper) or new media (internet) Big Media’s main source of revenue will continue to be the same one it’s always been– advertising. The New York Times earns its daily crust by supplying audiences to advertisers. The audience shows up every morning in exchange for being given “all the news that’s fit to print” plus some thoughtful commentary. Other media organs do something similar, offering their audiences pictures of naked girls with nice breasts, or the latest info on haute couture or the latest music coming out of the record companies.
Supplying audience in return for cash, using whatever means necessary. News, tits, fashion, music… whatever works.
A media company of the future might be quite different– instead of a huge editorial titan providing its own content with salaried content creators (a biz model that’s already seeming pretty tired), I can see something more like a brokerage house which arbitrates relationships between hundreds of big money advertisers and millions of small free content websites. Yes, Google Adsense has something like that already, although presently it’s neither pretty, fun or interesting. I’m seeing something more akin to Blogads , only far bigger and far more sophisticated.
If, as Clay Shirky has said before, the quality of free content will continue to rise, then the media company will have no need to hire content providers, because with few exceptions the free stuff will be as good as any paid stuff.
In Big Media, the relationship between advertisers and audience is the constant. The fulchrum in the middle– the content– nobody cares if it’s paid for or free. They just care if it works for them. The only people who disagree are the paid content providers and well, yeah, they would, wouldn’t they?
pimp central
“Guardian cartoonist and advertising copywriter Hugh MacLeod is looking for an agency job in New York.”
Just some insider Blogad info: I’m currently trying to relocate back to New York, so now all my blogads are “hire me” ads, aimed at a primarily New York audience. You can check them out at: Jane Galt, Amy Langfield, Tech Law Advisor and 601am. Besides those four I’ve also got some non-New York ads going at Blogads Weblog and Adrants.
Yeah, six blogs seems like a lot. But they’re cheap and culmulatively I’m thinking I’ll have a far more diverse a range than if I just bought advertising on a single, larger website. Nobody is going to hire you if they don’t know you, so you’ve got to get the word out. I’ll let you know how I get on. If it works for me, then it’ll work for other people. Then hopefully word will spread and people will start following my example. And suddenly Blogads will have found a brand new niche that’s potentially useful to thousands of people.
Wish me luck. If you want to help me out feel free to post this link online or pass it on to somebody relevant. Thanks.
about hugh macleod
[UPDATED October, 2009]
[Click on image to enlarge etc. Photo credit: David Sifry.]
Hugh MacLeod
gapingvoid@gmail.com
Alpine, Texas.
Twitter
Facebook
[Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[SHORT VERSION: Work with Hugh. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS. Limited Edition Prints. Cube Grenades.]
Third-Person Bio:
Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist, who makes his living mostly drawing “Cube Grenades” for clients and publishing fine art prints via the internet. His first book, “Ignore Everybody” is published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin.
Also known for his ideas about how “Web 2.0″ affects advertising and marketing, after a decade of working as an advertising copywriter, Hugh started blogging at gapingvoid.com in 2001. He first started off just publishing his cartoons, but as time wore on he started blogging about his other main interest i.e. marketing.
In 2004 he wrote “Ignore Everybody” and “The Hughtrain”, which both got widely read in the blogosphere, downloaded over million times in total.
In 2005 he scored his first major blog marketing success with EnglishCut.com, a blog he started with Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon. It tripled Thomas’ sales within six months.
Since mid-2006 Hugh has also been helping a small South African winery, Stormhoek “rise above the clutter” in the wine market by using Web 2.0 tools to get the word out. Sales have gone up fivefold since then, thanks to Hugh’s marketing efforts.
Since 2006 Hugh has been constantly engaged as a public speaker, giving talks in both Europe and the US, talking about Web 2.0 and the ramifications it has on business.
Hugh’s basic mantra about blog and Web 2.0 marketing is “It’s a good way to make things happen indirectly”, a point lost on many corporate types.
The Drawings:
[This is the cartoon that inspired the name “gapingvoid”. I drew it way back when, in college. Click on image to enlarge.]
When I first lived in Manhattan in December, 1997 I got into the habit of doodling on the back of business cards, just to give me something to do while sitting at the bar. The format stuck.
All I had when I first got to Manhattan were 2 suitcases, a couple of cardboard boxes full of stuff, a reservation at the YMCA, and a 10-day freelance copywriting gig at a Midtown advertising agency.
My life for the next couple of weeks was going to work, walking around the city, and staggering back to the YMCA once the bars closed. Lots of alcohol and coffee shops. Lot of weird people. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simultaneously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat pocket.
The freelance gig turned into a permanent job. I stayed. The first month in New York for a newcomer has this certain amazing magic about it that is indescribable. Incandescent lucidity. However long you stay in New York, you pretty much spend the rest of your time there trying to recapture that feeling. Chasing Manhattan Dragon. I suppose the whole point of the cards initially was to somehow get that buzz onto paper.
Although I haven’t lived in New York since 1999, it still lives in me. Far too much, some would say…
The originals are drawn on either business cards or bristol board cut to the same size i.e. 3.5″ x 2″. I use mostly a 0.3mm rapidograph pen. Occasionally I’ll use other things– pencil, watercolor, ballpoint etc, but not often.
Personal Faves:
An artist is quite a fucked-up thing to be, and to be honest I’m not sure if I would recommend it to anybody. Still, in my collection there are a couple of examples that, in some sick and twisted way, make the whole thing seem worthwhile. For the first five minutes, at least:
The Shark Bar
When I first moved to New York, I stayed at the YMCA on West 62nd.
My first drawing as a New York resident was on my second evening, sitting on a barstool at the Shark Bar– a hip, young place in SoHo.
Having only been in town just over 24 hours, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by New York, to say the least. Plus I had drunk quite a lot that evening. I think both show up in the drawing.
I’ve been back to the Shark Bar a couple of times since then, but it never had the same insane magic of that first evening. Great name for a bar, though. Especially in Manhattan.
Vanished
Spring ’98. I was at a bar, it was late, I was kinda tipsy.
Suddenly I realized that my life hadn’t changed much in the last decade since leaving college. Work, bars, cartoons, random conversations of a big-city nature, second-hand bookshops and art films, the occasional bout of random or regular sex to tide things over etc etc.
It wasn’t as interesting as it used to be. But I hadn’t moved on, really. And I had no idea where to go next.
Welcome to New York.
The best cartoons are the ones that give you these amazing moments of clarity as you draw them. That’s the best thing about cartooning, really. Everything else seems rather secondary in comparison.
Fanelli’s
December 29th, 1997. Fanelli’s, on Prince and Mercer in SoHo, is one of the great bars in Manhattan. I had been in New York only a couple of days when I found myself there, drinking heavily.
I no longer drink much, however at the time I had this idea that seriously heavy drinking was essential in order to enjoy New York properly. I don’t think I was wrong, either.
Around midnight at the bar I bump into an old acquaintance of mine from Chicago, Mark Mann. He had moved to New York about 3 months previously to do something with his film career. He is one of the funniest and most interesting people I know, but at the time I didn’t know that. We were quite suspicious of each other for the longest time before we admitted that we actually were friends.
I hadn’t told anybody I was moving to New York except on a need-to-know basis, so he was quite surprised to see me there. A ghost from his former Chicago life– just popped out of nowhere.
Told him my story. Told him about being laid off in Chicago. Told him about this new job I got in New York. Told him I only knew I got the job officially 5 days before Christmas– only about a week previously. Asked him how he was liking New York.
“It’s great,” he said. “Everybody’s insane with loneliness, but that’s OK. After a while you realize that’s part of the edge.”
I was hit with a paradox. I wanted to be in New York, I wanted to be “part of the edge”, but I didn’t want to be “insane with loneliness”. Was one necessary in order to have the other? Was it a price worth paying? To this day, I still have no answer.
A couple of months later (July, ’98) I drew this, sitting on a barstool. Thinking back to that conversation with Mark, suddenly I had a realization: The simple truth about big cities is that people don’t go there to give. They go there to take, or at least, to get. If you feel like giving, good for you, somewhere an angel is smiling yada yada yada, just don’t expect other people to follow your example. And if you’re feeling lonely, at least now you now know why. This drawing is partly about that.
Commitment
Within 1 week of meeting this person you realize that not only have you found your soulmate, but you’ve found your soulmate who likes to have sex 4 times a day in the bed, on the dining table, on the kitchen floor, in the changing rooms at Bloomingdale’s etc.
Within 2 weeks you’re already talking about moving in together.
Within 3 weeks you’re talking about having babies together.
Within 4 weeks you realize this person is a complete psychopath.
Within 5 weeks this person also thinks you’re a complete psychopath.
Within 6 weeks you’re sitting at a restaurant with an old friend who is giving you the “How come you only call me when you’re single” speech.
I Knew My Pain
Sometimes life throws you a devastating curve ball. And you’re never ready for it. Ever.
Eric
I remember being young and stupid. How utterly sweet and simple life seemed back then, but I also knew in the back of my mind that these days weren’t going to last forever. Ouch. Hopefully, in a decade or two I’ll be looking back to this time now with equal affection. I think that’s all you can do, really.
Complete
Early 30s is a great time to be alive– you’re still young, but you have experience. A powerful combo.
The downside is all that weird rockstar shit you believe about yourself is well past its sell-by date, and if you haven’t outgrown it by then, it starts to fuck up your life.
New York is tough enough if you’re a man. God knows how the women manage to do it.
Please
The piece is not particularly clever nor especially beautiful to look at. But something gently disturbing resides just beneath the surface. Hmmmm� sort of like apartment brokers.
C.F.A.
Yes. Exactly.
Mighty
All clients want one, I am told.
Cheap Plastic Toys
Some of it was my fault, some of it wasn’t. Regardless, I’ve made a list and they will pay dearly.
Mistakenly
There are many advantages of getting older… more money and respect from the world at large being the main one. However, with all this newly found cash & kudos comes the idea that maybe the world isn’t such a nice place, after all. That maybe all that unhappiness you see on the faces of your fellow commuters is there for a reason. And no matter how much you try or how hard you work, none of that will ever change.
Still, I suppose it’s better to know that said brutality exists, rather than burning all those calories pretending it doesn’t. I just wish I’d wised up a decade earlier than I did.
Lying
OK, this one isn’t exactly subtle. But it doesn’t take any prisoners, either. Unrestrained bile is actually pretty hard to pull off, artistically.
Wolf vs Sheep
No, I don’t have an answer to which option is better. Both exact a heavy toll, eventually.
Too Many Cats
Good thing a certain friend of mine never reads my website.
Dorothy
I’ve always been a big Dorothy Parker fan. Urbane wit at its finest. Would I trade my life for hers in order to be that talented and famous? No way. Like all intoxicants, talent can be a poison. Reading her biography, it seems she learned that more than most.
It’s 2 am and I’m in this crazy Midtown Irish bar. I have no idea why I’m there. I shouldn’t be there. I should be somewhere else. Asleep, comfortable, happy, sharing my bed with a sensible girl from a good family, Brooks Brothers’ pyjamas, insufferably middle class. But no.
Everybody in that bar is crazy. I tell myself I’m the only sane one but I think I’m kidding myself.
Being an artist/creative is like wearing funky clothing. Every year gets a little bit harder. After a while it just looks stupid. Eventually the stupidity reaches critical mass and the late-night tailspin begins. At a midtown Irish bar at 2am, while I’m drawing this picture, these things no longer seem to matter.
I like this card because it’s the kind of thing poor old Dorothy would have written.
All The Time
After years of struggling in impecunious obscurity, a very old friend of mine recently had a bit of success in his business.
Suddenly, everybody in the industry knew who he was, and would mob him at trade shows and conventions. People who wouldn’t have given him the time of day only a year before were shamelessly throwing themselves at him, scattering business cards like confetti.
My friend, the rock star. Who knew?
Shortly after one of these little feeding frenzies, we meet up for a drink, as we do.
He’s telling me all about it. All the off-the-record stuff that happened. All these relentless people coming after him, like terriers on the bone.
“How weird,” I say.
“Sure is,” he says. “Now I know what it’s like to have a vagina.”
Pickaxe
One evening after a gruesome day at the office I went into a coffee shop on 6th Ave to write. Got a coffee, found a table, opened my laptop and looked around. I’m not kidding; there were nine other people in the caf� with open laptops, writing away, just like me. Nine. I counted. They were probably writing the same tedious crap I was.
“It’s a novel about some guy who moves to New York to break into the high-brow literary scene and score with lots of chicks yada yada yada�”
One of the reasons I stick to cartooning is because my traditional prose writing is so godforsakenly awful.
Writing about New York is a bit like writing about sex– it’s already been done to death. And done. And done. And done again. It’s a form of literary necrophilia. Unless you have something completely unique and visionary to say about New York (I have yet to meet somebody in the flesh who does), any kind of Manhattan-fuelled artistic ambition runs the risk of turning you in to a “ligger”.
“Ligger” is Scottish slang. A ligger is a hanger-on, a wannabe, a parasite-to-the-hip. Somebody who goes to art openings to drink free wine, but never buys a painting. Somebody who sees art as not something you make, but something you milk. Somebody who is always seen, but never remembered.
Living in New York is only possible if you treat it like a religion. Liggers are really good at this, for some reason. Hence their vast numbers; hence why a big part of your average day in New York is spent seperating the liggers from the real people.
Henry
So you’re going out a lot. Pretty soon you’re going out too much. Parties. Bars. More parties. More bars. So you decide to cut back a bit, y’know, start living like a normal person.
So you trade in those wild & crazy times for delivered Chinese food, Forbes Magazine and Seinfeld reruns. You’re just going to try it for a couple of weeks, and see how it feels. After all, this is a “new you” we’re talking about. A better you. A saner you. A wiser, more sensible and compelling you.
But you know in your heart of hearts that you didn’t move from suburban Cleveland, Denver, Pittsburgh etc to a $3000-a-month Manhattan apartment just to watch Seinfeld.
In New York, you always think that if you try harder, work longer hours, make more money, spend more time at the gym, put more effort into networking, read more books, go to bed earlier, drink less booze, avoid negative people, be less shallow about the whole sex thing, be more supportive to your close friends, eat more vegetables and stop smoking so many damn cigarettes, you will eventually be able pull off that great Miracle Of Miracles i.e. you’ll finally, finally, finally be able to live in Manhattan while simultaneously leading a healthy, productive, emotionally-balanced life.
Ha.
(PS: I no longer live in New York, obviously)
the future of big media v4056.02
A lovely little post by Jason Kottke about a guy who predicted blogging (or “metajournailsm”, as he called it) over six years ago.
This is what caught my eye: “The beautiful thing about this new meta-journalism is that it doesn’t require a massive distribution channel or extravagant licensing fees. A single user with a Web connection and only the most rudimentary HTML skills can upload his or her overview of the day’s news. If the editorial sensibility is sharp enough, this kind of metajournalism could easily find enough of an audience to be commercially sustainable, given the limited overhead required to run such a service.”
Exactly. With the software basically free and the internet already in existance, why do we need Big Media’s sorry ass in the equation?
Purists will say “we don’t”. I disagree. There’s too much money to be made.
Whether it’s old media (TV, newspaper) or new media (internet) Big Media’s main source of revenue will continue to be the same one it’s always been– advertising. The New York Times earns its daily crust by supplying audiences to advertisers. The audience shows up every morning in exchange for being given “all the news that’s fit to print” plus some thoughtful commentary. Other media organs do something similar, offering their audiences pictures of naked girls with nice breasts, or the latest info on haute couture or the latest music coming out of the record companies.
Supplying audience in return for cash, using whatever means necessary. News, tits, fashion, music… whatever works.
A media company of the future might be quite different– instead of a huge editorial titan providing its own content with salaried content creators (a biz model that’s already seeming pretty tired), I can see something more like a brokerage house which arbitrates relationships between hundreds of big money advertisers and millions of small free content websites. Yes, Google Adsense has something like that already, although presently it’s neither pretty, fun or interesting. I’m seeing something more akin to Blogads , only far bigger and far more sophisticated.
If, as Clay Shirky has said before, the quality of free content will continue to rise, then the media company will have no need to hire content providers, because with few exceptions the free stuff will be as good as any paid stuff.
In Big Media, the relationship between advertisers and audience is the constant. The fulchrum in the middle– the content– nobody cares if it’s paid for or free. They just care if it works for them. The only people who disagree are the paid content providers and well, yeah, they would, wouldn’t they?
pimp central
“Guardian cartoonist and advertising copywriter Hugh MacLeod is looking for an agency job in New York.”
Just some insider Blogad info: I’m currently trying to relocate back to New York, so now all my blogads are “hire me” ads, aimed at a primarily New York audience. You can check them out at: Jane Galt, Amy Langfield, Tech Law Advisor and 601am. Besides those four I’ve also got some non-New York ads going at Blogads Weblog and Adrants.
Yeah, six blogs seems like a lot. But they’re cheap and culmulatively I’m thinking I’ll have a far more diverse a range than if I just bought advertising on a single, larger website. Nobody is going to hire you if they don’t know you, so you’ve got to get the word out. I’ll let you know how I get on. If it works for me, then it’ll work for other people. Then hopefully word will spread and people will start following my example. And suddenly Blogads will have found a brand new niche that’s potentially useful to thousands of people.
Wish me luck. If you want to help me out feel free to post this link online or pass it on to somebody relevant. Thanks.
about hugh macleod
[UPDATED October, 2009]
[Click on image to enlarge etc. Photo credit: David Sifry.]
Hugh MacLeod
gapingvoid@gmail.com
Alpine, Texas.
Twitter
Facebook
[Essential Reading: “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About ‘Cube Grenades’ But Were Afraid To Ask.”]
[SHORT VERSION: Work with Hugh. Cartoon Archive. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS. Limited Edition Prints. Cube Grenades.]
Third-Person Bio:
Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist, who makes his living mostly drawing “Cube Grenades” for clients and publishing fine art prints via the internet. His first book, “Ignore Everybody” is published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin.
Also known for his ideas about how “Web 2.0″ affects advertising and marketing, after a decade of working as an advertising copywriter, Hugh started blogging at gapingvoid.com in 2001. He first started off just publishing his cartoons, but as time wore on he started blogging about his other main interest i.e. marketing.
In 2004 he wrote “Ignore Everybody” and “The Hughtrain”, which both got widely read in the blogosphere, downloaded over million times in total.
In 2005 he scored his first major blog marketing success with EnglishCut.com, a blog he started with Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon. It tripled Thomas’ sales within six months.
Since mid-2006 Hugh has also been helping a small South African winery, Stormhoek “rise above the clutter” in the wine market by using Web 2.0 tools to get the word out. Sales have gone up fivefold since then, thanks to Hugh’s marketing efforts.
Since 2006 Hugh has been constantly engaged as a public speaker, giving talks in both Europe and the US, talking about Web 2.0 and the ramifications it has on business.
Hugh’s basic mantra about blog and Web 2.0 marketing is “It’s a good way to make things happen indirectly”, a point lost on many corporate types.
The Drawings:
[This is the cartoon that inspired the name “gapingvoid”. I drew it way back when, in college. Click on image to enlarge.]
When I first lived in Manhattan in December, 1997 I got into the habit of doodling on the back of business cards, just to give me something to do while sitting at the bar. The format stuck.
All I had when I first got to Manhattan were 2 suitcases, a couple of cardboard boxes full of stuff, a reservation at the YMCA, and a 10-day freelance copywriting gig at a Midtown advertising agency.
My life for the next couple of weeks was going to work, walking around the city, and staggering back to the YMCA once the bars closed. Lots of alcohol and coffee shops. Lot of weird people. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simultaneously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat pocket.
The freelance gig turned into a permanent job. I stayed. The first month in New York for a newcomer has this certain amazing magic about it that is indescribable. Incandescent lucidity. However long you stay in New York, you pretty much spend the rest of your time there trying to recapture that feeling. Chasing Manhattan Dragon. I suppose the whole point of the cards initially was to somehow get that buzz onto paper.
Although I haven’t lived in New York since 1999, it still lives in me. Far too much, some would say…
The originals are drawn on either business cards or bristol board cut to the same size i.e. 3.5″ x 2″. I use mostly a 0.3mm rapidograph pen. Occasionally I’ll use other things– pencil, watercolor, ballpoint etc, but not often.
Personal Faves:
An artist is quite a fucked-up thing to be, and to be honest I’m not sure if I would recommend it to anybody. Still, in my collection there are a couple of examples that, in some sick and twisted way, make the whole thing seem worthwhile. For the first five minutes, at least:
The Shark Bar
When I first moved to New York, I stayed at the YMCA on West 62nd.
My first drawing as a New York resident was on my second evening, sitting on a barstool at the Shark Bar– a hip, young place in SoHo.
Having only been in town just over 24 hours, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by New York, to say the least. Plus I had drunk quite a lot that evening. I think both show up in the drawing.
I’ve been back to the Shark Bar a couple of times since then, but it never had the same insane magic of that first evening. Great name for a bar, though. Especially in Manhattan.
Vanished
Spring ’98. I was at a bar, it was late, I was kinda tipsy.
Suddenly I realized that my life hadn’t changed much in the last decade since leaving college. Work, bars, cartoons, random conversations of a big-city nature, second-hand bookshops and art films, the occasional bout of random or regular sex to tide things over etc etc.
It wasn’t as interesting as it used to be. But I hadn’t moved on, really. And I had no idea where to go next.
Welcome to New York.
The best cartoons are the ones that give you these amazing moments of clarity as you draw them. That’s the best thing about cartooning, really. Everything else seems rather secondary in comparison.
Fanelli’s
December 29th, 1997. Fanelli’s, on Prince and Mercer in SoHo, is one of the great bars in Manhattan. I had been in New York only a couple of days when I found myself there, drinking heavily.
I no longer drink much, however at the time I had this idea that seriously heavy drinking was essential in order to enjoy New York properly. I don’t think I was wrong, either.
Around midnight at the bar I bump into an old acquaintance of mine from Chicago, Mark Mann. He had moved to New York about 3 months previously to do something with his film career. He is one of the funniest and most interesting people I know, but at the time I didn’t know that. We were quite suspicious of each other for the longest time before we admitted that we actually were friends.
I hadn’t told anybody I was moving to New York except on a need-to-know basis, so he was quite surprised to see me there. A ghost from his former Chicago life– just popped out of nowhere.
Told him my story. Told him about being laid off in Chicago. Told him about this new job I got in New York. Told him I only knew I got the job officially 5 days before Christmas– only about a week previously. Asked him how he was liking New York.
“It’s great,” he said. “Everybody’s insane with loneliness, but that’s OK. After a while you realize that’s part of the edge.”
I was hit with a paradox. I wanted to be in New York, I wanted to be “part of the edge”, but I didn’t want to be “insane with loneliness”. Was one necessary in order to have the other? Was it a price worth paying? To this day, I still have no answer.
A couple of months later (July, ’98) I drew this, sitting on a barstool. Thinking back to that conversation with Mark, suddenly I had a realization: The simple truth about big cities is that people don’t go there to give. They go there to take, or at least, to get. If you feel like giving, good for you, somewhere an angel is smiling yada yada yada, just don’t expect other people to follow your example. And if you’re feeling lonely, at least now you now know why. This drawing is partly about that.
Commitment
Within 1 week of meeting this person you realize that not only have you found your soulmate, but you’ve found your soulmate who likes to have sex 4 times a day in the bed, on the dining table, on the kitchen floor, in the changing rooms at Bloomingdale’s etc.
Within 2 weeks you’re already talking about moving in together.
Within 3 weeks you’re talking about having babies together.
Within 4 weeks you realize this person is a complete psychopath.
Within 5 weeks this person also thinks you’re a complete psychopath.
Within 6 weeks you’re sitting at a restaurant with an old friend who is giving you the “How come you only call me when you’re single” speech.
I Knew My Pain
Sometimes life throws you a devastating curve ball. And you’re never ready for it. Ever.
Eric
I remember being young and stupid. How utterly sweet and simple life seemed back then, but I also knew in the back of my mind that these days weren’t going to last forever. Ouch. Hopefully, in a decade or two I’ll be looking back to this time now with equal affection. I think that’s all you can do, really.
Complete
Early 30s is a great time to be alive– you’re still young, but you have experience. A powerful combo.
The downside is all that weird rockstar shit you believe about yourself is well past its sell-by date, and if you haven’t outgrown it by then, it starts to fuck up your life.
New York is tough enough if you’re a man. God knows how the women manage to do it.
Please
The piece is not particularly clever nor especially beautiful to look at. But something gently disturbing resides just beneath the surface. Hmmmm� sort of like apartment brokers.
C.F.A.
Yes. Exactly.
Mighty
All clients want one, I am told.
Cheap Plastic Toys
Some of it was my fault, some of it wasn’t. Regardless, I’ve made a list and they will pay dearly.
Mistakenly
There are many advantages of getting older… more money and respect from the world at large being the main one. However, with all this newly found cash & kudos comes the idea that maybe the world isn’t such a nice place, after all. That maybe all that unhappiness you see on the faces of your fellow commuters is there for a reason. And no matter how much you try or how hard you work, none of that will ever change.
Still, I suppose it’s better to know that said brutality exists, rather than burning all those calories pretending it doesn’t. I just wish I’d wised up a decade earlier than I did.
Lying
OK, this one isn’t exactly subtle. But it doesn’t take any prisoners, either. Unrestrained bile is actually pretty hard to pull off, artistically.
Wolf vs Sheep
No, I don’t have an answer to which option is better. Both exact a heavy toll, eventually.
Too Many Cats
Good thing a certain friend of mine never reads my website.
Dorothy
I’ve always been a big Dorothy Parker fan. Urbane wit at its finest. Would I trade my life for hers in order to be that talented and famous? No way. Like all intoxicants, talent can be a poison. Reading her biography, it seems she learned that more than most.
It’s 2 am and I’m in this crazy Midtown Irish bar. I have no idea why I’m there. I shouldn’t be there. I should be somewhere else. Asleep, comfortable, happy, sharing my bed with a sensible girl from a good family, Brooks Brothers’ pyjamas, insufferably middle class. But no.
Everybody in that bar is crazy. I tell myself I’m the only sane one but I think I’m kidding myself.
Being an artist/creative is like wearing funky clothing. Every year gets a little bit harder. After a while it just looks stupid. Eventually the stupidity reaches critical mass and the late-night tailspin begins. At a midtown Irish bar at 2am, while I’m drawing this picture, these things no longer seem to matter.
I like this card because it’s the kind of thing poor old Dorothy would have written.
All The Time
After years of struggling in impecunious obscurity, a very old friend of mine recently had a bit of success in his business.
Suddenly, everybody in the industry knew who he was, and would mob him at trade shows and conventions. People who wouldn’t have given him the time of day only a year before were shamelessly throwing themselves at him, scattering business cards like confetti.
My friend, the rock star. Who knew?
Shortly after one of these little feeding frenzies, we meet up for a drink, as we do.
He’s telling me all about it. All the off-the-record stuff that happened. All these relentless people coming after him, like terriers on the bone.
“How weird,” I say.
“Sure is,” he says. “Now I know what it’s like to have a vagina.”
Pickaxe
One evening after a gruesome day at the office I went into a coffee shop on 6th Ave to write. Got a coffee, found a table, opened my laptop and looked around. I’m not kidding; there were nine other people in the caf� with open laptops, writing away, just like me. Nine. I counted. They were probably writing the same tedious crap I was.
“It’s a novel about some guy who moves to New York to break into the high-brow literary scene and score with lots of chicks yada yada yada�”
One of the reasons I stick to cartooning is because my traditional prose writing is so godforsakenly awful.
Writing about New York is a bit like writing about sex– it’s already been done to death. And done. And done. And done again. It’s a form of literary necrophilia. Unless you have something completely unique and visionary to say about New York (I have yet to meet somebody in the flesh who does), any kind of Manhattan-fuelled artistic ambition runs the risk of turning you in to a “ligger”.
“Ligger” is Scottish slang. A ligger is a hanger-on, a wannabe, a parasite-to-the-hip. Somebody who goes to art openings to drink free wine, but never buys a painting. Somebody who sees art as not something you make, but something you milk. Somebody who is always seen, but never remembered.
Living in New York is only possible if you treat it like a religion. Liggers are really good at this, for some reason. Hence their vast numbers; hence why a big part of your average day in New York is spent seperating the liggers from the real people.
Henry
So you’re going out a lot. Pretty soon you’re going out too much. Parties. Bars. More parties. More bars. So you decide to cut back a bit, y’know, start living like a normal person.
So you trade in those wild & crazy times for delivered Chinese food, Forbes Magazine and Seinfeld reruns. You’re just going to try it for a couple of weeks, and see how it feels. After all, this is a “new you” we’re talking about. A better you. A saner you. A wiser, more sensible and compelling you.
But you know in your heart of hearts that you didn’t move from suburban Cleveland, Denver, Pittsburgh etc to a $3000-a-month Manhattan apartment just to watch Seinfeld.
In New York, you always think that if you try harder, work longer hours, make more money, spend more time at the gym, put more effort into networking, read more books, go to bed earlier, drink less booze, avoid negative people, be less shallow about the whole sex thing, be more supportive to your close friends, eat more vegetables and stop smoking so many damn cigarettes, you will eventually be able pull off that great Miracle Of Miracles i.e. you’ll finally, finally, finally be able to live in Manhattan while simultaneously leading a healthy, productive, emotionally-balanced life.
Ha.
(PS: I no longer live in New York, obviously)