Cartoonists and a scotch with two speech balloons

Last night Flash Rosenberg invited me, and two other female friends, to attend the (largely male) monthly happy hour gathering of The National Cartoonist Society at O'Casey's bar near Grand Central Station.

I arrived early and was directed upstairs. There were two long tables. One was nearly full, with a crowd of jolly folks and the other had only two guys sitting there quietly. Assuming cartoonists were noisy, I sat at the full table. I shook hands, introduced myself, made small talk, and then someone asked me what firm I ran or worked for. Firm? Cartoonists have firms? They started to laugh deep laughs.
"We are accountants, the cartoonists must be on the other side of the room."
"Well," I said, "I am enjoying you all anyway, so I'll have a few more sips of my scotch before I join the other side. Besides, my brother is an actuary, that makes me almost related."

I made my way over to the slowly filling table of cartoonists and had the luck to sit right next to a short, sweet, funny, old man. Our patter was delightfully snappy and silly. At one point I told him I was taken and held out my ring finger, he pulled out an imaginary loop and inspected the diamond. I told him it didn't melt in the shower so the love had to be real... then I asked him what he draws.

"You mean, drew, what I drew."
"I guess I do," I replied.
"I drew Dondi, The Green Hornet, Wonder Woman, to name a few. I'm Irwin Hasen."
"WOW!" I made bowing motions. I was clearly sitting next to a flirtatious legend.
"My father loves Dondi, we always read it!" He smiled happily.

Irwin Hasen with me at the Cartoonists happy hour. Photo by Flash Rosenberg.

I also sat next to Ellen Abramowitz one of the other women Flash invited. She is the skilled, smart, and sophisticated (best dressed at any table in the joint) chairman of the board of trustees at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. She was brimming with good ideas, professionalism, and enthusiasm for the museum. She also tells great stories about the cartoon world, movies from cartoons, cartoonists... Cool. She knew who I was because she responded to a previous blog about my visit to their current (go see it!) show "NeoIntegrity" and had heartily agreed that the museum needs to grow in size. If comic con can fill the ENTIRE Javit's conference center, then surely, MoCCA deserves to fill a building too. One suite is just too little space for a museum. (So anybody with cash to spare, do donate.)

Ellen Abramowitz and Karen Green, photo by Flash Rosenberg

The other Flash invitee was Karen Green, both a Graphic Novels and Ancient and Medieval History and Religion Librarian at Columbia University. She, too, was fascinating to talk to. Think about how medieval manuscripts relate to graphic novel layouts. I got to ride home on the subway with her and the time flew by as she and I talked about what cartoons we devoured as we grew up, our ages being close, we went through similar stages of discovery. From daily newspaper strips to New Yorker cartoons to Edward Gorey to Crazy Cat to Archy and Mehitabel...We took a moment of silence around 86th street for the untoppable genius of Winsor McCay! Karen said (something she heard from Feiffer) "Imagine being there at the start of the golden age of cartooning and having his talent and creating Little Nemo without having to know that you would be the pinnacle that all others had to follow and could never top." Karen is great. I think all colleges should immediately contact her to come and speak to their students.

I also got to take home a truly funny new (free) newspaper full of cartoons "Coffee Talk" put together by Tony Murphy. The third strip on the front page was done by Marc Bilgrey who sat opposite me. It turns out he is also a fantasy novelist and we had both attended Lunacon a few months back and somehow I'd never heard of him or met him there. He was on the panels as a featured author and I was one of the listeners. So nice to meet someone who draws and writes fantasy. See! I'm not the only one.

I talked to so many...it was great to meet all of you...even the accountants. Thanks Flash Rosenberg for the invitation!

Bumble & bumble and hair tumbles...

My friend Flash has treated me to a new concept of self through a haircut at the trendy, delightful, multi-floor loft/salon of Bumble & bumble on far west 13th street in Manhattan. Before meeting Andrew, Flash and I drank gratis fizzy bottled water while overlooking the Hudson River and most of Manhattan's skyline in their airy boutique/cafe. I had grown out my hair and it was a fuzzy topiary. Having had no time to get home and change into my (one) chic casual outfit, I arrived in salt stained tee shirt and jeans, straight from the beach. I also had my recent self inflicted dye job, which I'd left on a tad too long, turning my brown with gray to black. This I regretted, but c'est la vie.

Pre-haircut portrait by Flash Rosenberg

Andrew's Bumble & bumble haircut, photo by Flash Rosenberg.

"Andrew, Claudia is a cool, mischievous, fun artist--poet, please give her a haircut to match. Right now she has a Long Island matron helmet do, this must change." Flash placed some images she had pulled from the web on the counter. Andrew glanced and nodded. Short, asymmetric, wispy bangs, but with some loft to the top in a spiky way.

"Yes, that's what I had in mind as soon as I saw her!" he said to Flash. His own short curly hair gave me confidence, it was natural, appealing. Not to mention Flash's own fantastic look: dramatic, feminine, quirky and in harmony with her features.

He cut my damp curls with a razor and half moons of black fell to the polished concrete floor. My head felt lighter and lighter, a balloon on a string.

Then I put on my glasses saw it was very short and different than any cut I've ever had. Andrew showed me how to tousle it with their magic cream and pull up artful bedroom hair tufts. I now had an Annette Benning style short do. And the hair fit my funky French glasses. Now all I need to do is find some fun, off-kilter, artsy used clothing! I think I will go with daughters to the nearby thrift stores, for the same price as shopping at Target, I can find things that feel in harmony with me, not just with my budget.

Next we celebrated with a half carafe of wine and a plate of sardines at nearby Pastis (self-described as a French bistro located in Manhattan's meatpacking district). We sat outdoors in the shade of the building and watched most of trendy young New York wobble by on the cobblestones. Best people watching spot in the city!

How wonderful. Here's to kind and kindred spirits, here's to my friend Flash. With love and thanks for this new do. And the thing to do with generosity is...pass it on.

Get a grip and Flash on the Whoopi

Yesterday Flash needed an assistant to operate a mic at a live event. I am, of course, not world renowned for my skills in audio capture, but game, I am. So imagine me, dressed in black, in the elegant glass-domed Bartos auditorium, pre-show, trying to look like the grip of the century. I occasionally gave a thumbs up to the professional dude filming the event on my left. I suspect he could tell my skills weren't up to his when the mic demonically spun upside down several times and I tripped over the feet of our tripod.

This from the official press release after the event : "Live from the NYPL presented an evening to honor the publication of George Carlin's posthumous “sortabiography” Last Words (written with Tony Hendra)... an evening of warm and lively remembrances of late comedian George Carlin on Wednesday, March 24 in the Celeste Bartos Forum. Hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, the tribute featured special appearances by Carlin's family, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Ben Stiller, Amy Stiller, Kevin Smith, Lewis C.K., Dylan Brody, Floyd Abrams, and Lewis Lapham." Not to mention an impressive list of performers playing the role of audience in the front rows, including Steve Martin.

Flash is Artist-in-Residence for LIVE from the New York Public Library and she draws responses to the spoken events they host, which are projected onto a screen as she does them. Later, she creates  videos, a.k.a. Conversation Portraits. Last night she tried adding a new approach, by inviting audience members to step up to the mic, tell a joke, and she'd illustrate it for them and the entire audience would see the joke drawn and written in real time and projected over their heads.

Sadly only a few stepped forward to tell their jokes. But given that George Carlin was one of the funniest guys ever, and the main event, who would feel equal to adding their brand of humor as a warm up? Precious few. For those that came forward, I managed to walk them to the mic, press the record button and laugh at their jokes, usually in that order. Luckily Flash had brought a slew of Carlin jokes and illustrated them.

Dressed in her usual black and white patterns, she sat and drew madly, using pens, watercolors, and expressive moves of hand, zoom and paper to make the art of her response the main show for me. Until they ran the Carlin films. Then I was laughing so loudly the video guys will have to edit out my hoots and wheezing snorts. Flash and I laughed until we cried during a live recitation of Carlin one-liners looking at each other the way you do when it is that funny. After, we agreed Carlin was a master of language, a poet of humor, with inner rhyme and rhythm.

Great to see all the Stiller family on stage, not one of them demure. Whoopi is totally natural. Lots of cussing all around. But hey, this is for George Carlin after all. They played his 7 words bit. The lawyer who protected his right to use those words spoke, and everyone said how much he had helped them and other comedians. 

Flash and assistant (me) were invited to the after party! Of course we had to pack up the pens, pencils, duct tape, brushes, cables, earphones, and papers first. When we got there, we didn't see Whoopi. I was so hoping to hear someone introduce Whoopi to Flash. "Flash meets Whoopi!" or "Whoopi meets Flash," Sounds like a vaudeville act. I may need to change my name to a verb soon. Although "Enjamb" (or would that be "N-Jam") doesn't have the same ring, does it?

As I walked in I reminded myself to respond to celebrities like real people and avoid the empty fannish things that can blurt out of my mouth and kill conversation. So over the chopped veggies I recognized performer Caroline Rhea and instead of blathering about Sabrina or The Biggest Loser, I said what I would to someone I didn't know, "Hi, I'm Claudia, what's your name?" because actually, I really didn't remember her name, just her face. We talked about the food, she loaded my plate with carrots and cucumber saying after all the years of catering it was hard for her not to serve. She introduced me to someone I didn't know, Scott Blakeman, saying his classes in improv helped launch her and Jon Stewart's careers. He was both modest and self-assured and has the ability to listen in a way that makes you feel interesting. The three of us had a lovely conversation punctuated with flashes from cameras, which I am guessing, weren't focused on me. I told them about Natalie, just finishing up at Actors Theatre of Louisville and most likely coming to NYC to pursue improv instead of Shakespeare. It is always great the way people who know, give a little start, when you tell them your daughter is in the best acting apprentice program in the country. Like saying junior got into Harvard. We talked about political humor and Scott's role as the liberal minority on Fox. I likened it to my year working at Lehman Brothers with very conservative folks that were smart, often sweethearts, even though their politics were so different than my own. I told them I was a poet and reading my poems was as close to performing as I wanted to get!

I met several editors of the Latham journal (love talking literary press talk), Ben Stiller's good-looking sister Amy, library important persons, and then I met a very very tall woman who told me she is in a tall person's club. I mentioned I was the shrimp of my family, with my 6'4" brothers and daughters of Amazon heights. You aren't short she exclaimed, you must be 5'8" or so. No, really I'm average, just under 5'6". Nooooo, no way, you must have heels on. No, no heels I assured her, I just stand tall. She peered at my sneakers with disbelief. Apparently they serve very tall cakes and record their adventures on very tall newsletters. I felt a bit like Alice in Longerland.

The whole evening was dreamlike actually. I walked Flash back to her studio and we couldn't stop laughing. She has an ability to respin the world and words, I have never heard her use a cliche, ever. We passed the windows of Lord & Taylors featuring spring frocks. "That one, only the skirt is worth wearing," she said, then to the next window "that one, only the color is good," and finally, "in that one only the window is good!"

And then I took the subway home, happy my career as a grip passed without a gripe.

Those fabulous book parties

Speaking of which, except for my wardrobe, I have been part of some terrifically sophisticated Manhattanish book and arts celebrations. Consider me your book party avatar and be sure to imagine me in something quite stylish, and while you are at it, make me 3 shoe sizes smaller.

At the legendary midtown club:
First was the launch of Gardner McFall's poetry book Russian Tortoise (disclaimer, I designed the cover) as well as an opera she wrote (I remember the theme of flying) at the Century Association. Into this legendary club I showed up hauling a 2 by 3 foot mounted poster in a huge, now wet, black plastic bag. Gardner's husband had me create, on the sly, the poster with her cover altered to read "The Tortoise Has Landed" and I added the parachute from a Russian soyuz to show the tortoise is not crash landing. This party was upstairs in a well proportioned dove gray room room lined with interesting artworks owned by the club. An open bar and frequent tidbits made me happy. Opera singers with classy voices sang a short selection from Gardner's opera as the composer played the piano. I quickly discovered half the room was lawyers and the other half poets. This led to me writing a poem about the singular way we are alike, as both poets and lawyers know the crucial importance of a single word. I enjoyed talking to poets I know as well as some lawyers that were, no surprise, well read and lovely to chat with. Melinda Thomsen and Martin Mitchell sat at a table with me and my husband and the caterers soon realized we were voracious and always swooped by.

At the NOHO Bowery Poetry Club:
My next party was the annual Brevitas reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. As the title suggests, the Brevitas poets, all two dozen or so of them, only write short poems. However with a music interlude of half an hour, the guest poet Harvey Shapiro!, two open readings (disclaimer, I was in the first open reading) and some Brevitas readers that felt the need for explanations that sometimes took longer than the poems, the event that started with me fresh at 1:30 ended with me rather droopy by 5:30. The Bowery Poetry Club is so unlike the Century Association that I feel Dante would have to feature them in two different books. Here the colors were black and the textures scuffed. I was especially there for my friend, the talented Flash Rosenberg, who not only read her poems but drew the bright and witty cartoon cover for the anthology of Brevitas poems that the $7.00 cover charge entitled one to. (Disclaimer, I helped her place and trim the artwork for the cover.) Because I read in the open mic, and am a pal of Flash, I got invited to an after party in Bob Holman's art and book inspired penthouse. The floor was painted with poetry, even the hallways. What a brilliant thing to do. Poetry books filled the walls of this airy lovely space. Did I mention Bob runs The Bowery Poetry Club? Well then, he does. Since I was utterly charmed by most of the work I had heard that night I was hopeful the group would consider me when they need to reinfuse their membership. There were tidbits to eat, including chocolates, and wine and lovely conversations. I even bonded a bit with a large plump gingery cat that lived there.

At a fabulous artsy residence in the Village:
Our friend, and my collaborator, the talented Carly Sachs, had one of her delectable food poems included in The Poet's Cookbook: Recipes from Tuscany, an anthology of food poems in both English and Italian edited by Grace Cavalieri and translated by Sabine Pascarelli. To celebrate the publication of the book, both poets and recipes from the book were enjoyed in a brownstone that is inhabited by a painter with helpful children (selling books) and walls replete with tongue-in-cheek collections of art. A wall of dog hunting paintings, a wall of delightful whimsical drawings! But honestly, I was far too distracted by the FOOD! Oh my god, Tuscan cooking, prepared by Alison of Alison's Restaurants, via the Village, a marvel. Olive dips, mozzarella so fresh it practically moooed, and pignoli cookies. The reading was sponsored by The Bordighera Press and the Vermont Studio Center Writing Program so there was a mix of poets, patrons, painters, and program directors.

Again in the Village, another lovely home:
And finally, a party in celebration of the publication of Patricia Carlin's new book of poetry, Quantum Jitters from Marsh Hawk Press. This home spoke of taste, spaciousness, and comfort. In fact, it was the home of the former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, now the President of The New School, and his wife Sarah Paley who hosted this lovely event. As I was looking for the address, I noticed a man outside busily listening to a cell phone and asked him if I'd found the place with the book event. He kindly nodded me in and later I realized this was Mr. Kerrey. Inside I found many of my fellow members of Marsh Hawk Press, all looking spiffy, and soon other dear friends arrived. Jeanne Marie Beaumont (poet) and Bob Mendelsohn (video), Lynne Saville (photography), Philip Fried (poet/publisher) and more. I met a fascinating woman who studies game theory. I was suddenly struck by the thought that once, back the the 1970s, my mother taught at the New School. Had she too been to any events at the president's house? And here I was eating bitty bits and sipping excellent wine and also celebrating the life of poetry. Raise a glass again!


While the lawyers dressed impeccably at the club reading, the poets just as expected in the Bowery, the most interesting outfits winked in and out of view around the trays and platters in the Village affairs.