Sunday, August 22, 2004
My brother Matt is making me help write his house play for school. I have been pressured by my parents into masterminding many of Matt's successes at school: he won a public speaking competition with a story I came up with about teeth that jumped out of people's mouths and tried to take over the world, and last year he won his house play competition with a farcical story about a school that burns down for insurance purposes.
This year the theme is "Waiting Room", and I was basically expected to come up with the entire concept for Matt. I was very tired and was playing the piano when Matt asked me this, so I basically regurgitated a story that Virginia had told me about the time she took some cartoons into the New Yorker for Mic, the cartoonist at The Reader, and the highly ritualised procedures that ensued before they accepted them.
Anyway, in this story there's a Jewish guy called Stanley (hmmm, wherever do I get my inspiration?) who takes the same cartoon into the New Yorker office every week. I made up this cartoon on the spot this afternoon and I'm really pleased with myself. It's about a lemon that goes to a complaints office.
Anyway, here it is and you can judge for yourself whether it's funny. Personally I like it because it's such a lame parody of New Yorker cartoons. Also cos it has a pun. I'm interested in hearing if I should quit either my day job or my night job and take up professional cartooning. Every time we need some extra art at work, my boss says drily to me, "Can you draw?" And I say enthusiastically, "Yes!" but he never believes me.
