Terrible for smothering

Zachary Kanin is a cartoonist who follows in the macabre and oddball cartoon tradition of Chas Addams, Gahan Wilson and Sam Gross. I've chosen a selection of Kanin cartoons from 2009 issues of The New Yorker magazine. (They're also all the New Yorker issues I had on hand.)

Kanin makes a big deal out of being a short man, 5' 3 1/2", and I couldn't understand why he was so big on being small until I found out he wrote a book called The Short Book, which, based on what I read on Amazon.com is very funny.

Cartoons copyright © 2009 New Yorker, Inc.



In June, 2009, I did a post about the pillow cartoon below. You can see it here.

"The Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian, make tonight a wonderful thing..."

Donald Fagen of Steely Dan turned 63 yesterday, which makes Donald and me now officially the same age. It makes it seem all that much longer that "Hey Nineteen" was a hit, and guys our age actually knew girls who were nineteen who weren't our granddaughters or their friends. This session starts with "Janie Runaway," a song from Steely Dan's 2000 album, Two Against Nature.

Donald Fagen Janie Runaway and Hey Nineteen



Clarence Clemons of the E-Street Band turned 69 today. Consider the big man's sax solo at approximately 2:12 of this video of "Born To Run" and how the song would sound without it.



This video shows that Clemons also has a vocal talent, when he and Jackson Browne joined together for Narada Michael Walden's "You're A Friend Of Mine."



Happy birthday!

The ephemerist

It was time to go through my computer desk drawer. I could hardly get it closed anymore, so I did a general purging. I found some post cards. Most of these I got about 20 years ago. I have so much ephemera in this house it's like a paper museum. I had forgotten about these cards until going through the drawer. I won't be purging these...they went back into the drawer.

My friend Clay sent me this interesting cat illustration. This sort of thing was wildly popular a few decades ago. Pillow-fightin' kitties is in the same kitschy category as poker-playin' dogs.

This card my wife got in a stack of cards she found on eBay years ago. The elements are so confusing I can't believe it was wasn't a total flop as an advertisement for a pet shop. Is that a real kid on that circus wagon, and what's he got there with him? A rooster? Ralph Warren Harding, named after an infamous U.S. president who died in office in the early 1920s, if you're looking tell us what this is all about.

Before the Internet took over this kind of thing, postcards were sold with these sorts of images. This is the kind of anachronistic freaky stuff people like: twin fat guys on little motorbikes! Wow! Uproarious! How do they stay on the bikes? Let's all point and laugh at fat people.

Then there's the "local color" style postcard. In this case a 1906 card sent from South Africa to Toronto, Canada, and featuring a couple of native policeman from Basutoland, bare feet, natty caps and all. They're carrying spears and not guns. I'm sure the South Africans, with their rigorous segregation, didn't want to arm any black men. These guys look pretty proud, though.

I bought the cards reproducing old paperback book covers in Petaluma, California. They're nostalgic for me because I remember my mom taking me to the grocery store and while she shopped I'd sneak a peek at the paperback rack, and all those racy images on the covers. Having read many of these books over the years I know now the covers promised more than the stories delivered.

William Irish was a pen-name of Cornell Woolrich (The Bride Wore Black, "Rear Window," etc.) I've never read Marihuana, but I like the the cover blurb: cheap and evil is what I like in a girl.

Leg Artist is a reminder to me of why I wanted to be an artist. In those days every ad I saw about taking art courses featured a guy drawing a pretty, half-dressed girl.

Movie posters are popular on postcards, and an especially fine, crazy cool, image is this "Invasion of the Saucer-Men." I've never seen the movie, but I'll bet the poster is better than the movie.

I picked up these cards locally. The one for Ken Sanders Rare Books was originally commissioned by Ken for the Cosmic Aeroplane Books in Salt Lake City, Utah. It's done by Neil Passey, who died at a very young age. I had a larger poster of this on the wall of my downstairs studio; my son and his friend Johnny used to sneak downstairs and ogle it.

Back in about 1990 a local entrepeneur put up stands in restaurants and stores featuring free advertising postcards. I remember picking up several of the best illustrated. I could only find these two for now: "Waltz Of the Dog-Faced Boy" is by an artist named Lammle, and "Fiddler on the Roof", done for the Sundance Theater is by James McMullan.


Especially close to home is this antique postcard featuring an old, old picture of the hospital where I was born. This picture was old when I was born in 1947! My mom claimed Holy Cross Hospital is where they gave her baby to another woman, and that woman's baby, i.e., me, to her. It's a long story, and for another day.

"Mew, mew," said Kitty.

Many Surprises, in the Developmental Reading Series, is a textbook from 1949. The section I scanned is illustrated by Ann F. Hurford and Miriam Story Hurford, whose familiar artwork appeared in many such early readers.

Americans of the Baby Boomer generation learned to read from such books, but the stories are pabulum. Give me a BATMAN comic book or a Tom Swift Jr. book to learn to read from any day! Still, I love the gentle watercolor pictures, which presented an idealized America of the middle decades of the Twentieth Century. These textbooks of that era didn't allow for any diversity in our society, just showing well-to-do suburban white children frolicking, perfectly well-behaved and polite. There are no disagreements or fighting over toys. Besides teaching reading they were also indirectly teaching standards of decorum and behavior. They also taught something a bit more dangerous. "Kitty" is a story of a kitten handed over to a little girl, Jane, like a toy by her father. There are no instructions on how to take care of a living creature; instead Kitty has to fend for herself.

Poor Kitty! Chased by the family dog! Ignored by children except as a plaything! Look! look! Kitty! You are alive. You are not a toy. Look, Jane and Billy. Kitty needs water, food, shelter. Look, Daddy! Turn on your damn brain.

Hopefully by now we've discarded the old-time attitude toward animals. But at least the pictures are nice.

Voodoo or voodon't?

Some time before my retirement I was angry--again--with my boss. Phil had been my boss since the late 1980s and we'd had a contentious relationship for nearly 20 years.

A couple of years before my latest anger at Phil my coworker, Sherry, as a joke had given me a novelty voodoo doll. I took the voodoo doll off my bookshelf and stuck some pins in the heart. "Have a heart attack on me, Phil!" I yelled, my maniacal laugh ringing throughout the house. I listened to myself, thought this is crazy, took the pins out and put the doll back on the shelf, where it sits to this day. Nothing bad happened to Phil, but I had a creepy feeling.

A few months later I read in a psychology text of a test where students were asked the question, "If you could kill someone with your mind, and no one would ever know, would you do it?" The great majority of people said yes.

I think the purpose of the question, at least as I inferred it, is to see if people would kill if they had no fear of punishment. Apparently many of us would. So it's the fear of being caught that keeps us from capital crimes. Of course, if I could kill people with my mind, it would mean other people would have the same power. What if they wanted to kill me? Would you rather have a guy sit in his easy chair and think you dead, or come at you with a gun or knife?

Good god, the things I think about...


I don't know anything about voodoo, except for the popular idea of putting pins in dolls. I went to the Internet and looked up voodoo dolls and found the same popular novelty dolls I tried to use in my plot against my boss. I also found that for $75-$150 this company, Planet Voodoo, will make a voodoo doll in someone's image.

The doll in the picture is bound, which means the person represented will be kept from hurting you, without them being hurt themselves. These nice folks at Planet Voodoo also remind us that whatever we wish on someone else will come back to us triple. Good thing I took the pins out of Phil's doll, because the creepy feeling I had were these awful pricking sensations in my chest...

Mama Mia!

The other night Sally and I watched one of our favorite Woody Allen movies, Broadway Danny Rose. We've seen it three or four times since it came out in 1984, and it’s funny every time. Mia Farrow was outstanding in her portrayal of Tina Vitale, the tough Italian girl. It was something of a departure from her usual roles, and if Allen had not been her significant other at the time the part might have gone to someone else. Ultimately she was a great choice.

One of the first movies I saw when I got out of the Army in '68 was Rosemary's Baby. Farrow was something of an "It girl" at the time. She had been successful in the TV soap opera, Peyton Place, and had recently married Frank Sinatra, 30 years her senior. He had divorce papers served on her while she was on the set filming Rosemary's Baby. He wanted her to give up her career and just be Mrs. Frank Sinatra. That was another generation, wasn't it?

Mia had a waifish, boyish look, with an open face and innocence that made Rosemary so appealing. I saw the documentary, The Kid Stays In The Picture, about Paramount studio head Robert Evans, who said that he picked Roman Polanski to adapt and direct the film. Polanski wanted either Tuesday Weld or his wife, Sharon Tate, for Rosemary. Evans wisely prevailed on his choice of Farrow.

You could tell the movie was a phenomenon when Mad featured it on the cover. A Mad treatment meant the subject was very popular, well known to everyone.

Farrow's short hairstyle was a topic of conversation at the time.
Mia was still popular when the first issue of People magazine came out, featuring her on the cover in character as Daisy from The Great Gatsby. In the movie she starred with Robert Redford, who had been first choice to play her husband, Guy, in Rosemary's Baby.

In 1971 my wife and I went to a neighborhood theater on a Friday night to see a re-release of Rosemary's Baby. It was playing with the newest Farrow movie, See No Evil, a suspense film in which she played a blind girl, Sarah. The theater was full of teenagers, noisy and rowdy, but we could at least enjoy the movie until Sarah comes home, and walks through a house where everyone has been killed in a gruesome fashion. She can't see the victims as she makes her way to her bedroom. The girls in the audience set up a deafening series of shrieks. Imagine several hundred girls screaming as loud as they can. I attribute it to the suspenseful set-ups by director Richard Fleischer, but also to Farrow's winsome, vulnerable character. I believe every one of the hundreds of screaming girls in that theater was identifying with Mia as Sarah, the blind girl trying to outrun a killer.

Farrow was a principal in a big scandal in the early '90s, when she found out her partner, Woody Allen, was having an affair with her 17-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi. She went on the warpath, publicly airing her outrage and grievances against Allen. Farrow had several children, either adopted or by former husband André Previn. She is an advocate for children, and also dedicates a lot of time and money to causes in which she strongly believes.

Even with her outstanding lifetime body of work, I believe Mia Farrow will be best remembered for Rosemary's Baby.

Mr Amarachi's message meets me in utmost surprise

I got this letter in my e-mail the other day:

FROM THE DESK OF: MR AMARACHI
AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK (A.D.B),
OUAGADOUGOU BURKINA-FASO,
WEST AFRICA.


Dear Friend,

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
This message might meet you in utmost surprise, however,it's just my urgent need for foreign partner that made me to contact you for this transaction. I am a banker by profession from Burkina faso in west Africa and currently holding the post of Director .I have the opportunity of transferring the left over funds seven million united state dollars ($7million Dollars) of one of my bank clients who died along with his entire family on 31 july 2000 in a plane crash.You can confirm the genuineness of the deceased death by clicking on this web site

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm

Hence,i am inviting you for a business deal where this money can be shared between us in the ratio of 60/30 while 10% will be mapped out for expenses.If you agree to my business proposal.further details of the transfer will be forwarded to you as soon as i receive your return mail.

This account has been dormant since 2000 that i have been monitoring it .I do advice you to keep this as a top secret. I wait for your urgent reply once you are interested to be my partner kindly send the below information’s.

YOUR FULL INFORMATIONS
Your Name.
Your Home Addresses.
City.
Country.
Home Telephone.
Private Telephone.
Fax No.
Marital Status.
Age.
Occupation.
Religion.
Your picture.

THANKS
MR AMARACHI

I went to the website with the news story of the Concorde crash in 2000, and it appears legit, but of course Mr Amarachi doesn’t specify for what deceased family his bank is holding the unclaimed money.

I’m also not too crazy about the 60/30 split, with 10% going to “expenses.” Whose expenses? And would I get the 60 or the 30? Mr Amarachi doesn’t say. He also doesn’t say why, of all the human beings on earth, I’m being contacted to help him with this transaction. My guess is he wants me to send him money to get the whole process started. Uh huh.

I’m also fascinated by the “full informations” he wants from me. I can't imagine what difference my marital status would make (but for your infomations, yes, Mr Amarachi, I am married, 42 years on this past New Year’s Day).

I’m also not sure why he would need to know my religion. Mr Amarachi, I have no religion in any traditional sense. Sorry, I don’t even make a religion of money, which I think you do.

Age, occupation, feh. Mr Amarachi, go fish.

A recent story I heard on national news says that for the most part people have wised up to the e-mail games played by these African “bankers” or “lawyers”, but occasionally someone will bite and then get scammed out of thousands of dollars. The latest is that these con artists are targeting Facebook, so the warnings are out. Don’t respond to these bozos.

So, Mr Amarachi, I thank you for your offer, but you go right on ahead and enjoy that US$ 7 million from the frozen bank account of the plane crash victims. I won't be participating. I don't have much money; nowhere near 30 (or 60) percent of $7M, but I intend to hang on to what I do have, and not send any of it to you.