January 2008


1 January 2008

Dear Mr. Kreider,

It is now nearly 3am 1 Jan 2008 in Amsterdam. Drunkish, so that's about the time to write and thank you 3 or so months after you've given me a great gift. As an expatriate, I would like to mention that earlier this year I was experiencing an alarming degree of not-nearly-earned-enough self pity (and more-deserved sense of homesickness) before coming across your work on your site over the past few months.

I, of course, am talking about not just the fantastic artwork, but the essays (in particular the Kliban and eyes wide shut essays) which made me write you to thank you. I spent three years in Balto and fondly remember your citypaper comics. However, to cruise through them all online was almost too much pleasure--I had to ration it into 2 nights, but wished I'd dragged it out further.

However, I did not know about this writing stuff and really encourage that. Your Kliban essay really, really did it for me. Consider me now your fan forever. I also thank you for reminding me how much I like generally being American. The mawkish sentence or two prior aside, it really is important for me as an expatriate to have touchstones of non-suckitude so thanks.

As a generous artist who's also written the best (and only) essay on Kliban, you're welcome at my place if you ever find yourself in Amsterdam.

Please keep spreading the word on Kliban's non-Cat stuff.

Fijne nieuw jaar!!

Brendan O'Connor

Brendan,

Greetings from New York City, 9:30 A.M., good old Eastern Standard Time.

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy drinking schedule to write and let me know how much my work's meant to you. Drawing those cartoons often feels like beaming messages out into space, not knowing whether the aliens even exist. It's especially gratifying to hear that my work makes you pleased to be an American. I wish the semiliterates who write in to accuse me of tearing the country down could understand this. But this is hardly the most important thing they don't understand.

Nice to know the Kliban essay is still being read. It really gripes my gut how little known he is today. He was one of our great artists, far better not only than a lot of other, more generally admired cartoonists, but better than a lot of our revered fine artists, like the creatively sterile huckster whose life's work, such as it was, is currently taking up the whole of the Guggenheim. Plus he may well have been, at the time, the funniest fucking person alive. Like my cartoons, that essay was a futile effort to restore a little justice and sane perspective to the world. You can see how much good it did.

If I'm ever over there, I will take you up on that free drink. I really should compile some sort of database to remind me where in the world and from whom I have free drinks coming.

Tim

Dear Tim,

Agreed and I think you've done some good to right some of the spiritual imbalance regarding Kliban with your essay. I was very pleased to find it. It really is an injustice how little appreciated he is. I blame the Cat too. Its popularity drags kitchifies the Kliban brand, categorizes him as a known artifact to the popular mind.

Personally, I would not know him it all if it weren't for my own early teen curiosity in picking through my grandmother's estate. She was wonderful while alive, but I grew to love her more when I found her trove of Jules Pfiefer, Oliphant, and Kliban books. I learned more about american history from these books--and how formidable a person my sweet old grandmother was from the fact that she collected these.

As you recommend, it was best that I "found" him. That is why it's so important to me and why your essay's epilogue really spoke to me: Leave Kliban around for the kids to find. Forcing an appreciation really will not work. As an artist, you probably must know this more than most, I guess the mind recoils at being told to appreciate something (but god knows I've tried it with Kliban). I guess you have to let the apes come to the obelisk of their own accord.

I truly appreciate your response and am surprised you did considering how earnest these sorts of missives come across-not my usual epistolary tone. But I guess you are getting some pretty earnest hate mail too. They are losers.

As an expatriate, feeling far away and having liberal inclinations as I have, one is torn with the normal and natural antipathy towards the peculiar Bushite blend of imperialism and provincialism that America can represent and the fact that you ARE an American and do not want your country ragged upon roundly. A knife's edge, but I was serious in what I said that reading you reminded me of what I love about being American. Your work is wonderful, and I had been meaning to write you for some time how cruising through your pages helped me get through some major homesickness and helped reassure me that the homeland is secure.

A chicagoan, I went to Balto for lawschool (vampire training) and then to NYC in 2004 to work. I loved Baltimore, liked NYC a lot but now have ended up in Amsterdam almost a year due to loving a dutch girl I met in DC. Drink is always on, so make sure to keep me on the database if you make it here.

In NYC, in the diamond district on E 48th street, is Gotham Books. I want to make sure you've been there as one of the owners was a trustee of the Edward Gorey estate and they've got a great collection of original Gorey drawings and memorabilia upstairs. If you like that sort of thing (and you really should) it's really worth the trip.
Best,
Brendan

Brendan,

I truly regret to bring you this news, but I've learned that the Gotham Book Mart closed in fall of 2006. Perhaps this severs your one remaining sentimental tie to this country.

Your drink offer remains on file.

Tim

 

2 January 2008

Just a funny comment--

Bhutto actually wasn't hot. I know some pakistani's and they said she was known as "hijra" in Pakistan-- hijra's are the caste in India/Pakistan that are men that dress like women (sometimes per they've become eunuchs); My Indian friend said the same thing-- she looks like a man. Now, I didn't think she looked THAT bad, I thought it was interesting to watch from one photo to the next, as her appearance would shift-- sometimes she had a double-chin and looked 50 years old, then in another she'd look 35, wearing the latest gucci glasses. It's image management by handlers, common to all high-profile people, I think.

Sincerely,

Alex Rediger
Accounts Receivable

Alex,

I passed on the information about Bhutto to my friend Boyd, a connoisseur of hotness. It saddened him, like learning that yet another photo of the Loch Ness Monster is a fake. Bhutto may have been no Yulia Tymoshenko--rowr!--but you have to admit that compared, to, say, Hillary Clinton, who's the hottest thing close to a world leader we've got, she was a honey. But your point about image handlers is well taken. Hilary looks better now than she did in college, something that can be said of very few women in their fifties.

Nice to see readers taking an interest in the current events that affect all our lives.

Tim

 

4 January 2008

Subject heading: “raccoon coat”

Dude, you've gotta get a big floppy felt hat with a plume, and a chain. Then you'd look just like an R Crumb character, which is appropriate since your depictions of yourself remind me of Crumb at his most morbid. Pity you can't snap yourself out of it by the convenient entry of big hipped woman in tight shorts. Still, i'd love to see a picture of you and your buddies trucking.

Apologies for this absurdly late reply to your letter. Since Ms. C.-H. absconded for Europe I have failed to keep on top of administrative duties at the Pain offices.

Thanks for your compliments on my fantastickal new raccoon coat! It is, indeed a thing of splendor. Yours is not the first intimation of pimpery to be made in connection with this coat. A few weeks ago I attended the birthday celebration of a friend at a Lower East Side club, resplendent in The Coat, and afterward he told me that no fewer than four (4!) women, on learning that he knew me, exclaimed, "I just assumed he was a pimp and I totally wanted him to pimp me out!" I have made some inquiries in this area but it seems the whole profession is more complicated and difficult and fraught with hazards than I'd at first imagined, and basically just not for me.

As for R. Crumb, his tastes in women differ from my own--though we are both, to be sure, ass men of the highest order.

Reg'd's'.,

Tim Kreider

 

4 January 2008

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080103/NEWS01/801030394/1311/48HOURS

Rudy Giuliani seems to be hinting that he'd want Dick Cheney involved in his administration. I'm a Canadian and that gives me fucking nightmares man. I mean can you imagine? These two bald old men, each permanently wearing what Shelly describes as [a] "frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command". Two paranoid violent secretive fascists at the helm of the nation. At least with Bush you kind of get the sense he's not smart enough to realize what he's dooing, being the idiot man child he is. Cheney kills small animals for fun, Rudy's only joy seems to be cheating on his current spouse. On the plus side, if they do get elected, we may see the first gay couple in the White House as these two loathsome souls finally realize that they are the only ones on earth who could ever truly understand each other. Oh, and the biblical apocalypse.

Keep up the good work Tim.

Alex Martin,

To call Dick Cheney a "partner" in this administration seems a little disingenuous, to say the least, kind of like calling Edgar Bergen Charlie McCarthy's "partner." And Giuliani's Lincoln analogy sounds pretty defensive and inappropriate since his eagerness to find a running mate "who really knows what he's doing" on board seems to suggest that he realizes, on some level, that he himself wouldn't.

Happily this all seems moot at this point since so far Giuliani is placing consistently just above Grand Moff Tarkin in the primaries.

Tim

 

6 January 2008

Anyhow I am shocked -- SHOCKED, I say -- that Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister of the Ukraine, did not make your They Hate The Hot comic. She's gorgeous.

Yore fan,

Jesse Irwin
Chicago, IL

Jesse Irwin:

Just last night forwarded Yulia Tymoshenko's image to my friend Boyd, who likes to keep up-to-date on such matters. All I can say in my own defense is, I had no idea. Who would've thought there could be any world leader so hot? Why can't we have a hot president? If only Mary McDonnell would run. Why not? She may be no Yulia Tymoshenko, but, like Reagan, she plays a President on TV.

Anyway, thanks very much for this important information. Her hotness is indisputable, but is anyone trying to kill her? Surely Putin must be.

Tim

 

8 January 2008

Dear Sir or Madam,

Yesterday I was in my local safeway waiting in the check-out line when I saw the most recent Time magazine which features Vladimir Putin as their pick of person of the year. "That's an odd thing to call him" I thought to myself, and so I picked up the issue interested to read their justification for such a claim. When I got to the interview, there is a large photo of him seated, nigh king-like, looking down at us with his unblinking eyes. And I thought to myself "By thor's hammer, I've seen that pose before!"

I could not resist putting paint to page, and before I knew it I had given the emperor new clothes. I sent a picture of it to my brother, and he said "Tim Kreider did this like a million years ago you plagiarizing faggot." And I remembered you had, so I send this to you with apologies for unoriginality, but here's hoping you get a kick out of it anyway.

http://s88.photobucket.com/albums/k162/absurdmusician/?action=view&current=vladvondoom.jpg


-Rob Randolph

Robert Randolph:

Thanks for acknowledging my precedence in this regard. I am impressed and very pleased by your own more elaborate portrait of Putin as the Lord of Latveria. I hope you will send a copy of this to TIME as a letter-to-the-editor in response to their making von Doom their Man of the Year.

Tim

 

9 January 2008

Game Show Host President

Tim,

Your “Artist’s Statement” is my second-most anticipated Wednesday event, followed only by your cartoon. (Work comes in a distant third, and I like my work!)

In your latest, you lamented how the primary winners would be the man closest to a game show host. Just a few nights ago, a woman interviewed by NPR told why she backed Romney: “He looks the most presidential, sounds the most presidential.” Nothing about his stand on any issues, nothing about how he’ll help make the nation the way she wants it. Ugh, the triumph of image over substance continues; but never so blatantly, so succinctly. She even got his first name wrong.

On another note, I loved your portrayal of the future representatives of dynasty. Chelsea’s light touch (and her mom’s hair, since hair on a candidate is so important) contrasted with the hard-edged Jenna. You captured the meanness almost necessary in a Republican candidate.

Keep up the outstanding work!

David Strobel

David Strobel,

Your anecdote about the Romney supporter depresses me, almost as much as Matt Taibbi's accounts of audience members parroting verbatim talking points from stump speeches they've just heard as though they were their own original thoughts. But to despise this is to despise humanity and this, although valid, is not a healthy attitude for me to cultivate.

Thanks for noticing my efforts at depicting the future candidates. I only wish I'd had more time to draw the aged and bloated Jenna. It would not surprise me one bit if that boozy little skank ran for the Presidency. If her illiterate cokehead dad could do it, twice, why not? Life has taught her that a lazy shithead can accomplish absolutely anything, including single-handedly totalling his whole nation, with enough money and the right connections.

Tim

9 January 2008

Ms. Phelætia,

If you could forward this along to Tim I'd appreciate it.

Tim,

I share your sentiments regarding the political climate in America, which is one of the reasons why I left the country. I now live in the countryside of northern england. I'm an artist as well, and I'm only dropping you this note to let you know that I check the site regularly, and as an artist recognize your drawing skills as top shelf. Keep up the good work. If you're ever in northern england, look me up, your first pint's on me.

Regards,

Matthew Hickey
www.absolutearts.com/hickeystudio

Matthew,

Alas, Ms. C.-H. has returned to Europe and I am reduced to the indignity of answering my own mail.

Thanks for your kind words about my work. It's always especially gratifying to have a fellow artist notice my draftsmanship, since I squander such a lot of time on the drawing and get less money and recognition than people who clearly whip out their strips in fifteen minutes or use clip art. But the race goes not to the swiftest, right?

I like your own work very much--more moody and evocative than the usual noonday-light photorealism. Do you work from photos? I ask because your painting seems to incorporate lens flare and other artifacts of photography.

I don't know why I don't leave the country. I guess because all my friends are here. If I could take them all with me I'd move to a Greek island.

Tim

 

9 January 2008

Dear Tim,

Thanks for the well-wishes, I hope you have had a chance to bring order out of chaos in your workplace.

I am once again heartened, despite your most curmudgeonly efforts, by your charming example of 'maitri' in the form of the first panel of this week's cartoon. Though I'm sure some of your sympathy for Hillary comes from thinking maybe she's