Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 3/13/02
Artist's Statement
Thanks to Dave Israel, who also
runs this website for me, for the idea for this cartoon. He visited me here
at my winter headquarters in Manhattan last weekend, when we had many a misadventure
on the New York subway system, which is always an object lesson in the difference
between the way things are supposed to happen (the 1 and 2 trains stop at
all local stations) and the way they actually do (except on weekends, when
due to construction the northbound trains suddenly skip everything between
34th and 96th). Also we were trying to make logistical plans, which also always
end up being a compromise between what's supposed to happen (he'd leave fairly
early in the afternoon on Monday so as to get back to Baltimore in time to
find a cab home from the bus station and pick up his dog at his mother' house)
and what you'd like to have happen (just stay in New York and drink all day)--that
compromise, of course, constituting what actually happened (he went home on
a later bus drunk). The whole notion of making plans has become a running
joke between us, since we both know that capricious Circumstance and our own
inherent dereliction and overruling love of beer will inevitably conspire
to put our most foolproof plans to ruin and force us into some ill-conceived,
last-minute backup contingency.
Life in general is basically a compromise between what's supposed to happen
and what you'd like to have happen, and the end result usually falls not anywhere
between them but turns out instead to be some third, utterly unforeseen, and
much worse thing. Although I would hope that this problem is a universal one,
I will conform that all examples drawn here are autobiographical. I am not
married and dote pathetically on my cat; I haven't had a job since 1991 and
have, admittedly, drawn a cartoon of a carrot up a man's butt (see archives,
December 19, 2001); and the
last ugly scenario has played itself out more times than I prefer to remember.
And it's usually Jim Fisher's fault, too, feeding me one too many pitchers
when he knows I'm supposed to meet Allison and go to a Bosnian puppet show
about the atrocities of war at the Lincoln Center later that night. I was
actually given an
excuse note written on a cocktail napkin once (by Dave Israel, the last
time he was in New York) but was so drunk I forgot to present it. Not that
it would've helped, probably. Although it was usually my girlfriend Allison
who was disappointed to see me turn up trashed beyond recognition on these
occasions, in this drawing I have substituted the face of my friend Carolyn,
because she looks much funnier when she is peeved. Allison didn't look very
funny at all. I stopped ever letting this happen after the Bosnian puppet
show fiasco.
In short, my choices in life have led me to become an undependable drunkard
who draws carrots up old men's asses for a living and is in love with his
cat. I am sorry for everything.