Pretending To Be Someone I’m Not
My long weekend at the National Cartoonists Reuben Awards
Weekend in Hollywood
Well, it’s been a week to reflect, beat jet lag and get my airplane vomit bag collection re-organized. It’s time to report on my long Memorial weekend in Hollywood. For those of you who don’t know, once a year all the members of the National Cartoonists Society meet in one cool place to drink, hob nob, drink, eat, draw, sing, hob nob, eat, and draw ... all simultaneously. The whole thing is anchored by Saturday night’s black tie Reuben Awards where the best in our business are honored.
What the hell am I doing here?
Sure, I’ve been an NCS member for five years since Speed Bump’s Dave Coverly called me out of the blue and mumbled something about Loose Parts not sucking too much and getting me to join. Putting the burlap sack over my head and stuffing in the van was overkill as far as I was concerned.
So for four days or so, I walk around these giants of the cartooning business and people seem to think I belong. Please don’t tell them maybe that’s a mistake.
But now, a week later, it’s kind of jumbled, so maybe the best thing to do is just bullet out a lot of thoughts and see if it comes out to something.
(If you want to see pictures, just go to this site’s home page and click on the big pink box. There’s a couple of dozen there.)
• The lovely wife, Eileen, and I get in Friday afternoon. We get to the Renaissance Hotel around 1 PM. Beautiful place. Right next to the Kodak Theater where the Academy Awards are held. Right down the street from all the stars on the sidewalk and all the handprints in the concrete. We decide to have lunch and hit the pool. I look one way and see the Hollywood sign. I look the other and see a giant 12-story archway with carving of Egyptian figures on it. Waste the next hour trying to figure out why one of the Egyptians is wearing a wristwatch. We manage get a few hours, and a few drinks, poolside before we get ready to, ummm, come back and have a few drinks poolside. Stephan Pastis walks by. Dave Coverly walks by. I hunker down.
• Friday night is the poolside cocktail welcome party. Every year we think people will forget who we are. Every year they prove us wrong. We reunite with Sam Viviano right off. Sam is art director of Mad Magazine. He and Eileen spent a day last year in New Orleans putting siding on a house as part of a Habitat for Humanity Project. They don’t build them nicer than Sam. I reconnoiter with Darrin Bell of Candorville whom I first meet online. Then I meet Glenn McCoy and the niceness level is off the charts. Before you know it, four hours go by and we’re in the lobby bar. Bunches of people are going to an after party. We’re on East Coast time and crash.
• Saturday morning is right back to the pool for breakfast. I pass Pittsburg Post Editorial Cartoonist extraordinaire Rob Rogers who just finished running. I skipped my morning run so now I have guilt with my eggs.
• It’s off to the NCS members-only meeting. It’s usally the most pedantic event of the weekend. How much money is in the accounts. Here’s next year’s plan. Here are the new board members. Stuff like that. Then Bill Amend steps up and says we have a guest who wants to talk to us.
JJ Abrams. Yes, as in Star Trek, Lost, and so on. Gottta be the busiest guy in LA but he’s come to ask a favor. He wants the cartoonists to help out with a big volunteering thing he’s trying to pull off this fall. (It’s very cool. More on this coming in a few weeks. Will I help? He had me at hello). Of course, I have no camera. But I do catch him free for a moment as I walk out and get to shake his hand, say hello and ask him how Lost ends. Turns out it’s all a dream Bob Newhart has. Hope I didn’t spoil it for you.
• Saturday afternoon is panel time. The big turnout of the weekend was for the panel on the Future of Newspapers and Comics. Somehow I’m on the panel. I talk way too much. Sorry, I’m a bit passionate about newspapers. The session is extended to take all the questions. I make a crack about a new Comics page in The Philadelphia Inquirer that has puzzles and only two comics: my new Biz cartoon and something called Dilbert. I walk off the dais and meet Scott Adams. Oops. Even better, my wife sits next to a lovely lady. “Come meet Jean,” she says. So “Jean” and I talk for another 20 minutes about the future of newspapers. Afterward, I tell my wife her new friend is Jean Schulz, Charles Schulz’ wife. This is the kind of stuff that happens at the Reuben weekend.
• Time for the pre-Reuben cocktail party on the deck. Everyone is in black tie and gown. Bill and Lisa Hinds (Bill does Tank McNamara) befriended us last year and this year we get to meet their delightful family. Talk to Dave Coverly and New Yorker cartoonist Mort Gerberg. Also meet Guy and Rodd of Brevity. I know I fight for newspaper spots with these guys but, damn, they’re nice people. Impossible to hate. Love their sense of humor. We decide to meet with Mark Parisi and start and offshoot of the NCS for Far Side rip off artists. Also talk with David Silverman of the Simpsons Movie. He can’t stay long because he’s leaving to play tuba in a jazz gig he has that night. I kid you not.
• Reuben dinner is lovely. We share a table with the Tundra guys: Chad Carpenter (artist) and Bill Kellog (marketing genius). Chad’s wife Karen is there. And it’s not so much that she looks like Sarah Palin, it’s that she looks like Sarah Palin and they live in Wasilla, Alaska. Bill Laroque and his wife sit to my left. To my right is Reuben nominee Jack Pittman, a delightful southern gentleman if ever there was one. Carpenter asks me a favor. Asks me if I’ll do an original Loose Parts sketch for his German friend Bernd who is a big fan. I turn to my wife and say what a wild world we live in. I meet a guy from Alaska, in LA, who has a friend in Germany who is a fan of stuff I draw at my dining room table in Pennsylvania.
The night is a lovely blur. The opning video features Jeff Keane in drag. Mike Luckovich hosts with his 8-year-old daughter. Mike Peters rips his clothes off. My friend Sam Viviano wins. My friend Mark Parisi wins. Best of all, my friend Mark Tatulli wins.
(Quick anecdote. Like 20 years ago I’m making a TV commercial in Philly. We walk into this post production house. They introduce me to this young video post artist, guy named Tatulli. As we worked, we struck up a conversation. He turns to me and says, “This is only temporary. I really want to be a syndicated cartoonist someday.” He starts showing me his drawings. I don’t know what’s more amazing; that he fulfilled his dream or that me, a guy who had no idea he wanted to cartoon, would end up in the same room with him as he and Lio win Cartoon Strip of the Year.)
Tatulli gives the best acceptance speech. Emotional. Profane. Sincere. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. No one, I mean no one, works harder than Mark Tatulli.
• After the awards, we get invited to the winners after party. (I guess it was thanks for my being on the panel). We get to talk with Mort Gerberg and his wife Judith. Mort is a personal favorite cartoonist of mine and his wife is amazing to talk to as well. We stay until we just plain run out of gas.
• Not much going Sunday morning so we hit the Hollywood sights. I get my picture taken by the hand and footprints of Dick Van Dyke. I watched the Dick Van Dyke Show every day as a kid and tried to model my life after that show. If only I can get Eileen to wear capri pants.
• Sunday around 3 we all pile into busses and go to Cathy Guisewite’s home for dinner. I can’t figure how, or why, she’s doing this. But her home is lovely and she bravely gives permission to wander wherever you want. Rodd Perry (Brevity) and I head directly to her studio. It’s a lovely, sunny second-story space. She leaves notes stepping us through how Cathy is made. Did you know she never uses pencil? Sketches everything in ink over and over till it’s right.
I’m blown away by the original cartoons hanging on her wall. Gifts from Charles Schulz and more. There’s nothing like visitng her bathroom and oogling and original Bloom County to give you a weird experience.
Everyone is asked to draw on a toy piano and a jar. By time I get to them, they’re already covered with amazing doddles. I try to find an out of the way place to draw so Guisewite doesn’t have to try to figure out who I am so she can explain my art to guests over the next 20 years.
• We return to the hotel just in time to head over to an LA nightclub they’ve rented out for the NCS. The band is really good. Of course, the keyboardist and singer is Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez. There’s a guy born in the deep end of the talent pool. After a few hours of dancing, karaoke starts. It gets progressivley weirder until Tatulli goes on stage in a mermaid outfit to sing a Disney tune. I kid you not.
More random observations:
• I get to spend time with one of my favorite people: Jerry Van Amerongen. There may not be a cartoonist whose style I admire more. To find out that the man behind it may be the nicest person on the planet is just a bonus.
• I get to meet Glenn McCoy, another guy whose stuff just blows me away. Tatulli tells me the first day that Glenn wants to meet me. I can’t believe it. He’s funny, nice and a genius.
• I get to meet people from other syndicates who make me feel at home. John Glynn, John Vivona ... I’m talking about you. They’re nice to me for no discernible reason I can figure.
• I can’t forget the people who always make me feel welcome: Tom Stiglich, Joe Was, Jim Horwitz, Chad Frye. And I apologize to those whom I may have missed.
I leave inspired and tired.
And that’s the best definition of a good time I can think of.
Till next time, stay Loose.
Dave
Blogged Arteries
Sunday, May 31, 2009
