#411: Substackers Drink at EAT, Thirsty TikTok Comments, Screaming Pillows & More!

+ Dia de los muertos Sketchbook, Smalls Jazz, NO-Vember, Process Junkie & Morris gets up close and personal

Welcome to Issue #411 of New York Cartoons.

EAT on Madison remains one of those iconic Upper East Side holdouts where the ghosts of Woody Allen movies still linger in the corners, which made it the perfect backdrop for my latest attempt to masquerade as a functional member of New York media society.

Substack arranged for three New Yorker cartoonists—myself, Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell, and Sofia Warren —to document their best-selling writers’ salon in ink, despite my historical inability to navigate large crowds while holding both wine and drawing implements.

The best part of doing these events (apart from the fact that they keep choosing the best venues in the city) is getting to catch up in person with Substackers I’ve been reading for years and meeting new ones I’ve never heard of. One writer filmed me drawing him and posted it to his TikTok. The comments are erm… Welp. They’re interesting.

Keep reading…

Read the full post here:

My Screaming Pillows are Back.

Well, we're back to 4 years of a convicted felon as the President of the US, and this screaming pillow is just what you need to at least get you to the midterms. What's more, the soft, machine-washable case with the shape-retaining insert is a joy to have long afternoon naps on! (Or a 4-year induced coma!) 🥹

(Let me know if you have any issues with shipping. It’s been buggy this week.)

Smalls Late Set: Eviatar Slivnik Quartet

I got to see one of the best quartets that have played Smalls in a long time last week. You can listen to the set by the Eviatar Slivnik Quartet here.

Somehow, we’re already halfway through NO-Vember and I still can’t say NO to things…

For the past 6 years I’ve run the NO-vember challenge. It started on Mailchimp but is now on Substack. Take a look here:

This week on Process Junkie, I dove into the power of creative partnerships, the essential skill of cultivating boredom and the lessons I’ve learned in a decade of meditation practice. You can read them both below:

Excerpt:

I have a confession to make: Something I realised I was doing wrong this year (aside from misusing the word brat) was filling every moment of time with doing something.

Until recently, I was that person at the gym who couldn't bear the sound of their own footsteps. You know the type— perpetually connected to a podcast feed like it's an IV drip of derpamine, frantically tapping through Angry Birds on the subway as if their life depended on toppling those precarious pig fortresses.

The crown jewel of my constant-stimulation addiction? My trusty AirPods, which had practically fused to my ear canals. I'd developed an almost Pavlovian response to silence, reaching for them with the desperation of a caffeine addict at 6 AM. My brain had become a 24/7 drive-through for other people's thoughts, with my own ideas reduced to sleeping in the parking lot…

Creativity Requires Quiet.

Excerpt:

Every creative journey has its origin story. Mine began late in 2013, with a giggling man in white robes doing an uncanny Yoda impression¹. He’d insert a painfully long pause every few words: “Whatever we put our attention on…will grow stronger…in our life.”

I’m watching his warped image on an old television, the VHS tape so well-worn that the audio crackles and distorts his thick Indian accent. But the message cuts through: the mind is an infinite canvas, and turning your attention inward is like learning to use a new set of creative tools.

The man, I later learned, was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His photo hangs on the classroom wall next to a child’s crayon drawing of what appears to be a dog sitting in a small puddle of shit…

A Skeptic's Path to Creative Enlightenment: What I Learned from 10 Years of Daily Meditation Practice

Excerpt:

Years after collaborating with Scott, I came to the realisation that almost all of my favourite movies, comic books, TV shows, albums, podcasts and comedy writing were almost entirely by creative partnerships…

• Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld (Seinfeld)

• Stephen Merchant & Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras etc.)

• Key & Peele

• Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (Broad City)

• French & Saunders (Ab Fab)

• Tom Gammill & Max Pross (Simpsons, Seinfeld, Letterman, Curb)

• Hale & Pace

• Harry Bliss and Steve Martin

• Mitchell & Webb

• Martin & Molloy

• Ben Folds & Nick Hornby (Lonely Avenue)

• D.B. Weiss and David Benioff (Game of Thrones …until season 8)

• Stan Lee & Steve Ditko (Spider-man)

• Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks

• George Burns & Gracie Allen

• Jack Burns & George Carlin

I could keep going…

Thoughts on creative partnerships.

This week’s Sketchbook is a selection of live drawings done for Modelo’s Day of the Dead celebrations in New York last weekend.

“Thank you for being a frien pillow.”