Lee Lorenz died last Thursday. He was 90. Lorenz had over 1,800 cartoons published in The New Yorker over 40 years, and was its cartoon editor from 1973 to 1997. He introduced some controversial, “edgy” cartoonists to the magazine, e.g., Roz Chast.
“There’s nothing more futile than trying to explain a cartoon to someone who doesn’t get it,” Lorenz said. He cited an illustration by Jack Ziegler of a man standing at the counter of the Bureau of Missing Toast as he tearfully shows a clerk a photo of a well-done slice of bread.
“It didn’t seem like the craziest thing we’d ever run, but I had people come up to me and say they didn’t get it — or like it,” Lorenz said. “On the other hand, Jack got a half dozen pieces of toast in the mail.”
In a Lorenz cartoon I like very much, a grumpy old man is standing before Saint Peter at the pearly gates. Saint Pete is looking through his big book and says: “Ah! Here you are — over on the shit list.”
The pretty famous “I say it’s spinach” cartoon is by Lorenz. A little girl is looking at some vegetable on her plate, and her mom says “It’s broccoli, Dear.” And the little girl replies: “I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.”
Rest in peace, Lee Lorenz. Thanks for all the laughs.
Wanna feel old? Jessica Alba, in the puzzle at 58 down today, is 41 and has three kids. She didn’t marry for money, but her husband’s name is Cash Warren. The first pics of her oldest daughter, Honor, appeared in OK! magazine and earned JA $1.5 million.
In 2014, Alba appeared in Henry Louis Gates’s genealogy series “Finding Your Roots,” where her lineage was traced back to the ancient Maya civilization. The research indicated that her surname was not inherited from a Spanish man, since her father’s direct paternal line (Y-DNA) was Haplogroup Q-M3, being Indigenous in origin. [Huh?] Her father’s matrilineal line was Jewish and revealed that lawyer Alan Dershowitz is a genetic relative of hers. [I did not make that up.]
Alba, but not Dershowitz, was listed on Playboy magazine’s “25 Sexiest Celebrities” in 2006, and she appeared on its cover. She sued Playboy for its use of her image without consent, which she contended gave the impression that she was featured in a “nude pictorial.” She later dropped the lawsuit after receiving a personal apology from Hugh Hefner, who agreed to make donations to charities Alba supported.
In June 2009, while filming “The Killer Inside Me” in Oklahoma City, Alba pasted posters of sharks around town to bring attention to the diminishing population of great white sharks. It was speculated that she would be charged with vandalism, but none of the property owners wanted to press charges. Alba apologized and donated money to the United Way, whose billboard she obscured with one of the shark posters. Here’s the poster, followed by the lovely Ms. Alba herself.
The NY-area football teams (both of whom play in Jersey), got off to surprisingly decent starts this season after years of dreadful futility. It induced in their fans what I like to call “delusions of adequacy.” But both teams have come back down to earth of late, the Giants with a thud — a 48-22 drubbing at the hands of Philadelphia. I liked the headline in the Times today: “Playoff-Bound Eagles Deliver Cold, Hard Truths.”
It’s Sam’s birthday today! He’s 34, kinehora. Happy Birthday Sam!
I was driving with Caity recently and we both yawned, one after another. It reminded me of a yawn theory that Sam’s friend Joe Urbelis propounded years ago. I thought it was something like there was only one original yawn in the world and it just keeps getting passed around. But Sam says it’s a bit narrower. It’s that you will only yawn if you see someone else yawn. So, e.g., if you yawn on an airplane, it’s because a yawn came in at the door and was going around the plane.
I reminded Caity of Joe’s theory, and she reminded me that, years ago, I came up with an explanation for why we yawn when someone else does. It’s because when someone else yawns, your body sees it and says “Hey, that’s a good idea!”
Here’s a family story from about 11 or12 years ago. I can pinpoint it because Lianna was still sitting in a high chair and she’s 13 now. Linda, Caity, Lianna, and I were having dinner “out,” i.e, we picked up food at Whole Foods and were eating it there in a dining area they used to have, pre-covid. I remembered that Linda and Caity had been planning to make muffins that day for Caity to bring to some event, so I asked how it went. Linda said “It was fine,” in a tone I had come to learn means it was a disaster of catastrophic proportions. “What happened?,” I prodded, and Linda said “We had a little trouble getting the muffins out of the pan, but it worked out.”
“Next time, we can use liners,” Caity said, and Linda said “or we can cut up parchment paper.”
So I said, “Parchment paper — is that the crinkly yellowy paper they wrote the Declaration of Independence on?” And Caity said, a little snippily, “Yes, Dad, that’s exactly what it is.”
So I said, “Well, young lady, I’ll have you know it just so happens that Martha Washington once accidentally used a copy of the Declaration of Independence to make muffins. And when George came home and realized what happened he was furious. “What am I supposed to tell Thomas Jefferson when he comes over later?,” he asked her. “He’s been working on that thing for weeks!”
And Martha just smiled, because she knew how much George loved her and that he could never really be angry at her. She said, “George, it was an accident — he’ll understand. Offer him a muffin — they’re delicious!“
And Caity’s and Linda’s were too.
The Wellington Files 