CAPTION: “I wasn’t texting. I was building this ship in a bottle.”
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Robert Leighton, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Archives for posts with tag: New Yorker
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Bob Mankoff, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CAPTION: Is there a doctor of literature in the house?
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Michael Maslin, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at condenaststore.com.
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” STEPHEN KING
Illustration: New Yorker cartoon by Charles Barsotti, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CAPTION: “I wasn’t texting. I was building this ship in a bottle.”
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Robert Leighton, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Leo Cullum, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at condenaststore.com.
CAPTION: “If he was really intelligent, he wouldn’t limit his applications to East Coast schools.”
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Danny Shanahan, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CAPTION: “Costco.”
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Joe Dator, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Editor’s Note: For readers around the world (in case there isn’t a Costco where you live), the name designates a gigantic store where you can buy huge quantities of everything you need (and don’t need) at discount prices.
When the New Yorker published its first-ever science fiction issue — a double issue dated June 4 & 11, 2012 — no one predicted that the magazine would include Ray Bradbury‘s last published writing. (Bradbury passed away on June 5, 2012 a few month short of his 92nd birthday.)
Entitled “Take Me Home,” Bradbury’s contribution to the New Yorker‘s science fiction issue discusses the author’s favorite books as a child and includes a poignant reminiscence about a 4th of July spent with his grandfather. Read “Take Me Home” at newyorker.com.
Cover illustration: Daniel Clowes, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Cartoonist Matt Diffee offers insight into the creative process by explaining how he developed his “Skywriter’s Block” cartoon. (Read the entire article at the New Yorker.)
I started by jotting down the words “writer’s block.”…I started by playing with those words. First I thought of alternative meanings of the words themselves. So “writer’s block” could be a city block where writers live. It could be writers playing with children’s building blocks, or a football block performed by a writer. You can see there’s probably a joke to be had among those options, but I don’t think it would be a very good one. Might be more “punny” than funny.
You could mess around with the “writer” part of the phrase, too, and make it “rider’s block.” You could take that as far as you wanted and get “horse-rider’s block” or “subway-rider’s block.” I don’t think I pursued that angle very much.
I mostly thought in terms of replacing the “writer” with another occupation. I jotted down things like “dentist’s block,” “taxidermist’s block,” “proctologist’s block,” “ventriloquist’s block,” and then a bunch of occupations that end in “-er” like “plumber’s block” and “butcher’s block” (which has its own punny potential).
In the end, I found the gag by adding words to the phrase. Where can you add words to it? In the middle? Not really. At the end? “Writer’s block and tackle.” “Writer’s blockade.” At the beginning? Sure, “copywriter’s block,” “grant-writer’s block,” then eventually I came to “skywriter’s block” and BAM, there’s the idea…
CREDIT: New Yorker cartoon by Matt Diffee, all rights reserved
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