Artist's Statement

Announcement: I will be doing one of my slideshow/talks for R. Sikoryak’s "Carousel" at Dixon Place, 258 Bowery, 2^nd floor, at 8:00 P.M. on February 22^nd. Call 212-219-0736 for tickets. Any New York City fans of The Pain are encouraged to attend, and to ask me out for drinks afterward.

I apologize for the lameness of this cartoon’s conceit. Anytime an artist tries to foist off on you a work of art based on how he didn’t have any ideas for that work of art, that artist has failed. This is an ancient and contemptible dodge and it has never worked, no, not once. I’ll also go ahead and apologize for the haste of its execution; whereas last week’s cartoon took me two whole days to draw, this one took only three hours. I woke up at 7:00 A.M. Monday morning and got it sent in to my editors shortly after ten, which is absolutely my final deadline. Thanks to my friend Isabellle for helping me come up with some of the panel ideas. The "idea" in panel 1, as you probably don’t need to be told, is really taken from an urgently scrawled notation found in one of my little notepads the morning after a productive session with friends at Cox’s in Baltimore or McSorley’s in New York. Artwork on the far left in panel #2 © 2007 Emma. Despite my inexcusable dereliction I think this turned out surprisingly well, a solid C+ or B- effort. It turns out there’s no premise so uninspired it can’t be rescued by an appearance by Wim and Wem, those Wuvable and Wascally W_______s!

I don’t know why I was feeling so uninspired this week. Maybe I’m still just exhausted from last week’s undersea extravaganza. The news this week hasn’t been news so much news as the depressingly redundant confirmation of old news; maybe you’d call it not news but Ders. Iraq is a hopeless clusterfuck; global warming is real and it’s our fault; Republicans continue, with infallible calculation, to contrive to bring the greatest possible deprivation, injustice, suffering, and grief to the greatest number of people, while Democrats continue to do nothing. I feel like we’re in summer reruns. And the fall previews do not look promising. The usual corporate-sponsored talking heads and stuffed suits are running for President, albeit some with excitingly novel genitals and skin color--the equivalent of introducing "new, improved" cosmetic variations to the same brand of crappy product, like Clear Coke or Chili-Lime Doritos.

Also conceivably a contributing factor was that I spent Sunday eating room-service rack of lamb at poolside on the 45^th floor of the Parker-Meridian Hotel overlooking Central Park and drinking some fancy pear brandy at a French bistro, none of which was exactly conducive to getting down to work Sunday evening. Instead I downloaded some Battlestar Galactica episodes and watched them in bed. I dreamed that George Bush had a heart attack and died during his morning run. Everyone was so shocked it took us all a couple of hours to realize that Dick Cheney was now president and absolutely nothing had changed. Cheney tried to appoint a new President—some other feeble patsy he could twist to his iron will--but someone explained that he actually had to be President now and appoint a new Vice President. Maybe it was Baltar.