osnyder
New member
This is almost off-topic, but not quite! Got a good chuckle out of this short interview with the wonderful cartoonist Roz Chast, famous for her delightfully neurotic characters. Anyone who teaches their parrot to say "that's ridiculous" is A-OK in my book.
I'll paste the whole thing here and the link at the end. It's from yesterda's New York Times.
Roz Chast Brings Her Characters to Fishs Eddy
By PENELOPE GREEN
October has never been one of Roz Chastās favorite months. The New Yorker cartoonist, who has made a career out of anatomizing anxiety, is particularly skittish around Halloween, which her husband, the fiction writer Bill Franzen, celebrates with gusto, in an annual spectacle involving a guillotine, severed hands, scented smoke machines and multitudes of other props, on their Ridgefield, Conn., front lawn. In recent years, though, he has scaled back the production, from 26 tableaus to just eight, she said.
Ms. Chast had other reasons to celebrate last month, as well: She has a new book out, āWhat I Hate: From A to Z,ā a catalog of aversions, irritations and fears, including alien abduction, spontaneous human combustion and the color yellow. And she has a small line of dishes, with a gaggle of her characters, called the In Crowd, which includes a cereal bowl ($10.95), a mug ($10.95), glasses ($5 each) and salt-and-pepper shakers ($12.95 for a pair), at Fishs Eddy in Manhattan (fishseddy.com). āThere is even a celery dish,ā she said proudly. This reporter talked with Ms. Chast last week, two days after the winter storm knocked out power in Ridgefield and other towns. But her cellphone was working.
Good news about Halloween ā I hear it was canceled.
Well, it was rescheduled by the town for Nov. 6. Anyway, Bill has been scaling back. He originally made an announcement that he was going to quit the year before, but itās kind of like someone quitting smoking. You keep catching them with cigarettes. [Calling to her husband.] Are you going to have any smoke machines? [Muffled response.]
He said, āI donāt have smoke machines. I have fog machines.ā Who knew these things? He gave a lot away. He put the guillotine on the lawn with a sign that said, āFree.ā A couple of weeks ago, we woke up and it was gone. So itās a happy ending.
Why are you designing dishes, and why make a celery dish?
I always imagined my little cartoons on plates for some reason. I didnāt want to just put a cartoon on a plate; I wanted to make characters specially designed for the thing. Who doesnāt need a celery dish? Even if you donāt have any dishes, you need a celery dish. We havenāt put any in ours yet, but we definitely plan to.
You had a book signing at Fishs Eddy last week. Did people tell you about their phobias?
I heard some strange ones: turtleneck sweaters, popping open those dough things. I kind of hate those, too. Somebody had a fear of stickers. That was interesting. The thing is, itās not just phobias. Itās odd things you donāt like. The dough thing, I was happy to be reminded of that fear. Then thereās ones like lockjaw that a lot of people my age grew up with. If you got scratched with a rusty nail, you just kind of wait for that jaw to lock up, and thatās the end.
What do you write when you sign peopleās books?
I write something like, āI hope you never get stuck in an elevator full of balloons.ā
[Her phone makes a terrible noise, and then goes dead. Repeated calls back to the number yield a busy signal. After 30 minutes, Ms. Chast calls the reporter back.]
I worried that you had spontaneously combusted. Are you O.K.?
Iām absolutely fine. I had convinced myself I had been so boring you had had enough, or that it was some reporter thing, like in the movies or TV, when they donāt go through the hello or goodbye part of the phone call.
We should talk about those hooked rugs you like to make ā thatās a very homey pursuit. Are those the same birds youāve had for awhile, and what are they saying these days?
Yes, same guys. Marco is a blue-streaked lory. Eli, the African gray, turned out to be a girl. You have to get a blood test to find out. Thatās why she has a bow. She can say, āLook at the big bird,ā āThatās ridiculous.ā They both can go, āMeow, meow, meow.ā
Iāve always wanted to learn how to hook rugs. A wonderful artist named Leslie Giuliani taught me how. The nice thing is you can change it as you go along.
In the cartoon issue of The New Yorker, you made a cartoon of a family vacation. Was that your family vacation?
Yes, we went out West, to Utah. All that stuff is all totally true. We did that hike: āIs this the third emerald stream or the second?ā The firecracker store was amazing, like a Stop & Shop for explosives. The names, like āWhoās Your Daddy?ā All totally true.
Did you bring any back?
Uh, no. I didnāt think they would like it on the plane.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/garden/roz-chast-brings-her-characters-to-fishs-eddy-qa.html
I'll paste the whole thing here and the link at the end. It's from yesterda's New York Times.
Roz Chast Brings Her Characters to Fishs Eddy
By PENELOPE GREEN
October has never been one of Roz Chastās favorite months. The New Yorker cartoonist, who has made a career out of anatomizing anxiety, is particularly skittish around Halloween, which her husband, the fiction writer Bill Franzen, celebrates with gusto, in an annual spectacle involving a guillotine, severed hands, scented smoke machines and multitudes of other props, on their Ridgefield, Conn., front lawn. In recent years, though, he has scaled back the production, from 26 tableaus to just eight, she said.
Ms. Chast had other reasons to celebrate last month, as well: She has a new book out, āWhat I Hate: From A to Z,ā a catalog of aversions, irritations and fears, including alien abduction, spontaneous human combustion and the color yellow. And she has a small line of dishes, with a gaggle of her characters, called the In Crowd, which includes a cereal bowl ($10.95), a mug ($10.95), glasses ($5 each) and salt-and-pepper shakers ($12.95 for a pair), at Fishs Eddy in Manhattan (fishseddy.com). āThere is even a celery dish,ā she said proudly. This reporter talked with Ms. Chast last week, two days after the winter storm knocked out power in Ridgefield and other towns. But her cellphone was working.
Good news about Halloween ā I hear it was canceled.
Well, it was rescheduled by the town for Nov. 6. Anyway, Bill has been scaling back. He originally made an announcement that he was going to quit the year before, but itās kind of like someone quitting smoking. You keep catching them with cigarettes. [Calling to her husband.] Are you going to have any smoke machines? [Muffled response.]
He said, āI donāt have smoke machines. I have fog machines.ā Who knew these things? He gave a lot away. He put the guillotine on the lawn with a sign that said, āFree.ā A couple of weeks ago, we woke up and it was gone. So itās a happy ending.
Why are you designing dishes, and why make a celery dish?
I always imagined my little cartoons on plates for some reason. I didnāt want to just put a cartoon on a plate; I wanted to make characters specially designed for the thing. Who doesnāt need a celery dish? Even if you donāt have any dishes, you need a celery dish. We havenāt put any in ours yet, but we definitely plan to.
You had a book signing at Fishs Eddy last week. Did people tell you about their phobias?
I heard some strange ones: turtleneck sweaters, popping open those dough things. I kind of hate those, too. Somebody had a fear of stickers. That was interesting. The thing is, itās not just phobias. Itās odd things you donāt like. The dough thing, I was happy to be reminded of that fear. Then thereās ones like lockjaw that a lot of people my age grew up with. If you got scratched with a rusty nail, you just kind of wait for that jaw to lock up, and thatās the end.
What do you write when you sign peopleās books?
I write something like, āI hope you never get stuck in an elevator full of balloons.ā
[Her phone makes a terrible noise, and then goes dead. Repeated calls back to the number yield a busy signal. After 30 minutes, Ms. Chast calls the reporter back.]
I worried that you had spontaneously combusted. Are you O.K.?
Iām absolutely fine. I had convinced myself I had been so boring you had had enough, or that it was some reporter thing, like in the movies or TV, when they donāt go through the hello or goodbye part of the phone call.
We should talk about those hooked rugs you like to make ā thatās a very homey pursuit. Are those the same birds youāve had for awhile, and what are they saying these days?
Yes, same guys. Marco is a blue-streaked lory. Eli, the African gray, turned out to be a girl. You have to get a blood test to find out. Thatās why she has a bow. She can say, āLook at the big bird,ā āThatās ridiculous.ā They both can go, āMeow, meow, meow.ā
Iāve always wanted to learn how to hook rugs. A wonderful artist named Leslie Giuliani taught me how. The nice thing is you can change it as you go along.
In the cartoon issue of The New Yorker, you made a cartoon of a family vacation. Was that your family vacation?
Yes, we went out West, to Utah. All that stuff is all totally true. We did that hike: āIs this the third emerald stream or the second?ā The firecracker store was amazing, like a Stop & Shop for explosives. The names, like āWhoās Your Daddy?ā All totally true.
Did you bring any back?
Uh, no. I didnāt think they would like it on the plane.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/garden/roz-chast-brings-her-characters-to-fishs-eddy-qa.html
