Lockhart got a brand new blog.

Courtesy of programming genius JCN, a new comics feature: a strip generated at random from panels of previous strips. Thanks to advanced technology, we've gone a step beyond Hypernorm, which randomly picked the last panel only. Utter nonsense, more often than not, but I find it endlessly amusing. Then again, I'm easily endlessly amused. Or is that amusingly endlessly easy?

• JVG: The Random Comic Strip

Sliding, surfing down the subway steps; someone behind says "Wow, he was never any good at sports in high school." At the bottom, hop the turnstile — the two old ladies know me — then out the back door and fall waist deep into snow. I call for help, pretend I'm stuck for the benefit of another guy from high school, who walks away without offering assistance. Nice guy. Drag myself out of the snowdrift and across the lawn, buried only thigh deep there. Crawling up the hill: have to get to the house at the top, something to do. Slow work. My hand breaks through the snowcrust, light glows bluely up from one of the ground fixtures. Almost at the top. I grab the underbrush to pull myself up.

What could be more boring?

In the news: Rebecca is cross-examined by the Princeton Packet. This weekend, the "folk-jazz-rocker" performs at The New Jersey Folk Festival, and then on May 1 at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, which is, according to our resident Hamptons expert, "an exceptionally cool venue."

Meanwhile, Anne continues to get good ink for The Disapparation of James, available wherever books are sold. The Orlando Sentinel just reviewed James, calling it "a compulsively readable and an elegantly written novel."

Joey looks exceptionally hot in the tight leather outfits she's required to wear for the New York Auto Show, which runs through Sunday right here in NYC.

And Susannah, recovering nicely, heads North to Lenox, MA, where she begins rehearsals this weekend with Shakespeare & Company for her ingénue turn as Hero in Much Ado About Nothing.

The most distressing part of the Bloomberg doomsday budget, as the Times points out today, is the forced relocation of longtime Brooklyn residents. Clearly, City Hall never considered the substantial loss of social status for animals who have to move to the Bronx.

Never fear: you can help. Send letters to your elected officials telling them you want to keep the more fashionable animals where they belong: in Brooklyn.

The budget also fails to outline what the city plans to do with the empty zoos after they're closed, or acknowledges the horrifying possibility that they could be breeding grounds for penguinlike supervillians. Oh, Mayor Bloomberg. Did Batman Returns teach us nothing?

In this report, filed twenty-one years ago today, I carefully balance a number of disparate elements: news report, drawing of a castle, and math quiz. Needless to say, the effort is deemed "excellent" by the reviewers.

Notable:
• For mathematicians: a disappointment. Numbers in upper right hand corner ("2222121") show an incomplete grasp of binary.
• For researchers: a triumph! Document contains incontrovertible evidence that April 22, 1982 is the day I learned about homonyms.
• For historians: a puzzle. What is this "New York Experience" I claim to have "went to yesterday"? It seems to be some sort of museum, but a google search reveals only package tours and insipid travelogues.

Journalism: "A cloudy good morning to you." 4/22/82

Bobby® came to our house with our last bag of bananas®, and shows no signs of leaving anytime soon!

Xina writes:

As I was walking around New York City on Tuesday, enjoying the brief days of sunshine and summer-like warmth, I found myself in Herald Square. The streets were filled with crowds of happy shoppers, people on their lunch break enjoying the weather, and tourists wandering around staring at things and getting in everyone's way. It occurred to me that it is almost Easter, a very special time, and as I walked I began to meditate on what this means to me.

And then I got to Macy's.

And there, I saw it.

It was a sign. It was an omen. It was as if some great cosmic power had reached down to show me just what this thing called Easter is all about. You see, I discovered The True Meaning of Easter.

And that, oh my loved ones, is Peeps.

You've heard of them, you've seen them in the stores, you've even poked them through the cellophane packaging. Some of you have watched me consume massive amounts of them over the past twenty-five years. They are small, they are sweet. They are the number-one selling non-chocolate Easter candy in America. They are Peeps.

And they are what Easter is all about.

I urge you all to stop by Macy's and take a look at the Peep. Can't make it to Macy's? Then gaze at these photos as you munch on a box or two of Peeps - and hey, don't forget to send me the upc codes if do you do snack on a Peep. I'm aiming for the Peeps travel mug, but if we all pull together and get snacking, I can get the clock. And isn't that what Easter is all about?

Xina


Giant Peep peeks out through the first blossoms of spring. (photo by Xina)


To her disappointment, Xina found no additional Peeps inside. (photo by Xina)

(Phone rings)
SHE: (Cheerfully) Hi, I'm calling to let you know that starting this Friday, you'll be receiving the Daily News everyday for half price!
ME: (Also Cheerfully) But we don't want the Daily News!
SHE: Ohhh. Why not?
ME: Because we don't like the Daily News.
SHE: Ohhh. Why not?
ME: Because it's not a very good paper.
SHE: Ohhh. (Hangs up.)

Backyard at my grandmother's house: a large man is taking the deck furniture. She has failed to make the payments, he claims, and it is therefore being repossessed. He tries to attach a chair to the hook that hangs from the helicopter. The chair is green, metal. The paint is chipping. I grab the hook. The helicopter hovers above. "I find it hard to believe," I reply, "That this 50-year old furniture is not long since paid for." The man steps forward, too close, too tall. In the window: the cat, hungry, meows. My grandmother does not have a cat. Later, as I leave, the huge tree in the center of the lawn, buffeted by wind, cracks and falls. It misses the house.

For those of you that were wondering how difficult it would be to drive across the Manhattan Bridge with a giant fake rock strapped to the roof of your car, the answer is: not very. Although you do run the serious risk of bemused looks from traffic cops.


Photo by David V.

(Confidential to the guy who oh-so-sneakily snapped a picture of us with his cel phone camera: Buddy, you're not fooling anybody but yourself.)

One reader takes issue with perceived "New Jersey Bashing" in this space:

You must desist immediately from the constant negative references to New Jersey. It does not have incredibly irritating traffic, there is no garbage in my street, and drunk monkeys would have done a much better job on the breath robbing, spirit sapping, brain-burning abomination that is New York City.

Your mayor, in the name of god, is Bloomberg. What more can be said? How can you speak negatively about anywhere else? YOUR MAYOR IS BLOOMBERG!!!!!!! YOUR PRESIDENT IS BUSH!!!!!!!!! NOWHERE IS SAFE!!!!!!!!!! We should all move to Nova Scotia.

A fair point. Sadly, this reader's over-generous use of exclamation points renders his opinion invalid. Better luck next time!

Congratulations to Gawker, which celebrates its four-month anniversary this week. Since December, Elizabeth and Nick have obsessively brought us everything we ever needed to know about things we never needed to know anything about. From the incessant Tina Brown coverage to the "no J-Lo" policy (a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance), Gawker is, by my accounts, a winner.

In honor if this quarter-year milestone, I've compiled a list of Gawker posts that, in my unbiased and carefully considered opinion, represent the blog at its best.

THE BEST OF GAWKER: The First 120 Days

BEST ENTERTAINMENT NEWS: JVG's Saturday Night Gawker's celebrity nightlife coverage kicks off on a high note.
RUNNER UP: Celebrity Tracking

BEST ORIGINAL REPORTAGE: Scene from last night's Gawker party: Jonathan Van Gieson A fair and accurate account of the event.
RUNNER UP: Smoking ban workarounds

BEST NON-MANHATTAN NEWS: New Neighborhood Acronyms Gawker was the first publication to jump on the "SloWiTe" bandwagon.
RUNNER UP: New Jersey

BEST WAR COVERAGE: The Lockhart Steele Resolution Unlike less responsible media outlets, Gawker covered the Van Gieson/Steele conflict from the very beginning.
RUNNER UP: JVG covering for Lockhart Steele The very beginning.

For those of you who didn't feel like downloading the PDF, my profile in Dramatics Magazine — in which I make such insightful observations as "You need to have a couple of people to step in if an actor is injured during a show" — is now online.

Just between you and me, I think Aaron Bailey is following me around. First he "accidentally" runs into me on my birthday, and then today he "happens" to be taking the F train home in the middle of the day to "pay his rent." He claimed the encounter was a "coincidence," but I think we all know that rent is due on the first of the month.

TheaterMania takes in Tiny Ninja Theater, and approves. As well, Xina's photo of Romeo & Juliet graces the cover of Dramatics Magazine, which features an article that describes me as a "businessman" and quotes Dov quoting Yoda. Both note the clumsiness of Melanie Hipchikz, who plays Juliet.

• "At the performance I attended, Juliet took a suicide leap during the balcony scene..." TheaterMania.com
• "Juliet suddenly plummeted from the stage, hitting the floor with the same force as if she’d leapt from atop the Empire State Building." [pdf] Dramatics, April 2003

Lock's Below 14th post-ban vignettes, not surprisingly, support his pro-smoking agenda. My own experiences, also perhaps unsurprisingly, have supported my own position...

A smoker, on her way outside to smoke: (Lotus Club, LES) "Actually, I'm okay with it. A lot of my friends used to go home after one drink because they couldn't stand the smoke, but now they're staying out later."

RouletteGirl, a smoker who, two weeks ago, argued passionately against the ban: "After visiting San Francisco, I've come around. It was so nice to go out there. You go into a bar and it doesn't stink. You come home and you don't stink."

Another smoker: "I've been trying to quit for years, but I keep falling off the wagon when I go out. I think this will really help."

But hey, if Lock wants to fight for his right keep paying $737 per year to support a habit of which he doesn't partake, that's his lookout. And just one more check mark in the pro-war column.

Being the third in an ongoing series of rare and unpublished works by the author which, for one reason or another, were never presented to the public at large.

Title: "Drool," 2nd Draft
Date: c. 1997
Rejected from: Not submitted for publication
Intended use: Self-amusement
Reason rejected: Failed to amuse self


continued...

Based on the success of Chicago, and the catastrophic performance of its recent releases, Disney's Imagineers are toying with a new concept: animated musicals. Only time will tell whether the studio can successfully merge two such diametrically opposing genres.

Clearance Aisle, Toys "R" Us:
Marked down to $4.99, Rosie O' Donnell "Friend of Barbie" doll.

Xina says: "Apparently, it means the same thing as 'Friend of Dorothy.'"

• Lady Bast rates Rosie doll's body "A+" (Warning: plastic nudity)

The first day of my 30th year brings the introduction of a long-requested feature to this website: a shiny new comic strip.

Beginning this very moment JVG: The Comic Strip will roll out in the left-hand column of the front page at the rate of one panel per day.

The Main Character: Me.
Supporting Cast: My family, friends, acquaintances, cats, and hedgehog.
The plot: Chronicling, day by day, my slow crawl from 29 to 30.

My loved ones need worry no longer about whether or not their lives will serve as fodder for the strip: I give my solemn oath that they will. How will you, as one of my loved ones, be able to tell if this is happening? It's fairly simple: if a character has the same name as you, looks vaguely like you, and is recreating events from your life, then it is — without question — you legally considered parody and protected under the first amendment.

Why do a comic strip about myself? I think a better question is: does string theory really resolve the incompatibility of general relativity and quantum mechanics?