February 3rd, 2011

Gallery Show, Plus How I Took Six Months Off My Life To Win a Quart of Milk

by Hilary Price

A few Wednesdays ago, I was invited down to NYC to join New Yorker Magazine cartoonists Matthew Diffee, Drew Dernavich and Eric Lewis in an out-and-out cartooning brawl called Fisticuffs…

Picture a stage with two small tables on either side of it.  Each table is manned by two cartoonists.  There’s a four piece band in the middle of the stage and an MC front and center.  The MC gets suggestions from the audience on what the cartoon should be about…A chicken… and a guru…in Hell!

Then, while the band plays a catchy number, each of the cartoonists tries to come up with a cartoon.  When the band ends their song, the artists show what they have on an overhead screen.   The audience then votes by applause on which team came up with the best material.

This is the real life version of the anxiety dream where you show up to an exam totally naked, plus you haven’t studied for it.  Of the five rounds of cartoons, twice I scrawled something coherent.  The other three times I stared really really hard at the paper, and as the band wound down I scribbled something quickly.

But get this– these New Yorker guys were pretty good at pulling quality out of thin air.  Of the five rounds, at least one of the four cartoons was a real drawing with a real joke.

Drew and I won the first round– the topics were Cat, Dominatrix and Hospital.  I had the dominatrix holding the cat saying to a doctor’s convention:  “I deal with cuts, Fluffy deals with scratches.”

Then Matt and Eric took control, blowing us out of the water with fully realized cartoons about pointe shoes, credit cards and something else which I have zero memory of.

Which brings us to the final round.  We were down by forty points, so this was a winner-take-all fifty point challenge.  This was when the Chicken/Guru/Hell trifecta was shouted out…

I did a joke about crispy skin.  Drew drew something good…we won the round!  We won the title!  VICTORY WAS OURS!

And thus we received… A quart of cold, delicious milk.

To see more pictures from the event, check out:

http://www.fisticuffsshow.tumblr.com/

Gallery Show in Newton, MA

Ten Rhymes With Orange originals that touch upon Jewish life are now hanging at the Mayyim Hayyim Mikveh and Educational Center in Newton, MA. I am sharing the gallery space with Phoebe Potts, author of the funny graphic novel Good Eggs. The name of the show is called <a href="http://www.mayyimhayyim.org/Gallery/Drawn-from-Life".  It will be up through April.

Important Dates:

This Sunday, February 6, from 2:30 to 4 – The Opening Reception.

Author Anita Diamant will introduce us. Phoebe and l talk for a few minutes each and be around to answer questions and eat little cubes of cheese. Everyone will be standing.

March 2 – Artists Talk with Phoebe and Hilary

7:00-8:30 pm

Each of us will do a 30 minute talk and show toons up on a screen. Everyone will be sitting while we stand and entertain.

March 27 – Telling Our Stories: A Workshop with Memoir-Artist Phoebe Potts

6:00-8:00 pm

Phoebe will teach you things. You will be impressed, and I imagine you can either sit or stand as you wish.

http://www.mayyimhayimm.org/Gallery/Drawn-from-Life

Future Events–Mark your Calendar

-Sunday, March 27, 1-4 pm:  Author’s event at WEB’S, America’s Yarn Store.  Northampton, MA http://www.yarn.com/

-Saturday, April 16:  Paint & Pixel Festival, Northampton, MA.  Western New England’s finest comic artists, book illustrators and cartoonists! http://paintandpixelfestival.com/

-April 30, 3-5 pm:  Author’s event for The Picknelly Adult and Family Education Center, Holyoke, MA http://pafec.hcc.edu