NYC NCS Get Together 4/25/07

Tony Murphy, Rina Piccolo, Sam Viviano

The Metro chapter of the National Cartoonists Society got together Wednesday night. It was a grand time, despite the rain outside, and there were so many cartoonists that the restaurant's waiter suffered from cartoonist overload.

It was great to see David Hill, Francesco Marciuliano, Bill Alger, Flash Rosenberg, Evan Forsch and his lovely bride, Lovely Andy Eng and his lovely girlfriend, and a number of others whose names I am blanking on. There was not enough time to say hello to everyone -- a good reason to return next month.

Tony Murphy and Rina Piccolo and I talked about gag subjects that were now old and worn out. Terms like "feng shui" and "blog" are over. They're tired. It's like jokes about Dolly Parton's breasts. It's over! Tony added that "blogosphere" is not passe.


Mort Gerberg, Arnie Roth and Anne Gibbons

I don't know why Mort gave that goofy grin. Arnie was late coming and I asked his wife why. She said he was at home, doing crossword puzzles! But he did show. I think he was waiting to see if the rain was going to stop.

Dan Piraro started the meeting by asking us to identify ourselves. When it was Arnie Roth's tune, he pointed to Larry Katzman, magazine cartoonist. Arnie said that there was a time, the late 1980s, when the NCS was in dire straits, and Larry Katzman was the fellow who untangled the group after the deaths of then NCS president Bill Hoest and, soon after him, NCS super-secretary Marge Devine. Larry got a round of applause.

Larry Lieber, Stan Goldberg, Sal Amendola

Or, to put it another way: the Spider-Man comic strip, Archie and Batman. I remember that Stan and Larry were talking, for some reason, about the old Paddy Chayefsky MARTY play -- the original play on TV, not the movie. I'd seen it repeated on PBS in the 1990s and I thought that the version with Rod Steiger was much better than the movie. They agreed (or they were just being nice to me). Future mother of Tony Soprano Nancy Marchand played Marty's date in the TV version.

"Ruben Bolling," Mike Lynch

"Ruben" (not his real name) draws the Tom the Dancing Bug strip. I don't know if I can say his real name here. Is it a secret? Anyway, a heckuva nice guy, but I want to keep his ID private. I'm not gonna cheese off the Tom the Dancing Bug guy, OK?

Mad Magazine's Sam Viviano draws caricatures of ...

... Mike Lynch and Rina Piccolo, despite their protests!

The evening closed around 9:45. And Rina and me and Tony and Trade Loeffler and Marc Bilgrey all made our way home in the mist ....