460. Uncomfortable Conversations with Szeps, Stanford Lecture This Week, & A Moment of Zen Pencils

Plus! A New NYC Mayor, The most New York party Ever, Bobby Slayton Sketchbook & Morris is obstinate for a change.

Hey again, friend.

Whew! What a week. Welcome to Issue #460 of New York Cartoons. As I’m trying to write this, Morris is on my belly, demanding rubs. He’s nothing if not a brilliant distraction from the endless slew of stuff on my to-do list.

I’m headed out to California this week to deliver my guest lecture at Stanford (I know, I’m as surprised as you are), and I’m thrilled to get on a plane that takes off the ground during a government shutdown. That’ll be the most impressive part of the entire trip at this point.

If you do happen to be in the Bay area and want to stop by and watch the talk, you can get your tickets and all the information on the talk here.

Oh! And yeah. It’s November. I can’t believe it either.
That means it’s also NO-vember. My annual 30-day challenge to get good at saying NO to shit. Join up below:

NO-Vember.

—And don’t forget! I’m still drawing pups into the new book if you know someone with a dog who has a birthday coming up— and it’s not too soon to start thinking about Christmas!

You might have seen in the news that New York has a new mayor. I wrote about the candidates earlier this year when I drew them all— here is the redux:

Anyway, I’ll crack on with this week’s edition. Thank you to everyone who tuned into the two live streams this week. It’s always nice to see your names pop up. Be sure to leave a comment below.

If you want to support my work, please take out a premium subscription (just $1 per week).

The Sketchbook I’m sharing with you this week is a selection of the sketches of Bobby Slayton from his book on Jewish Comedians, and some that I did of peoples’ dogs as gifts this past week. If you have a friend with a dog, send me a photo and I’ll draw them into the book for you.

Tonight I found myself wandering through a warehouse-turned-event-space in Domino Park, Brooklyn, home to what may be the most hopeful room in New York: The David Prize party…

On Friday, I sat down with Gavin Aung Than - creator of Zen Pencils, author of the brand-new Creature Clinic, and someone whose laughter I recognised from two decades ago in Perth when we were both sketching during our day jobs, wondering if cartooning was a viable life choice…

Last night I joined Josh Szeps on his show Uncomfortable Conversations for what began as a chat about New York’s newly minted mayor and quickly became a 90-minute meditation on free speech, burnout, and the noble art of saying “No” before your arse falls off.

If you’re new here, or you haven’t had a moment to wander back through the archives of profound genius I’ve shared up to this point, take a peek at the following scribblings:

“No, you go out in the cold. I’ll be right here.”