four

Some friends had a baby, I drew some ice cream cones for them.

Angelica Kitchen

In the mid-90's, Angelica Kitchen was basically Ellis Island for me and so many other hardcore kids, artists, dreamers, and assorted hungry young strivers: move to the city, get a job in the juice bar at AK, and suddenly the city became yours. I know that storyline has been repeated for years since and for years before. Working there taught me tons about life, and more importantly, Angelica remains at the forefront of teaching people to eat and consume with care and consideration for the world. Go get a dragon bowl now--it's still a bargain.

As with so many other places in the city, AK is struggling with outrageous rent increases. Read more directly from AK here.

Lincoln Memorial on the Chronicle blog...

Back in April, Chronicle Books asked me to write a few words for their blog about my most recent book, Lincoln Memorial: The Story and Design of an American Monument. This request happily coincided with a celebratory trip to D.C. -- Chronicle posted my piece yesterday, you can check it out by clicking here.

The book, by the way, is widely available, and features great illustrations by Chad Gowey.

A Better Beast: In which monsters tell stories.

“I used to live in New York City. And in that town, in the course of my day-to-day business, one of my greatest joys was when I’d witness one quite obviously crazy person ask another quite obviously crazy person for directions. Like once this woman in a t-shirt that had an illustration of two Mickey Mouse gloves giving the ‘hang loose’ sign on it was sitting on a curb trying to light a cigarette, and another woman came up to her, started talking in a calculated whisper about how she had to short-sell some estate documents, and did she know how to get to Union Square, and yes it’s very hot, very hot, but she did need to get to Union Square because there really was only a limited time with these documents, you understand. People were waiting. To get to Union Square from where they stood, you quite literally just had to point north and say, ‘that way.’ Ten minutes later, I come out of the deli, they’re still at it. Hang Loose was insisting that an abscess tooth was nothing to fool over, life was too goddamned short.”

Argosy

Ink and watercolor.

Only Connect...

Painted this ditty for my friends Michelle and Matthew as a wedding gift. "Only connect" of course references E.M. Forster's novel Howard's End: "Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." I've always enjoyed that sentiment as it clearly does not pussyfoot around. 

Golden Circle Story Time

Today is National Doughnut Day, so herewith I dust off my long-retired webcomic (2008-2011), Golden Circle Story Time, which was--ostensibly--all about doughnuts and particular doughnut shop in the fictional Northern Californian city of Los Besos. 

Chicago Tribune Interview

Click here to read an interview about Lincoln Memorial that I did with William Hageman at the Chicago Tribune, whose skills on the ol' typewriter helped hide my utter lack of over-the-phone eloquence. Thanks, Bill!

Lincoln Memorial

Lincoln Memorial: The Story and Design of an American Monument, publishes today from Chronicle Books. Here's my editorial assistant, Marlowe, basking in some much-deserved attention on a recent celebratory trip to Washington. Various links to buy the book are here, or ask for it at your local bookseller like a good citizen.

ice cream

An ice cream salute to a good friend as she welcomes her daughter into the world.

The Who, the What, and the When

I have an essay in this book, compiled by the design/creative team Also and to be published by Chronicle Books in the autumn of this year. It's now available for pre-oder, if pre-ordering things is your kind of gig.

luncheonette

evening light

April 18th, 1982: Day One for the Universe.

Current theories posit that universe began at approximately 3:07 PM on April 18th, 1982 in the oven of DiStano’s Pizzeria on Martin Avenue in Queens, New York. This is an inherently difficult concept for most people to grasp, but, as physicist Eliza Wittmer points out, “if you think about it, is the big bang itself any easier to conceive on its own? Just pow, something from nothing? That makes no sense either.”

Wittmer explains the current thinking on how the universe was created billions of years after it already quite clearly existed, and why it began in a pizza oven. “Think about it this way, on a quantum level, time is not linear. It seems to us that the beginning of something should occur before events that occur at a later time, but if time is like a branch of tree, something resting on its outer end--say a very large bird--will have an effect on the base of the branch. It can even conceivably alter the branch itself, even though that portion of the branch affected existed well before its outer edge did.

‘Quantum theory suggests that if there ever was a moment of pure nothingness--that is if nothing existed at all, quantum fluctuations would basically cause the universe--the big bang--to pop into existence. We think this happened in the DiStano pizza oven in 1982, and then retroactively created the universe. The big bang began happened in Queens.”

But how did a moment of pure nothingness happen inside a pizza oven? “Well, that’s the question, ain’t it?” asks Wittmer. “My feeling is that the universe is actually a supremely elegant place, all of its chaos and decay notwithstanding. And DiStano’s makes a pretty goddamned elegant pie; crispy yet with a chewy body to it, delicate, sweet, rich, and immensely flavorful. It could be that on that afternoon in 1982, a pie so perfect was made that it basically shocked the universe out of existence for a fraction of a second. The hand of god stopped creation in awe of this perfect pizza pie. And then quantum fluctuations popped it back into existence--but looping it back to the 'begining,' if you follow me."

Wittmer admits that it’s a rough theory. “I don’t know, maybe I forgot to carry a one somewhere. We got some interns double-checking everything.”