#70 "Feather in Your Cap" in color!!! September 3, 2013

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 We live in a time when people are obsessed with food. There's more than one network on television completely dedicated to different kinds of food. There are numerous cooking competition shows, even one that has kids competing to be the best chefs. It seems like people didn't even care about food before the millennium. Obviously some did, but if you look at history, it seems (to me anyway) that we live in a time when people think about the food they eat way more than they used to. I think that is great, as people should be interested in what they are putting into their bodies, but there are some downsides, especially as a waiter. One of my biggest peeves is the gluten allergy. I realize that it is a real thing, and a real horrible thing, but I also know that not as many people who claim to have this allergy actually have it.
When I first started working in the food service industry back in the 90's, I never heard of allergies, really. I would come across the occasional lactose intolerant person, but had some told me they were allergic to gluten in 1996, I would not have known what they were talking about. I would have made some joke about them mispronouncing the word "glutton" and then told them to maybe eat less next time and then they wouldn't be allergic. Or some other "deadly sin" joke. Nowadays, as a server, you hear at least one person a night say they are allergic to gluten. So, because of that and because of this blog post, I went down various rabbit holes related to food allergies and was very surprised at the results. There are, of course, one thousand and one conspiracy theories about what is causing this huge spike in food allergies over the past 30 years, and this being the internet, you really have to cross reference a lot to figure out what is true and what is pseudoscience. Even then, you are left pretty much right back where you started.
Let me backtrack for a second. Gluten allergies at the worst is called Celiac disease. When people with Celiac disease eat gluten, their body mounts an immune response and attacks the small intestine, causing horrible pain in the small intestine. This damages the small intestines and blocks it from absorbing nutrients, leading to larger problems, including anemia, migraines, miscarriages, and even intestinal cancer. The Celiac Foundation (which was only started in 1990) claims that Celiac disease is hereditary and is passed down from generation to generation. But the Foundation's website doesn't tell you how one develops a gluten allergy to pass down to your kids, like bad teeth and acne, so I had to wade through the muck and mire that is the internet.
I googled "Gluten allergies 1990's" because I figured it was in the 90's that things started spiking (as I had not heard of a gluten allergy in the actual 90's and the Celiac Foundation didn't start until then). One of the first articles to come up was a 2013 study by an independent scientist and an MIT professor that you can read here. It's called "Glyphosate, pathways to modern disease II" and I read a lot of it, although not all of it. In the article, it maintains that Glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp, the common most fertilizer in America is the direct culprit in the spike in Celiac disease and gluten intolerance in general. The article goes on to say that this Glyphosate is not only the main culprit for Celiac disease but a host of other diseases from cancer right on down. This made sense to me, as RoundUp was introduced in the mid 70's so by the time kids from that era started having kids (the 90's) they would have had ingested tons of Glyphosate in their Wonderbread peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. Thus, they would have passed down their gluten intolerance to their kids, and thus a gluten intolerance epidemic is formed. However, upon further reading, I found out that the article is mostly false and filled with so many "ifs, "mights," and "could be's" that it is not be taken seriously. And yet, it is the first thing to pop up when you google "gluten allergies 1990's" and is published on the National Center for Biotechnology Information site, which leads me to believe that anyone looking for a good gluten allergy conspiracy theory (and aren't we all, really?) can find all they need to know about the horrors of RoundUp in one site, and have it be totally believable because the website seems so legitimate. Also, when you think about possible culprits for disease, fertilizer seems like a pretty clear evil doer, so when you read something like RoundUp is causing everything from Celiac disease to autism, no one would blink an eye. The problem is that Glyphosate is very low in toxicity and breaks down in the soil in an extremely fast rate, making contact with your Wonderbread  very unlikely.
So where is this spike in gluten allergies coming from? The internet is filled with contradicting articles and theories, and the food service industry simply waves it all off as a giant lie that difficult customers on a diet use as an excuse to eat gluten free so they can fit into those jeans they used to wear in college. And that's the sad truth about it. You might have Celiac disease, and I am sorry to hear about that. Beer is awesome, and so is bread, and so are a bunch of other things that contain gluten. I feel bad that you risk your health if you come into contact with something that is going to affect your ability to have kids. I also hope that science can figure out why this disease has essentially tripled in the last 30 years, and can figure out a way to stop it. Imagine if they never did figure it out, and one day the whole planet was gluten free, many generations from now. No more wheat, no more beer, no more bread, no more cookies, no more muffins, no more pasta, no more tortillas, no more gravy, no more cereal, no more soy sauce. Maybe we'll be better off. Until then, the next beer's on me!*

*Not true. I think you still owe me one from that other time.

#70 "Feather in Your Cap" September 3, 2013

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One of the most popular desserts at the Loup is the Chocolate Pudding. Actually, it is the most popular, hands down. We have a great assortment of desserts, and most of them are fantastic, but the chocolate pudding stands head an shoulders above the rest. I am not quite sure why that is besides the fact that it is delicious. It is simply your basic, every-day pudding, but there is something else that elevates it to a magical plane. Maybe it's the giant chocolate cookie that accompanies it, or maybe it's the fresh whipped cream dollop on top, or could it be the sprinkling of cocoa powder? It could be a combination of all of these things, but I think the not-so-secret ingredient of "love" that Jose puts into every batch is the real reason this dessert is such a hit with the downtown crowd.
In the drawing above, the chocolate pudding is merely a bystander witnessing the scene lain before it. It was the last detail of this drawing to be added if I remember correctly. It stands proudly in it's parfait glass, complete with a spoon just waiting to be gobbled up by someone with a sweet tooth, or maybe someone who really likes dessert and has sweet teeth. The rest of the drawing unfolds before it, with all of the characteristic hi-jinx that are usually seen in this series of drawings. Including a severed head, and what self-respecting T&J drawing is complete with out one of those?
So, as long as I have been working at the Loup, there has always been the chocolate pudding. I have seen some desserts come and go, but the pudding is always going to be around. We used to have this great dessert that is sadly missing from today's menu. It was called Sabayon, and it was incredible. For those of you who have not tried this particular delicacy, it is essentially just eggs, sugar, and some wine. It can usually be found in Italian restaurants since it has Italian origins, but we used to have one that could stand up to anyone's. Light and creamy, served with berries, it was something to behold. But alas, we got rid of it! No one misses it though, not like other things that disappear off the menu. There are still people who call the restaurant on a regular basis asking if we have the brains back on the menu. I have talked about brains here before, and there's a great story about them over here in T&J #55, but they are not a consistent item on the menu. They are the very definition of "special." But people still ask about them. One thing that I am glad we no longer serve, either on the special list or on the regular menu is the Duck Liver Beignets. Those things were toxic (no offense to the guys in the back who made them every day. It was not their fault that they were nature's own heart attack inducer). These things were crazy. They were essentially crepes that were filled with duck liver (think Passover style liver, not fois gras) and then deep fried. Then, they were served with a sweet sauce and served like a pizza, essentially. They were my nightmare, and I stand behind the food that I serve at the Loup, so this was one of those things that was difficult to serve. But people loved them anyway! Who am I to say what people are going to find delicious and nutritious? People would get the Beignets and then still have an entree after eating their weight in duck liver and crepe. It was truly a sight to behold.
But I digress. We started this one off talking about desserts, so I guess we should finish off there as well. Not that it matters where we end. But dessert does come last, so we should stick to that. In the next post, you will see the pudding in color, then you are going to want it. This is the most reasonable response to the pudding. You see it, you want to eat it. I don't think I have ever served someone the pudding and them not like it. Some people can't eat a lot of it because they have already eaten too much rich things like Beignets and such, but they'll still try it out and fall in love all over again. And isn't that what dessert is all about?

#65 "Happy Campers" In Color!!! June 27, 2013

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Oof. That last post stressed me out!

I was inspired to write a post in the style of a short story instead of a blog post, and for some dumb reason I decided to write about being in the weeds. Well, it was like I was reliving being in the weeds, and the customers were real! Even the guy who tugged on my apron was a real person and I can see his face now! Argh! That is one of the challenging things about this project: I am forced to think about work while not physically at work. One of my favorite parts about being a server and bartender is that when you leave the job, it doesn't go home with you. I don't ever have to work from home. If I am not at the restaurant, I don't have to serve people. It really is a great thing. However, with this project, a little bit of the restaurant is with me all the time here on my computer. I am sure I have mentioned that I rarely draw people I know on these pictures because I don't want to have to think about them when I am at home. Don't get me wrong, Tim and I have inadvertently drawn customers and friends on these drawings before and probably will again, I am just saying that I don't usually do it on purpose. I would feel bad if I drew someone I like on one of these drawings and then all of a sudden, the drawing progresses and that person that I like finds themselves in some crazy scene like the one pictured above. On the other hand, if we draw someone who we don't like very much or who is a difficult customer, then I have to see them, color them in, and make them fit into the crazy scene like the one featured above. That means that I have to spend time with them that I usually would not do. I try to avoid difficult customers. I do not want to hang out with them in my own home in my free time, and they probably feel the same way about me. 

When we do get difficult regular customers at the restaurant, we usually will trade them out. For instance, if you are a problem customer for me, but Mike doesn't mind you, then you will usually have Mike as your server even if you are not sitting in Mike's section. The same goes with me. I will take Edie's problem customers and vice versa and on and on, amen. This makes the night better for everyone, including you. I mean, you don't think that you are a problem customer! You think that you are Cafe Loup's best regular and life of the party! But I am here to tell you that you are someone's problem customer. I think that I am probably someone's problem customer. I walk into a certain bar on a certain night with a certain someone behind the bar and they roll their eyes and say, "darn, that guy is back! Why can't he come in here on my night off?"

It's just part of life. You think you are a good person, a generous person, and a person who is liked by all people and babies and small animals. But you're not. Someone thinks you suck. And I think this happens a lot in restaurants because people who are problem customers don't know that they are being obnoxious a lot of the time. Sometimes it's the alcohol that makes them difficult. Maybe that one night they had a couple too many and started talking crazy to their server. Maybe they were just really hungry that one night and weren't in the mood to small talk and so they got a little snippy with the waitress. Well, whatever it was, your server remembers. 

Being a server is a hard enough job as it is without difficult customers. When I have a full section, which is 12 tables with up to 36 people in my section AT THE SAME TIME, I do not have time to have difficult people. That is 36 people all needing something and all at different times, so I am trying to figure out the timing of getting 36 people one thing at a time. A lot of the time, I have half of those 36 people being regulars who know me, and see that if I do have a full section, they'll be more patient than usual. And yet, with 18 people on my side, all it takes to throw the whole night off is one problem customer. Since the job is all about timing, and making sure everything is landing in the right place, one person making crazy demands or keeping me at the table longer than necessary is a formula for throwing off the entire night. On the other hand, if I mess things up on my end, the same is true. There is a very delicate balance and if as little as one thing disrupts that balance, a good night can turn into a bad night in a matter of literal seconds. 

That is why when you are a problem customer, your server will never forget you. There are people who have been coming to the restaurant for years whose face gives me a visceral reaction of dread and yet I can't even remember how they spited me. They may have done something 10 years ago, and yet, when I see them, I hand them over to Mike or Edie. Yet, even as I say that, I am looking down the pike at future T&J drawings and see more and more real life people making their way into the drawings. However, as you will see in future blog posts, the people who do make it into the drawings come with an interesting story. So, even though they might be awful, at least their story is interesting. Maybe it will be about YOU!

#64 In Color!!! June 19, 2013

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When Tim and I started this project 5 years ago, we had no idea how far it would go. We were essentially just messing around, drawing pictures at work like we had been for years before that fateful day where we liked a picture enough to take it home and work on it outside of the restaurant. That first picture that I took home is pretty simple, but has all of the insanity of later drawings in it. Take a look at it here.
Tim and I would draw on the Triple Dupe Pad nearly every day we were at the restaurant, always adding (and sometimes subtracting) to the whole thing. We would draw on them while we had our evening coffee before the rush, and then again at the end of the night while sitting on Table 8 drinking beers and talking about the evening that had just recently ended. As time went on, Tim and my schedule became less and less intertwined. We used to work three out of four days together, and so we were working on these drawings a lot during that time. As the years passed, our schedules changed so much that Tim and I only work together for a couple hours on Friday evenings when I come in to wait tables in the evening and he finishes up his shift as the dar bar tender. I am not sure if that fact of not working together has slowed down our output, but we have certainly slowed down the production of T&J drawings.
 I rarely draw these days during the pre-shift coffee break. This is usually because I am much better friends with the bar regulars now, and so instead of turning my back to them and drawing insane pictures of aliens harvesting heads, I catch up with them and visit. Then, at the end of the night, it's usually the same thing. Instead of the staff sitting on Table 8, like the old days, we all hang out at the bar and visit with our favorite regulars. It almost seems wrong to call these people regulars since a lot of them are friends who happened to be customers first. That is how I would describe these people to outsiders. Yes, we met in a server/served environment, but we have gone beyond that relationship and developed a full-on friendship. This happens sometimes in some restaurants and bars, but it happens at our place more, I think. The way the restaurant operates, and the longevity of the staff makes it the perfect place to become really good friends with the staff and regulars.
For instance, years ago, a woman named Karen started coming in to eat. She would come in and sit at Table 11 or 12 (depending on which one was open at the time). She would read on her Kindle and have a glass of wine and eat a little something. Well, after a couple of times waiting on her, I asked how she liked the Kindle (they were new at the time), and from that question on, we became friends. She would come in every Wednesday and Friday for years and years. We became Bookface friends, and we would talk for hours about everything from technology to the Opera and everything in between. Now, you are probably thinking, well, obviously a young waiter and a single woman becoming friends in a restaurant is nothing out of the ordinary. That sort of thing happens every day. The only difference is that Karen and I are completely different people from completely different times. She could be an aunt of mine or some distant relative that would be a peer of my parents. But, because of the restaurant, we are now friends. In the outside world that never would have happened, but in the restaurant it happens all the time. The fact that I have so many friends my parents age and older is directly related to working at the restaurant. And so, I guess it is a little sad that the T&J production has gone down but the reason for the slowdown is a positive thing. I mean, friendship is more important that productivity any day of the week.

#62 "Blue Shirt, Period." In Color!!! June 6, 2013

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Picasso's Blue Period only lasted for 3 years, but the name will live on forever. It is said that he was severely depressed at this time, as his friend had just committed suicide. His subject matter turned to the fringe members of society; beggars, prostitutes, and thieves. At the time, the paintings were not well received by the public or by Picasso's own art dealers, although now they are some of his most popular works and the name itself is synonymous with "the brooding artist." I'm sure every artist goes through a "blue period" of some sort, even though the artist might not be actually painting in blue. In Tim and my case, I doubt this could be considered our blue period, but when I posted it to Bookface, I did mention that we were now entering our blue period. I was merely making a joke about this two-headed artist's choice of palette for his little masterpiece (that and the heavy use of the color blue throughout the picture). On top of that, the title of this drawing is a play on the uniform we wear at the restaurant. When I first started, the uniform was a blue, button down shirt with a tie of your choice, jeans, and a bistro apron. For the most part, the uniform has stayed the same, but we do have a couple people on the staff now that have taken some creative liberties. Phillip tends to wear a lot of color and a lot of patterns both on his shirts and on his conservatively wild ties. He has real style though and his shirts are always pressed so he can get away with it. I still maintain the original "uniform" most of the time unless I am behind the bar, although Dien has been wearing wild shirts behind the bar for nearly 20 years. There are waiters in this picture, although they must not work with us as they have some crazy attire.
It's hard for me to pinpoint when Tim and I had a "Blue Period," if we have had one at all. The thing about an on-going project like this one is that a lot of the work is done at such different times and over the course of so many days that there is probably blue period aspects in many of the drawings. But, since there is other "periods" in the same picture, you can't tell the difference. Also, 2013 was an incredibly productive year for me and the whole "Mind on Loup" series. Since I had essentially taken 2012 off to work on children's books, 2013 saw a huge increase in production in the "Mind on Loup" drawings. Not that we were drawing them faster, it's just I had a ton backed up from 2012 and colored them in at a furious pace. In fact, I put out about 30 colored versions in 2013, so that marked the most productive year ever. To put that into perspective, this year I have only put out 18 and the 3 years before that I put out 52 combined. It's a lot of numbers, I know, and I will stop with all this math. The long story short is that the Blue Period for the "Mind on Loup" series is impossible to trace. I'm sure Tim could show you some of his drawings from a low point in his life, and I could certainly show you some pictures that I drew while depressed, but they would probably be on different pictures in different time periods. Also, since the drawings remained uncolored for sometimes almost 2 years, the original drawing and the colored version would have almost nothing in common as far as mood is concerned. I may have been depressed while drawing the purple cloud or the orange mechanical fish(?) but by the time I got around to coloring it, I am not even sure I remember what the thing is that I am coloring.
In a lot of these drawings I can remember drawing the subjects and I can remember specific events surrounding the drawings. This is not one of them. The only thing I vaguely remember about drawing this one is the thing on the far right-hand side, because Edie could not believe it and questioned me tirelessly about what it was. Even then I had no real answer. Now, looking at this drawing, I could not tell you without the help of my records when it was originally drawn. Anytime between now and 2011 would be my guess, although I kind of know that it was much closer to the latter. Not that any of that matters. I think that once this project runs it's course there will be good ones and bad ones and ones that are just part of the project. I think this one will be the one that will symbolize our "Blue Period." Why not, right? If we really did have a blue period, why not have it be this one? This one will be the stand-in for our depressed, brooding period where all we worked in was blue ball-point pens on blue tinged Triple-Dupe pads whilst drawing pictures of Smurfs, blue prostitutes wearing Craz-berry Ring Pops and only listening to the artist Blu.

#61 "Richard of XIII Street" In Color! May 30, 2013

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Coloring this one was very satisfying. I got to really bring out Tim's welt, bring out the insanity in Richard, and costume all of the super heros. Although I am almost most proud of the scaffolding behind Richard and the wall behind that. If I told you that this was a picture of 13th St. any time between now and 2010, you would say, "Of course it is, there's the scaffolding." As anyone who frequents the street knows, there is scaffolding there all the time. At the time of this drawing, there had been scaffolding around our building on the corner for years. They were replacing the windows or something. Then, when those were taken down, they did the same thing to the building across the street so up went the scaffolding for another couple of years. I am not exaggerating when I tell you these are up for years. In fact, people would come into the restaurant when the scaffolding went up and would express their shock and concern for the place. Because, you see, 13th street in the past 15 years has been almost constantly under construction. The fact that the restaurant has survived through this constant work zone is a testament to the owners and the regulars who frequent the place. Without hard work from the staff and the loyal patronage from the neighborhood regulars, this place would've folded like so many uptown places that can't survive the constant construction (yes, I am talking about those poor guys stuck in the way of the forthcoming 2nd avenue subway line).
When I first started, there was an awning like the kind you see uptown; it stretched from the building all the way to the edge of the sidewalk. You could fit ten smokers under there if it was raining, and it looked grand and inviting. That was replaced with the one that hangs there today during the first round of construction. That was when the MTA was putting in ventilation fans for the New Jersey Path train that has a station underneath 13th Street and 6th Avenue. The underground system is massive and so although the train station itself is across the street on the opposite side of 6th, the underground network stretches far beyond that. In fact, during the blackout in 2003, I saw angry commuters being shepherded out of a hatch on the corner of 13th, a block from where they usually emerge. Anyway, the construction of the ventilation fans was the longest and most detrimental to the restaurant. The whole sidewalk was ripped up and the north side of the street was essentially closed, which meant that any new customers were not going to be walking on that side of the street and thus not coming into the restaurant. The owners had to refinance their apartment to keep the place afloat, and were even interviewed for the NY Times. We survived that storm, and soon the fans were up and working (to the dismay of unwitting women with loosely fitting skirts who sometimes find themselves in "Marilyn Monroe on the vent" situations).
The next project started not too long after that, with the building in which the restaurant resides deciding to  tear up the whole sidewalk in front of the place so they could replace the marble facade along the base of the building. So now there was no sidewalk again and a wooden plank leading up the the restaurant. I was still a smoker in those days and would smoke in the little pits on either side of the plank. People would come in and ask what was happening out there and our go-to response was that we were putting in a pool, so just wait until summer! The truth, of course, was way more mundane, but the people who were asking usually were the same ones who had been coming in during the ventilation fan debacle so they were essentially in on the joke. Or, they were at least sympathetic about the whole thing. This lasted a year or so, and then they had to replace the windows, so for almost a decade, the restaurant was blocked from the street by some sort of construction. When the scaffolding went up, Phillip would joke about putting problem customers on "The Deck." That would have been great, although they probably would have liked it so much that we would have to take calls for years with the person on the other end saying, "Can we have a table on the deck... what do you mean you don't have a deck? I remember you having one... I am a regular there and I know you have a deck.... Can I talk to Floyd?"

P.S. There is currently scaffolding up in front of the restaurant because part of the parking garage next door fell off onto the sidewalk. So, expect to see some scaffolding next time you're on 13th Street (it'll no doubt be the same purple hue as pictured above:).

#59 "2-5-5-4-7-4-6" July 10, 2013

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This month marks the five year anniversary of the "Tim & Jeremy's Mind on Loup" series. Five years ago, on September 1, 2009, I posted the Very First collaboration drawing that Tim and I had ever done. I am sure there were more before it, but we had never taken the time to bring the drawings home to do anything more with them. In fact, Tim and I had been working together at that point for at least three years, so we could have been doing these things upwards of 8 years, or as long as we have known each other. It would be funny if we had started right from the beginning. In the five years since we started these things, we have made it to a grand total of 105 finished drawings (with countless loose doodles collected by myself, Tim, and Edie). The fact that we are only on number 59 on this blog is a little disheartening to me, as the writer, since that means that I am behind by almost half. Daunting, to say the least. I mean, as the time has gone on, the blog posts have gotten more and more complex, mirroring the artwork. If you go back to the first drawing, it is really just six doodles that seem to come together to form a narrative. It wasn't until years later that the drawings started to become a universe of their own, complete with backgrounds, themes, inside jokes, and substance. The first couple years there were a lot of growing pains, Tim and I both trying to figure out exactly what we were doing with these things. The happy answer is that, to this day, we still don't know what we're doing with these things. We still make them, and have a stack waiting to be finished presently in a drawer at the Cafe Loup. Some are almost ready, some are still in the premature stages, but there are plenty coming down the line. As long as we both work at the Loup in some form or another, these drawings will continue to be made, since when we are spending time there, we are adding, subtracting, and ultimately making more and more artwork. It has become ingrained in the daily life at the Loup. You go to work, you doodle a little bit, you serve hungry guests. Then you have a beer and doodle some more. It's just the way we do things there.
Over the past five years, the progress of both the drawings and the blog have gone through fits and starts. Had it not been for the years 2011 and 2012, I might be caught up with both; however, those two years I was spending my time differently. That time ended up making future T&J's heads and shoulders better than their brethren of 2009-11 (in my opinion). If you look at the early ones, you can see how inept I was at using Photoshop, the program I use to color all of these drawings. I had been using Photoshop since college, but I wasn't really that good at it. I could use the basic tools and even then I was lazy and would cut corners. I look back at those drawings and I want to recolor all of them, but of course I stop myself because they are a time capsule of where my skills were at the time. Taken as a whole, you can see the progression of skill and comfort gained merely by continuing the project. Then, once 2013 comes around, you can see a major transformation. The years 2011 and '12, I spent illustrating children's books that you can find here. Spending the whole year working on these books honed my skills to a whole new level, and it shows in the drawings from 2013. I always like to look back on the past and see that progress has been made, and it is clearest when you look back on artwork that you have created in the past. As an artist, you like to think you are always at your best. There are days and months that you sometimes feel like you are stagnant and doing nothing interesting, but then you look back at the work you did a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, and you see that back then you didn't know half of what you know now and that the quality of work was simply not as good. There are occasions that some of the things you made were good, but I feel like on the whole, you are always improving, or if not improving, then you certainly change. Brush strokes change, line quality, all of it. I mean, when I first started coloring these in Photoshop, I was using a mouse! It wasn't until almost two years later, that I started using a Wacom pen and tablet to color them. That technology changed the whole look instantly. I still use the same pen and tablet as I did then, and I've used the same version of Photoshop this whole time because I'm a cheapskate. But I got comfortable with the technology and so it has influenced the look of these drawings. To my eye, the more recent ones don't look dated to me, even though I am using outdated technology. But I also know for a fact that in a year, three years, and five years down the line I am going to look back on these recent drawings and think that they are very primitive and outdated. But, like the restaurant in which each of these drawings is conceived and created, everything changes while staying the same all at the same time. Tim and I have been drawing pictures on the Triple Dupe pads for 5 years. We'll draw on them again tonight, and tomorrow and on and on. No matter what happens outside of those walls, the drawing will continue as long as we are working within. 

Etsy Store Now Open!!!

Hey everyone!

Now you can own your very own print of "Tim & Jeremy's Mind on Loup!"

I have set up an Etsy store where I am selling prints of all the work you see here on this blog, and even some that haven't been posted yet!

The prints are all printed in the Giclee method, with archival ink on archival paper. This means that the color will never fade and the prints will look just like they do on the computer model. Tim and I printed a bunch out for a show we had recently here in New York, and they look AMAZING (if I do say so myself). If you find yourself in New York in the next couple weeks, check them out at HiFi Bar on Avenue A. If you can't make it there, just click the link below and OWN ONE OF YOUR OWN!!!

We are going to do limited editions of each one. 

If you don't see your favorite one, please message me, and I will make sure to print out the one you like the best. Again, these are fine art prints, not just run off on some regular paper with an ink jet printer. These are museum quality prints that capture the brilliant color and integrity of each piece. 

We are very proud of these prints and are very excited to share them with you!

Collect all 100!

Shop the Etsy Store!

(#95 Pictured Above. Available Now!)

#57 "Happy Hour at the Cafe Loup" May 8, 2013

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There are no real Cafe Loup patrons in this picture. There is one person who is based on a real person, but not a customer. The rest of these characters are from our collective imagination. However, when I posted this on Bookface on May 8, 2013, all of my Loup friends thought they had figured out who was who. I guess on the one hand, you could find similarities to a couple of our customers in some of these fellows, but they just happen to be at the bar. In fact, this one wasn't even located at the Loup until the very end, when I put in the coat room and the clock over there on the far left of the picture. Before that, it was just some random bar in Anytown, U.S.A, although with all those shot glasses littering the bar, it could be anywhere in the world. We always joke about Happy Hour, saying that it's always Happy Hour when someone inquires if we have any specials. I worked in Massachusetts for a long time and you aren't allowed to have happy hours there at all. You can't have happy hours, drink specials, or sell beer in gas stations or after 11 pm or on Sundays (actually, that one got changed) and last call at the bars is at 1am.  It's all from what they call the Blue Laws, which is a fancy name for antiquated Puritanical nonsense. There are Blue Laws in many states and countries that basically force businesses to stay closed on Sunday to observe the sabbath; Massachusetts dates back to the 17th century. You can imagine my surprise when I went to college in New York and found out the bars are open until 4am and you can buy beer pretty much anywhere. I was born in Massachusetts and I have a lot of family from that part of the world, but there are some things about that state that baffle me. I understand that you want to control the amount of alcohol people consume before they do something stupid. I even understand that people in bars at 4am are certainly up to no good. But, if there is one thing I've learned about people and drugs (and alcohol is one of those weirdly and widely accepted drugs), it's that if you want some, you can figure out a way to get it. I learned this in High School, when drinking was taboo, but very common. I learned from a early age that the cool kids went to places like The Field and had parties with beer! This story is as old as teenagers, I'm sure. These kids would find a way to get booze, any kind of booze,and 9 times out of 10 they would succeed. My buddies knew a guy named Basil who would sell them Milwaukee Best cases when they were 16. Kids would lift their parents bottles of booze (which I previously mentioned led to my never drinking of Johnnie Walker Red again). You could always get something if you really wanted it and were determined. It's like that old Chris Rock joke where he says that junkies are the most industrious Americans because they wake up in the gutter and they are high as a Georgia pine by the time they go to sleep.

 Drinking is such an ingrained part of the American Culture. The advertisements for booze come into our homes right through the television. Every magazine has ads for beer and wine and even hard liquor these days. On top of that, people are always discovering new ways to get a buzz. In my lifetime, dozens of new designer drugs have been invented for people to get high from. I know that these are very different from alcohol, but in some ways they are exactly the same. From these designer drugs, all the way down to the caffeine in your daily cup of coffee, drugs are a part of daily American life. You ingest  them in order to change your chemical composition in your brain to feel good and feel different from how you feel without ingesting these things. You take these things to feel happier. You take them at your own Happy Hour. By that logic, when I wake up in morning and have a cup of coffee, that's Happy Hour. When I get off work and have a beer, that's Happy Hour. I guess we were right in our assessment: it really is always Happy Hour at the Cafe Loup.

#54 "The Ones That Mother Gives You" In Color! April 11, 2013

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Speaking of drugs, let's talk about coffee. Most of my life would not be possible without coffee. I feel like a lot of Americans share my love of coffee and would agree that caffeine is hands-down the best drug around. It's legal, accepted, and you can get it almost everywhere. Now, what bugs me is decaffeinated coffee, but we'll get to that in a minute.
As a waiter, I like to have a nice double Americano before I start working. I used to drink a double iced latte to start the evening's shift, but then I decided I was lactose intolerant and I had to cut the milk out of the equation. That was bothersome for a while, but now I have learned to like black coffee and black double Americanos. I will agree with true coffee purists that all of these names, Americano, Macchiato, Cappuccino, are supremely annoying. Then, put Starbucks lingo on top of that and you have reached the pinnacle of obnoxiousness. However, I don't work at a Starbuck's and I rarely go into one, so I am relatively safe from them. But not really, because they have infected the minds of the American Consumer, and that affects me directly as a waiter. When I first started waiting tables, there were two options for coffee; regular and decaf. Now there are seemingly endless combinations. And none of them irk me more than decaffeinated cappuccino. I get one or two of these orders during a shift, if not more. It used to make me physically upset. I would grit my teeth and be so mad at the person who ordered it from me. I would think that they were doing it to spite me, like they knew how much I hated hearing those two words and they were getting joy out of my misery. Not only are they a pain in the butt to make, they are time consuming and when I have a full section on a Friday night and I have to stop and make a couple of these drinks, it can send me directly into the weeds; do not pass Go, do not collect $200. I realized one night after someone ordered a decaf cappuccino that it was affecting me so much and I thought that was a bad thing because people are not going to stop ordering the darn things, so I had to stop being such a baby about them and deal with it. I didn't know how to deal with it at first, because it was and still is an annoying beverage. I realize that people don't always want the delicious buzz that regular coffee gives you. I realize that some old people can't drink regular coffee any more and that after a lifetime of drinking it, they still get the pleasure out of decaf, because it actually tastes like coffee. I get this. I realize that some people don't drink coffee at night because they'll stay up looking at the ceiling in the dark and think of things like last years taxes and did they say the wrong thing at that party last week? I understand all of this. But I don't have to like it.
I finally figured out how to deal with the situation using reverse psychology. I now offer people decaf cappuccinos. That's right, I beat them to the punch. How can I be angry at them if I am the one who brought it up. By that logic, I should be angry with myself for even broaching the subject, but I like myself so I am not going to be mad at myself for something so trivial. I have much bigger issues to be mad at myself for, so offering a sweet old lady a decaf cappuccino is really low on that list. I have even been stepping it up a notch by offering decaf macchiatos, the crowned champion of obnoxious coffee beverages. I mean, really people, a miniature cappuccino? Get a life! I find that using this technique truly works, and I am no longer physically angered by orders of decaf anything. I may still find it annoying and time consuming on a busy night, but I am no longer shaking with rage when I hear those two bitter words. There are so many annoying orders that people come up with, and so many annoying people in the world, it's best to just accept this fact and try not to get so upset by these people. I mean, they have to deal with themselves, which must not be fun, so why let it affect you adversely? I understand that this is sometimes easier said than done, especially in the heat of the moment, but it's good to step outside yourself every once and a while and remind yourself that eventually, everyone will eventually go home.
But you order a "hot water with lemon" and so help me....

#52 "Down in the Mouth" In Color! February 16, 2012

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I was probably coloring this one in exactly two years ago today. I think my computer was in a different location back then. So, instead of facing West, as I am now, I was facing East, looking at the opposite wall. Of course, Tim and I had finished this drawing over the summer of 2011, but we had so many to color that it took me until February to color this one. It's the same thing now, I am always a couple months behind. Sometimes more. In fact, this one marked the last T & J drawing that I worked on for almost a whole year. The year 2012 was a busy year for me and I felt like I didn't have the time to work on these drawings. I was working on writing and illustrating children's books for an iPad App called Mibblio that my buddy Sammy Rubin was developing. I worked on five books that year, illustrating four of them. If you have an iPad, you should download the App and grab a couple of my books; I think you will like them. It was a great experience, but it kept me extremely busy. However, because of that experience, my coloring style changed drastically, as you will see in the upcoming posts.  After such a long hiatus, I got extremely backed up with all of these drawings. Because, even though I wasn't coloring them anymore, we were still drawing all the time at the restaurant. That part never changes. As long as we are working in that place, we keep drawing pictures. At this point, it has become part of the routine at work. I think it is the best part of work sometimes. I think about the drawings sometimes when I'm not there and I wish that I was still working on them when I am at home. I know that this thought is insane. Who in their right mind would want to be at work just so they could work on an elaborate doodle that will someday, years in the future, end up on some blog that only 8 people read? Granted, 2013 was a very productive year for me and I was publishing one of these almost every week. But, I feel like I will never catch up unless either Tim or I quits the restaurant and we no longer draw these pictures. To give you an idea of how backed up I am on this blog: At present, we find ourselves looking at #52 in full color. Last week, I published #86 on Bookface. That means, for me to get caught up, I have to write 68 more blog posts since each picture gets two posts; one for the original Triple Dupe Pad drawing and one for the colored version. Those 8 of you loyal readers know that I write a blog maybe twice a month on average. That means I won't be caught up to #86 for 34 months, or roughly 3 years. Sometimes I write a little more than that, so we could average it to be 2 years from now that I will finally make it up to 86. I guess it's good to have goals.
  I used the word "have" but I guess I don't have to do anything. I enjoy writing these blog posts and I enjoy revisiting the drawings. I don't look at these drawings very much, so it's nice to see them a year or two down the line. They provide a window into the past for me. Some carry pleasant memories, some carry some unpleasant ones, but they all act as a time capsule for me. Some of the drawings I don't even remember drawing, but even those ones carry a reminder of a vague time somewhere in the past. In the mean time, the drawings keep coming down the stairs like the brooms carrying the buckets of water in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and I couldn't  be happier about it.

#50 "A Question Isn't Answered" In Color! January 12, 2012

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I was working on one of these drawings on the computer and then all of a sudden my computer shut off. I was pretty scared that my whole computer had just up and died, but fortunately the power strip had merely had enough power for the moment and shut itself off. Fair enough, I guess, one must know one's limits. However, once I turned the computer back on and went back into the Shop, I found that I hadn't saved my work in over an hour, and all that coloring I had done within that hour was gone, like I had never done anything. Like I was sitting around staring at the walls for that past hour. I'm sure this has happened to everyone at some point who interacts with computers. I remember back in the collegiate days people were always losing entire papers somehow because they either didn't save them or their word processors were malfunctioning. Yes, word processors. Remember those? Me neither.
It's annoying to have to repeat the work that you have already done once through and found it to be completely satisfactory. When you have to do it all over again, you know that you won't be able to do it exactly like you had done it the first time. You think in your mind's eye that there is no way you can replicate the original, nor improve on it. I always feel that the second time around will definitely be inferior only because I am annoyed at having to do it over again, and because of that, I'll end up rushing, cutting corners so that I can get to the place where I was before everything was lost. Trying to catch up to the place where you were just one minute ago, but it took you the last hour to get there. The bright side of my situation is that the drawing was still there. I hadn't lost that. It was still in good shape and ready to be worked on. It's not like my apartment was washed away in some Mega Tsunami and everything was gone forever. But the thing about that happening is that you are left with nothing and are given a fresh start. You wouldn't be able to recreate that stuff anyway, so you move on to new projects and presumably a new apartment. You would certainly miss all that work that you had created, but you would also know that you would be able to make more things that will possibly be better. You already had all that practice with the things you had lost, so you gained the skills that you now own to move forward. I get nervous about that scenario sometimes since a lot of my work is on paper, and the stuff that isn't on paper is in this here computer that I'm typing on right now. If there was some sort of fire bombing situation in Brooklyn and all the paper in my apartment was incinerated, I would certainly be sad. Years of work up in smoke. This sort of thing used to happen to Tim and I with these drawings all the time. Not fires at the restaurant, but people throwing out the drawings. The reason is that all these drawings are done at work on the Triple Dupe Pads which, when emptied of their order slips, look virtually like garbage, the only distinguishing feature being a couple of strange doodles on them. We've lost dozens at this point I am sure. I can still remember some of them. We had one that was about halfway complete with the picture being an homage to the Final Four basketball tournament held every spring. That one had a basketball court, some mascots milling around, some people in the stands; it was really starting to gel and then someone threw it out. We were both bummed out about it, but it would've been a fool's errand to try and recreate the drawing. It would never happen. It's like when you used to lose a roll of film and you would remember the pictures you had taken, but will never be developed. The images, even if you tried to reshoot them, will somehow be different. The light may have changed, the people now put on forced smiles instead of the pure, in-the-moment smiles they had before. And so you move on, but you'll always remember those images. Over time, you might even remember them as better than they actually were, had you had realized them, developed the film and then stuck the pictures on your hard drive. They become romantic images that only you remember. Since no one else will ever see them, they become a part of only you, and you can describe them to people, but to them it will be like listening to someone describe a dream. Abstract, had to grasp, and in the end, unimportant. Fleeting.
I wrote this because I couldn't go back to coloring that drawing right away. I needed a break from the frustration of losing all that work. I am going to go back to it nowish, but I am going to start from the point that I lost all of the work and move in a different direction. I think that will be better than tackling it from the same angle. That will be too annoying and I will only think of what I had done instead of what's ahead of me. Maybe this time it will turn out better, and if not, at least I learned the same old lesson about saving your work. 

#50 "A Question Isn't Answered" January 12, 2012

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Who knows how this one started?
Actually, I think I know. Tim and I were working together one night and once the rush and flow of customers had died down to a trickle of thirsty bar regulars, we sat down on Table 8 with a couple of dupe pads. This was one of them. It's the same old story. In fact, that is kind of how all of these drawings got their start. I mean, these drawings start at all kinds of different points within the restaurant; some at the bar, some in the kitchen, some at the waiter station, but their history starts at Table 8. When I first started working at the restaurant, I drew pictures on that table every night, only minus the dupe pads. Long before Tim had a job there, me and the other waiters and waitresses would sit down at Table 8 and drink a beer and order some food. Back then, the kitchen would actually cook us dinner at about 11 o'clock. We would all sit down and split some escargot or a bowl of mussels, and eat and drink until all of the customers were gone and it was time for us to clean up and go home. In those days though, we didn't even bus the table, but would leave all of our empty glasses for the poor fool who was working the lunch shift the following day. Can you believe that? It's incredible to even think about it. And these were the days when you could still smoke in the restaurants in New York, so you know there were cigarette butts in everything. The smell alone must have been something else the next day. But that kind of thing was not only allowed, it was accepted by the people who had to clean it up! Granted, I was that person every once and a while, as I worked lunch a lot more back in those days when I was just a youngster and low on the totem pole. It wasn't until years later that the boss cracked down on us ordering food late night and making a mess on Table 8 that we didn't clean up. If we made a mess now, it was to be cleaned up before we left. That's only fair when you think about it. In fact, the old way seems incredibly disrespectful to whoever had to work the next day. But, "that was the way it was," and that mantra has left so many things in the restaurant the same way for years, for good or ill. However, back in those heady days of seemingly unlimited free food and booze, while we were sitting around discussing the finer points of life, I would sit on Table 8 and doodle on the table cloth. Well, not on the actual cloth, we have paper that is placed over the cloths so that they last a little longer than just one night. I'm sure you've seen a similar setup in some restaurant somewhere along the way. So, I would sit there and draw picture after picture on the butcher paper that covered the entire table. Sometimes they were really great drawings and I wanted to take them home and sometimes they were just a bunch of crap thrown together complete with butter and wine stains. I wish I had kept a couple of them, but for the most part, they are all gone now. Lost among all of the other lost things from those days. I can't remember any of them now, and at the time I never thought they were worth keeping, even the good ones. I might have a couple of the good ones around here in my apartment, but they're either buried in some box somewhere or they were tossed in all of my moves since I started working at the restaurant. At any rate, once Tim and I started in on the Triple Dupes, the drawings on the table cloth paper continued to feel unimportant next to the Dupe Pad drawings that would eventually be displayed here and on Bookface. In a way, they were the genesis of this project since there was a sort of collaboration with everyone sitting at the table, whether they were actively participating in the drawing, doodling at their own seat, or simply spilling some sort of food product onto the paper. Everyone contributed. Flash forward a couple of years and Tim and I are sitting on Table 8 with a couple of Dupe Pads in front of us and we're stumped on what to draw. So, instead of drawing something, we just covered this one with random marks and lines until it was busy with them. Then, for the next couple of days we found all of these characters and images within the lines we had slashed down on that first night at Table 8. The random chaos of those lines turned into this drawing that you see above this rambling paragraph. All of the lines eventually turned into shapes that the brain can read as recognizable things that seem to go together to create some sort of story. And it all got started right there on Table 8. Julian always wanted to write a book entitled, "Table 8" and have all of the crazy stories that were told there compiled into one, neat, hard covered book. I'm sad that never happened because I feel like now, as with the drawings, those stories have gone and moved on to the next phase, lingering only in the air around an unassuming table in Greenwich Village.

#48 "The Last Macy's Day Parade" December 14, 2011 in Color!

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I have always loved Thanksgiving and in New York, it is indeed a special day. When I was a kid, I would go to my grandparents house and we would have a bunch of people over for breakfast. The menu would be entirely made up of different types of pie. My grandfather liked mince meat and pecan pie. I liked apple and pumpkin. The house would be full of people and everyone would be milling around, eating pie, and watching the parade on TV. Eventually, I grew up and as a teenager, I may have slept through the parade every year, but gotten up for the pie. Then, when I moved to New York, I couldn't wait for Thanksgiving to actually see the parade in person. I know, it's pretty hokey and the crowds are insane, but this was a thing I had been seeing on TV my whole life, and now I finally lived in New York City and I could walk out my door and see the spectacle in person. I was also videotaping everything at the time, so giant balloons floating down Broadway was just the thing for me. I must say, the parade does not disappoint. It is an absolutely crazy experience in person. The fact that there are a million people watching it makes it all the more exciting (albeit slightly annoying at times). The marching bands culled from all over the country blaring their marches, the semi-famous and super famous people and their intricate floats; it's all an incredible display. Granted, it is all basically just a prelude to Black Friday these days, gearing all the consumers up to get great deals at midnight at Macy's. The original idea behind the parade was for all of the newly acclimated immigrants who worked at Macy's to celebrate their new American heritage. But even then, it was really just a publicity stunt for Macy's itself. Over the years, it has become the largest Thanksgiving parade in the nation, and is the one that is on television every Thanksgiving at 9 in the morning. When I first went to it, I was propelled by the sense of irony that I felt towards this event. I have always thought that the balloons are aesthetically pleasing objects and are more than the sum of their parts as most of them are giant advertisements for toys or other products. However, though pleasing to the eye, I thought the whole event was really the worst part of Capitalism, namely the commodification of something that should hold special significance to the country. Thanksgiving, after all, is a day to reflect on all of the good things that one has in life. That is a great reason to celebrate! You are not dead! You should be happy about that, at least. The Parade, I thought, took all of that and threw it out the window, replacing it with a three hour long advertisement for "The World's Largest Department Store" and the things in sold within it's avenue-long walls. But then I attended the event in person. It actually was a celebration of the good things in life! Fun times, music, dancing, people working together to create something for others, community; all of these things were represented and I was so excited about it. It was one of those times where you are so cynical about something, and it surprises you and turns your frown upside down and shows you that, although you might still be right about the broader social implications, at the heart of the event, it is still a parade and parades are supposed to be FUN! Now that I have attended the Parade numerous times over the past 10 years, my next goal for the Thanksgiving Day Parade is to be in it. I would like to hold one of the balloons and march down the street in a "Clifford the Big Red Dog" outfit on and be part of the action. I would like to be on one of the floats with Selena Gomez and throw out candy to all the kids who come in with their parents from Long Island and Westchester at six in the morning. Someday that's going to happen and I will wave to all of you watching on TV, eating your pie for breakfast.

#47 "Herpes or Hairpiece?" December 16, 2011

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The title of this piece comes from the website Bacon or Beercan. For a while it was just the "bacon or beer can" guy, then they added the "Hairpiece or Herpes" guy, who, if you go to that website you might know from the nightly news. Or not. I was one of those people who thought the whole thing was hilarious, so I named this piece after it. Mostly, because of the figure who appears in the left-hand side of the picture with the microscopic penis and the spots. Also, the guy holding him up could be wearing a hairpiece on his face. It could also be a merkin, I'm not sure. At any rate, I couldn't originally figure out the point to this one, so I gave it the arbitrary name. It may have something to do with sickness. It could be a fever dream. My fever dreams used to always involve math. I would go to sleep thinking that I wasn't sick, and then spend all night sweating and dreaming of more and more complex math nightmares. A lot of time, the problems weren't in the real world, but looked more like the code from The Matrix moving along in different plains in varying forms of difficulty. I was never able to solve these problems and would wake up sweaty and sick. It was so common when I was sick, that I could tell in the dream that I was getting sick just from the math problems showing up in the dream. I have never missed a shift at the restaurant for being sick. Sure, I have been sick at work before; I'm sure everyone has been at some point, but I have never actually missed a shift on account of sickness. That includes hangovers. Are there times when I should have taken off? Heck Yes! I have been in rough shape for work plenty of times, but I always pushed through it. Knock on wood, in my adult life, I have only been sick enough to miss work a couple of times, and those times all magically fell on my days off. Then, when I had to work again, I would pop some Dayquil and show up and wait those darn tables, by golly. I think if waiters had some sort of Union, you wouldn't have to do that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it's not even right to do that. Showing up to work with the flu is just mean to your co-workers and customers. But then, if you go into an office building with the flu, you are just as likely to infect the same amount of people or more, what with the central air and ventilation systems and what not. So what's a person to do? You can't miss that much work even if you DO have sick days. So you go to work and say, "Well, I hope these people all took their flu shots." You suck it up and work. People have been doing it for as long as there has been work. I'm just glad I don't have to work with Scarlet Fever or The Plague. That would've been difficult, although I'm sure people have done it. I mean, of course people have done it! Think of those poor dudes who had to dispose of the bodies! They probably had the same sickness and just worked until they climbed in the wheelbarrow themselves and had someone take over for them.