Words, Pictures, Humor

Luckily I Have Both Collision and Caption Insurance

drewdernavich — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:22:44 +0000

In case you were wondering why my cartoon in this week’s New Yorker actually made complete sense, in a very non-witty, straightforward kind of way, it’s because somehow the original caption got mistranslated. I submit my captions in German, which is the funniest language of all, and sometimes it’s difficult to capture the subtleties in translation. Anyway, it should have read like this:

Resolution

drewdernavich — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:07:17 +0000

My New Year’s Resolution this year was to take free-falling classes. Oh, good! They have them here locally.

Get Your Computer Out Of My Meme

drewdernavich — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:03:49 +0000

This is not only what 5 MB of storage looked like years ago, it’s what 5 MB of storage looked like in the lap of one of those weird Victorian mothers who was conspicuously hidden in her own photo. You’re welcome.

No Thanks

drewdernavich — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:30:54 +0000

One thing that’s always bothered me about the Christmas season is this overemphasis on commercialism, where everything has to be for sale. It’s so excessive.

Don’t Celebrate Quite Yet

drewdernavich — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:18:49 +0000

The fact checkers at the New Yorker magazine are famous for their thoroughness, but they might have (spoiler alert: football analogy coming) dropped the ball on my most recent cartoon, which I think I drew during a power outage. I’ll detail these errors so that you, the readers, don’t have to. Where to start?

1) If you are an art student who has been instructed in the correct use of linear perspective, you might notice that the table kind of disappears at the far end. In fact, if you trace the edges of it, you’ll find that the table has this shape:

2) It’s pretty hard to drink a glass of wine through a football helmet’s face mask. They are just posing with them.

3) Oops! No silverware.

4) Nobody is Tebowing in the end zone, which means that it’s pretty obvious that the cartoon was drawn in early October, and therefore not in touch with the current national zeitgeist.

5) There are 12 men at the dinner table, which is one too many according to NFL rules, and clearly a penalty. This touchdown should have been called back. What’s ironic is that there’s no delay of game penalty. Because there’s no silverware, the meal is over pretty quickly.

6) You would never know this by looking at the cartoon, but it’s the 4th quarter, and the team that is celebrating is still behind in this game, 31-10. There is no reason for them to be celebrating.

7) This is also very self-serving of me, but the players aren’t actually talking about the game (maybe because they’re behind 31-10). They’re trying to think of captions for my last caption contest cartoon with the hippo. It’s so meta!

Dashing Through Your Ears

drewdernavich — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:30:45 +0000

Oh, yes I did.

My favorite time of year to listen to Christmas music is around Christmas time. I’m crazy that way. So every year I make a new mix of stuff that I’ve enjoyed listening to. This year’s mix has got 1960s psychedelic rock from Korea, some good ol’ bluegrass, an admittedly annoying dance craze from the 90s, and a Bob Dylan mashup that you won’t hear anywhere else because I MADE IT MY DAMN SELF. I’m crazy that way, too. Most of all, it’s fun and harmless – your aunt would even like it (full disclosure: I already played it for her). So feel free to download and enjoy it here. You can get mixes from years past here as well. Enjoy.

(by the way, the exploding bulb in the background of the tracklisting is from Alan Sailer’s fantastic “War Against Christmas” Flickr page.)

My Conversation with Bill Murray

drewdernavich — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:16:06 +0000

DD: Hi there. Thanks for taking the time.

BM: Sure.

DD: Do people always make tiresome jokes about how you have the same name as the other Bill Murray, the famous SNL alum who also starred in such comedy classics as as Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Rushmore, etc.?

BM: They do. All the time.

DD: Okay. I won’t do that!

BM: Thanks.

Newt & Susan

drewdernavich — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:59:37 +0000

Newt Gingrich and Susan Boyle. You know what I’m talking about, right? The certain uncanny resemblance, despite the fact that one rose to fame on Britain’s Got Talent, and the other across the pond on America’s Got Too Many Republican Presidential Candidates? You can judge for yourself, below, from these completely unretouched screengrabs. That is, if you can tell which one is which.

Behind the Gutters

drewdernavich — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:53:15 +0000

We did this a few weeks ago, so let’s try it again just for fun. Here’s what I sketched when I had the original ‘a-ha’ about a guy whose couch was so filled with leftovers from previous dinners that he had to get gutters installed. It’s about somebody else, naturally.

It needed a bit more fleshing out to be understood. Who is that person looking over his shoulder?

This is the last step in getting it to be a submission-worthy sketch. Yes, I sometimes sign my sketches. Why? No idea.

So, this is how it looks when I originally hand it over to the editor for consideration:

And this is what it looks like in this week’s issue of the New Yorker. Page 80 if you have one of the printed thingys.

And this is what my drawing desk looks like. WHY CAN I MAKE JOKES ABOUT SOMEBODY ELSE’S COUCH BUT NOT MY OWN DESK?

Stray Shots

drewdernavich — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:56:08 +0000

The camera application which I prefer to use on my iPhone is different than the built-in camera. It’s one in which you touch any part of the screen to take a picture instead of a single “shutter” button. It’s fine, except that it also means that in handling the camera – switching between hands, taking it in and out of my pocket, shoving it in my armpit as I fumble through my bag looking for something – the screen gets touched a lot. I think half of my pictures are of the accidental, oh-crap-I-thought–the-camera-was-off variety. But you know what? Some of them actually look kind of cool, especially when you gallery them. So I’m committing to this. If you need a wedding photographer and you don’t care if the pictures look like arbitrary screenshots from The Bourne Ultimatum, feel free to make me an offer.

(click image to open larger size in new window)