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.

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.

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!

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.)

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.

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?

(click image to open larger size in new window)

A while back, while casually caffeinating myself, I was trying to think of silly ideas about carpooling, and I scrawled something down which I could barely read:

The joke wasn’t about saving money on a work commute, which is dumb, but about saving money on a midlife crisis, which is obviously hilarious, because you’re supposed to go all-out on those things, according to the rules of a midlife crisis (which, because of increasing longevity, now happens at around age 75). So I decided it was good enough to submit to the New Yorker, and they liked it.

Notice how the “Jump in, Stan” is unnecessary, and I reworded the caption so that it was less clunky. The car, however, was a definite clunker. You’re not having a midlife crisis in that car. You’re having a takeout Sonic cheeseburger. I had drawn an economy rental vehicle. So I had to sex up the car a bit when I drew it for the magazine so that the joke was actually believable. Here’s the preliminary sketch:

And then I went all woodcut on it, which is the way you see it in this week’s Money Issue:

And once it’s in print, the rest of it, as I wrote in a recent post, goes like this. Peace out.

Okay, I didn’t really choose it. The editors at The Good Wife decided to insert me into their Season Three premiere this way. The scene that I was fake-graphic recording in was mostly eliminated from the final cut, but my second-best asset (I’m counting right shoulder blade first, back of head second) was allowed to remain in the scene. The drawing I did for Eli’s brainstorming meeting also made a brief appearance (below). I was disappointed at first, but you know what? I have a hunch that that’s why people are raving about the show: subliminal advertising works, and so does subliminal acting. Yes, Julianna Margulies is pretty, and Chris Noth is hunky, and Alan Cumming’s Eli is enjoyably pompous, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the subconscious everyman appeal of my nondescript neck that is what’s entering into our TV-watching nation’s subconscious and making the show irresistible. The folks at The Good Wife know what they’re doing, and now you know their secret (you’re welcome).

And what’s good for the show is good for me. Because of the brevity of my appearance, I’ve still got a healthy 14 minutes and 59 seconds of fame left. And that’s not including Vanity Fair‘s reportedly featuring the back of my head on the cover of their October issue.