 So I have some slides, like 57 slides, and I'll go through them fairly quickly and talk about some of the cartoons. I'd like to do a Q&A at the end, but if anyone has, like, a question about one of the cartoons, I'll just say, hey, Harry, and I'll answer it. So I said thank you for coming out already, right? Yeah. I really appreciate it. I really do. It means a lot to me. Thank you for coming. Yeah. Well, they're paying me. It's a gig for me, but I would have done it anyway. I haven't done this in a long time, so I did it last year in South Europe, and I was saying I used to go to elementary schools all over the world. I've been to Dubai and Moscow and St. Petersburg, Singapore and Bucharest, all sorts of places. But I don't do that anymore, so I miss it. Anyway, this is me and my siblings. My sister's a painter in Philly. My brother Charlie's a wildlife artist. My brother John's an educator in Rochester, New York. That's from 1970. We were all on the show called The Electric Company when we were kids. That's not true. I'm lying. I'll do some more lying later. I came from a family of artists. Is there any way to turn these lights, not just these? Yeah. And my dad was a graphic designer for many years, and he was a sort of painter. And my uncle Leon, uncle Ken, my uncle Harry, that's my dad. And they're all gone now. My dad, I lost both my mom and dad this past summer. He was 93. He had a pretty good run, and he really wanted to get the hell out of here. He really did. But the gene was passed on to all of us kids and siblings for that matter. Two cousins, Phil and Jim, who are illustrators, Annie, who's a phenomenal pottery, a ceramicist, I should say. This is an early... I was obsessed with Picasso when I was 12, 13. I was just obsessed with all the kind of isms, impressionism and post-impressionism, even romanticism. I went through all this. And I was a pretty rotten kid, and I got into trouble. I burned buildings down. Not really, but I did kind of burn the neighborhood down on accident, the backyard of the neighbors. So I got into trouble, but art really saved me. It was the one area that I could go to where I had control. If you grew up in a house with a lot of dysfunction, which there was, I think it was in the drinking water in this lower middle class suburb of upstate New York. But yeah, making art is a way to control what's going on in your world. So anyway, I was in doing some Cubist work here. I later went on to art school, and this is a watercolor I did when I was a junior at the Philadelphia College of Art, which is where my parents went, and it was then called the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. They met there in 1958. But I did this for a student competition cover design for Print Magazine, which is a graphic design magazine. And I placed third in the competition. It's an international competition, and this was a watercolor I did of these Dutch tiles of this painter having this kind of euphoric moment when you paint that comes a moment in the process where you have a bit of euphoria, where you're like, ah, that's it, I got it. That's the living room, oh, God, of my parents' house, which is now owned by someone else, and all of that is gone. But these are my parents, some of the paintings, my mom's painting, my dad's, just cluttered, cluttered with books. When I left art school, I waited tables for a long time in Philadelphia, 12 years. I bust, I clean the kitchen, dishwashing. I got my girlfriend pregnant, and we gave our baby up for adoption. I was on welfare. So I had a really eclectic and interesting time. But in around 1994 or five, I started getting work for the first time, illustration work. And the gigs that I got were doing book covers. And I got a lot of mysteries. In fact, I became, I got pigeonholed in doing mysteries for St. Martin's Press. It was a great gig because I would get the manuscript in the mail that sent it to me. I'd get it, and they'd pay me, oh, they're $1,200. It was good money. It's good money for me. And this was $94.95. That was like three, four months' rent. But I'd take it to the 16th Street Bar and Grill and catch a little buzz and read the mystery. But after a while, they got so formulaic, I didn't really, I got sick of reading them. So I sent it to my mom, and I gave my mom $50. But then she went to art school, so she's a voracious reader she was. And she would send notes. She was kind of art direct to me. She's like, well, this takes place, you know, the woman's killed by a butterfly guy. So, you know, it's a flapper dress, and there should really be butterflies in the cover. I was like, mom, stop, enough, let me, let me do it. This was actually the very first book cover I did by Douglas Kiker, who was a, I think, an NBC News correspondent for a long, for many years. And this artwork was lost. Usually when you do illustrations, you get the artwork back, okay? They send it back to you. I did this in 1991, I think. And 22 years later, they sent me the artwork back. I couldn't believe it. It's like, we're going through our files, this was for Random House, going through our files, we found this and thought, you know, better late than never, they wrote. This is done for Philadelphia Magazine. Watercolors, sorry, yeah, these are watercolors. This was for Philadelphia Magazine when I was living in Philly. It was a full-page piece about Amish children, young adults, when they reach a certain age, are allowed to sort of make a decision whether they want to stay in the community or smoke pot and don't listen to radios. What is that called? What's that? Yes. Thank you. So here he is listening to a Walkman. Another mystery. You can see there's this influence of Vermeer here on this one. These were hard to kind of do, you know, difficult paintings. But anyway, this is a cartoon. Speaking of Amish people, at a certain point, I was living in NIAC New York. I'd finally moved from Philadelphia and I got a little apartment in NIAC and I had a little boy, little son, my son Alex, and his mom relocated. We weren't married and I was following him around, so they didn't want to be far away. And I was in a rare bookstore in NIAC and I was looking at a book of Charles Adams cartoons who I always loved growing up, loved Charles Adams, appreciated the drawing and the wit and the kind of sardonic, dark humor. And I was looking through it and at the time I was doing book covers and I thought, I could probably do this, you know? And I recall back that people said to me, you should try submitting to the New Yorker. And I didn't really have any idea of the cachet that magazine. I didn't really know. Anyway, went home, knocked off eight or nine samples over the course of two or three weeks, and eventually got a gig, a letter from the cover editor saying, this might be a long shot, but why don't you try doing some cover sketches. And I did. And first I was published as a cover artist. And then about a year and a half later I started submitting cartoons. And this was an early cartoon, this might be 2003. I was trying to think, like I had the idea, the Amish midlife crisis came first. I thought, there's something there. And I thought, what would they, what kind of car would they get? They'd trade in the horse for a cheetah. This was an early rejected cover of, I believe there was a Haitian immigrant outside of Manhattan, and a burrow was shot many, many times. He was unarmed. And Mayor Giuliani was a mayor at the time. And this was kind of based on my being inspired by, of course, the incidents. But also Sergio Aragonese, who's a great mad magazine cartoonist who did these kind of shadows where it would have the dog and the man walking and the shadows would be completely different. So this is watercolor, this kind of mixed up. This is a watercolor I did not that long ago. I live in Cornish, New Hampshire now. And my wife has a house in Burlington. So I come back to Burlington every now and again to just check in with her. And it's kind of an interesting marriage. That's really small, okay? I can't, I'm not going to mess with it, but it's really tiny. Okay, I'm going to go back to that. But it's the New York Public Library lion. And it has the, a little pigeon feathers in its mouth. A little tiny bit of blood. And that came from just being in Manhattan and walking by those statues and having pigeons there and just thinking that flying would completely eat them in a second. So this idea for came from being in an art museum and watching people not really take in the art. But they were sort of wanting to capture the culture, and that happens even more. I'm not against taking photographs, by the way, of paintings with the camera. I do it all the time. But I was seeing people not really look at the art and it bugged me. By the way, this painting is my version of Norman Rockwell's version of a Jackson Pollock that ran on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. And his cover was called The Connoisseur. Was it called The Connoisseur? I don't know. But my editor at the New Yorker, François Mouly, was like, you should try to make it look just like the Rockwell. And I was like, are you high? But in the end, I compared mine to Rockwell's and my Pollock is far superior to Rockwell's. It's another... I noticed a lot of the covers I do for The New Yorker are kind of celebrating looking up. And I had a great... I worked for Playboy for a while. And Michelle Urie was my cartoon editor. And she passed away too young. But she took me out to lunch one night. One afternoon, I should say. Yeah, she took me out to lunch one night. We had a lot of drinks. And so we were walking home and Michelle was like... And she wore sunglasses. She actually died of cancer. I didn't know this, but she had a cancer in her eye or something. I think she wore her sunglasses anyway. But she was kind of a glamorous, cool woman. She put up with a lot of shit from Heffner for many years. And she just hung in there. But she took my arm and she said, she goes, look up. And I looked up at the buildings and she's like, look at that. Look at all that architecture. Look what's going on up there. There's a mist and stuff coming up. She said, look around there. People aren't looking up. And that was before self. That was before phones. She was great. I miss her. I wish these were... These are so small. Sorry. He's got a super soaker. That's 2005? August 1st, 2005. Yeah. That's just a detail of a cover that I did for a publication called Weird Fiction Review. And I love Mad Magazine. I love Jack Davis. So this gave me the opportunity to kind of drop into Jack Davis's ink work for those old E.C. comics. And it was a close-up. And I was kind of proud of that. And that's the actual cover right there. These guys coming to... Was it great? Yeah. Buddy of Mine Design did the type. And it was super fun to work on. Yeah. It was fun. This is an illustration for a book I did with my longtime editor, Joanna Kotler, who I love and is a good friend, is a great painter. I did many children's books with her, Harper Collins. And this was the last book that we did. One book we did, I should say. And she wrote it. This is a student edit. It's called Sorry Not Sorry. And it's a really great children's book about saying you're sorry. I thought it was a fantastic book. And not just... It's great. And I used to get manuscripts all the time. Not all the time, but often enough. I got one from Judy Bloom at one point. And I didn't really like it. But this concept of apologizing, I just thought, that's huge. When you say you're sorry and really mean you're sorry to deeply feel sorry, I just thought that it's such a profound thing that I had to do the book that says, won't tell you anything about the rest of it. This is a different book. This was written by Katie Camillo. Then really, of course, it's in... This is the German edition. Whoops. So I'm a dog fanatic. I have a memoir coming out about my dog Penny, who passed away after 17 years. So I'm really... Sometimes I think there's something wrong with me that I love. I love dogs so much. I do, I fear for my sanity. But anyway, this is called Good Rosie. And this is a nice book, too. I love Katie Camillo's sheet. There's a real sense of humanity in her writing. This is just silly. It's the Lost Beemlehem sketch. I got that on eBay. It's certified. It's the real deal. I remember my cover at the difference while I was moving. I walked in one day and she had Xerox. That's her sentence where she Xeroxed and put it on her wall. I was very proud. Oh, these are so small. I'm really sorry. I'm like, I wish I could... Maybe I'll get out of this and just hand-do it because this is driving me crazy. Hold on. I know it's there with me. I gotta escape. Hold on. I'm going to go back to... I don't really care. We're here, we're here, right? Ugh. Are you sure you want to open 71 items? Oh, unselect them like that? Thank you. I'm going to need you. Stay with me. Now what just happened? What? I mean, I don't really care. I might need tech help. Does anybody know how to do this? I don't know how to do this. So, honestly, this could be a... Well, I don't even know how to get back to that now, to be honest with you. Yeah. It's in a folder called Dartmouth that is on the desktop, but as soon as I plugged into this... Well, this one. That guy. See how small the cursor is? You can't even see it. That's the idea. Now, if I do that, will it go to the next one now? Well, if we move the escape here... That's what I try. And if we... No, just... As soon as I plugged in... If I unplug it, it'll... Gotcha. It's because it's plugged into this. It's the library's fault. You turn it into a slideshow would be ideal. Right. It won't let us go forward. Right. You want me to find the folder? Dartmouth. It just says tiny. That's it. Why can't we turn that into a slideshow? It's so weird. The libraries. I love libraries. They literally saved my life growing up. I mean, art did, too, but libraries being in high school, public high school, in the 70s was brutal. Absolutely brutal, but I could go to the library and I get picked on. It was quiet. Art books were everywhere. Books with comics in them. And I could go to the library and find peace. It was just like saving my life. And it was free. I could take books out of the library under my arm, or the black t-shirt on in the middle of winter in Rochester, New York. And... Yeah, it just was... And that hasn't changed over the years. That's exciting, whatever happened there. At least I can... So we're down. We'd be right up. Right there, maybe. No, date created, size named. That's not it. So we're looking... Yeah, that's what we're looking for. Yeah, that's what we're looking for now. So you wanted to go to this one, right? Yeah, the next one, yeah. It's so small. You want to just sit down? Yeah, I'll just... Harry and I went to college. Yeah, John. We actually went to art school together in Philadelphia. He's a graph designer, yeah. This cartoon I really like. Just because I like the clothes are like people would say, you said meow? Or was it down there? It's just down there. Okay. So this is... Gluten recalls a time before their intolerance. This is like a... He's got a little fish shirt. I forgot if he's got a little fish shirt on. Okay, we'll go to the next one. It's zooming out. Yeah, it's under it. It's the pollen, yeah. This is really a... This is a really hard drawing to do because I had to make sure it really looked like Shelley DeVall. It was really hard. And they also... Initially, this had the little... the little stems coming off it. And that's not where the pollen comes from. The New Yorker fact-checked that for me. And they said they actually have to change it so I added these. Anyway, yeah. People really like this one. It was an old seven days cartoon. I think... I did an alternate version of this where he's got a metal detector. It's weird, my drawing... I used to do watercolor cartoons for the New Yorker, but I don't do them. It's the... Oh, the cursor, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, a brush ink line. Yeah. Kind of old school. Just like Charles Adams would do it. I would imagine, yeah. This idea came to me. I was driving from Cornish to Burlington and there was a... you see them. They're Cooper's Hawk and they're sitting there and they look so... they look so badass and regal and just really impressive. And that's where it came from. It doesn't work, huh? Yeah. Yeah, there was some... Well, wait, switch to... Really don't like speeders. I don't... Yeah, there came a point in my life where... I'm really... I go slow. I drive pretty slow. I mean, if I'm on the highway, if it's wide open and there's no one around and I'll do 75, whatever, but if I'm driving where there are people, I tend to go pretty slow. I don't know why... Is that an age thing? I don't even know. You're no drive, do you? You had the Nirvana show on. I thought he probably drives. I remember when Nirvana's first album came out. 93 was it? And I was old in 93. I was like 35. That's pretty recent. 2000... No, 2023. Yeah, I was in a bar with a friend of mine and feeling we heard that accompaniment. I was like, what is this? You better spill it, Frank, because we got your pal Mittens in the next room singing like Lady Gaga. Lady freaking Gaga. So there's a narrative. If I like narrative cartoons where you can kind of, sometimes you can different captions, you spend more time there. I like the imagining what happened before and then after it. And it's very film noir-y. I grew up on old Billy Wilder movies and this is kind of still thinking about that squirrel. I'm laughing at my own cartoon. I just love that little face. She's just like, how do they do it? Right. Yeah, I mean, I try. That's kind of the goal. There's a film there and we're dropping in on some moment, I think. Sorry. I really don't have much to say about that one. I include my journals. I keep a journal and I journal every single day, every morning, every morning and it's fill up the journal with things. Yes, I think it's this one right here. Yep. That's Beatrix Potter, I'm not sure what I don't know what this says, but we better get off this before they read something. Really not cool. Oh, this is a sketch for a cover I did for The New Yorker. We all kind of worked. It was a collaborative effort with Art Spiegelman his wife, even Ramnik pitched in on this. Art Spiegelman had the idea we can go to the next one and I think see the finish. Yeah, I think it's right under it. Which was great to have all these people. I love collaborating. I'm not one of those cartoonists who really enjoy everyone working in, but yeah, Art's idea was to put the Clorox there. I think at a certain point, Francois said make, instead of Lurch, we're going to Lurch from the Adams family, because this is very Charles Adams. I mean that's supposed to be Jared Kushner is there. These are QAnon kids. There's a little portrait of Vladimir Putin right there. And this was, again, father time 2020 COVID ball. It's all in there. It's just stocking. It says Donald. It says Donald, Donald, Donald. And I started working with Steve Martin in 20, I don't know, what are we 24, 2021, 22. He was at a dinner with my cover editor and he had some ideas for cartoons and he said, do you know anybody? And she said, yeah, I know somebody likes to collaborate, Harry Bliss, and he actually knew my cartoons and then he started sending me some ideas, emailed me some ideas. And that's how it all started. Yeah. That picture, by the way, it was a photo shoot for the New York Times and he was like, he's great, he's just walking, he's like, Harry, I'll show you how to fake laugh on camera. It's really funny. And I was laughing at him. So he was making me laugh. Let's see. What's below that? Oh, that's a fun one. Yeah. This was kind of tricky drawing that. I had a friend of mine years ago who said, you suck at drawing guns. And ever since then I'm like, I got to learn how to, yeah, right. I got to make sure the gun's right and it was fun to draw. I mean, they're all kind of fun to draw. This is one of Steve's, I think. I think. This is just to show you what they look like before I add any graphite. It's just a lot. Two hours. Two hours. They start off in the journal. You go to the next one. They start off in the journal sometimes as little, like if he sends me an idea, or I think of an idea, I'll do a little rough of it and then, yeah, there's the finish. I'm kind of always working because I'm always, you know, when you're in your cartoonist, you're kind of, your brain becomes trained to see and hear cartoons. People say, did you ever run out of ideas? And I'm like, no, not a million years. Can I run out of ideas? No, it's just a pencil. Yeah, it's actually a mechanical pencil I use. But if you want to go to my Instagram account, there are videos like me drawing, which will really show you. I'm not going to try to explain it. Someone said, you know, that fish isn't that terribly drawn. It's hard to draw from me. I think Picasso, didn't Picasso say I've spent my entire life trying to draw like a child? Kind of unlearn what you learn, which is very interesting. That's right. That's actually right, yeah. That's when Steve calls me, I put in Naven Johnson, that's his name in the jerk. And so he does call a time, but when he does call it, just before I answer the phone, I'm like, you have a good laugh on that. There was a sandwich at August 1st in Burlington that I ordered yesterday called the jerk. And I took a picture of it and sent it to him. Oh, so Steve will have, he has a very specific mind, we all do, but his is very quirky and this was one idea that he said, you know, I had this idea and it's an overhead shot of a Las Vegas genie convention. And that's, that's like, I would never think of that. And he said, and then he sent me these lines, I think I'm getting a new bottle. What kind of cork do you use? Have you seen the new screw tops? A thousand years, that's nothing. And he had more lines to go and I just, I was like, you know what, I'm not going to do that. That's too much work. Anyway, the next one I like is a page from our first book. This is a, oh, yeah, we can read. So he says, well, Harry, I gotta say I've been a city boy my whole life but that walk in the woods was spectacular. I saw a deer, bear, scat, a squirrel, some kind of bird. I think I saw a rhino. I just don't see a downside. There, I got it. What a nasty looking tick. Okay, now you check me. It's bright ticks. It's like, that's what you got to do. You go out, you're in the woods, you come inside, you strip your clothes down. But this, I like this drawing because I think that's kind of what he looks like naked. Those strips to do with Steve, we did a lot with Penny. There's Penny on the cover. Penny is the, my wife and I, Sophie had our dog Penny that again she's been on New Yorker covers and we had her, 17 years is a long time and when you lose a dog if you have a dog and you've lost a dog, it's just crushing. It's just a crushing thing. Steve said the same thing. He said it's the second worst thing that could possibly happen. This one was this one. It's one of Steve's too. I love every now and again I'll draw him in the cartoon. I don't do it very often but this was I think you can see I've like scratched out in the graphite here to get some of that. He's a huge Winslow Homer fan as I, and so I try to tap into Homer some of the seascapes. This one is, says Barnaby, if by chance the cats are ahead in the bridge game hold off on serving the smoked salmon bites. Very good Miss Penny. I like this one. That's very much like Penny. But again, this comes from reading a lot of ideas I will get from reading. PG Wode House eventually. It's a miniature poodle. Kind of a scruffy little 24. I'm just thinking of the body bag I have in Cornish that I had to bring her in as October 11th, 2022. Yeah. Did she show up in your drawings before you lost her or after? She continues to show up in the drawings. I'll put her in every now and again. And I have a new dog too. This was Steve's cartoonist. I think I sent him the drawing and then he added the this is completely Tintin on the moon. It's RJ Tintin on the moon. Totally. He loves dogs. He had a dog in his book. There's a passage about his dog Roger. He can't. We tried to have a discussion on the phone about he was going to read the passage. I think it's in our book. It's in the first, but he couldn't read it. He started crying. Yeah. Couldn't read it. I was like, again, this is a very Steve idea. Come on, Penny. I'll teach you how to fly. You cup your hands like this and flap them up and down. And then anyway, oh, here comes Harry. What's up? Nothing? This is good. I put this little book of LSD because I was experimenting with Second Alex at the time. But yeah, Steve he's got there's a surreal side to his sense of humor that I really like. Anyway, that's the cover. We can skip this. It's kind of boring, but there's Penny again. Not a great, it's kind of Penny and you know, oh, this shows you this shows you the sketch for the oh, this is a sketch for the second book we did. It's called Other Diversions. Number one is walking in other diversions. He was telling me he would write the script and it's about three amigos. I remember something and I like this. My favorite part of this is we're sleeping and I'm like wahoo and Penny turns around and is pissed off. It's like Martin, like he woke us up. But these were these strips were super fun to do and he was completely open with having me integrate like we'll be walking in the woods. I integrated New Hampshire, Vermont and you really enjoyed that. Which was a huge relief for me because I really loved to draw the woods and nature and all that stuff. This was, we got to do a thing on the New York, what's this place in New York the town hall in New York with Nathan Lane was moderating it and Steve was there and it was so much fun and he just that's basically I laughed the whole time because these guys are so good. They're so funny. Well I was drawing, I did some drawings on a big screen and this is just it's kind of crazy. I stopped thinking about there was a time early on when we started collaborating where I was like oh my god this is Steve Martin. I grew up, I grew up loving Steve Martin. He was my hero. But it went away and I guess when I met him and spent some time with him he's like he's just a really nice guy and I don't know yeah it's not there anymore which is nice. This is where the title of my book came from, comes from which is that's the brutal thing about having a dog even my dog now, Junior, we go to the next one before I started crying yeah then my dog now it's like sometimes I look at Junior Junior's just like a year and three months and I'll just be like Jesus you know it's kind of how am I going to but someone said to me recently when you have a dog you have all this love and you have to keep giving it to the dog keep giving it to another dog another dog this is a rough, these are just covered ideas that let's get back to funny, oh that's a good one that's very out of my that's like the Mickey Mouse hair this shows you from the journal so you'll see what the roughs look like in my journal and I think this was Steve's idea and then the next one you can see the actual cartoon and we switch the he switched the line and I like this line better but you can see it's very film noir very cinematic and I borrow a lot from I still watch I watch a film, a criterion channel film every night pretty much this is a strip I did from Mountain Gazette magazine which is a new magazine that just started it's not a new magazine it was big in the 70's, large format and it started up again, Mike Rogie who lived in Burlington started it again anyway, Steve and I have been contributing double page spread comics to this publication and this one I did by myself without Steve this is the first one I did this is about my dog Junior I got a puppy, a little Aussie Shepherd standard Aussie Shepherd and I'm absolutely so yeah, you can read this but this is exactly how it went down I was first allergic to the dog I almost got divorced over this Sophie was allergic, she was flipping out she couldn't believe I got another dog she's now come to love Junior but it was really tough and it's at night getting up you take your puppy out at 3am to go to the bathroom whatever and then he does, he humps a little towel he's a little he's happy, after he eats he gets excited so he goes out onto the patio and humps a little towel because he's so happy so I was like get a room, you too but if you ever go to Cornish, New Hampshire you go to the next one Maxville Parrish lived there and worked there and it's just like his paintings you look at night and you see where he's sitting here right? such a good boy such a good boy he's a good boy G-O-O boy let's see, oh there's another one there little dog says Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to get me to chew your stockings again totally inspired from films The Graduate was a seminal movie for me it was my kind of catcher in the ride it was the first, I saw a movie and I was like oh, I can leave home and just go after a girl that's something I could just do I don't have to ask my parents oh we did it twice so go down to the next one I guess 260 year old man looking for a cursor oh there you go over here now yeah good luck Godspeed you're on that I'll talk about that because I'm a collector I collect art I actually spend most of the money I earn on art that's the other thing I love about Steve because if there's something that I'm unsure of I'll ask him about it he knows most of the auction sites but you've seen his collection right? not all of it his and Ann's both of them, yeah oh you did the splash one? yeah, yeah yeah, he's got Steve's got a great eye he's got a great eye yeah, his collection's insane he's a Lucian Freud I'm just no caption here but I love Willard Metcalf a Cornish colony artist I love if you get a chance to look up Willard Metcalf's brilliant, one of my favorite American impressionist I just bought a Willard Metcalf pastel that I got really cheap this is Wanda Gog I don't know, really fantastic illustrator artist yes, millions of cats yeah, she was a fantastic artist check her work out there are books on her well, we go to the next one this is a watercolor of hers that I picked up at auction maybe a year ago and it's of I mean it's nice to get a print but this is an actual watercolor and it's about this big thin paper and it's gorgeous it's just gorgeous I bought an NC Wyatt huge NC Wyatt and I this is a nice segue that was completely unplanned too I met Andrew Wyatt years ago I went to Chad's Ford, Pennsylvania and hung out with Andy and his wife Betsy for about two and a half hours and we had grown up we were huge Wyatt's fans we sat for a while at one point Betsy got up and left us to kind of hang out with her but at some point I was going to take the picture I said can I take your picture and she said I'll get one of you and Andy together and Andy said I get an idea why don't we stage something here I mean really, he was like 90 at the time and he said I'll get on the floor and he said Betsy you take your cane and get on top of me and go like that like you're going to hit me and I've got more photographs of them absolutely hilarious this is all in the memoir I wrote the whole essay up in the memoir but what a trip what a total trip they were so generous and they really loved the cart they loved the drawings oh that's my wife they loved the kind of crew Andy loved the crude quality of the drawing because I brought a bunch of drawings with me because I knew I was going to be really nervous I'm like I'll just put these out I think we're almost done no there's a couple what are you doing with 714 getting close to the end I like this one, this is very autobiographical I like to come here sometimes all by myself and shout the most offensive things I can think of like not maybe not everyone like this one I like because you can't you can't and I also like that drawing it was really yeah if I might say so myself we'll go quickly I'll go quickly then this is a recent one of Steve's you never see them roll over why should you this one's sick it's not sick it's actually very sweet in a way because shotgun because I did a book called Death cartoons and I remember when that came out and I got a few more than two people saying that how there was a retirement community or a hospice place they had the book in their library and made so many people laugh like they really appreciated it you know kind of laugh in the face of death oh this is another strip this one actually this is a sneak preview this isn't even out yet but Andy Warhol and you know the shot Maryland's anyone know the shot Maryland's well there was a studio in 1964 Andy Warhol created a series of five silk screen images of Marilyn Monroe each a different color this was a blast to do by the way that's Lou Reed by the way and the studio I wanted Dracula in there because it's just a the silk screen portraits basically this woman into the studio in 1964 her name was Poe Burr you can Google this Dorothy Podburr she said can I shoot these Andy thought yeah you can photograph them she pulled out a revolver and shot shot that right off they were stacked four together they later became then he's like and then I like this little pop pop art thing so the shot Maryland's as they came to be called acquired instant cash and shot Blue Sage Maryland was sold at Christie's in 2022 for $195 million and Andy Warhol you know he of course he's gone now but if he were there he would have been he would say wow this one I really like too take it easy Billy I'm just gonna give her a treat this might be the last one that's Junior that's a recent one it's like they don't commercial where isn't 70s commercial where the guy was like walking in Paris he just says I love this woman I don't care who knows it remember that was a commercial no never alright thanks John thank you big round God bless you just gonna stay up there I had Trotsky in Vermont yeah well I just I brought I did this because I was just messing around with drawing William Steig once said he just he loved to like see what happens to see where the ink moves and where it goes on on the page and I always thought I always loved that there was something that I did at elementary schools I would have kids come up and draw scribble because I was trying to get a kid over the intimidation of the paper so it have them do a scribble like that I'm not gonna have anyone here do it because I don't feel like it it's a cool game by the way to play with anyone I still play it you know when I'm out and I have paper but so you look at this and you think well what can I turn it into turn it anybody have any ideas pretend this is a classroom what do you think this could be turned into what do you think that's not a very good student you're not being you're gonna get in trouble go with the dog you know my brother is an educator and this is a terrible dog so let's just get rid of this I hate this drawing oh it's stuck don't be afraid to destroy your work my brother is an educator and I hope this is the film that he sees this and I went to his school in Rochester New York and I had him do a scribble I'm like John let's get Mr. Bliss out there to do a scribble here's what my brother's scribble was I'm not kidding and every adult in the whole room all the teachers were just like and I'm like okay that's cool I don't know what I did I don't know yeah I'm not good I'm just gonna go away but um yeah I love to draw trees and the thing that I'll I'll tell people about drawing is to understand I'm reading about Leonardo da Vinci right now Isaacson in fact I finished I think I did but da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci was off the charts unbelievably amazing I can't there's no one else who's ever lived in my opinion who was as smart and as just as amazing as da Vinci was the guy dissected 30 cadavers and drew everything he knew about them everything and they were drawn beautifully just miraculous drawings so all this to say if you want to understand trees you have to just study them and keep watching them like now I'm learning oh the bark's really quite different on a sugar maple then you know pine trees are different in the background white pines and often times if I'm cartooning I will start this way because I love to draw this stuff I love drawing it's a way for me to draw the things that I love to draw I'll put a dog here you know with some guy walking the dog and then I'll think of like I said earlier I'll think of a narrative that led up to this moment in the walk and there was a recent cartoon I just did where it had the guy walking and there's a big landscape I think it was yesterday's cartoon and he says to the dog behold my antidepressant look at the nature so any questions? I'm moving over here now they used to send out kind of calendars not really though no they'll send out a calendar and every now and again when Osama bin Laden was killed they had sent out an urgent we need a cover on this right away and I submitted a cover that I thought was very good and I thought they should have run it it was just an ocean just a shot of the ocean just a water color and it was just a turbulent waters and because they buried him at sea and there's nothing but turbulent times then I went with something else it was a picture of Osama bin Laden and then someone he raced it which I thought was kind of a shallow I didn't I'm opinionated but I've gone from answering your question to touting how how good I am Ed Collins spoke here about five or six years ago and one of the things he talked about was the connection between the art and the caption and he said that he had the art down and then it was a challenge to get a caption that was inappropriate like I was wondering if you could now since you keep a journal where it looks like you're writing and drawing maybe you see that in a different way but could you comment on how it works for you connecting the art and the words well they have to be they should be inseparable in other words they have to rely on each other so a good example of that is the guy sleeping with the vodka bottle like the caption says you wake question mark it needs the drawing but it's different with every cartoonist because my captions is my style of writing there's a cadence to it there's a way that it's like a song it was just one yesterday my wife and I I did the drawing and it came down to one word it was a fairly decent length caption but instead of a device my device a device was better than my device and it was better because because a device he was talking about his phone he was walking in the woods and saying basically he's walking in the woods with his dog he's talking into his phone and he says hey Siri set a reminder for me so I know how wonderful it is to be walking in the woods without my device so but it was really important that it be a device because it's more universal than my device I felt like my device somehow was too personal I might be wrong but that's an example of how you could get pretty nitpicky it has to be right and it's how I talk it's how I would talk to they come to you at the same time so the art and the words no not at all that was me drawing I literally did a drawing of a guy walking in the woods just like I would draw here and I really liked the drawing I stared at it and then he had a phone so he had the phone he's walking and then at first I had something coming out of the phone like he's listening to someone and I didn't really have anything and then did I ask someone wait I might have oh no no then it came to me something came to me like no he should be saying something I'm sorry my wife that's her cartoon that's her idea so I should clear it up because she gave me the idea about him thinking something about how wonderful it is to be in nature and then using his device to remind him of that that was her idea and I just changed it I said how tranquil I used to I wanted the word tranquil how tranquil it is am I over explaining it but yeah it can be very complicated it can be wrong or anything see things automatically as cartoons as you're going through life do you find that ever creating a wall between you and the experiences you're having because you're framing things in terms of future cartoons no I don't think so even as I get in the way of my being present I don't think so I mean it almost has to a little bit because if I see something as a potential cartoon I am working then is your wife a good for people who know you well saying things like are you doing it now kind of yeah my wife definitely yeah wasn't there was there there's a really funny movie called Walk Hard the Dewey Cox story with John C Riley which is so funny and they're having an argument they're getting divorced and Kristen Wiig just looks at him and she says don't you and they're arguing and she says something a line that's mad at him and he's listening to the line he's like that would make a great song and she says Dewey don't you write a song about this you're always reading things in that kind but it's I don't so much anymore because I draw the drawing is first drawing is the first thing Ed probably does or did I should say he's probably out there still he's probably I like them all I like the ones that are funny without the caption and the caption tightens it in so it gives it a point how it sharpens it yeah the Amish Midlife crisis is funny as a drawing yeah that's true but then that gives it a snap that I love that's funny though because the caption gives no one's actually pointed that out before but you're right in that you almost don't need Amish Midlife crisis up there in the box it's a little superfluous but it adds a nice right maybe I'm just saying I never thought of that before but you make an interesting point there because it's funny without it I mean I think people would might I don't know I'm not sure but I try on the single frames yeah thank you thank you that means a lot to me I work for I think a lot about those the way it's and I think there was a poet that I met once Yousef and I won't know how to pronounce his last name does anyone know this a Pulitzer prize winning Yousef Karma no come on he said to me that there's poetry in the cartoons in cartoons and I kind of like to believe him a little bit even though I know very little and nothing about poetry but my mother-in-law who's 92 who just had a stroke well a year ago and she a published poet when she reads to me her poems I think the same thing I think this is very much like writing captions you know it's very specific yeah I have a book of rejected New Yorker cartoons because my editor thought they were a bad taste yes yeah you're a prolific cartoonist I think my question is how many cartoons a month or whatever period do you submit to in New Yorker out of how many do you total and how many are rejected or extended yeah that's a good question I'm syndicated through Tribune Media and I've been syndicated since 2008 I think so I have to generate a daily cartoon six days a week I'm contracted with the New Yorker I've been contracted for most of them since 99 which means they have first a right of refusal on all my cartoons so what I do is I generate six or seven cartoons every week I send them to the New Yorker first they say oh I want I'm going to take these two to the meeting so they hold them then I have to come up with two more send the rest to my syndicate and that way they'll take those to the cartoon meeting once a week they'll either buy one usually I sell once a week once every two weeks and I don't care anymore we used to really hate not selling it would really drive him crazy he'd get mad and he was frustrated and I'd be like man you're a legend it doesn't matter anymore you've done like 60 covers but it really mattered to him it bothered him so it's brutal it's absolutely brutal I mean I'm lucky because whatever is to profane or unpublishable of the seven or eight I generate every week seven days we'll publish I just want to say look at seven days those are the rejects ones that I like they publish ones that are profane and they'll publish them that was kind of by design I mean it was but it's a really brutal career it's just for people who have to rely on the New Yorker it's super hard no I send it directly to seven days although they get the similar drawings than the syndicate sometimes the same drawings and sometimes profane drawings yes we are not mine right yeah I do oh mine it's all over the place I don't know yeah I do I'm sick of it man I'm kind of sick of looking at my work I don't hang it up in my house and I would say that's I'll look at my old work and be like wow I was really good I could really paint watercolors but I'm way more interested in other people's work but I do have most of my work some of that I sell some of the New Yorker covers I sell I sold the King Kong cover to the company that owns the Empire State Building they bought that cover yeah thanks yeah I'm really proud of that that almost got me a gold medal in 1993 from the Society of Illustrators a guy a judge came up to me and said you were that close I was like fuck you yeah that was that piece I am very proud of I like the modeling on that really worked out and my journal drawings like I said but after studying Leonardo da Vinci and seeing his drawings all those drawings at the Windsor Castle they're just unbelievable they blow my mind I can't believe he was that prolific and he died at 66 yeah I'm going to steal some of those I'm going to break in I'm going to get them you can't get them do you ever consider or have an urge that you will push yourself into a fine arts which you would get paid for the same amount of work for a whole lot more I make pretty good money doing cartoons no it's not it's just the opposite it's very easy drawing cartoons is I love to do it it's easy never I used to there was a time when I used to think when I used to think of a cartoon if you find yourself trying to think of a cartoon you're just going to hit a wall but I just start drawing that's what William Steig said and Ed would say Ed Coran would say just start drawing and see where it takes you that's a beautiful way to work I paint my way don't mess around to get right to work I've got it it's really good because I've had yeah that's nice too when you can sleep on it dream of I've dreamed of paintings yeah that's a whole another if you're daily cartoons how do you decide what cartoon comes out on which is I don't the publisher does that my syndicate does that there's some days like of course Christmas is coming up or a holiday out there's some snow cartoons or some seasonal stuff beach stuff in the summer yeah anyone else yes so why do you say the cartoon you send to seven days of profane some of them are what? I don't want to say they're sweet some are sweet those are the yes you're right I should take that back you're right you're right no you're right they used to be profane they did years ago they would if I could think of one they would publish the sex things the sex jokes that I did which would have there was a woman in bed and the guys got the bra on and the woman says I'm going to need that bra back so those things I couldn't get published in syndication maybe the New Yorker would publish some things but seven days God bless them the cartoons that I really like that were unpublishable anywhere else they would run but you're right I think that is true they are kind of sweet well I'll get you some yeah sometimes I'll do that for people I'll put their dog in a cartoon let's just see if their dog is not doing well I do that for people sometimes the article about you in seven days one of that it sounded like you sometimes think about giving a cartoon enough and I was hoping that's not true because like six days a week I look forward to a moment of just peace little bless little moment of bliss I just love it wow thanks that means a lot to me I don't think I will just because it's not but I meant retiring in terms of books and working hard I don't really have any I don't like promoting I don't like doing stuff like that I like coming to libraries and talking to people but I think in the world that we live in right now with social media and this especially for young people especially my son's 30 there's an immense pressure for young people to be famous to be seen to be known to have followers and I rail against that even though I have a lot of followers on Instagram now that's funny to me that's me being asshole but I do rail against it I think it's terrible for young people it's terrible for creativity when I think back on my early career the most important thing for me and it still is for me being me to draw a cartoon that I love to draw a picture I like to draw it could be $50 or $100 I don't care but the fact the joy I get from that is amazing it's just like this is great I don't need much more than that so I've got to need a job so I'll keep drawing cartoons and I love to draw my dogs and I like to make people feel good so someone here said that there's a way to get a cartoon a day from you yeah you can, see I suck at promotion you could go to my website and just type in your email it doesn't go anywhere else it just goes to my, I have a web guy who's Peter Woodward from my art school roommate god I love this guy but he, my website harrybliss.com you go in, you put your name in and you get my cartoon every day you can see on my website there's a ton of cartoons on there the whole log is there and I sell prints there and stuff and I'm tired of me I just thought of something I asked Ed the last time I started doing Ed together and I asked Ed does he take suggestions yeah he doesn't and he never did, but you do yes I take, you know anybody has an idea for a cartoon you know yeah no I don't, I like collaborating one of my favorite things to do was in fact my brother-in-law Tony, he's a law professor in Wayne State just sent a cartoon to me three weeks ago that the New Yorker bought and it's great, it's got I can't put it on my phone somewhere but it's got a huge rock it's an older, big giant cliff and it's thinking to itself that it'll never beat rock never beat scissors or something but it was such a funny gag and I drew it very like highly rendered rock and one of my favorite things to do is to call him and tell him the New Yorker bought your cartoon it makes me so happy so yeah alright I'm interested that I hate commissions because I hate me too and that's like the kiss of death forgetting anything you have to work under that happily every single day will they like this but it's, no it's not a commission though because I'm drawing for me they're just along for the ride Quinn Tarantino said that about making movies which I loved I make movies for me it's just a luxury that people like my movies that's the way it's turned it is so I hate commissions, can't stand it draw this, we need a businessman in a suit I don't know even for the New Yorker covers even for the New Yorker covers if they, I still submit on occasion but yeah I wouldn't like that I probably would turn it down you reach a certain age in your life you're like I don't want to do anything that is going to cause me stress or just like loose sleep or I'd rather if you can afford it if you need the money to pay your bills that's different but yeah, no thanks man I'd rather hike in the woods with my dog than sit strapped over a desk just so you know, as you've been talking more and more and seeing one of your cute puppy touch podiums is better than you awww thank you and John of course is talking about what it's like to lose your cartoons he worships me okay dear self, June, I should have brought him I actually thought I'd bring him well thank you yeah, it was a lot of fun