This coming weekend is the National Cartoonists Society's annual Reuben Award Convention Thing, and guess who gets to go? Well, lots of people, but one of them is me. It's in New Orleans this time, at the Ritz Carlton in the French Quarter no less (see photo above). I've never been to New Orleans, so I'm really looking forward to it. To get there I'll board the Crescent Express, an Amtrak train that takes about 26 hours to reach the City That Care Forgot (so called by Mark Twain). I'm taking a book, or maybe a whole bookcase.
I'm attending this year's Reubens because I'm up for an award. Every year the NCS bestows a Reuben Award, named after Rube Goldberg, on the Cartoonist of the Year. I'm not up for that, I'm up for one of the division awards, the division being "Newspaper Strips". Here's the full list of divisions and nominees, and here's the list of those up for Cartoonist of the Year. I'm up against Paul Gilligan of Pooch Cafe and Jim Meddick of Monty, both strips I like a lot. It'll be an interesting and a fun trip, even for a stick-in-the-mud antisocial guy like me who never leaves the house much except by astral projection.
Above is a photo of an actual Reuben Award, as designed by Rube Goldberg (it looks like it comes with a set of dinner plates, too). Originally it was to be a lamp, but it was converted into a trophy. Kind of a pity because it'd be a great lamp, especially if there was one on either side of a very ugly sofa.
So I won't have much to say here for a while, though a bit later I'll add the story of the only other time I went to a Reubens thing, back in '96, and how my rental tuxedo pants didn't fit.
Above is a photo I found on Google Images under "Crescent Express", which worries me. I don't think I can sit on that thing for 26 hours.
