Where I'll Be

This weekend is the annual National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards and I get to go. And I get to take my family along to subject them to all the fun. As in past years I'm taking the train from DC, this time to Boston, disembarking at South Station, which is only a few blocks from this hotel.

It's the fabulous Fairmont Copley Plaza, an ornate ocean liner of a hotel that floats on Copley Square in Back Bay. In its famous Oak Bar you can buy a special engagement martini priced at $12,500! There's a resident dog named Copley that guests may rent for walkies! There's a lobby with big plush chairs where you can sit and look directly at someone else in a similar chair! Each room features beds with a pillow arrangement so complex and hard to disassemble that most guests give up and sleep on the floor! Okay, not all of that's true, but this is the venue that the NCS has chosen for its annual bash.

We'll be staying next door at the Westin, which is also a nice place, and much taller.

More TK.

Reuben, Reuben, I've Been Thinking

Mad Master Tom Richmond drew this poster for the National Cartoonist Society's 2011 Reuben Weekend, where the NCS gathers to fill up on corned beef & sauerkraut sandwiches and trade ink-related horror stories. Somehow Alice, Petey and me all snuck into this, along with such masters as R.O.Blechman, Roy Doty, Tom Gammill, Glen Keane and Stephan Pastis (not to mention thousands of comics characters). I swore I wouldn't show up on my own blog in person but Tom Richmond's version is so much more lifelike than the actual thing. (And strangely enough, the only other image on this blog close to it was also by Tom.)
Tom talked about the poster with Mike Cavna at the Washington Post.

Home Again

I just got back from the 64th Annual Reuben Awards in Jersey City, and oh boy, what a good time I had! First, my sincere congratulations to Mr. Dan Piraro, the hardest working man in comics, for getting the Reuben this year. Well deserved, and about time, and Dan! Where were you? There was a very real danger of someone like Stephan Pastis rushing the stage and making off with that big shiny object. Not that I would ever do such a thing, as it might require giving a speech.

More to come, when I remember it.

The Reuben Weekend

As everyone in the nation is no doubt aware, this weekend is the National Cartoonists Society's annual Reuben Award Convention Thing, and it's being held here (above) at the Hyatt Jersey City, somewhere off the coast of Manhattan. And look (below) they've got a boat in case you want to leave!

I'm going to the Reubens in Jersey this year 1, to see friends I never otherwise set eyes on; and 2, 

because I'm up for the Reuben Award (below).

Every year the NCS bestows the Reuben Award, named for Rube Goldberg, on the Cartoonist of the Year. This year they've run short of names so I'm a nominee, along with two other, more deserving cartoonists, Dan Piraro and Stephan Pastis. Not only does the winner get the lovely ornamental statue, also scultpted by Rube Goldberg, but he (or she) evidently gets a set of dinner plates too (I make this joke every damn year and so far nobody's laughed). Goldberg supposedly planned his tumbling dwarves to be the base for a table lamp, but it somehow got reconfigured into a trophy. I don't think the ink bottle on top actually works, which is a shame because who wouldn't be inspired, overawed or just terrified into drawing better by using this massive objet as an inkwell? 

 

To get to Jersey City, you get on a train and get off at the stop just before Manhattan. I'm hoping I'm not the only one there because all the photos I've found of the hotel so far seem utterly devoid of life.

Updates if possible as they become available.