The impossible has happened – on my zillionth trip to the city, I finally reached my New York City threshold!
Since a trip to the city always manages to leave me short of words (in a good or bad way), I decided to resort to cartooning (pardon my sketchiness, it’s a venture after an almost 5 year hiatus, and I must say, Photoshop’s attempt at translating my 'work of art' left a lot to be desired ;)) to dissect the capriciousness of New Yorkers, broken down mathematically by a concept called the 'New York Quotient' *grin*
Numerically,
Your NY Quotient ∝
[# of toes stepped on & vice versa] + [# of hours camping at red lights] + [# of dollars the ticket vending machines ate up] + [# of rude, curt answers you’ve received] + [# of answers you haven’t received] + [# of times you’ve tripped on street debris] + [total line-waiting time (this includes restaurants, bars, subway & ferry booths, TICKETMASTER)]
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22 comments:
wow!!! the artwork is superb!! i have to ask - did you really sketch this?:) And the imagery is coherent with a nicely increasing gradient. Perhaps I am a born New Yorker since I never had to be in NY to "be on the move always without regards to time":)
Now to the equation. Mind explaining?
Is the threshold like critical mass? Or is it a constant? How about subtracting the "pleasure" part (great chinatown food, absolutely rocking desi pockets, fabulous record stores, broadway, seinfeld, STC, hard rock cafe and I could go on). Methinks with the subtraction it would be very hard to reach the threshold especially if one is completely time insensitive (did that kind of negate the whole idea of NY).
And finally a quibble - I didnt see an "=" sign. You should have made the numerical part an artwork as well.
my bad! didnt notice the "proportional" sign. I still think it should be a singular quantity if it is a threshold.
DEEEEEEEEEE, where have ya been?! (‘course it’s that one. Can't fool me the second time round...)
Yep, the numerical part needed workin on...trust the numbers expert to pick on it, when I’m jus minding my own business, steering clear of them & doin what I do best (yeah, I did the sketching myself; nothing a good charcoal pencil and inspirations from ‘the big book of cartoons’ can't do :). Btw, the last time I cartooned was caricaturing my professors in college; I had the uncanny knack of starting with portraits and ending up with cartoons :D). I shouldn’t have started up with that whole equation thing, considering the only equation I truly believe in is good food = unconditional bliss :)
That’s true though, I was shortchanging NY by including the quirks w/o the perks :D so, gave your suggestion due credit & tried to factor in the advantages. Let me know if that works for ya. If not, come up with one yourself. hmmmppphhh X|
yeah, the ‘proportional to’ sign is representing (good to know it's still in vogue. I have been outside the numbers game for a while now ;))! I don't care what math dictates, cos I always speak figuratively & that’s jus my way of letting the folks know that the NY experience can't be “equated” :)
ok. i will live with both equations. i was never that great with math anyways, except that i had the unfortunate luck (just in this case) to be born an indian and you know how it is. If you are Indian you got to be a ramanujan. so my artsy real self says - love it.:)
ok...went thru the new items in detail and cool. everything different from what i think of ny. This follows heisenbergs uncertainty principle then:) i like the curt answers of ny (no polite stuff for me when i need to know). i like the anonymity. and wheres the "met". no not the ny mets!:)
come up with my own equation?? nope, i dont like to compete where i cant win;)
he he he..."cannot be equated". thats what i call a winner.
yeah, you do spend way too much time browsing pointless weblogs to be a ramanujam ;) [j/k of course; don't wanna lose my scanty, albeit highly qualified readership (by that I mean, those that can catch on to the nuances, like the 'gradient' factor :)]
but i've said this before, and i cant say it enough -- india gives waaaay too much importance to the "math-science" department. i realize that's where the money is, but I hope once we make it all up with in-sourcing (is that the right complement?) we can focus on the arts :)
The MET, did you say? the Met (or the Mets, for that matter) has no place on my blog. i dont like art all that much ;) spent a wasteful couple hours at the guggenheim last weekend and had it not been for the wind and rain i woulda jumped out the windows (if they had any; kinda keep you trapped in concentric circles) right onto the lush greenness of central park. more my scence. why would you gaze at van gogh's park, when there's one right across? that's one place reality wins for me :)
'i like the curt answers of ny'
hmm, that's why i call NY an "experience" instead of a city. i prefer curtness too, when i have the stomach for it.
it's the cumulative effect. this time I could have done with a nice bright smile and a cheerful hi. cos the vending machine stole 10 bucks, i walked 30 blocks cos i couldnt get a cab on 5th ave and my favorite gyro vendor at rockefeller center was amiss :(
now, the time i was on my way to see Roger play at Flushing, I coulda done w/o the old man gushing about Agassi, smiles an' all. sigh! NY- it offers somethin different, every single time :)
just the facts:
i read only one blog. i have a hard enough time keeping my day job as it is:). in general i prefer face to face conversation so i am defly. realist there.
no, no loss of one reader (qualified or not). thats the plus side of good writing. you can afford to lampoon and be yourself:)
The cartoons are impressive, and speak a lot about your charcoal skills. I never knew that along with the micropipette and the pen, you seem to be jolly good at wielding a charcoal pencil too.
Don't feel flattered yet. Coz I am not so sure about the puzzling math that follows.
:-)))))
Dee,
That's me beaming :)
never feel like the emoticons convey enough of my emotion. reason why i have to resort to words, and soooo many of them! cartoons dont do the job either, cos they always need captions...
what would we do in a world w/o words? :O there's an interesting topic to write on :)
atool,
whoever said anything about weilding a micropipette well? you seem to have forgotten my constant cries about bench science, but i wont try and remind you :)
as for the pen, i often wonder what i would do if i didnt write. that would be too many hours of nothing!!!
the charcoal pencil is pretty cool -- you run it on paper thinkin of somethin -- what you get looks ten times as good. i used to do a lot of cartooning back in india, but my branching into celluloid kinda made that fade away...then i realized that the marriage is jus a scanner away :)
the math -- i'd advise you to not waste precious time interpeting it, but if you do manage to make sense outta nothin, you might wanna break it down for me :) you should know tho, that i'm a tad worse at math than i am with computers ;)
awesome cartoon... i do read ur blogs, but never post a comment....well i am a firm believer that you are amazingly talented and i truly believe (though most of the folks r going ga ga ge ges over this cartoon ) that u r capable of much more....
gees and trust dee to post a comment like that(if i may say so!!!)
good luck
nans
jeez, nans! i am not making a living here. merely making living better :D
you must admit though, that this is a far cry from my unrefined cartooning in The Profile. what was i thinking? :O
i'd normally try to hide the fact that i demanded a comment by sending ya an email alert, but not today. dee's flattering comment should suffice :)
btw, it's 'jeez'
I mentioned the micropippette just to give my statement - for the lack of a better word - a melodramatic feel, you know ;)
This reminds me of the days in high school when I dabbled at sketching RK Laxman cartoons from the TOI (the Common Man et al). My memory drawing skills left a lot to be desired and that's as far as I went.
atool,
today's been a down-memory-lane day. i usta love RK laxman and keshav. cartooning is more about the creative thought process than the actual sketching itself, and i'd rather have the creatviity to make people laugh out loud than jus be able to paint hair and eyes with a pencil, if you know what i mean :D
yeah, i figured about the micropipette. god knows you've heard enough of my sulking to think i was good at using it :D
at the end of the day, all i ask for is a decent degree of advocacy over the weilding of a pen :) and a fork, of course (despite the fact that i eat best with my hands unarmed :))
The Nr ought to have a logical value built-in as a multiplier, for whether you actually LIVE in New York or not :-))
gees - geez, ga ga ge ges - ga ga goo goos, whats the diff?!:) nans does to english (simplify) what (i think) kalainyar karunanidhi did for tamil (and no flames from the thi mu ka factions please).
"what would we do in a world w/o words?"
why, go to the MET of course;-)
FS,
The '#'s take care of that!!! The # of times you have done somethin obviously increases proportionally with how many days you've spent in the city. But if I were to include that factor, it'd probably be in the dr. there is somethin about jus bein a NY-er that makes it irresistable to the ppl that live there.
i get it. i dont live in NY ;) And for once, am I glad! Boy, that city's not easy...
dee,
the MET uses too many words for its own good. I have been caught staring at some of 'em in the pretense of appreciating art, till the real enthusiasts pass me by with a weird look. And that's when I realize it's a sign board (for a restroom, perhaps) and nonchallantly move away :D
i dont understand Nans' (or KK's) point. Why would more words simplify a language? I think I make it simplest -- I always get my point across in tamil, w/o ever having to use all the syllables :) And as a bonus, I send people into spurts of laughter :)
:) ok, i will grant u that the MET and its siblings are a little abstract. Sometimes, in some of these places it may really be an art exhibit of a restroom:)
My point on simplification withdrawn. But you must admit that backhandedly clubbing KK and nans together was a pretty good one!:)
"i prefer curtness too, when i have the stomach for it."
I always prefer curtness to excessive verbosity. If you can say something by pointing a finger (whichever one it is) go fer it. What i dislike is the head in the sand approach (a la the zombies with their iPod stuck on or head buried in the NYT).
yeah, Dave Barry says it best --
'It's NOT a bag of rubbish: It's a rubbish bag! If THAT'S not $47,000 worth of innovation, then I don't know what is.'
little wonder that the talented people dont make any money in this world...
hehe, yep, i grant you the backhand clubbing. though knowing nans, you could forehand club and she still wouldnt get it ;) [this, assuming nans wouldnt go through the excruciating process of reading my comments section more than once in one decade ;)]
dee, 2 people couldnt be more different! after having drunk the "be nice" mantra of this country, i cant stand people that say in two words what can be said in two sentences ;) but i do so love the head in sand types -- one, cos they ensure that you stay away from them rather than be curt later, and two cos there is no bigger turn-on than a guy with his head buried in the NY times and the world could all but crumble around him...sigh...now there's a reason to keep taking the NJ transit to NY :)
"no bigger turn-on than a guy with his head buried in the NY times"
true;-) a guy who can wrap his philly cheese steak in the nations best is one after my heart too:)
now, you got me rethinkin -- no bigger turn on than a guy that devours a philly cheese steak and the NY times, and once he's done with both, wraps one up in the other and tosses it in the trash!
there......
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