james gandolfini

wizard

happy

i am not amused 2

even more rabbit

sons of the desert 1

My brother was hit by a moped three years ago. It ran right over his face and took his nose with it. He has a hole for a mouth and a tire track running from the left side of his forehead to the right side of his chin. And then there’s this:

Yesterday, I asked my brother if he’d ever seen Sons of the Desert, a Laurel and Hardy movie.

“No,” he said.  And then he paused.  “Wait, are you talking about me or Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

“You”, I said.

“Oh, okay.  No, I haven’t.”

“Have you seen any Laurel and Hardy movies?”

“I think so…wait, me or Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

And so on.

Every time I ask him a question about his personal history, his favorite ice cream flavor, his shoe size, anything, he always has to clarify whether I’m asking him or Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Which is not to say he thinks he IS Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He still signs his rent checks with his given name.  And he still introduces himself as Auggie to new acquaintances, as long as his name isn’t solicited.  If it is, well:

“And you are?”

“Me or Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

I’ve asked him numerous times if he was aware of his own peculiarity.  And in each instance, he’d ask me if I meant him or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I mean you,” I said, the first time we had this conversation, about a week after he returned from the hospital, “I always mean you when I ask a question about you.”

“Right.”

“So why do you have to ask if I’m talking to you or Arnold Schwarzenegger?  He’s not here.  He’s never been here, nor will he ever be here.  Neither of us know him, and no one we know knows him.  He’s a former movie star and the former governor of California.”

 “I know who he is, Bob.”

And he stormed out of the room.

We spoke again at breakfast the next morning.  I waited for him to sit down and pour milk into his bowl of Mini-Wheats.  Then I asked him to pass the carton.

“Me or Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

“Arnold Schwarzenegger,” I said.

“Yes” he said. 

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

more rabbit

Julie Danielson, the picture book maker's best friend, shares a heck of a lot of Rabbit's Snow Dance stuff today on 7-Imp!

i am not amused

fingers

louis, don't!, continued

Here's a sample spread from my *nearly* complete book dummy, Louis, Don't!, which shows a typical interaction between Louis and myself (both in the book and in reality). Just a couple more pages, and it'll be publisher-bound!

football

at the zoo



a more or less true story 1

handgun

jason voorhees

shark suicide

brat with stolen vcrs

cobracop

a giant disguise

firecrackers

louis, don't!

Here are some character sketches (a rocket is a character, right?) from a book I'm making, called Louis, Don't! It stars my son, Louis, in the lead role, and myself, not pictured, in a supporting turn. And an alien. And space fruit. Don't worry, it'll all make sense.

frog

baby walks trailer

In today's episode of Putting the Cart Before the Horse, watch a work-in-progress trailer for a book that has yet to be sold, Baby Walks, written by Dan Richards, and illustrated by me. Idle hands and all that.

louie and daddy

robot and robette

the greedy worm

It's semi-official! Assuming my contract doesn't explode in the mail, my next book as an author/illustrator (and my third with the incomparable Justin Chanda at Simon & Schuster) is The Greedy Worm. It's about a greedy worm. There, now you don't have to read the book. But please do. I shouldn't have said that.

hippopotamus

the incredible disappearing website

For some reason, my website no longer exists. I don't recall getting any correspondence from my hosting company regarding this matter, but then again, I don't recall much ever since the "accident". The upshot to this is that it's the final push I need to completely overhaul http://www.newmanpictures.com/, which has been severely played out for a good half-decade.

Until that happens, please contact me at newmanpictures@hotmail.com. Thank you, Hotmail. And thank you, reader.

phoebe & digger

Tricia Springstubb's Phoebe & Digger, which I had the great pleasure of illustrating, is also complete! It'll be published by Candlewick Press a few months after Rabbit's Snow Dance, on February 12, 2013, just in time to resolve your President's Day shopping dilemmas. Here's a peek:

@newmanpictures

No more saying I hate brussel sprouts without trying them, first.

I finally joined Twitter. Mostly in a desperate attempt to halt the ageing process, and partly because everyone else is. And I'm still not sure what to do there. Rather, I'm still not sure what I SHOULD be doing there. So far, I've tweeted three times, which sounds exactly like what that phrase sounds like it should mean. I've tweeted, and all three Tweets continue to just sit there in a metaphorical basin, waiting for a metaphorical flush, or a metaphorical...what exactly is the bathroom-centric behavioral equivalent of someone reading and re-tweeting your Tweet? Is that question good fodder for a Tweet? Is fodder a good name for a Tweet that no one reads?

Sweet Zeus.

I've got a lot to figure out. It would be dangerous to let me do it alone.

a very special blog post iv: the necronomicon edition

Colin, from Decatur, Georgia, is the undisputed (and completely unchallenged) winner of The Great Shrinky-Dink Giveaway, the Fourth! And for the first time in this contests long and storied history, I received a "gift", in return: a wonderful poem, written by our winner, that I soon discovered is not a poem, at all, but some kind of wizard's incantation. How do I know this? The same way I always know when I've gazed upon forbidden lore: lightning, and lots of it, shooting out of my bloody eye sockets and killing everything I've ever loved. H-duh.

Please stick around for more chances to win a Shrinky-Dink (and perhaps other more substantial prizes) in the near future, which is really all we have left if this primordial text I'm reading is corre...GAH!

Rest in peace, Fido.