Mannie Gentile: Art Imitates life

Solstice

2009-12-21T23:45:00.000-05:00

The longest darkest night of the year. For me the new year begins tomorrow, and it will be a much, much better one.

Happy new year to you, happy new life to me.

-

The Art of Conversation...

2009-11-24T22:09:00.000-05:00

of late.

Glimmer

2009-11-21T22:58:00.003-05:00

"Up"

is where things

are beginning

to look.

My Kind of Town

2009-09-05T22:30:00.000-05:00

Chicago 1995...whatta scorcher!

Still, my favorite city.

Unsolved Mysteries

2009-11-14T22:53:00.000-05:00

The more I consider the possibilities, the more unpleasant become the conclusions.

Imagination abhors a vacuum.

Perhaps less thinking is in order.

Fall Guy

2009-09-22T00:03:00.001-05:00

Seasonal Greetings from 1983

Autumn has always brought me down, especially for those 53 years of living in Michigan. Autumn means winter, frigid and dark and fraught with colds, flu, and pneumonia. Autumn was also the beginning of school, which I always loathed. Though I had plenty of jolly friends all through grade school, the idea of trading the unbridled joy that was the freedom of summer in the farmlands and woodlots of Taymouth Township with the monotonous, mindless, rote, drudgery of classwork was nearly unbearable.

Newer developments make this Autumn and Winter unbearable in other ways.

Think spring.

no picture...

2009-10-29T23:18:00.001-05:00

can capture this bewilderment.

no sentence can articulate a marriage

no sounding to be made of these depths

no refuge but dreams of happier days

no picture

Here's hoping

2009-10-22T20:28:00.000-05:00

This afternoon,

on the towpath,

flying along on my bike, knees pumping, leaves flying, heart beating,

peddling toward a future unknown...

peddling toward a future I own.

Cold Comfort

2009-10-18T19:21:00.005-05:00

A new high (or low) in pathos...

working on crosswords started by my, now gone, wife.

I mean really, it is pretty pathetic, using her partially finished puzzles in hoping to find some sort of connection with someone who's decided to end a marriage, a marriage that I wanted to go on forever.

Time can't pass quickly enough to get me out of this funk.

hmmm...23 across "a funk of unrelenting sadness" ten letters, beginnng with "dep".

Quite the last place...

2009-09-20T22:47:00.003-05:00

I expected to find myself in.

Quite the last person I expected this from.

Quite a long haul ahead.

Getting in the Kubler Ross groove

2009-09-19T21:12:00.002-05:00

Seems I was in denial for the first few months, peppered with some anger.

Now I'm just plain sad.

I think there's actually six stages. Unfortunately three of them are depression.

Let's see what tomorrow brings to the abyss.

Eeeek, Michigan

2009-07-08T19:41:00.002-05:00

I left Michigan four years ago at a sprint. I couldn't get out fast enough. Now I live in Maryland. This is a less punishing landscape with mild winters, mild people, mild spirits. A friend recently referred to Grand Rapids Michigan (our former home town) as "the city that hates you back". I think she got that just about right.

Now I'm returning for a very brief family rendezvous. Other than family there's only two or three people I'll be seeing (hiya Chuck).

I can't wait to get back home to Maryland.

I can't wait to get back to a normal life.

I can't wait for these long lonely evenings to be over.

In the end, we all have to wait.

And this coming from "life of the party".

a slightly sprung spring

2009-06-27T00:35:00.005-05:00

Spring of 2009 was a doozie.

It wasn't good, for me that is.

Everything I thought I knew for sure turned out skewed.

Spring of 2009 only had two upsides:

1. My daughter moved closer and I'm very happy about that.

2. I got to spend some quality time with a family of musicians who lived in my back yard for two months.

You can see a video of them here

I enjoyed their company, and I look toward better days.

Mannie

Its almost like a secret club

2009-05-29T21:00:00.004-05:00

It's my birthday which too many people forgot!

So let's go to the carnival together...

If this has moved you in any way, email me at:

museumofamerica@myactv.net

Life currently...

2009-04-25T07:23:00.001-05:00

sucks.

Santa's favorite helper

2008-12-13T22:41:00.004-05:00

The world just got a little less sexy.

Bettie Page 1923 - 2008

إزالة الإطار

2008-12-13T17:48:00.002-05:00

How's that for a title?

Apparently someone from the middle east dropped by my blog and left it as a calling card.

I've no idea what it means. I tried to translate it using bablefish but they've no application for

"squiggly talk".

cartoons as alter ego

2007-02-01T11:08:00.001-05:00

Hello,

I'm Mannie Gentile. In addition to many other things, I'm a cartoonist.

I've been cartooning, on and off, for over forty years. During that period it was my good luck to latch on to a brand new arts and culture magazine in Grand Rapids Michigan (not necessarily known for either) entitled "Downtown".

Launched in 1984 by a groovy cat named Roger Bruinkool (a local artist) "Downtown" appeared monthly on the streets of Grand Rapids (GR). Noted for smart, diverse writers, and a very hip style, "Downtown was a very new thing for the area, and it took right off. (This original, showing the photo-safe blue lines as well as the original "cut and paste" appeared in 1984)

I drew cartoons for "Downtown" from its first issue, and stayed with it for about eight years (long after it had changed its name to "On-the-Town" to be more inclusive of the advertising dollars from outlying communities). After a long absence I returned very briefly a couple of years ago to do a few final cartoons and reviews for them.

Although a cultural history educator by training, and a park ranger by good fortune, I continue to occasionally do illustration work and cartoons, most recently for the Park Service.

Through this blog I'd like to resurrect some of my older work to give it new legs in this electronic media that didn't even exist at the time the ink was still drying on my drawings.

A focus of this blog will be the comic strip "Pembroke" that ran for five years. Little did I know it at the time, but Arthur C. Pembroke was a foreshadowing of Mannie Gentile 15 years into the future. I was the last one to see the obvious. More on that next time.

So on we go, new post every week. Let me know what you think.

Mannie

Cartoons as alter ego, part two.

2007-02-03T19:55:00.001-05:00

Okay, so it was 1985 when several factors aligned into a sort of harmonic convergence, and believe me, everything in my life changed for the better:

1. My wife of ten years divorced me.
2. I realized that baldness was stalking me.
3. I found out that a heterosexual man who had been locked up in a ten year monogamous relationship,
once single, was a very HOT property indeed! (relax dude, I'm talking about me).

Other kooky things were also happening like:

I quit my job at a small graphic arts house in Grand Rapids (Michigan) called Acraforms to go back to Michigan State University to finish up my degree after a 13 year absence. You can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to learn that I had only 13 credits to achieve for my BA in history.

- I discovered the artistry of Frank Sinatra (everyone's entitled to a theme song)

- I was meeting and wooing beautiful women (the most beautiful of which I'm married to to this very day).

- I decided to become a teacher.

- I began a regular comic strip in On-The-Town Magazine entitled "Pembroke"

Here is an early character study of Art Pembroke and his on-again-off-again (mostly off) lover, Angela.

I knocked this off while still working second shift at Acraforms. I had been with "Downtown" later "On-The-Town" (hereafter referred to as OTT) for about four years and was antsy to get a regular strip going.

By this time the editorial reins at OTT were held by two great gals; Julie Christiansen and Melissa Medura.

I think that they were somewhat charmed by my naiveté regarding me being a new bachelor in Grand Rapids. So when I pitched this idea about a cartoon character who was a bookishly nerdy, but really nice, man on a journey of self-discovery they jumped at it. Clearly they saw this as some pretty cheap entertainment vis-à-vis what was happening in my life. So I was off and running.

Every month, starting sometime in '84 or '85 I'd ink up a Pembroke strip. Nine times out of ten it reflected something that was going on in my own life, and the only one who wasn't hip to that fact seemed to be...me.

Here's the inaugural Pembroke strip (though, belive me, I'm definately not as fem as Art):

..."Mime", man, that killed me. Note how crude the characters are and how skanky Angela is. Ironically, they are both smoking in this first strip. In subsequent strips, Art is a non-smoker but Angela continues to partake. Her smoking will continue even as her appearance improves...this is a real sore spot with Art Pembroke.

As you'll see in subsequent postings, I hadn't found the stylistic groove yet. The strip had a very crude look and I still didn't know how to draw women. I guess I just needed more exposure to both, as you'll see things will get markedly better.

In addition to the Pembroke strip, I continued to do regular one panel, and sight-gag cartoons for OTT.

Here's one that came on the heels of the Vanessa Williams Miss America sex photo scandal (remember?).

Apparently our first African-American Miss America got busted for doing a Playboy pictorial or some such thing. Imagine, punishing Miss America for participating in something as American as Playboy Magazine. Anyhoo, Ms. Williams overcame the flap and went on to a semi-successful acting career and I got a got a nice cat cartoon out of the deal. By the way, If that's your cat in my yard...'nuff said amigo.

So here we go. More cartoons and backstory next posting.

We've all got a story to tell....some of us can add pictures.

Mannie

Math as torture, torture as math

2007-02-04T21:11:00.000-05:00

Get used to this one as I'll probably foist it on you again. It's sort of like my cartoon anthem. Mathematics and I parted company in the fourth grade. I think that I can trace my unfocused anger to that period. Since then I've been faking it as far as arithmetic is concerned.

One of my greatest triumphs in college was to use the words "albeit" and "moreover" in the same sentence. A triumph of this particular strip was to have Art doing the rubber pencil trick and walking like an Egyptian in almost adjacent panels.

Here Art is tutoring some young miscreant (who we'll see again much later) in Algebra. I took algebra at Birch Run High School in Birch Run Michigan... now there was a little slice of hell on earth.

...and chemistry, again with Mr. Frank, was yet another unflushable toilet of mounting despair.

I'll let Arthur do the speaking here for me and countless others.

Remember, none of you are safe.

Baldness, Old frends, baldness, batchelor life

2007-02-11T18:58:00.001-05:00

Hi, welcome back. Here's the second Pembroke strip published in OTT (On-The-Town) in 1984. I pretty much had Art Pembroke's look nailed down, but Angela was still elusive. I wanted her to look pretty glamorous and cool, but drawing cheekbones and boobies still intimidated me somewhat.

This strip is noteworthy as I drew it in my new bachelor pad apartment where I had just had cable installed by my landlord Melvin. I'd never had cable before. This was way back when MTV still played music videos.

The cable was hot (as in bootleg) as was Melvin (as in totally horny). It seems that Melvin was known by half the female population in Grand Rapids, and they either loved him or hated him...often both at the same time. He was a real character. I was cautioned by my sister to keep Melvin "out of the loop" regarding my social life as he was a guy to whom discretion was an unknown virtue. That turned out to be some very good advice.

Life as a newly single guy was always interesting and usually fun.I was setting the agenda in my new Genessee Street "Batch pad" and it was all about high adventure (and, apparently, not wearing tee-shirts).

Around this time, I had just been canned (a recurring theme) from my job at "Acraforms" a graphic arts house in Grand Rapids Michigan. By the way the "Acra" in Acraforms stood for "accuracy"...wait...what the... shouldn't that be "Accuforms"?. Well, whatever, I was working at Acraforms as a graphic arts grunt.

The boss and I just rubbed each other the wrong way. The immediate result of my firing became a piece of corporate folklore...still told around campfires by the elders.

These are the groovy cats and chicks that I worked with at Acraforms, as Pembroke was coming together. L to R: Kevin, the beautiful Margaret, Schmedly, Me (with the hand o' death hovering above me), the lovely Bonnie, Good pal Pete Taylor, and good old Ken.

My firing from Acraforms lasted exactly one weekend as a popular rebellion unfolded at the shop headed by Ken and the above mentioned folks. The boss (George) hired me back as a supervisor on second shift, That way he'd never have to see me and I'd never have to see him...pretty cozy huh? Anyhow this was my first inkling that I was leading a charmed life.

During this period I started working for "Downtown" (later "On-The-Town"). This was a wonderful experience. I was meeting all sorts of delightful people, including these two:
New York cartoonist Art Melendez and O-T-T editor/publisher Julie Christiansen.

Every day was a holiday and every meal a banquet in those days.

Suddenly, and without warning, the boom is lowered. Baldness!!!!

And no, I never resorted to the "comb over ploy", except in jest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAfyRD9iutI

Thanks for tuning in, I'll post more cartoons next week. I can't wait to see how it all develops (even though I was there at the time).

Stay warm,

Mannie

Learning along the way

2007-02-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

More than once (read all too often) I'll do a cartoon that I think is really funny, but the humor is apparently lost on many others. Sometimes it's because the gag is way too obscure (like the visualization of my childhood imaginary friend...man, did that one fall flat). Sometimes the cartoon's just not drawn right.

When I started with "Downtown" (later On-the -Town) I was really thrilled to be an actual cartoonist for an actual publication that was being seen by actual viewers. And I was still very naive and also a little too full of myself. Somehow, it seemed to me that every idea that flowed from my pen was a gift to mankind. My editor, Roger Bruinkool, quickly set about to knock that post-adolescent notion right out of my head.

The reality-check began with a simple little gag I drew as a reflection on a heat wave that was ongoing.

Now, I knew that the ice cream guy was inside of his refrigerated pushcart. Roger insisted that it looked as if he was simply standing behind it. Doh! Unlike everyone else in the world, I often don't take criticism very well, and what really torqued me off was that my editor was himself a visual artist. He was often critical of my execution, and I was just as often annoyed with his lack of perception...though he was just about always right...which in itself was pretty annoying too. Well, when you're at press time with a hole to fill, the cartoon generally runs weather the boss "gets it" or not, as in the case of Elmo the ice cream man.

It was not so with this next example. Later in 1982 Roger asked me to do the cover for the December issue with a downtown Christmas theme. THE COVER!!! Man, I was thrilled. So I came up with an idea of an army of identical happy Santas as holiday shoppers in the downtown business district (back when Grand Rapids still had a downtown business district). Strung above them appearing as garland were continuous strings of Hs (as in aitches) and Os (ohs). The effect was a continuous line of ho ho hos going across the top third of the panel. Again, it was a sight gag, which I'm some times a little too enthralled with. It was great and I was eager to bring it in to the office and bask in the glow of praise and approval.

I laid it out in front of Roger. He adjusted his glasses and without any expression examined the piece.

"Well this won't work at all"

I was stunned and insulted, and began a lame argument. Before I was able to make a complete ass of myself, Roger pointed out the obvious:

"This 'hohohoho' stuff becomes meaningless. All of the action [the Santas] is below the fold".

By golly, he was right, and that's when I learned what "below the fold" meant in designing a cover for a tabloid-style paper. What the viewer sees is the top half of the paper as it sits in the display rack. If the gag is dependent upon the imagery in the lower half it ain't going to work. I was getting educated in the ways of real cartooning.

Roger had me fix it by simply losing the hohohoho and spreading out the Santa action. Its a much better cover his way (dammit).

Here's another sight gag. From the feedback I received, it seems that most readers got it.

Live and learn.

Here's this weeks Pembroke strip. First published in 1985, I run it here to commemorate the current spate of weather that grips this neck of the woods.

Staying warm, and humble, on South Mountain.

Mannie

The "New Yorker" years

2007-02-19T14:08:00.000-05:00

In the early 1980s I was starting to feel more and more confident about my cartooning and less and less confident about my marriage. I was looking for some affirmation so, like every other cartoonist I took a shot at getting published in prestigious magazines like Playboy and the The New Yorker.

I was pretty systematic. I targeted six publications and drew twelve cartoons and did a big round robin. As one got rejected it immediately got mailed back out to the next magazine on the list. I kept a big chart on the wall to keep track of which one had been where and what the results had been with each. I did this for a year and, like most cartoonists, I collected a cool set of rejection slips. What suprised me was how much the experience didn't bum me out. It was really fun just doing it. I ended up with rejection slips from about ten different magazines, each with distinctive logo letterhead. They're called "slips" for a really good reason; each one is about the size of an index card.

Rejection aside, this was a pretty affiriming experience. I wasn't aware of the term "self-actualization" back then...I just found that it felt good to be doing something creative and a little bit scary.

Here's a selection of the cartoons I submitted, if you don't like them, you are in very distinguished company.

I was going for the "absurdist" crowd

An early, wintertime, appeal to cubicle bound wage-slaves...Y'know, sophisticated New Yorkers.

Calling Doctor Freud...my slip was showing.

Speaking of Freud...
creepy, huh?

Here's that bald guy again, sort of a chunky Art Pembroke (remind me to keep my beard and ponytail).

Survey sez...

"I've been throwed outta better joints den dis!"

Here's this week's installment of Pembroke from 1985...note the rotary telephone.

Stay warm, and check in again next week.

Mannie

Divorce as "do-over": enter the swingin' bachelor era...what's your sign?

2007-03-01T18:52:00.006-05:00

My cartoons really started to percolate about the same time that I did. Sometime in 1985 or 86 my marriage of ten years had finally wound down to an official end, and all of a sudden I became single, happy, and productive.

I took an apartment in the "East town" neighborhood of Grand Rapids which sort of fancies itself as Greenwich Village west, providing that Greenwich Village east is populated with uptight dutch people. Marvin, my landlord, I've discussed him earlier, was an outstanding influence to come under in many (though not all) ways. His name wasn't really Marvin, by the way.

Marvin rented me the upstairs apartment of his Genessee Street home. The rent was something like $125.00 per month. Interestingly enough he'd only been charging the previous tenant, Bill, fifty bucks. I guess he thought is was time to stop renting to friends.

My sister turned me on to the apartment and gave me this warning about Marvin: "Never let him know who you're dating, he gossips like an old lady". I think she said "dating". Well, beyond any unfair stereotypes, that was some really good advice. Marvin was always keenly, painfully, interested in the details of my private life...not one single detail of which I'd ever shared with him. The very attractive women that he would occasionally see me making dinner for upstairs, he could only guess about. As much as he would pry he got nary a peep from me. It drove him nuts. See, Marvin and I were exactly the opposite. He would go on at length about his relationships, in utter detail. As I mentioned earlier, half the women in Grand Rapids know Marvin, and they either love him or they hate him.

He was a good role model of what not to be like when it came to dating.

I was just happy to be meeting so many cool women...the coolest of whom I'm married to today.
(Me, newly single...the phone just ringing off the hook, it was probably the sequins.)

But before I could start entertaining in ernest I had to move into and clean out my new apartment. What a disgusting job lay ahead of me.

Bill, the former tenant (of many years) was into just three things:

1. Pornography
Don't get me wrong, that's fine with me, but when Marvin took me through the apartment prior to Bill's moving out, the place seemed to be carpeted wall-to-wall in skin magazines. I'm certain that no one greeted the world wide web with more gusto than did Bill.

2. Fishing
Fishing was Bill's big passion. He'd fish day and night. He got a job at the local hardware/sporting goods store to be near the equipment that his employee discount put into his reach. I think he liked catching fish even more than porno.

One of the problems that he left for me was the detritus of his hobby(s). The musty, musky shag carpeting (orange, thank you) was a mine field of fish hooks, long lost and embedded in the shag just waiting for an unsuspecting foot to happen by.

That carpeting was also saturated with Bill's favorite bait - salmon eggs. Like electric orange BBs made of jelly these fragrant little fertility bombs were liberally mashed into every highly trafficked area of the floor. I spent the next month cleaning salmon eggs out of every nook and cranny of the apartment.

3. Living like an unwashed human toilet of despair and slothfulness.
This was what Bill was the very best at. his rotting teeth were an eloquent testimonial to his lack of personal hygiene as well as his good-natured abandonment of what separates humans from dung-heaps. His stinky essence pervaded every inch of that apartment.

Having my sister Fran along for the initial recon of the apartment was very helpful...unlike me, she could see beyond the filth, stench, and degradation. She insisted that the place had real possibilities, especially for a young man in my position. Trusting in my sister's judgment I held my nose and gave Marvin the check.

When Bill moved out I moved in and the frenzy of cleaning began. These two cartoons will tell you all you need to know:
(not an exaggeration)

(only slightly exaggerated)

Though daunting, the task of cleaning this stable was nothing that time, ammonia, vinegar, and elbow grease (and a strong stomach) couldn't accomplish. Eventually I'd established a pretty nice little roost for myself to take the best of what life had to offer.

Marvin and I also became pretty good pals, despite out differing approaches. And we spent many a happy hour on his front porch watching the wanna-be bohemians of East Town promanade by. The Pembroke strip below was informed by some lazy afternoons on that sagging by cozy porch.

And it only gets better,

Stay tuned (and turn down that music!)

Mannie

When smoking was fab.

2007-03-14T14:58:00.000-05:00

When I was working a Acraforms back in the early and mid 1980s, it seemed like all of us smoked, or at least bummed smokes while trying to convince ourselves that we didn't really smoke anymore. This was also reflected in my cartoons of the era.

Here's about half of the Acraforms slide department:
Nancy, Chuck, me, and Pete. Chuck was the only nonsmoker. In the background is that famous pcture of Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald as Willard Scott looks on.

My version of Jack Ruby's mechanic (drawn about the same time as the group shot above) was also a smoker.

Another mechanic from the late 1970s. He looks alot like one of the characters on "King of the Hill" (also named "Dale", I believe).

Similarly, I think I did the original "Bad Santa" twenty five years prior to his arrival in theaters.

The human zippo has an FDR sophistication.

Smoking is pretty glamorous.

A cartoon drawn for On-the-Town.

A large-format shriner who also looks quite a bit like...

this three-dimensional cartoon I did in Clay, called "Corporate Image 1"

After years of normalizing smoking through my cartoons the big irony came along when I found myself doing gratis work for the American Lung Association. Like second-hand smoke; what goes around, comes around.

I've been smoke free for over twenty years now, nary a puff. I made a deal with a gal I was dating back then: I'd quit smoking if she'd start using her seatbelt. Twenty-some years later, I don't know if she stuck her end of the deal, I'm just glad that I stuck to mine.

By the way, for me, it was like throwing a switch. One moment I smoked, the next I didn't.

Here's this week's installment of Pembroke. This one's really dated. Tony Randall the actor had an equally high profile as an anti-smoking crusader. I guess you had to be there.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, just not upwind of me, thanks.

Mannie