Thumbnail of the Cartoonist

While the baby naps, I draw cartoons. When I'm caught up on drawing, I write. A simple life, but I like it.

Okay, maybe that's a little too sketchy, even for a thumbnail sketch. I am thrilled to be cartooning for The New Yorker, which is the dream of almost every print cartoonist. I hope to be doing it until I retire, which will be shortly after my death — which will be not so shortly after I turn 100. I was a late bloomer, I need the time. I also draw cartoons for other magazines and illustrations for ads and random publications.

I have two anthologies of my cartoons. The first is What Would Satan Do? (Abrams Books), a book of cartoons about right, wrong, and very, very wrong. You can find it at your local bookstore, or buy it now (shameless plug) at Amazon. It also couldn't hurt you to buy my second book, Because I'm the Child Here and I Said So (Andrews McMeel); after all, think of the children! It is a book of parenting cartoons, useful to any expectant, new, or not so new parent. I use it frequently as my own parenting aid. When I catch myself doing anything like the cartoons, I say to myself, "Don't do that." Very useful indeed.

What do I write in between? Musicals. I have this wacky ambition to let that replace illustration as my second gig by 2010. Yes, Broadway is an unrealistic dream for a writer, but so is The New Yorker for a cartoonist. Current projects in development include Flop, My Dead Irish Mother and Despairadise.

On the personal side, I lead a surprisingly quiet life, even for someone with a daughter in diapers, another who's in everything else, and a wife who's a politician.

If you are an aspiring cartoonist, you may be interested in the longer history of my career. If you are anyone else, it may bore you to tears. You have been warned.