Archives for category: Food

After 4 years of writ­ing, off and on, about a vari­ety of things such as odd thoughts, close calls, suc­cess (and fail­ure) and other things now rel­e­gated to the archives, it’s time to switch direc­tions and start anew.

From the get go I’ve always envi­sioned this site as an out­let for exper­i­men­tal cre­ativ­ity and to share the results of such with whomever was interested.

This site’s focus was never meant to be excluded to just a blog, but due to my inter­ests in cre­ative writ­ing it just remained. Like Anton, I’ve been ready for quite some time to move away from just being a blog and realign (not that kind of realign­ment) my inter­ests and the inten­tions of this site.

For his­tor­i­cal preser­va­tion, I’ve decided to select the best arti­cles from the archives and com­pile them into a book because I’d hate to see those dis­ap­pear. Besides, I’d like to do some self-publishing and Lulu has me more than intrigued.

A Fresh Restart

What this means is that I’ll be tran­si­tion­ing the blog, or what you’re read­ing now, into a small, but impor­tant por­tion of the site. If you can think of it as the con­ver­sa­tion that takes place after you’ve con­sumed a three-course meal, then you’ll under­stand what its pur­pose will be.

The main course of the meal will be the illus­tra­tion and design, wrapped together in a fresh and fun lay­out that’ll hope­fully immerse you in what I’ll have to offer. (Speak­ing of which, have you seen the new Squidfin­gers design?)

As corny as this might sound, I do appre­ci­ate each and every one of you who con­tin­ues to sub­scribe to, read and inter­act with kar­tooner. There are plenty of you who should be proud of your design prowess and mea­sure of intel­lect. With­out you, I’d just be a guy with one of them-there blog thin­gies here in New York. In other words, chan­nel­ing the mantra of Chris J. Davis, “You rawk!”.

Catch­ing up with Goals

Part of the rea­son I’m so adamant about chang­ing some things is because I need to finally meet my goal of fin­ish­ing my comic. Yes, that comic, the one I’ve been talk­ing about for a lit­tle over 2 years! After mix­ing it up with my friends at SXSW this year and absorb­ing the enthu­si­asm, I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that I need to not just pur­sue, but chase after and tackle my goals.

I could just keep mak­ing excuses or con­tinue play­ing trash bas­ket­ball to bide the time, but that wasn’t why I chose this career in the first place. This is a jour­ney of explo­ration and fas­ci­na­tion that we’re all on, and I’m mov­ing up a cou­ple seats to see the full view.

Process and Innovation

On my panel at SXSWi this year I men­tioned doing con­cep­tual sketches for Sidev­ille, using the movie Pirates of the Car­ribean as one of my source mate­ri­als. I fore­see using the blog to post my work in progress, kind of like Car­son System’s Bare Naked App but with­out the app and the bare naked­ness. It seems like peo­ple are inter­ested in the process and craft of devel­op­ing a project and appre­ci­ate that mis­takes are made along the way.

As per­fect as the end result might be, suc­cess needs to be con­stantly fine-tuned and rec­og­niz­ing trail and error is part of that process. Every bril­liant and suc­cess­ful busi­ness or idea has to be built from the ground up and the vision­ary at the fore­front of things needs to keep inno­vat­ing and mov­ing forward.

Sure, a lot of what suc­cess can be might seem serendip­i­tous, but it’s the cru­cial ele­ment of keep­ing one’s eye on their goals that makes it both chal­leng­ing and rewarding.

To sum it all up, I’ve got an idea and it’s time to take that from con­cept to real­ity. Join me.

Hot SoupWhen I was kid, when­ever my fam­ily and I would go on vaca­tion I’d always order the same thing at restau­rants we’d eat at. I had my Roast Beef Sand­wich phase where I’d order noth­ing but Roast Beef Sand­wiches with a side order of fries, some­times sea­soned and some­times not. Before that there was the Grilled Cheese phase, golden brown on both sides with a huge dol­lop of ketchup on one cor­ner for dipping.

It became some­thing of an inside joke; “What will Erik have this trip? Will he suc­cumb to the same kinds of food or will he try some­thing dif­fer­ent to mix things up a lit­tle?”. Never one to dis­ap­point I’d rarely break the pat­tern of not order­ing the same thing at meal time but on occas­sion I’d try some­thing dif­fer­ent. That was then, this is now, but I’ve found that child­hood quirks stay with you, no mat­ter how much time passes.

Even to this day I’ve noticed pat­terns in what I’ll order at restau­rants and most of the time it’s just food I’ve become com­fort­able eat­ing, like Clam Chow­der for instance. Noth­ing adds to a meal — at least in my opin­ion — like the sooth­ing warmth and taste of thick chow­der topped with soup crack­ers and a dash of salt and pep­per. Even­tu­ally I might grow tired of order­ing clam chow­der with every meal but most likely it’ll be replaced with a dif­fer­ent phase.

Do you have any food phases?

There’s a Chi­nese restau­rant that my office mates and I fre­quently dine at called The China Buf­fet. The owner, a short and stocky man with pierc­ing eyes, runs the place like a spit-polished fac­tory keep­ing his wary eye on his employ­ees, mak­ing sure every penny is accounted for. We like to call him the Sama­rai and it’s not just because he’s of Asian decent, but mainly due to the fact that he barks com­mands as if he’s con­ceal­ing a sword behind the counter.

The other day we ordered three drinks and filled our plates with at least three trip’s worth of Chi­nese food. After­wards we gob­bled down ice cream to cool our palettes and then came time to pay the bill. The owner, dubbed “Samu­rai Jack”, asks for the bill and slowly scans each item as if he’s con­cen­trat­ing on a really dif­fi­cult cross­word puz­zle. He looks up, then down, and finally asks if I will be pay­ing with cash or credit. I pull out my wal­let and slide my credit card across the counter and he pauses, “I see two drinks on bill. Did you have a soda?” I nod­ded and in Chi­nese he barks some com­mands at the wait­ress who in turn barked com­mands at the bus­boy. At this point the owner explains that even though it’s not on the bill I will still be charged for the drink. I shrug and tell him, “Fine.”, then at the top of his lungs he says, “$7.84! You pay the same as all the rest. $7.84!”

I sign the receipt and walk out the door, laugh­ing to myself and think­ing that this man, “Samu­rai Jack” should have his own sit­com. I envi­sion it as a cross between Belushi’s The Samu­rai Butcher and San­ford and Son.

subwaysandwich.jpgAfter work the other day I was feel­ing a bit hun­gry. Lately I’ve been skip­ping out on lunch and break­fast because either I’m too engrossed in what­ever project I’m work­ing on or I for­get to bring the packed lunch (like this morn­ing for instance).

As I’m dri­ving down the road a thought comes to mind, “Wow, I haven’t been to Palermo’s Sub Shop in a few months. Won­der how my Sub mak­ing bud­dies are doing.” I pull up in the park­ing lot and enter the sub place and order the usual; a meat­ball sub with sliced mozzerella on top. After order­ing I casu­ally walk over and get a drink from the soda foun­tain and wait patiently while the “Sub Artist” does his thing.

Even­tu­ally the guy comes over with two sand­wiches? I was in a panic, it was as if all the air in my lungs had been sucked out of me. Why, why, two sand­wiches? That’s when I real­ized, he split the two halves. This is where this sub story gets weird.

The guy takes my credit card, slips it through what I call the “credit crack” and it takes about 15 years to autho­rize the trans­ac­tion. In the mean time we chat about life and even­tu­ally he real­izes the receipt machine has no power. I let out a laugh that exudes a mix­ture of “how funny” and “Dude, what is your prob­lem?” and finally it works.

He hands me the receipt to sign and in an awk­ward moment says, “Well, it’s been great hang­ing out with you man.” Like I said, awk­ward to say the least and yet at one point I think I wanted to give him a hug, thank him for mak­ing my sub and tip him for the ser­vice. In the end I decided not to, think­ing it might have been going against the Sub Mak­ers union.

Some­day, when all of the sub shop artists are replaced by sub-making robots I’ll miss these kinds of moments.

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