Dear Gabe,

My boyfriend and I have been together for three months. He says it’s time to take our relationship “to the next level.” Gabe, I am 17, and consider myself pretty mature. But how does a girl know when it’s time to “take that step”?

Sincerely,
Confused in St. Louis

Dear Confused,

Did you know that a recent public opinion survey indicates that 30 percent of the American people believe that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States? This is an anti-Semitic canard—the same percentage of people in the United States believe that the Jews killed Christ. So while it may or may not be time for you to “take that step,” do keep in mind that your behavior reinforces the pernicious notion of Jewish control over this government.

Shalom Aleichem,
Gabe

Let us reflect upon the summer of 2002: The Iraq War was but a glimmer in the eyes of a young Dick Cheney, Canadian art-rock heartthrobs Nickelback were climbing the Billboard, and the Lowbrow Reader was publishing its second issue. And a fine issue it was! Articles included Neil Michael Hagerty’s “A Survey of Recently Declassified Literature” and Michaelangelo Matos’s profile of Slim Gaillard (both later included in our book, The Lowbrow Reader Reader), as well as shorter pieces about Jack Benny, Owen Wilson, and the Judd Apatow sitcom Undeclared. As if the readers of ’02 needed more convincing, the issue concluded with the lyrics to Jonathan Richman’s “When Harpo Played His Harp.”

Lowbrow Reader #2 has been sold out for years, and most of its articles and illustrations do not appear in The Lowbrow Reader Reader. But now, for the first time in a long time, the issue is available once again: We recently unearthed some extra copies that journeyed from Boston to rural Washington to Western Massachusetts before arriving in New York City. It was a heroic trip, indeed. Get your Lowbrow Reader issue #2 today via our handy ordering page—but act fast, as supplies are limited!

You illustrated the cover for Lowbrow Reader #1, back in 2001. What do you remember about that first assignment? And honestly, what in god’s name made you agree to it?

I remember that it made sense to me immediately. Guy on toilet using Burberry toilet paper? Sure! For some reason, he was supposed to be Japanese, so I based him on my upstairs neighbor who was a club DJ named Gak. He would do his thing into the wee hours of the morning inside the apartment without headphones. So in a passive aggressive way I was getting back at him.

Are there particular challenges inherent to drawing people involved in bathroom scenarios?

Just thinking about it makes me need to go.

You have illustrated nine Lowbrow Reader covers—eight issues and the cover of the book. Which is your favorite?

Issue #3, the wizard, is my favorite. Conceptually, at least.

In subtle ways, your style has evolved over the years that you have been drawing these gags. What are the main changes?

I think perhaps I focused more on the gag as time went on? I try to be as concise and direct as possible—that’s the elusive trick to illustration. You have to put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Of course, that’s where an editor comes in handy.

Do you have a favorite artistic masterpiece involving a bathroom activity?

That peeing baby boy statue in Brussels? Just kidding. But I do love really crude bathroom graffiti, especially amateur drawings of anatomy.

Have you ever had an idea for a Lowbrow cover that proved too strange or tricky to execute?

Yes, there’s one that I did in which a meeting of business people is standing around a long conference table and all are excitedly applauding the boss who has just burst through the door in the background. In the foreground is the boss’s “chair” which is a toilet; in fact, everybody’s chairs are toilets. There are note pads, coffee carafes, and rolls of toilet paper on the table. There’s a tagline that reads: “Let’s get to work!” [Ed note: The drawing, below, ran as part of a house ad in Lowbrow Reader #7.]

You live on the Jersey Shore. Is there an artistic community there that gets ignored because of the area’s, er…reputation?

Ha! Not really, though there are a couple of hip gallery spaces here and there, such as the Parlor Gallery and Asbury Lanes of Asbury Park. The recession has put a damper on the arts since right after I moved from Brooklyn to Long Branch, which was in 2007. I think Snooki’s t-shirt shop might have been washed out to sea by Sandy, though.

Can you describe some of your recent non–Lowbrow Reader work?

I always have several pots going on the stove. To pay the bills I freelance for advertisers in Manhattan doing production and illustration behind the scenes. Also, I’ve been drawing sci-fi comics based on scripts by my friend Jeff Burandt. He’s the singer-songwriter from the band Americans UK (which I played bass in around 2009–2011). I do rather traditional landscape paintings and sell them locally in New Jersey and also by commission. I’m working on a very exciting book proposal at the moment with a writer I met through the Lowbrow Reader. Besides that, I help my wife run her jewelry business out of our home and I play dolls with my 3-year-old.

On Twitter, a search for John Mathias yields a right-wing fanatic. Does this bother you?

Does it bother you that “President” Barack Hussein Obama is trampling on our freedoms one after the other and instilling Sharia law?

Religion Zen Buddhist Capitalist

Biggest lie you once believed Youth ends at 50

Car Mercedes X740-T Zebra Ultra L74, Silver Class

Cigar of choice I don’t smoke cigars

No, really Corona Gorda (Aurora 1495 BME, Nicaragua)

Weight of wristwatch About two pounds—it’s lighter than it looks

If your home were on fire, which three items would you save? Are we talking about my Tribeca loft, Miami Beach two-bedroom, modest East Hampton cott—

Let’s say Tribeca My MacBook Air, which has drafts of my cookbook and some remixes I’ve been working on for Kanye. A framed letter from my father, begging forgiveness. And a photograph of my dog, Oscar, sandwiched between his namesakes, Oscar de la Renta and Caroll Spinney.

Most humbling moment Staring into the eyes of my newborn son, seeing the reflection of my vintage Public Image Ltd shirt, and realizing that he would never be as cool as his father

List four embarrassing numbers, stripped of context 3.2, 21, 1991, 230,578. What is this interview for, anyway?

Man’s Digest: The Magazine Celebrating the Best of Man Never heard of it. Next question.

If you were forced to make love to any Beatle, which band member would you select? Ringo. Are these really the questions you ask everybody?

Yes. Favorite trick to play on the deaf My assistant just brought me last month’s issue. Hardly any were posed to Tony Bourdain.

Maybe he was the exception. Favorite actor— Jack—

Besides Jack Nicholson Benicio Del Toro does admirable work

Most unlikely possession A tandem bike. A dear friend gave it to me for her birthday in the hope of riding through Paris together—the next week, she died in a tragic modeling accident.

Least favorite Proust question “What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?”

If you could have brunch with four historical figures, what would you order? Eggs Benedict

Who would pick up the check? Nicholson

If you were stuck on a desert island, what song would you incessantly hum? John Cage’s “4’33”

What book would you bring? Something about building rafts

Most surreal experience Getting called by the MacArthur Foundation

Your bio doesn’t mention a MacArthur Grant You don’t hear about the people who turn them down

What were you given a MacArthur for? Having sexual intercourse with your mother

I deserved that. Favorite vacation spot I’ll give you three choices. If you guess correctly, you may ask me anything you want. Wrong, consider this interview over. A) Galveston, where T. Boone Pickens takes me around to all the secluded swimming holes. B) Tuscany, where, upon my death, six white-clad blondes will sprinkle my ashes. C) Addis Ababa, where I chair a foundation helping the poor to better understand global warming.

I’m going to answer “F,” as in “Favorite Batman villain, besides Jack’s Joker” The Riddler

Five favorite Jack movies Chinatown, The Shining, A Few Good Men, and…I can’t. It is an affront to the man’s legacy to limit his oeuvre to five works.

Famous painter you could live without Dalí, a talented creator of dorm-room posters

Least favorite person on a postage stamp Bart Simpson, a phony rebel

If you could go back in time and assassinate one beloved historical figure, who would you choose? John F. Kennedy, moments before Oswald’s bullet. I like clarity.

Favorite moment from this interview The next and final question

Evening routine I plunge into the loneliest hours of the night, me a vampire and the city my damsel. When at last I become so fatigued that I need smelling salts to recall my surname, I drag myself home and to bed, where your mother feverishly awaits me.

Run, don’t walk! Order Fashion Projects today! 

SALIVA (Streets Around Little Italy and Vicinity)

If you have a taste for the pungent, SALIVa is for you. This neighborhood begins somewhere beneath the Williamsburg Bridge and seeps West until you don’t like the shops anymore. Goose your pallet with the wines of Italy and the culinary fare of Chinatown as you breathe in the designer perfumes, aromatherapy candles, and scented room sprays of Soho. Ponder the lengths to which your ancestors went to move out of the five-story tenement of your desires. SALIVa truly is a formerly rent-controlled cafeteria for the senses!

NOMOOLA (North Moore Over to Lafayette)

Once a home to light industry, this district—which radiates from North Moore, crossing White Street on its way to Lafayette—is now home to the business executives and financial wizards who can both pay the unregulated loft space rents and appreciate the whimsical architectural touches left behind by the earlier wave of artist occupants who gave NoMoOLa its name.

CLOTH (Closer Than Hartford)

CloTH may be a land-locked neighborhood bounded on all sides by Astoria, but for apartment-seekers from out-of-state looking to shorten the workday commute, CloTH allows residents to boast “it’s only 15 minutes door-to-door to Roosevelt Island if an express train making skip stops arrives just as you reach the platform.” It’s a dream come true for those with excellent timing who work on Roosevelt Island! On the weekends, stroll with your exotic lover, hand in hand, down boulevards of discount leather coat outlets and automobile parts distributors waiting to be discovered. Return home with your treasures to large living spaces with easy-care linoleum walls inside and easy-care green painted cement outside.

STUMBLES (Stretch of Unlit Malodorous Bars on a Lollygag down the East Side)

Second Avenue from the Low 30s to 14^th Street earned its name in the days just prior to the current proliferation of Irish bars and bars with perfectly Irish-sounding names. Out-of-towners should avoid those bars that water down their potions and follow the locals to reputable spots where hard liquor will change your speech change to that of Roseanne or the Hamburglar (depending on your age and gender). N.B. in StUMBLES, St. Patrick’s Day still is known as “amateur night.”

RUMBA (Residences Under Manhattan Bridge Area)

Characterized by its elevator-free lifestyle and proximity to a true looming architectural wonder, this is the up-and-coming region for those without preferences for a particular type of music. A walk through RUMBA on a warm summer’s night is a sternum-thumping smorgasbord of bass notes from car speakers, apartment speakers, and speakers in bodegas, restaurants, and bars. Music is everywhere, especially if you heed the local custom which dictates that every pedestrian must carry his or her own sound system.

DIAPER (Diagonal from Prospect Park to the East River)

Not-quite Brooklyn Heights, not-quite Prospect Park, this is where all your friends move when they finally decide to have that baby. Prepare for plenty of inter-borough travel if you ever want to see them again, for once they settle into DiaPER, there will be no extracting them from a neighborhood that offers all the dark tree-lined streets of the suburbs without compromising on the prices, dirt, and brunch crowds of the city.

TROLL (Tramway Onramp near Lower Level of the 59^th Street Bridge)

Home to plenty of shade beneath the entrance to the Queensborough Bridge, TrOLL is the place to heed the large, free-standing traffic signs warning of construction and congestion in Queens. Ideal for those who watch and wait.

SOWHAT (South West of Holland Tunnel)

Allegedly named after the retort to a resident’s braggadocio (“I live quite near the UPS facility”), loyal long-timers insist the neighborhood is merely overlooked.

MEANDER (Mott, East to Allen, then North to Delancey, then East again to Ridge)

Any number of exciting new things go on all the time in the City, but living in the MEANDER district really takes the pressure off: no need to make things happen when your neighborhood, itself, is so happening. Artists and poets, musicians and philosophers — they all have lived here in their salad days, and these are yours. Why hurry when you could just as easily miss something very cool right where you are as you rush to some awesome thing going on wherever you’re going? Roll out whenever you like. The minute you leave the apartment, you’ll be convinced there is something excellent right around the corner; and whenever you arrive, you’ll have the feeling you just missed another singular and legendary edgy urban experience!

SMIRK (Secured Mainly In Return for Key Money)

This highly-desirable area of the city [N.B. The borders of SMIRK were disputed by all of the 17 brokers consulted for this article] is the most fashionable neighborhood and contains the wittiest and most accomplished residents. Familiar to the influential few, home to the best parties and private cultural happenings for the select, only well-connected insiders may live in these elusive large, airy, sun-lit apartments reputed to inspire torrents of creativity in their passionate and successful owners. If you must, ask around to find out exactly where it is and who lives there, be discreet. Also, you cannot afford it.

The Lowbrow Reader Reader, our Nobel-worthy tome published by Drag City earlier this year, is what one might term a “best-of” compendium, surveying the eight Lowbrow Reader issues that preceded it. By our rough count, the book features seven articles from Lowbrow Reader #5, six articles from Lowbrow Reader #7, and so forth. But what of our modest beginnings, 2001’s Lowbrow Reader #1? Why, the book features a mere two lousy selections!

To amend this slight and raise a glass to the holiday season, we would like to offer a free copy of Lowbrow Reader #1 to anybody who was kind enough to read our book. That’s right: An awe-inspiring $3 value…free! To collect your complimentary Lowbrow Reader #1, send an e-mail to editor@lowbrowreader.com with “free issue #1” in the subject line and your mailing address in the body. Oh, right: We need proof that you own The Lowbrow Reader Reader. (We weren’t born yesterday, you know.) Thus, in homage to Billy Madison, please turn to page 69 of the book and, beneath your address, include any word that appears on the page.

Happy holidays, America! (On that note, we regretfully inform foreign readers that this offer only extends to those with mailing addresses in the United States. We love you, other countries of the world, but postage rates do not.) And remember, you can still order a copy of The Lowbrow Reader Reader. What sort of a fool would not want to find such a book inside his or her nondenominational holiday stocking? (This nudnik, sure, but clearly nobody else!)

Really, 5C? Are you serious? You have lived here for a long time—longer than we have, at least. Thus, you have lived in this building long enough to understand how sound travels in the bathroom. The moment you go near that tub, it’s as if all walls and floors were to melt away, leaving you sitting in our bathroom, yelling into that phone.

You know what time it is, I presume? It’s 5:25. That’s not the fun evening 5:25, when people are trickling out of work into the romantic twilight. It’s the weird morning one that generally exists without me.

Do you know who is awake at 5:25 in the morning? The jetlagged, the elderly, travelers kicking themselves for having booked unwise flights, easily bullied types with poorly socialized children or pets, the freshly Oscar-nominated, exurbanites staring down long commutes, physical education teachers, club kids hitting a second wind, child practitioners of esoteric sports, Al Roker, my Uncle Sol, our nation’s more competent newspaper deliverymen, and bakers abiding by cliché. And now, thanks to your arguably immoral decision to take a phone call in the bathroom, me.

So, how do we proceed? If it’s not obvious by now, I respond poorly to both sleeping pills and earplugs. I think we both would agree that I’m not going to march upstairs at this hour and lodge a complaint. Slipping a note beneath your door seems so passive aggressive. If I knock on the ceiling with a broom handle, it will wake my wife—who, as you may have heard, would not hesitate to murder me, her parents, and the populace of lower Manhattan in exchange for a good night’s rest.

Might this be a situation worthy of the city’s 311 complaint line? “Good morning operator, there is a woman loudly gossiping from her bathroom, which she knows is poorly insulated for noise. The suspect is in her early 50s, stands in tense silence while riding an elevator, occasionally wears heels while walking on hardwood floors, and apparently has a work rival named Janet. Really? You can dispatch the police…oh, wait. I hear their sirens now! And the officers will handle the arrest in a quiet manner so as not to wake my wife?”

Realistically, we both know such a call is out of the question. After all, this is your first major offense. But as the minutes tick on, my chances of returning to sleep grow ever slimmer. And so, despite the chill in the air and my own environmental concerns, I now rise from bed to turn on the air conditioner, whose clunky purr should drown out your inane blather. Make no mistake, I may be awake for good, effectively ruining my entire….

…scars of your love they leave me breathless—MATTHEW, DID YOU SEE MY BLUE SHIRT?—I can’t help feeling we could have had it all, rolling in the….

Et tu, 4B? Already this morning, I have been smiled upon by the gods of sleep, who benevolently allowed me to drift off so soon after 5C’s interruption. I should not get greedy. Nonetheless, 4B, why must we continue this ugly morning dance?

We share a thin bedroom wall but so little else. On the east side of this wall, for instance, we sleep until at least 9:30. You west siders wake at 7:15 prompt. We are considerate beings, quiet as mice in the evening hours when we suspect others to be asleep. You, by contrast, are callous noise terrorists, conveniently oblivious. My wife and I met in college. You, Loud Matthew and Rick of the Booming Voice, could only have met at a support group for New Yorkers who grew up along airport tarmacs. I cheer the legalization of gay marriage, if only for the opportunity to witness your nuptials:

“Do you, Rick of the Booming Voice, take this man, Loud Matthew, as your husband, to have and to hold?”

“I DOOOOOOO!!!!” [Glass shatters; an elderly guest faints; the reverend clings to his toupee as it threatens to blow away.]

I take issue with those scolds who view a later schedule as some sign of sloth, yet realize that the seven o’clock hour is widely considered an acceptable time to rise. Still, your insistence on placing a stereo directly opposite our bed is mystifying: feng shui as practiced by jerks. And while the volume of your voices is certainly—

Hmmpharghhhhaghghmmh. Loud Matthew and Rick of the Booming Voice are at it again.

Okay, now you’ve done it. My wife is awake.

Can you go talk to them?

Please, dear lord, do not make me get out of bed, put on pants, and knock on that door like some schoolmarm pest. Understand that were I not so comfortably sprawled, I would be on my hands and knees, begging mercy.

We have to say something or they’re going to do this every morning. Please. Can’t you go talk to them?

Sorry, 4B, but orders are orders.

Upon moving next door, you did examine my CV, right? Note that over the past dozen years, I have been dispatched to file noise complaints to beefy Wall Street types on East 28th (TV), a pan-Asian restaurant directly beneath our bedroom on Second Avenue (New Age music), a kindly autistic man on West 15th Street (hallway pacing; boots), and, also on West 15th, four college undergraduates crammed into two rooms (unrepentant, all-around vileness). I concede that you, Loud Matthew and Rick of the Booming Voice, reside on the less egregious end of this loutish spectrum. To a hardened nag such as myself, this renders you hapless putty to mold and crush at will. I must stand before you neighborly yet firm: stern, frank, and fearless in the face of any protests. Yes, I may sacrifice future elevator repartee regarding the fickle weather. But if frosty hallway greetings are the price of silence, then so be it. Let’s roll! Hooyah!

Oh, um, hi, Rick, sorry to bug you guys, but, would you, in the morning, it’s just that we sleep a little later than you, and, it’s not your fault at all—these walls are so thin—and would you maybe mind maybe turning your stereo—

MY GOSH, OF COURSE. I’M SO SORRY. MATTHEW! CAN YOU TURN THE MUSIC DOWN? I’M SO SORRY WE WOKE YOU! OH MY GOD!

So, that went well! My wife is sleeping like a sweet, uncomplaining angel. 5C is at work, no doubt dealing with the dastardly Janet. The music has subsided, and Rick of the Booming Voice even seems to have adopted a whisper. It is as if we uplifted the apartment and moved to the countryside. It’s just that peaceful.

There goes the alarm.

Few things are as important to completing your novel as choosing a comfortable reading position. Without this trump card, you may as well turn the television on right now. Every reader is different. Some people prefer arm chairs, while others like a nice countertop on which to rest their book. Some approach their novels while in bed, either lying flat on their back, and thus holding the book upright, or resting their head on their right arm for even pages and left arm for odd ones. Still others—oftentimes aficionados of Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy—require an airplane seat to concentrate on their book.

Once you have found the position that works best for you, it is time to begin the novel. Let us pretend that you are about to launch into F. Scott-Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As with many classic tomes, most additions of this book come with an introduction; in my experience, it is best to ignore these. Frequently tedious and universally pedantic, introductions ruin exciting plot twists and indulge in the type of academic mumbo jumbo that sends the average reader straight to the local video arcade or Internet pornographer. What’s more, many introductions are numbered with “Roman” numerals that do not factor into the book’s final page count, leaving a prospective reader to slog through twenty pages of text only to find herself, discouragingly, back on page one.

With reading position chosen, book cracked open, and introduction smartly skipped, we find ourselves ready to rumble with Mr. Scott-Fitzgerald’s mind. Let’s look at the first paragraph:

IN MY YOUNGER and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

It is a handsome beginning. No grandiloquent word sending an eager reader to the dictionary. No presentation of eccentric characters or complicated plot devices. Rather, we have what appear to be two characters: The book’s narrator (who, we already learn, was once younger and more vulnerable), and his father (a giver of advice). What’s more, through the author’s use of capitalization, we know that his emphasis is being placed on the book’s first three words, “in my younger.”

It is not long before we realize that Scott-Fitzgerald has tricked us. Not only does the book fail to explore the narrator’s youth, but his Gatsby could hardly be considered commendable. Perhaps more discouraging, the author loads his novel with those insipid passages sprinkled throughout so many pictureless masterworks that cause even a cautious reader’s mind to wander, sometimes breaking sentences with two or even three commas. To wit:

Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away.

Now let us see how a typical contemporary reader mentally digests Scott-Fitzgerald’s prose:

Evidently some wild wag [come again?] of an oculist [is that an eye doctor? I really shouldn’t have put the dictionary all the way on the shelf] set them there [what if I move it over by the radiator?] to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness [wait, who’s blind? I’m not paying attention at all here…] Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten [I sure could use a snack] his practice [I did just eat all those potato chips—are potato chips fattening?] in the borough [I wonder if I have any of those Teddy Grahams left over from the party] of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness [who’s this blind guy? I better start over again…] Evidently some wild wag….

At this rate, the poor sap seems unlikely ever to complete his novel. Why? Our reader let a bland passage get the better of him. Once he found his mind veering off course, he should have skipped the paragraph—which, as you probably have figured out, is tossed in by the author to pad out his book—and plowed ahead.

Indeed, those skilled in plowing ahead will find more success with their novels than readers who linger on every last detail. It is with this in mind that we approach our final major step: skipping pages. Once a book is 75% read, it is as good as done. A reader is familiar with the characters, the author’s favored nouns and pronouns, and much of the plot; all that remains is the conclusion. The best strategy is to skim a novel’s final portions, keeping an eye out for references to death, birth, oral sex, and such phrases as “at long last” or “of course!” Soon enough, one’s eyes confront those words cherished by lovers of literature around the globe: “The End.”