HAIL AI

About a million and a half years ago, my friend Jim and I started scratching the itch that would somehow get us out of the mailroom at Needless Hardons & Tears. We both had dreams of becoming writers but had no idea how to go about doing it. 

Oddly enough, we both found employment at an ad agency, a business built on the crafting of ideas. I mentioned this was a million and a half years ago, didn't I?

Except NH&T didn't want any of our ideas. We thought the New Yorker magazine, one of the few still in business, would. So we started making cartoons. As I had no artistic leanings whatsoever, Jim was tasked with putting charcoal to paper. Though many of our joint efforts were juvenile and prurient, many reflected the politics and zeitgeist of the day. 

As I was rolling through the Rolodex of stale ideas in my head for the next R17 post, I thought it would be interesting to give Jim a well deserved rest and see what AI would do with our never-published cartoons.

Unlike others -- I won't mention names -- I find AI to be a fascinating tool. 

Perhaps that's because I cannot draw. Never have and never will. And my photoshopping skills are even worse than my handheld skills. In fact, I've never learned Photoshop. And what I have conjured up on the computer is via Apple's Preview, where there is no erasing tool. And layering images requires some ingenuity.

At this writing Jim is fishing out some of our old work. And I eagerly look forward to seeing how they can be reproduced with stolen pixels and anodyne styles that will still not produce a check from the fabled New Yorker magazine.

For the time being, there's this...

I may be a little biased and Jim may be a lot biased, but in my mind the 1983 original is far better than the 2025 version, which if you ask me lacks the humanity and the vocational suffering of two mailroom clerks trying to get by on $9,800 a year.

To be continued....