I was in a book store on Friday night and this caught my eye: Denys Wortman’s New York: Portrait of the City in the 30s and 40s.

I’d never heard of Wortman before but I was immediately taken with his work.

Yesterday, the Times ran a long feature about Wortman who is the subject of a show at the Museum of the City of New York through March:

If there is a single constant in the creative world, it is that fame has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. One prime example is the cartoonist Denys Wortman, who from 1924 to 1954 contributed six drawings a week to The New York World and its successors.

His feature, “Metropolitan Movies,” was admired for its strikingly naturalistic portrayal of daily life in Gotham. Using a single panel and a conversational caption, Mr. Wortman adroitly summoned up an entirely believable world of housewives talking across fire escapes, girls in the subway hashing over last night’s date, and men and women trying to make a buck in diners, offices, music halls and factories — or struggling to keep afloat during the Great Depression. Mr. Wortman’s drawings were also beautifully composed and finely worked, a legacy of his art school years, when he studied alongside future Ashcan school painters like Edward Hopper and George Bellows, and with their guru Robert Henri.

Even then “there was nothing quite like it,” said the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who enjoyed the drawings as a boy. “His work didn’t seem studied. It was as if you were looking out the window — or my window in the Bronx.” And because it was syndicated nationwide (as “Everyday Movies”), Mr. Wortman’s world spread far beyond the Hudson.

But in 1958, four years after his retirement, Mr. Wortman died of a heart attack. By then cartooning had become character-driven and graphically streamlined (think of Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts”) while art was ruled by the Abstract Expressionists. And when The World’s successor The World-Telegram and Sun folded, he was as forgotten as yesterday’s fish wrap.

The book and the show look like a must.

From Jon Heyman via the indefatigable Craig Calcaterra:

The Yankees are busy with Derek Jeter and Cliff Lee, but after that’s all said and done, Mariano Rivera will be tops on their priority list. Jon Heyman reports today that, when they do get to him, they’ll find that he wants a two-year deal, not a one-year deal.

This should not be a problem. I think you pretty much give Mariano Rivera whatever he wants. At least within reason. He earned 2011 by continuing to be awesome in 2010. While, sure, he might fall off a cliff eventually, who has a greater right to ask for an extra year than Mariano Rivera? He’s carried them for 15 years. They can carry him for one if, for some reason, next season is his last effective one.

Agreed. No problems here. Two years sounds beautiful to me.

[Drawing by Ricardo Lopez Ortiz]

Ozark Ike: You gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. Eye-ball. That’s a gag, son. Gag that is.

Garry Wills just published a memoir. He’s also got a piece on Gary Trudeau in the New York Review of Books celebrating 40 years of Doonesbury:

Most comic strips run out of creative energy after their initial inspiration. Trudeau has just kept improving, year after year, in part because he stays so close to changing events. He still has his ear for the way young people talk through all the varying slang fashions (perhaps helped by his children). At any rate, he has never been better than in the last six years. B.D., who always wore his football helmet when he was not wearing an army helmet in Vietnam, goes to Iraq as an aging National Guard adjunct and his tank is hit by an IED. The strip blacks out, and when he emerges from the darkness, he is seen for the first time without a helmet of some kind—and we find his hair is white at the temples. But that is the least shock—he has also lost a leg. The beloved original character of the strip is tragically maimed.

Trudeau has had some kind of career, indeed.

Nice post on the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s work over at the New Yorker’s Photo Booth.

Here’s more:

Over at SI.com, Joe Sheehan offers up a savvy GM’s guide to free agency:

Jorge De La Rosa

There aren’t many bargains in this year’s market; De La Rosa could be the best. The 29-year-old hits the market off a disappointing season by traditional metrics: 8-7, 4.22 ERA, just 121 2/3 innings in 20 starts after missing two months with a finger injury. Look deeper and you see a lefty who strikes out eight men per game, whose arm hasn’t been damaged by overuse and who has been coming into his own since the Rockies picked him up in 2008. De La Rosa has become a groundball/strikeout pitcher in his late twenties, peaking last year as more than half the balls in play off him were put on the ground. His ERA was higher than it should have been due to a fluky-high 15.8 percent HR/FB rate, against a career mark of around 11 percent De La Rosa is 2 1/2 years younger than Cliff Lee, doesn’t have Lee’s back problems and will provide at least 80 percent of the value for maybe 20 percent of the cost. You could blow out the field by offering three years at $8 million each and get the best deal of the offseason, something teams such as the Twins, Tigers and Brewers should be eager to do.

And this, from Mark Feinsand and Peter Botte in the News:

According to a source, the Yankees have expressed interest in lefthander Jorge de la Rosa, considered by many to be one of the top free-agent pitchers available after Lee.

De la Rosa, who turns 30 in April, went 8-7 with a 4.22 ERA with the Rockies last season, although he pitched well during the second half, allowing three earned runs or less in 13 of is final 14 starts.

De La Who?

07 Dog Eat Dog

Man Ray.

Strand Book Store (2010) by Max Ferguson.

From the New York Magazine archives, here’s the late, great Vic Ziegel on Ali-Spinks II:

he copy of Money magazine offered to Leon Spinks during his flight to New Orleans was full of splendid suggestions for a new career. Soccer coach, that was something the heavyweight champion might want to think about. Nowhere is it written that soccer coaches have to run through strange cities at five in the morning. Or spend great hunks of each day inside expensive hotel rooms that offer baskets of apples and Gouda instead of X-rated film selections. And there aren’t small armies of people telling the cover-boy soccer coach to kick this, do that, no this, no, no, no . . . armies that depend on the heavyweight champion to provide their per diem expenses.

The magazine went unread, of course. Leon Spinks was in Louisiana to defend his title against Muhammad Ali, a 36-year-old body with the staying power of Tutankhamen. Ali was the favorite. Ali was the attraction—the once, twice, and future champion. Leon Spinks? Come on. Just another name on an expired driver’s license.

“Did you hear what Spinks did when he came off the plane?” The lawyer is talking to a sportswriter after the fight. The party is at the Windsor Suite of the New Orleans Hilton. Sportswriters are badly outnumbered by designer suits. Worse yet, the lawyers had heard all the best available fiction.

“Spinks gets off the plane and he does an interview. Everything’s cool. No problems. And then they hustle him into the sheriff’s private car to drive him to the hotel. The first thing he does—this is in the sheriff’s car, right?—the first thing he does is take out a joint and light up.”

Ali won the rematch.

[Art by Neil Adams]

Subway Art Blog is a great site.

Movie Posters that scared me as a kid.

Scared me so much I didn’t see the movies until much later.

Jeanne Verdoux’s got it going on.

Dig this Elvis photo gallery by Alfred Wertheimer over at the New Yorker’s Photo Booth.

From Bay Area Legend, Elmer Bischoff…

Peace to Think Factory for pointing out this most cool Life Magazine photo gallery of the 1955 Whirled Serious.

Ocean Park 49 (1972), By Richard Diebenkorn

Dig this most awesome new book by photographer Lyle Owerko.

While we’re at it, how about a word from Uncle L:

According to Brian Cashman, A.J. Burnett will get a start in the ALCS.

Joe Pos on The Great Mariano:

There’s nothing left really to say about his greatness. We all know the story. He throws that cutter precisely where he wants, it turns left just as it gets to the plate, and there has never been anyone quite like him.

Still, watching him break four bats on Wednesday night — I’m pretty sure he broke Denard Span’s bat when getting the last out of the eighth, then broke Orlando Hudson’s bat, Joe Mauer’s bat and Jim Thome’s bat in the ninth — was another awe-inspiring reminder. He clearly does not throw as hard as he once did. Teams have broken him down on video for more than a decade. We all KNOW exactly what he’s going to do. And still, major league hitters come up, they swing at his cutter, the ball breaks in two inches more than they expected, they break their bat. In Las Vegas, I’ve seen David Copperfield make a car appear out of thin air, and I’ve seen Lance Burton duel someone in a costume who turns out to be Lance Burton. I’m sure I could watch those tricks 50 times and never figure out how they are done. I’m sure I could watch those tricks 100 times and never figure out how they’re done.

But Mariano Rivera has pitched 1,150 innings in the big leagues. He has pitched another 135 or so postseason innings. He has faced almost 900 different big league hitters. And this same trick, precisely this same trick, works almost every time. The Twins may or may not be good enough to come back in this series. They will obviously need to beat up on the Yankees’ second-string starting pitchers, and try to hold their own against this relentless Yankees offense. What they do know is this: They ain’t going to win it in the ninth inning. Mariano Rivera turns 41 next month. He is aging just like the rest of us. But for one more year, it sure looks like nobody is going to beat the Yankees in the ninth inning.