Kvetching with Ken Krimstein
the first thing cartoonist ken krimstein kvetched about was how long he has lived in new york city (28 years), and the second was how much kvetching goes on around him.
"kvetching is just like complaining about the world in a way, like, 'it's just the way it is, it's not going to change, and, isn't life wonderful?'" he said. "a lot of people kvetch, especially cub's fans and upper west siders."
this self-described cubs fan and chicago native wasn't really complaining about kvetching. in fact, that very thing provided him with enough material to fill his new 96-page book of cartoons. just released, kvetch as kvetch can is full of humorous anecdotes revolving around jewish traditions in relation to food, family, holidays, culture and guilt.
"jewish humor is all about identification. you laugh and grimace at the same time," said krimstein. "these are observations, you aren't making fun of other people, you are making fun of yourself along with other people, which takes the sting out of it."
one of his cartoons in the book depicts "how jewish men age," and features a man who looks the same in the drawings, only his pants get higher and higher. another panel shows a boy sprinkling food into a fish bowl with a blob floating in it that's captioned, "chaim rabinowitz feeds his gefilte fish."
"i started finding the humor in traditions and thought, 'why do we eat this food at passover that's bumpy or bread that's not bread, but a cracker?'" he said, and continued, "'what is gefilte fish? it doesn't look like fish, it's like white gunk in a jar.' so, i asked myself these questions and it opened things up."
finding comedy in everyday life and translating it into art has been something the 52-year-old krimstein has done since he was a kid. whether the initial interest came from a mild addiction to the fumes from the markers his ad-man father kept around his highland park home or pure talent leaking from his nimble fingers, it was something he stuck with. inspired by the cartoons in the new yorker magazine his parents subscribed to, and by reading volumes of charles addams sketches at his friend's house, krimstein was on the path before he ever knew it could be a real career.
not that he was immediately successful at it. after majoring in history at grinnell college in iowa, he attended northwestern as a journalism student, and then made his move to new york. like his father, krimstein eventually started working as a creative in advertising, which he still does today, and was pitching his cartoons on the side. every wednesday, he would leave his office at ogilvy and mather, walk three blocks to the new yorker office with a package of drawings under his arm, and join the other cartoonists submitting work. while he frequently published pieces in the national lampoon, good housekeeping, wall street journal and other well-reputed publications, he was constantly rejected from the magazine that had inspired him. finally, after years of submitting, he got his first cartoon published in the new yorker. it featured a woman in a soho loft lounging on the back of a tractor having martinis with her friends; the caption simply read, "i got it on ebay."
now, krimstein lives on the upper west side with his wife and three children. when he isn't taking his family to riverside park for picnics and tennis, he can be found drinking the "nuclear" coffee and munching on the poppy seed hamentaschens at the hungarian bakery, where he often goes to work on cartoons. the coffee helps, of course, especially as he finished the book, he kvetched. "it's hard to cut down 5,000 years of kvetching into 100 pages." _ know any interesting west siders? email profile suggestions to ahouston@manhattanmedia.com.