Blog Anniversary and the anniversary of the "The New Yorker" - previously unrealized

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As I indicated in my 5 am post of today, the first entry in the journal was made on this day in 1999.

When I went out to check the mail, there was the anniversary issue of "The New Yorker" which always appears near the publication date of the first issue - February 17, 1925. Why I'd never made the connection before now is beyond me.

"The magazine's first cover, of a dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle, was drawn by Rea Irvin,... The gentleman on the original cover is referred to as 'Eustace Tilley,' a character created for The New Yorker by Corey Ford. Eustace Tilley was the hero of a series entitled 'The Making of a Magazine,' which began on the inside front cover of the August 8 issue that first summer. ... Traditionally, the Tilley cover illustrated here is reused every year on the issue closest to the anniversary date of February 21, though on several occasions a newly drawn variation has been substituted." (See Wikipedia - The New Yorker.)

It's interesting to note that the covers have always been drawn. A photographic cover has never been used.

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However, in 1994 under the controversial tutelage of editor Tina Brown, underground comic book artist Robert Crumb scrubbed the aristocratic, top-hatted Regency dandy, Eustace Tilley, studying a fluttering pale pink butterfly through a monocle. He instead subbed a different face for the first time since the magazine's founding in February 1925. "The New York Times" said "In his place was a scuzzy but recognizable descendant -- an adenoidal, acne-plagued teen-ager with chin-stubble, a gold earring, a reversed baseball cap and a yellow T-shirt, squinting myopically, perhaps uncomprehensibly at a flyer for 'Adult XXX Video at the Playpen.' " (See The New York Times - Times Topics - Tina Brown - Saturday, February 17, 2007.)

I can certainly see the traditional reader taking a glance at that and pouring a triple-strength vodka martini.

But notice the clever genius of Crumb; the faces are actually a great deal alike. Note the similarities in the nose, chin, mouth, partially open eyes, eyebrows, neck position of the right arm, and the distance to the item under study.

I'm assuming that the kinship of the initial publication between my journal and "The New Yorker: portends good fortune and fecundity.