Motherboard

My father, Robert Grossman, is an illustrator. He did the Airplane poster. (I used to use this line to entice nerdy men into my spider’s web. But now, ladies, I bequeath it to you: He can be your dad too. Maybe he is! JK!).

Over the last two decades, pops has done a lot of work for The New York Observer. Most of these pieces were conceived with the paper’s former editor, the legendary (and weird, genius, sweet, handsome, contrary, infuriating, and enigmatic) Peter Kaplan; although lately I hear the paper’s going with the Huffington Post model of compensating contributors if you catch my drift. (Full disclosure: I worked at the dear NYO for three years under the aforementioned Mr. Chip’s reign. NY media nepotism? Yes. Problem with that? Want to taste my knuckles?)

In 1999 my dad did this piece for the cover of the Observatory, which used to be the Observer’s art section. Maybe it still is—haven’t read it in a while. If I recall correctly, this piece came from a discussion he and I had had about how nineteen had been an important number in our lives and how sad it was that it was abdicating. I was nineteen that year, and it happens to be my lucky number—he and I both realized that we’d kind of miss writing out those two taken-for-granted numbers on checks and such (this is back when we used checks). Laugh if you want, but I have strong associations between numbers and letters and I’m not alone—it’s actually called Synesthesia. Go forth and Google.

I love this anthropomorphized nineteen and the scary little twenty babies. Hope you do too. Happy New Year!

(with thanks to John Figler for the scan)