Prizes are, of course, objectively good, though I think the correct reaction to receiving them is best exemplified by Doris Lessing:

Doris gives ‘em the business

https://youtube.com/shorts/HLo_1RnXHVM?si=i1C6BO6syhh-nlKD

My reaction to prizes (or arguably any sort of good news, praise, or stray compliment) zig-zags wildly across a matrix and never quite manages to land on Doris. A rush of excitement followed swiftly by a rush of dread of whatever’ll come to cut me down to size; a sense of self-loathing for my knee-jerk impulse to immediately tell the world while simultaneously trying bat away or otherwise minimize the thing.

I despise false modesty in myself as much as I despise it in others, and certainly we all know people whose performative self-laceration is a thin gloss on a towering narcissism (a few memoirs spring to mind). Self-deprecation is the native tongue of my age and demographic cohort, and while I’m firm in my belief that self-regard is a substance used sparingly at best, I am also keenly aware that the instinct to beat everybody to the punch is pretty fucked as defense mechanisms go, and that it also serves as a weak attempt to quell the monster within that wants MOAR PRIZES ALL THE PRAISE MUCH LOVE GIVE IT TO MEEEE.

Posting good professional news feels like a thing one must do, because Business, but it’s also a way to scare up some of that sweet sweet external-validation dopamine for which I am a bottomless pit of need.

I feed the beast, and then immediately fear that it will get big and everyone will see it, so naturally I then have to tell it it looks hideous in those pants. “Never let ‘em see you cry” has nothing on “dear God, you absolute dork, never let ‘em see you wag your tail, Jesus, there you go doing it again.” My inner critic is unnecessarily wordy, and at any rate I think crying probably plays pretty well on Instagram.

But anyway: a matrix, one that doesn’t seem to have a locus of grace. I won some prizes, I am happy about them. That should be all she wrote, but that would be an awfully short Substack.

Another thing that happened this year is that I lost 60 pounds. Technically this happened over the course of the last year and change, and it was on purpose (a calorie-tracking app called Noom, plus a side-effect of amphetamines - Adderall, prescribed for my brain, I didn’t just happen upon a skid of dead-stock Dexatrim). I am sponsored by neither). I weigh less as of this writing than I ever have in my adult life, and as a person who has struggled with her weight since childhood, that is… a thing, and comes with (you guessed it!) its own complicated matrix. I am thin? thinnish? not-fat? - a thing I have never been, a “prize” (ugh) I’ve wanted forever, I stand 5’6” and weighed in this morning at 125. This was absolutely not about health and entirely about vanity - I carried those pounds easily enough, and I do not find myself feeling healthier nor more energetic (except for the energy provided by my new best friend, SPEED). I was in reasonably good health before and I’m in reasonably good health now, just smaller, for now anyway.

A lifetime of conditioning and an awareness of the cold calculus of perception means I am happy about being a size six. I don’t feel great about bowing to that (fucked!) conditioning nor that calculus, but it is what it is. I am also a bit withered, having lost weight at an age where you have to keep the bag it came in. My arms are crepey, my midsection baggy, my ass is kind of a disaster, and don’t even get me started on my tits. My sister told me (not unkindly, plus I asked) that I looked a bit haggard and should put ten back on (I don’t think I am psychologically ready to gain weight on purpose). Weight is not the only line along which the calculus is figured, so it could be argued that this entire project is a wash. But on a deeper level, I am just not used to this body. It doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to me, which is a profoundly dislocating feeling.

All of this adds up to a kind of reckoning. I am, it seems, at or approaching some kind of crossroads, some kind of transformation or new understanding of who I am. I got an email a couple days ago from somebody who’d happened upon a volume of Lulu Eightball cartoons, which he noted was very different from my work for the New Yorker; it’s a kind letter but it also posits that something is lost in the translation, and wonders if the sensibility I brought to Lulu is something I can still access. I don’t think he’s wrong; Lulu, as raw and uneven as it was, still stands as my favorite work. I think its voice is still present in my work (it is, as he observed, muted somewhat in TNY, but that’s a very different venue than an alt-weekly), but I do genuinely long to access it in a purer form. Does that voice belong to me, or does it belong to the girl I was then? That girl, briefly: tubby, perpetually broke, often lovelorn, usually drunk, lost, full of vague ambitions she had no real clue how to pursue, a complete mess by almost every metric. When I think of her now I feel an almost unbearable tenderness and sorrow for what I may have lost.

I will be 50 next year. I have realized some of those ambitions and developed new ones. I have life and renter’s insurance. I am married, I am a mother. My body is a new thing not just in terms of size, but function (I’m not experiencing much in the way of obvious signs of perimenopause, but come on, man, I’m 49 fucking years old). Can I access her voice more directly without doing a sad cosplay of a former self?

I can almost see her narrowing her eyes, blowing smoke in my face, and saying with maximum contempt: “Fuck you, lady, you’re a size six who wins prizes.**”

*In no particular order:

• The Thurber Prize for American Humor in Cartooning, for which there was a lovely ceremony and reception that featured a table heaped with bacon. It was truly a wondrous sight to behold. The trophy is a surprisingly heavy glass book with Thurber’s portrait etched into it, plus money, which I need and love.

• A Funny Award, which is given out at FunnyCon in Chicago. FunnyCon is the brainchild of Onion vet Scott Dikkers; I was not in attendance but it looks like it was fun (and at any rate was held at the Hideout, one of my very favorite venues in Chicago, and a place in which I got apocalyptically drunk at least once in the early oughts). The prize is an intensely disturbing… rubber? clown holding a smaller version of himself. It is clammy to the touch and wiggles in a way that is upsetting on a cellular level. Naturally, it now lives on my mantelpiece.

• The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, which is a fellowship of four months (I opted for the Spring cohort, which runs late January to late May). The others in my cohort are terrifyingly high-key academics, and I am not doing a false modesty when I say I have absolutely no idea why I was selected (I mean, I applied, and I wanted it, but I did not think I would actually get it) (and I am genuinely thrilled that I did). I hold no degree beyond a BFA (eked out by the skin of my teeth, per my deeply unimpressive transcript) and I write and draw jokes for a living. I am not saying I’m an idiot - I’m reasonably bright if you catch me on a good day - but these people are, like smart-smart. But thank you, AAB, I’ll try not to make a mess.

  **This is where my inner critic truly shines - I can immediately tell that brat that be that as it may, my apartment is still often a disaster, I play a lot of chicken with my bank account for a woman my age, I spent a good 45 seconds trying to enter the butcher’s through the out door yesterday, and furthermore look at this sad-ass titty. MAKE WITH THE JOKES, YOU DEGENERATE. Anyway, should I get bangs?

  And lastly, here’s this issue’s Lulu, speaking of the perils of transformation:

  

  PS - I’m turning on paid subscribers because apparently the Substack algorithm likes it when you do that, but good God you do not have to pay me for this maundering I squeeze out on an extremely irregular basis; nothing’s gonna change in terms of access. If for some reason you love paying for things, the money will go to St. Nell’s, a humor writing residency I operate. OK ALGO YOU HAPPY OR ARE YOU MAD ‘CAUSE I SAID YOUR NAME

• We managed this trip on a shoestring - found crazy cheap tickets from Philly to London, ordered one cocktail between six people at Damien Hirst’s bar (classy!), piled into Dawn’s student lodgings in Edinburgh. For the London bit I just sort of assumed there would be a cheap hotel available - it will not shock you to hear that this assumption was incorrect. I managed to wheedle the proprietor of a… lodging establishment? Shady hotel? Flophouse? Into letting us stay in the room of a long-term lodger who was away for the weekend (it didn’t occur to me until much later that these were probably his own quarters and he bunked down in the cellar for the night). The six of us squeezed into two beds that had newspapers and dirty underwear in the blankets and took bets on whether or not we would be murdered. In Edinburgh I tried to pull a cute bartender and got chased away by a woman mean-mugging me through tears (I am not fool enough to fight a Scotswoman, certainly not over untried dick) and saw more than one person vomit on the sidewalk. We visited a bar called Oz that was the only place I recognized on sight when I returned almost 30 years later, not because there’s anything particularly interesting about the place but because it was burned in my brain when I made some dumb joke about Australia as we went in and some guy muttered “Jesus Christ” under his breath (certainly a personal best in terms of auto-cock-blocking on my part) (actually I completely failed to hook up with anybody on that trip, the only interested party being a pill-dealer at some kind of dance situation we ended up at, and no thank you, pill-man) (no shade to pill-men, he just was not my type).

Things I don’t remember:

• Apparently we went to Glasgow on this trip?? I have zero recollection of this, but have been assured that we did, and that we once again shared one beverage between six people, this time at a tea room. I am not endorsing this behavior, merely reporting it. I am sorry to both establishments. Also, how on earth did we find our way around or do anything at all? I do remember that I sorted our train tickets from London to Edinburgh over the phone (long-distance from Baltimore, yikes) but have no idea how we managed anything else. Probably the same way we did anything - got lost a lot, asked directions, made puppy-eyes at hotel managers hoping we were cute enough to take pity on. A different world by all metrics.

On this most recent trip I never so much as handled the local currency, because you can pay for everything with your phone. We apartment swapped with my New Yorker colleague Will McPhail (thank you for keeping our cat alive, Will) and instead of drinking myself insentient every night I walked up (most of) Arthur’s Seat (I was wearing Chelsea boots with slick soles and got the yips for the last 20 feet) and sat in the steam and sauna rooms at a local gym with my beloved Dina Nayeri. I bought and smuggled home a truly heroic number of UK Cadbury Creme eggs (FAR SUPERIOR TO THE AMERICAN VERSION). I had some excellent Indian food and also raw venison, which was spectacular.

Here’s a thing I’m ashamed of: I am terrible at sketch journaling. I always intend to draw on-site, but especially on trips with family I very rarely actually do it, because I am lazy and a fraud. I will squirrel away and write if I can, but rarely do I produce the kind of beautiful sketch-diaries that so many of my compatriots offer. I did however doodle a few things once I got home, and I’ll post one here in what feels like an act of penance.

I did promise you pigeon content, did I not? I am many things but I am no liar. Or wait, maybe a bit of a liar - I did manage one on-site doodle when John and I ducked out for a nightcap at the pub at the top of Will’s block. I think you can tell the progression of the two drinks I had as we move from left to right across the picture plane.

Also, besides being proud of my daughter’s guitar and singing skills, I am also proud of her comedic writing chops, as evidenced by the note she left Will (I am also proud that her home-training of addressing adults by Mr./Ms. Firstname has stuck, and perhaps a little alarmed by the fact that she has an olfactory reference for “rich finance men".” NYC kids, what’re you gonna do).

This post is not, in fact, Cadbury sponcon, but Cadbury, baby, if you’re listening, I am OPEN to it.

And lastly, we tried and failed to find Trainspotting streaming while at Will’s, but I did manage to log into YouTube on his TV and then couldn’t figure out how to log out, so now Will can see my whole YouTube history. Have fun learning just how much ASMR, Elliott Smith, and ten-minute arm workout content I consume, Will.

Ok, on to this issue’s Lulu:

Speaking of TV! You can most likely date this one to the references to popular television of the time; in retrospect I am still mad at how bad the finale of True Detective S1 was, and would still absolutely watch as many minutes of Walton Goggins blowing Timothy Olyphant as HBO would see fit to bless us with. If HBO/HBOMax/HMBAOX whatever can give us Heated Rivalry, surely they can serve up some man-on-man featuring men I personally actually want to see fucking (sorry, HR stans, those smooth young hockey players did exactly nothing for me. I wanna see lived-in gentlemen having deeply conflicted encounters in a tool shed. I want to see Timothy Olyphant’s face as he actively tries not to come, and the bitter mix of relief and guilt when he does. I would pay extra for this content).

On that note, happy Monday? Anybody want a Cadbury Egg? THEY COME IN BISCOFF FLAVO(U)R!

Love,

Emily

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Hahahah WHUT

Apparently I “started” this Substack in August of 2020, a time best encapsulated by picturing a lunatic asylum on fire. As I recall I did so so I could participate in some kind of Substack-y thing, but just what has been lost to said fire, along with some perfectly good lunatics. And I’m doing this now because I will be a guest on Jason Chatfield’s excellent Draw Me Anything tomorrow, March 24th, at noon Eastern (MARK YOUR CALENDAR), and that feels like just the kick in the pants I needed to get this going For Real after… five and a half years. At any rate, I see that I promised “Lulu Eightball, plus assorted brain detritus,” so let’s get into what the hell that even means. I may deliver LATE but let it not be said that I deliver NEVER (that has in fact been said, often, with damning accuracy).

The fuck is Lulu Eightball?

Lulu Eightball was a comic strip I did for alt-weeklies (for the Youngs: alt-weeklies were once a mainstay of urban life, free newspapers covering local entertainment, news, and culture. They also featured classifieds, Missed Connections - and I got TWO thankyouverymuch, I was cute once - and comics, and I miss them like a dead friend) from 2001 - 2016. Lulu is how I taught myself to write jokes and established my “voice,” as it were, that voice being “well-meaning mess mining pathos for humor,” if I have to give an elevator pitch. I will post them here, less as an exercise in nostalgia and more as a bid for external validation means of connecting with that voice, because Lulu is still probably the most distilled example of my comedic… essence. Sometimes it is helpful for me to remember that, as a way of keeping my comedic North Star visible.

“Brain detritus?” Okaaaay

A catch-all term that, if I’m being honest, sounds a little cringey to me now, but is meant to indicate that I will also write about whatever happens to be on my mind at any given moment. Topics are likely to include but not be limited to: Baking (especially pies), middle-age, my ongoing battle with the pigeon community (not the people who harbor them, but the birds themselves, and they know what they did), people and why, motherhood, small joys, big sads, fear of all kinds, and run-on sentences.

Who even ARE you though

My name is Emily Flake, if you haven’t figured that out already. I am a cartoonist (mostly for the New Yorker), writer (for many many pubs, books, radio, and screen), acomic (any stage that will have me and some that won’t), illustrator (everything from books to mags to Broadway), and teacher (currently at the New School). I am the author of several books, including Mama Tried, That Was Awkward: the Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug, and Joke in a Box: How to Write and Draw Jokes. I was a writer on Command Z, a Steven Soderbergh-directed web series, which was nominated for a WGA Award (and is the reason I am in the WGA, and if you’re looking for a writer in that capacity, HI). I co-host FDK, a monthly-ish standup show with the incredible Hollie Harper, at Young Ethel’s in South Slope. I own and operate the St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency in Williamsport, PA, a program for women and other marginalized genders working in any comedic discipline. I was a Yaddo fellow in 2025 and I am the recipient of the 2026 Thurber Prize in Cartoon Art. I live in Brooklyn and own an absurd cat. This is my favorite thing I have ever written.

This is what I look like (they said I should tell you)

Yes, that’s a Jawbreaker shirt. Yes, that’s extremely on-brand.

And here’s a very early Lulu, just so you know part of what you’re getting into here. As you might glean from the reference to “I.M.” and “emoticons,” this is from Long Ago (I want to say 2004, around the time I did indeed start fucking a co-worker, and reader, I married him) (for real!), but “That’s the spot where I don’t love you anymore” remains one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written, so do with that information what you will.

5. Ignore our advice

Oh Substack, I love it when you play coy.