Roz Chast Brings Her Characters to Fishs Eddy (2011/11/29)
   Well, it was rescheduled by the town for Nov. 6. Anyway, Bill has been scaling back. He originally made an announcement that he was going to quit the year before, but it is kind of like someone quitting smoking. You keep catching them with cigarettes. Are you going to have any smoke machines.I always imagined my little cartoons on plates for some reason. I did not want to just put a cartoon on a plate; I wanted to make characters specially designed for the thing. Who does not need a celery dish. Even if you do not have any dishes, you need a celery dish. We have not put any in ours yet, but we definitely plan to.
   He said, “I don’t have smoke machines. I have fog machines.” Who knew these things? He gave a lot away. He put the guillotine on the lawn with a sign that said, “Free.” A couple of weeks ago, we woke up and it was gone. So it’s a happy ending. Why are you designing dishes, and why make a celery dish?
   You had a book signing at Fishs Eddy last week. Did people tell you about their phobias? I heard some strange ones: turtleneck sweaters, popping open those dough things. I kind of hate those, too. Somebody had a fear of stickers. That was interesting. The thing is, it’s not just phobias. It’s odd things you don’t like. The dough thing, I was happy to be reminded of that fear. Then there’s ones like lockjaw that a lot of people my age grew up with. If you got scratched with a rusty nail, you just kind of wait for that jaw to lock up, and that’s the end.
   What do you write when you sign people’s books? I write something like, “I hope you never get stuck in an elevator full of balloons.”
   I worried that you had spontaneously combusted. Are you O.K.? I’m absolutely fine. I had convinced myself I had been so boring you had had enough, or that it was some reporter thing, like in the movies or TV, when they don’t go through the hello or goodbye part of the phone call.
   We should talk about those hooked rugs you like to make — that’s a very homey pursuit. Are those the same birds you’ve had for awhile, and what are they saying these days? Yes, same guys. Marco is a blue-streaked lory. Eli, the African gray, turned out to be a girl. You have to get a blood test to find out. That’s why she has a bow. She can say, “Look at the big bird,” “That’s ridiculous.” They both can go, “Meow, meow, meow.”
   I’ve always wanted to learn how to hook rugs. A wonderful artist named Leslie Giuliani taught me how. The nice thing is you can change it as you go along. In the cartoon issue of The New Yorker, you made a cartoon of a family vacation. Was that your family vacation? Yes, we went out West, to Utah. All that stuff is all totally true. We did that hike: “Is this the third emerald stream or the second?” The firecracker store was amazing, like a Stop & Shop for explosives. The names, like “Who’s Your Daddy?” All totally true.
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