I am a fan of humor writing. I cackle over Cynthia Heimel’s hilarious columns (If You Can’t Live without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?), Gladys Taber’s comical autobiographical novel, Mrs. Daffodil, and Emily Kimbrough’s charming humor/travel book, Forty Plus and Fancy Free.

The cartoonist Nicole Hollander was another favorite of mine. While looking up her Sylvia cartoons online, I was saddened to learn that she died  last April.

Hollander began to write and draw the Sylvia cartoons in the 1970s.  In those days she published them in alternative publications, but from 1989-2012 the comic strip was nationally syndicated.

The cartoon character Sylvia smoked, drank, and talked to her cat.  She had wisecracks for every occasion.  In one cartoon, a man at a bar tells her, “Face it, Syl, you need us. Can you imagine a world without men?”  She replies, “No crime, and lots of happy fat women.”  (It’s funnier with the drawings.)

In another favorite, a cat sits on her head. She says, “Sometimes I enjoy writing with a cat sitting on my head, other times not so much.”

Among her collections of comics are I’m in Training to be Tall and Blonde (1979), The Whole Enchilada (1982), Tales from the Planet Sylvia (1990), and The Sylvia Chronicles: 30 Years of Graphic Misbehavior from Reagan to Obama (2010),

I also enjoyed her comic memoir, Tales of Graceful Aging from the Planet Denial. She doesn’t mourn ageing: in fact, she thinks she is adorable in an outfit she wears to the movies. If this is denial, I want it too. Now that I am a woman of a certain age, I, too, have cute outfits to wear to the movies.

In an interview with NPR about Tales of Graceful Aging from the Planet Denial, she said, “Well, you know, I did, sort of, out of the corner of my eye notice that I was aging. And I had created a cartoon character who would age instead of me.”

Do I have a Sylvia alter-ego?  Well, yeah, I think so.  Of course Kat’s style is different. She doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t go to the hair salon, but simply enjoys the ridiculousness of life, reads, and drinks tea.

Appearance vs. reality is a strange trip. I’ve never been into that. But some have to look beautiful for their job, like actors and models, and they have to do unpleasant things like have plastic surgery. Thank God I can just be adorable in an ordinary way. Yeah, and I can’t wait to wear that cute sweater that may be a sweatshirt or a jacket: who can tell?