Known as the "quiet Half-Tone", Barry Blitt has been contributing illustrations to a variety of publications for what seems like years. His cartoons [if that's what you call them] have appeared in Entertainment Weekly since the early '90s, and his tiny portraits of varying likeness show up constantly in the New York Observer.

As well, Mr. Blitt's covers and drawings grace the pages of the New Yorker [perhaps "grace" is too strong a word] with some frequency. He is currently working on a children's book, and several other doomed projects.

A frustrated piano player since his angry boyhood in Quebec, he has recently been taking weekly lessons from an increasingly agitated and embittered jazz teacher.