Rodney has lived on the East Side since 1969. Born as Jacob Cohen 57 years ago in Babylon, Long Island, he spent most of his boyhood and his early career in Queens. After graduating from Richmond Hill High School, he changed his legal name to Jack Roy "because my father used 'Roy' in vaudeville." For years he worked small nightclubs for little or no pay. Then at 28 he married. "My wife was a singer. So we decided to both quit show business and lead a normal life. That doesn't always work out." The first "no respect" joke he ever wrote, says Rodney, was: "I played hide and seek. They wouldn't even look for me." The same basic gag has since reappeared in a thousand variations. ("My twin brother forgot my birthday.") Rodney now earns a substantial part of his income by making commercials, the best known of which are for Mobil and Miller Lite beer. He has cut two comedy albums and written a pair of books, _I Don't Get No Respect_ and _I Couldn't Stand My Wife's Cooking So I Opened a Restaurant._ For the moment, Rodney has no plans for other books or albums. "Perhaps I'm not ambitious enough to pursue different things the way I should," he confesses."I'd rather spend my free time at the health club. The idea in life is not to see how much money you can die with." Copyright 2004 The Associated Pr ess. WESTSIDER JAN DE RUTH Partner of nudes and _Time_ covers 9-24-77 In 1955, when Jan De Ruth's painting reached the point where he could support himself entirely by his brush and palette, he used to take singing lessons at 8 o'clock in the morning to make himself get up early. Today he gets up strictly to paint, and does so with such skill and efficiency that he maintains a reputation as one of America's foremost painters of nudes, while still managing to turn out five or six commissioned portraits a month. At 55 and in the zenith of his career, De Ruth is a mellow, dignified Westsider whose lively eyes reflect the deep intellect within. His achievements in the past two decades are enormous. His works have graced nearly 70 one-man shows. His portraits of former First Lady Pat Nixon and other celebrity wives have appeared on the cover of _Time_ magazine. He has written two widely popular books -- _Portrait Painting_ and _Painting the Nude_. As we relax in the workroom of his West 67th Street apartment, I begin by asking how he came to specialize in nudes. "I always knew I would paint women," he says in a soft voice shaded with tones of his native Czechoslovakia. "In 1948, when I came to the United States, I started to paint nudes." Is his choice of subject matter motivated by something other than art's sake?" "The only person I think who may have these thoughts in mind is myself," he answers, smiling frankly, "because I always ask myself whether these reasons are purely artistic or do they come from the gut? I don't think there can be art unless it comes from the gut."