Tomversation by Tom Falco

Babu wasn’t a bott

Babu Bhatt telling Jerry he is, “a very bad man.”

I keep having issues with Adobe. I may dump them once and for all.

I overpay them monthly for terrible service. They keep cutting me off, saying that I am sharing my password and account with others. Which I am not. I don’t even know anyone who does graphics or who would want to use my Photoshop or Illustrator. Most people these days seem to use Canva for everything.

Canva’s Affinity is free. It’s basically a free full version of Adobe Photoshop. I don’t know why I keep paying Adobe, and you think they would fix their issue with me so as not to lose a customer.

Anyway, I was chatting online, trying to get help. After a bit, the chatbot sends me over to a human, named Babu. And I asked if he was Babu Bott, rather than Babu Bhatt, which is the name of the guy on Seinfeld. It’s spelled Bhatt, but I misspelled it as Bott.

I guess since he saw me call him Bott, the guy online made it clear he was a live human. He didn’t get the Babu Bott/Bhatt reference. And I had to laugh because other than Seinfeld, I never knew anyone named Babu before.

There was an Ubu that I used to hear on tv years ago. “Sit, Ubu, sit. Good dog!” is an iconic closing phrase for Ubu Productions, seen at the end of 1980s/90s TV shows. It was the final thing you heard after the credits.

I use Photoshop and Illustrator for my business. I use Clip Studio Paint to draw, and I use Photoshop to color the cartoons, even though I can use Clip Studio Paint to color. And Ollie And Jacomo, my current cartoon doesn’t have much color, so who knows, maybe I’ll just use Clip Studio Paint for the whole process.

Years ago, I used Earthlink to host my business online and every time my site was down I would call them. The first thing they would say is, “Do you have everything backed up?” And I would scream, “Don’t touch anything!” They were asking so that they could remove all the pages and then reinstall them. I did not want that.

We didn’t do that, but then they had me jumping through hoops, “Do this, do that,” and after an hour we would hang up. I would then realize that their servers were down, it had nothing to do with my site personally. But I would always fall for it, and rather than just tell me the servers were down, I was made to jump through these hoops.

That is what Adobe does. They seriously asked me if I had two-tier security sign in for my account. I asked them what hacker would get into my computer, bypass my bank accounts, bypass my credit cards and all my other sensitive material, to steal my Adobe sign in? Seriously, Adobe treating me like a moron. Rather than admit they have some sort of glitch in the system.

As I was typing this, Canva popped up with an ad in my email. I guess they are watching me and want me as a customer. Crazy.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to this blog here – and each time I publish, usually twice a week, you’ll receive it in your email.

Catch up with Ollie and Jacomo

Starting earlier today, a new season of Ollie and Jacomo began.

I’m putting my daily Tomversation cartoon on hold for awhile and Ollie and Jacomo are back.

I know people have been asking for them. And I’m glad to be bringing back new adventures in the form of their daily comic panel. For some reason, I enjoy a single panel cartoon, that’s not to say there won’t be multiple panels once in awhile, but mostly daily, there will be a single panel.

You can follow along for their daily Coconut Cove adventures daily, or if you prefer, every Friday I’ll send out an email with all five cartoons of the week, so I won’t be bothering you daily with emails, but you’ll get that one with everything in it.

If you subscribed in the past, then you will be receiving their weekly adventures every Friday, you don’t have to do anything. And if you don’t subscribe yet, but would like to, you can do that here. It’s free.

Otherwise you can follow them daily at these locations:

Their website: OllieAndJacomo.com
Instagram: instagram.com/ollieandjacomo/
Facebook: facebook.com/OllieAndJacomo/

And you can subscribe via email to this blog here – I send out a couple of short posts each week.

Baking bad, Nutflix and party life

I will be taking a break from my daily Tomversation cartoons and spending time with Ollie and Jacomo.

They are back for a new season of hijinks.

If you subscribed in the past, then you will be receiving their weekly adventures every Friday – that’s 5 toons from the week’s worth. If you would like to subscribe, you can do that here. It’s free.

Otherwise you can follow them daily at these locations:

Their website: OllieAndJacomo.com
Instagram: instagram.com/ollieandjacomo/
Facebook: facebook.com/OllieAndJacomo/

My blog can still be seen here: Tomversation.com and you can subscribe there if you like. There are links after every article to subscribe.

See you Monday! Over there, at one of those places (not here).

Ollie and Jacomo are returning!

The Gemini in me is coming out again and I decided to change things up, as I usually do once-a-year. I’m putting my daily Tomversation cartoon on hold for awhile and Ollie and Jacomo will be back for a run.

My brain needs a rest from the daily Tomversation. Coming up with ideas is not easy, but Ollie and Jacomo seem to write themselves. It doesn’t seem like much of an effort with them.

Time to pull out my Jacomo, “I Live for Summer” t-shirt again, I guess. I’ll wear it around NYC this summer – getting free advertising on the subway and stuff.

Their adventures will start running daily this coming Monday. If you’d like to subscribe, you can do that and receive all five cartoons of that week in Friday – this way, I won’t bug you daily with an email, you’ll only get the one.

You can use this link to subscribe for free. If you subscribed in the past, that is still good and you will receive the mailings starting next Friday.

If you prefer, you can can check them out daily at their home on the web at: OllieAndJacomo.com

Or you can follow them on Social Media at:
Facebook here: facebook.com/OllieAndJacomo
Instagram here: instagram.com/ollieandjacomo

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog here – this is just for my blog which comes out a couple of times a week.

Again, for Ollie And Jacomo, you can subscribe here, where you’ll receive all 5 cartoons on Fridays.

Waymo’s Standoff: A Morning Encounter

We had a Waymo car visit our cul-de-sac the other day. They have been all over Miami, but this one came to our own neighborhood.

So many of us happened to be out on the street at that time too. It was early morning and I was out talking to our condo maintenance man. An elderly neighbor was waiting for an Uber, I helped her get to the sidewalk to wait.

A bunch of workers were on the street – they have been here for many months putting new drainage pipes in and raising sidewalks and the streets themselves. They were putting blacktop down, finally after all this time – the final stages to the long job.

A police officer wea present, they always are when work crews are present.

We also had a bunch of guys putting new pavers down on our property, so they were present, and so were some of our neighbors from next door.

We were all there, about 20 people, all doing our own thing. But when the Waymo came up the street, we all stopped and watched quietly in unison.

The street was blocked at the corner because the steamroller and other equipment were putting down the blacktop, so you could not drive by. There were barricades and a big sign saying “Street Closed” And there was the Waymo. Just staring at us all, wanting to cross the “Street Closed” sign and all the big orange barricades. We all stared back.

The Waymo stared us down for a long time and then slowly turned around. It took a bunch of maneuvers to get it turned around, but it started heading back up the road, from where it came.

One of the workers joked with my older neighbor saying that she should not get into the driverless car for her doctor’s appointment. But luckily, that was not her Uber. Her Uber was trying to get to her on the one-way street where the Waymo had turned around and was heading.

It was almost like a cowboy gunfight standoff. Both the Waymo my neighbor’s Uber just sat there staring at each other. There was nowhere to go.

The Waymo was not going to budge and finally the other car, the Uber, turned into a driveway and allowed the Waymo to pass by.

The Waymo won that fight.

We all laughed and turned back to whatever it was we were all doing. It was a funny way to start a Friday morning.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Peeps, ghosts and farro

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

I got the punchline from Jean Smart

This cartoon idea just popped into my head when I read a headline on Reddit that said, “Are we giving our children too many tablets?”

Of course they meant ipads and such, but I twisted it around in my mind and I saw this.

I didn’t know which type of tablet would be funny that children take – Tylenol? Flintstone vitamins? I let the cartoon sit for a day or so, which I do with many of them – making drawing changes and many times I make text changes.

Then I heard Jean Smart being interviewed on tv about her show “Hacks,” and she mentioned taking Ativan, as a joke about something.

I didn’t know what Ativan was, but it sounded funny, so I looked it up and I thought, “This will work.”

This cartoon is something I think about. Farro.

Every time people mention Farro, they call it the “ancient grain,” from the time of the pyramids. But so what? Does that make it special?

When you think about it, people did not live long lives back then, it’s not like farro was the magic ingredient that kept people alive and healthy. But maybe it did at a time when lifetimes were not very long – maybe it extended life to the ripe old age of 30.

I heard about farro years ago, Martha Stewart was using it on one of her shows and she of course said it was “an ancient grain.” And now it seems to be popping up all over.

I always picture it as being grown along the Nile River, during the time when the river flooded and enhanced the land and the grains being grown there.

The first time I had it was in a salad at Panera Bread. It’s sort of a mixture between quinoa and barley. I had barley in a soup yesterday.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

This cartoon is for the birds

This recent “Moderately Confused” cartoon by Jeff Stahler had me laughing because it really hit home.

Most of Jeff’s cartoons hit home and make me think because he seems to think like me. So many times I’ll see one of his cartoons and think, “I think that!” or “That happened to me!”

With this bird cartoon, it reminded me of a neighbor, who the other day said to me, “Do you hear those loud birds in the middle of the night? I can’t sleep!”

It’s more like 6 am or so when loud birds start tweeting outside our windows every morning. I am up early, but they still annoy me. They sound like they are right in the house.

I knew exactly what my neighbor meant, and so did Jeff Stahler!

I sent this cartoon to my neighbor. He’s out of town and he replied, “Thank God I am out of town. I can sleep now!”

We have a rooster down the block who crows a lot, but he is not as loud as these birds. I think they are black crows. And peacocks roam the streets – if you ever heard them screech, you would remember that.

Speaking of birds. Lately I’ve been visited by a dove. Almost daily. He/she is quiet, and doesn’t tweet or anything, but I am visited for a few minutes daily.

I believe doves are someone trying to send a message. Maybe I’m crazy, but I believe that.

This guy, or girl, has been visiting me all week.

For a long time, a dove would be overhead on a telephone line whenever I would go to a friend’s house. One time I had a white dove outside my window for literally 12 hours. He didn’t move. I thought he was stuck to the railing!

When my father passed away, I said, “Dad, if you can hear me, can you come visit as a dove with Mom and Joey (my brother who had passed). And I don’t remember if it was the same day or the next, but three doves appeared on my balcony railing.

At first I saw only two, who were together, then off to the side, there was a third dove. It was them!

This is the father I saw in NYC last summer

Last July, I saw a white feather on the sidewalk in New York City. I remember it was on Lexington Avenue, near 44th Street. They say a white feather is a sign from above. I have only see the one white feather. But I’ am always seeing doves.

Till next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Lincoln, the lighthouse and the Smurfs

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

The judge, Geneva and PetSmart

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.