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UPS ruined my cooking experience

I ordered one of those Instant Pots. I have been wanting to make bone soup and other things in a crock pot and I read about this newfangled pot in the NY Times and I ordered it from Amazon.

instantpot It came in two days. I haven’t tried it yet, I may try to figure it out this weekend.

I do have a complaint though, it’s about the delivery. The UPS driver just threw the box over the gate, you know, like you see on the tv news? I’m assuming this is a delicate piece of equipment and throwing it over the gate isn’t a good thing.

I complained to UPS about the driver and asked why he didn’t ring the bell, which he never does. Their response was that the driver cannot call me and that I should choose another delivery address for deliveries in the future!

I didn’t ask the driver to call me, I asked that they ring the bell and I was home, why would I ask for another delivery address?

So if the food in my Instant Pot comes out bad now, I don’t know if the pot was damaged in delivery or if it’s operator error.

UPS and their stupid response is unacceptable and is a total example of what is wrong with society today.

Is it live or is it Memorex?

25498421_1600075113416938_5282992848606003044_n This old Memorex ad reminded me of high school. We had an English class called Rock Poetry and we discussed the lyrics and poetry of current rock music. It was a nice class.

The teacher didn’t know much about current music I think because one day she started pulling out cassette tapes that we had brought in (yes, cassettes) and asked, “What should we listen to next? The Beatles? Carol King? The Bee Gees? Memorex?

And we all laughed, and said, No! Memorex is the name of the cassette tape company!” It was so many years ago, but I remember that as if it was yesterday.

There was also this Maxell ad. Remember? It ran all over the place for years. il_570xN.1327002678_3dve

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I did a comic using my character Tombo the Rabbit doing the bit a few years ago.

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Merry Christmas!

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I love this photo. I took it at my parents’ house a couple of years ago. Merry Christmas!

A moment in time

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Look at this photo. It’s Broadway in NYC, in 1902. I can stare at this photo for a long time and just sort of fall right into it.

I have to find another template for this blog so that the photos appear larger (if you click on the right mouse button and hit “open image in a new tag” it will open much larger), but anyway, look at the one guy closest to Santa. He looks to be about 25 or 30 years old, perhaps born in 1872 or 1875 and at the prime of life – dapper, cool, looks like he has money. I like how his pants cuff falls onto the shoe. And now he is gone. Dead.

This period in time captured here and “alive” forever, yet everyone in the photo is gone.

This looks to be near Macy’s. Isn’t that the New York Herald in the back left?

Deli worker with a special voice

I’m sure you saw this all over the news. A 23-year-old deli clerk named Guilherme Assuncao who works at Russo’s supermarket in Watertown, Massachusetts was doing a sound check at the store and this happened. He was a singer in Brazil. I don’t think he’ll be serving deli for much longer. Do you?

These are two of my favorite songs. He is amazing. And so humble.

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Chock full of memories

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I saw this ad on Facebook on some site that shows old ads. It brought back so many memories. My mother used to give us Chocks when we were kids. After all these years, this one ad made the memories come rushing back.

A while back, I saw an ad for a Fred Flintstone and Dino toy, and that brought back a floods of memories from playing with this at my grandmother’s house. I had seen the ad on Ebay and then a year or so later (just last month), I saw it at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, along with all those long forgotten toys and items. That’s it below, Fred riding Dino. I can see it in my mind’s eye, on the floor, walking along, in front of the refrigerator at my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn.

Something that I collected a few years ago are those old Flintstone glasses. We used to have those when I was a kid. Welch’s Grape Jelly came in them and then when the jelly was gone, you had the glass.

I saw a bunch on Ebay and bought them from different people over a period of time I must have a couple of dozen now. I didn’t realize they were so small, about 4 inches tall, but my mother tells me that she liked them because they were small. She says they were perfect for small children.

I have one jar that still has the jelly in it! I bought it on Ebay, too. Originally it was 29 cents, the label is still on the jar. What happened was a lady in New England closed her small grocery store in 1965 and just left everything as is. Years later when someone bought the store and went in for the first time, it was a time capsule of 1965. And this jelly jar came from that.

welchs1 — An original Welch’s grape jelly jar from the early 1960s.

welchs3 — Some of my large collection of original 1960s Flintstone glasses.

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The boat graveyard

I live in a little sailing village in Miami called Coconut Grove. After Hurricane Irma passed through in September, we had dozens, probably hundreds of boats sink offshore. Not just little dinghies, but expensive yachts.

For a couple of months now, the army corps or engineers or one of those groups have been lifting the boats from their sunken graves in Biscayne Bay or the area near the Grove we call Sailboat Bay and they have been sitting in this graveyard right across from million dollar condos. Very surreal.

It’s ugly, yet beautiful in a way.

I took some videos of the boats and other things right after Irma passed in September, you can see those here. But right below are some photos and a small video of the graveyard taken today.

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NY Daily News; keeping it real

You gotta love the New York Daily News front pages. Today’s is a real winner.

I’m proud of Alabama for the way they voted – moving into the future. And I’m proud of the Daily News for always keeping the front pages real.

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Here are some I copied from Google search, you can see so many of the great Daily News covers here.

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How to publish Hal & High Water

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Here is Hal from my new comic strip “Hal & High Water.”

I would like to start publishing in January or February of 2018. I sent in the strip to the five major syndicates and received two rejections.

To be honest, I don’t really feel I need the syndicates to get Hal up and running. I don’t want to be confined to editors or a newspaper schedule and I notice that even on the syndicates’ websites, features don’t always have a large following. So the way to go is to self publish.

And while I intend to publish on social media, mostly Facebook and Instagram, I need a comic-based website to publish to daily. I’m debating on which one and how to go about it. I’m totally confused at this point.

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Art Miami is at an historic site this year

My love of newspapers ironically brought me to The Miami Herald, but not the current location of The Miami Herald and not because I went to visit the newspaper. It so happens that this year, some of the satellite fairs associated with Art Basel Miami are taking place in huge tents on the former Miami Herald site, right on Biscayne Bay.

The Herald moved out to a western suburb of Miami a few years ago and the old site was sold to a casino company, only we don’t have legal casino gambling in Miami, so the site just sits there – prime waterfront property. This year, the owners set up a deal for Art Miami and Context 2017, two of the satellite art fairs to take place on the empty lot.

Cement slabs were placed down and tents went up and it felt nice to visit the old site where I had visited The Miami Herald so many times over the years.