I used to play this song every September 30, so here it is – Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day. The actual song starts at about 1:50 min.
Ironically, or maybe not, YouTube knew that I love the video and song below, Time to Say Goodbye by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli. They had it next to the Green Day video.
And two more versions. All incredible.
I’ve been buying old 1945-46 Kellogg’s PEP cereal comic pinback buttons. I’ve seen them around the internet for very high prices, but I got a good deal on thse. I purchased them one or two at a time. They are quite small as you can see – 13/16″, lithograph print on front with Kellogg’s PEP cereal stamp on the back.
Pep was a brand of whole-wheat breakfast cereal produced by the Kellogg Company, and introduced in 1923.
I got the Pop Jenks from the Harold Teen comic strip and Andy Gump from one guy, he sent me the Pop Jenks instead of the Andy Gump, which I ordered, and when I let him know, he told me to just keep ‘ol Pop, too, rather than send it back. Popeye and Olive came as a set and Superman and Smokey Stover came separately. I am purchasing more as we speak.
I got this Moon Mullins button, too. Just paid for it ($3.99), it’s in the mail on its way!
Someone is selling the whole set, I think 86 pins, for $799.00. That comes to over $9 a pin but I’m getting them for half that purchasing them one at a time, which sort of makes it more fun and more of a sport, you know, tracking them down one by one.
Went to Wynwood (the Williamsburg, Brooklyn of Miami) for lunch with my friend Harry the other day, Zika mosquitoes and all. Visited the Wynwood walls next to Joey’s, the restaurant we ate in and found that they repainted most of the walls. I didn’t know they did that, but it seems like a crime to paint over that great art. I had come upon the this photo of me in front of the walls a few years ago. I noticed that this great colorful mural was changed you can see it here. Then and now.
I use the image of me and the colorful walls sometimes up above as the name plate of this blog.
Here are a bunch of new murals at the Wynwood Walls and other areas in Wynwood.
I looked out the window last night and who do I see? Snoopy! Sitting right over Key Biscayne, floating among the clouds. Look at him, he’s just sitting on a cloud, look at the row of pink clouds, just before sunset. I love it so much, I made it my nameplate above.
10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes
I’ve been pumping out a bunch of 10 With Tom’s for the Huffington Post, so rather than post them all separately here, I’ll link to the Huff Post instead.
I recently interviewed Andrew Farago, who has one of the coolest careers as the curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. You can see that interview at the Huffington Post here.
Willie Geist, NBC newsman is one of my favorites. You can see his 10 With Tom here.
And Kim Zolciak-Biermann, who rose to fame in 2008 as one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta can be seen here.
Early Saturday morning, we had a special bike event in town. The D. Wade CommUNITY Bike Ride took place, hosted by former Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade and his wife, actress Gabrielle Union.
Hundreds turned out for the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT)’s event, partnered with City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado and our district Commissioner Ken Russell (I saw Ken, riding his bike, didn’t see the mayor).
It was a beautiful morning for the event. Sunny and pretty right on the water. “It’s great to get kids outdoors interacting with positive role models,” said Commissioner Ken Russell. “I can’t wait to ride through Coconut Grove with Dwyane Wade.”
The ride started at about 8 am and went for about 6 to 7 miles around Center and South Grove. There were events at Regatta Park and outside City Hall before and after the ride.
It was one of those days where the whole town came out and everyone knew everyone else.
There’s a great Facebook account called Editorial & Political cartoons, they have almost 85,000 fans. They liked my Hillary cartoon from the other day and they posted it and apparently it struck a nerve because almost 1900 people liked the comic and 2078 people shared it last time I checked. That’s a nice audience for the cartoon. If each share had 100 eyes on it, that’s 190,000 people seeing it. Check out the page, with the current political season, there’s plenty to laugh (or cry) about.
I saw this on the Classic FM website. A hymn was discovered on a clay tablet in Ugarit, now part of Syria, and is dedicated the Hurrians’ goddess of the orchards Nikkal. This is the oldest melody in existence. It is over 3400 years old. You can listen to it right here. More on this find at Classic FM.
There is a former prime minister named Sir Wilfrid Laurier on Canada’s five dollar bill and since Leonard Nimoy’s death, the bills have been marked up – to look like Spock from Star Trek! The resemblance is uncanny with just a few pen strokes. It’s been happening quite often. It’s perfect during this 50th anniversary of Star Trek, too.
According to Bank of Canada it’s not illegal to do this “…However, there are important reasons why it should not be done. Writing on a bank note may interfere with the security features and reduces its lifespan. Markings on a note may also prevent it from being accepted in a transaction. Furthermore, the Bank of Canada feels that writing and markings on bank notes are inappropriate as they are a symbol of our country and a source of national pride.”
I am surprised they are circulating, if I received one, I think I would save it and not spend it. But as you can see above, there’s a US $5 bill circulating with Lincoln made into Spock, guess that’s how Lincoln would look if he was Spock for Halloween.
I ordered a couple of books from Amazon. Krazy Kat by George Herriman and The Gumps by Sidney Smith. The books are part of a series by The Library of American Comics Essentials and they are superb. The quality of the books themselves are first class, they come with a place holder ribbon, you know, like a bible has. And what’s great about the books is that they have one comic strip per page, basically the size that the original ran in the newspaper, the unique size of the book allows this. Each book takes one year, 365 days, of a period in time and the object is to read one strip per day and to be transported back into that time period, which is quite hard to do as you want to binge read the strips and cannot just contain your enjoyment to just one strip per day.
I’ve always been a fan of Krazy Kat and I have many Krazy Kat anthologies. What’s different about this book is that it’s not the usual full color Sunday pages which get all the usual attention. This is 365 strips from 1934. The first strip is January 1, 1934 and the last is December 31, 1934. This year was chosen because it was thought to be one of his best years regarding writing and drawing.
As for The Gumps, I didn’t know much about them except the name. When I had seen images of the strips in the past, they were few and far between and seemed too wordy for me. I’ve always felt that less is more when it comes to text in comic strips. But back in the early 1900s when The Gumps started, the comic strip was a very important part of American entertainment and the more wordy, the better.
The Gumps strips in the book run from May 1, 1928 to May 3, 1929. This was an important period in that it was probably when it had the most readers and the biggest plot twist of all time. It involved a new neighbor who moved next door to Andy and Min Gump, named Mary Gold, and the whole year twists and turns around her disappearance and (spoiler alert) death. Yes, cartoonist Sidney Smith had the character die which was something unimaginable at the time. The Gumps received thousands of emails a week, they received front page headlines during the Mary Gold episode and serial strips were born.
The Gumps was already a very successful strip, probably the number one strip and most popular. It started in 1917 when Sidney Smith had characters from his previous strip, Old Doc Yak, about a bunch of goats as people, moved out and the Gumps moved into their house. It all took place in the same space on the newspaper page. In 1922. a common greeting of people was, “Did you see Andy this morning?” Sort of like, “Who shot JR?”
One other interesting fact about The Gumps is that when the New York Daily News began in 1919, The Gumps was the only comic strip in the paper! “Gump” was a word used by Joseph Patterson, owner of the Chicago Tribune, NY Daily News and Tribune Syndicate, to refer to everyday people, he had Sidney Smith use that name for the characters in his new strip.
At the front of the Library of American Comics Essentials books there is a written history of the cartoonist and the strip. There is a lot of information there that I had never heard before. It’s just as good as the strips themselves. The Gumps really can fill a book all by themselves, I don’t mean comics, but the whole story of Sidney Smith and his life, how he was the richest cartoonist at the time, the most popular cartoonist and was known for his exotic car collection. He received a new car each year as part of his cartooning contract, something like a Speedster 348, which is shown in the book.
Sidney Smith was killed in an auto accident in 1935, very ironic since his life was the comic strip and cars. He was front page news as you can see.. You can read the article up close here. It jumps to page 6, which you can see if you scroll down on the Tribune site.
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