It’s interesting when you have one idea in mind when you create a cartoon and then people see other ideas and meanings to the cartoon.
This one in particular came easy to me. I am eating more farro these days. Farro is an ancient grain, eaten by the Egyptians, Romans and others and it came back into fashion in the past few years.
It seems that you can’t just say, “Farro,” you have to say, “Farro, the ancient grain.” And that’s where the cartoon idea came from.
So what if it’s an ancient grain? Was it a magic grain that was mighty and powerful? Did it extend life expectancies? I don’t think so. The mom is feeding the baby Farro, so he could live to a ripe old age, which was 30-years-old back then. I was thinking that when I hear, “It’s an ancient grain!”
Some read the cartoon as meaning the boy was King Tut and he wouldn’t live past 19-years-old anyway. He was just a random boy, but if they want to think that is Tut. That’s fine.
Others felt that if that was King Tut, he was King, so Farro was good for him. But he was only king from ages 9 to 19, so Farro didn’t keep him alive. It’s thought he died from either malaria and/or a bone disease. Both things not prevented from all that farro he may have eaten.
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Cartoonist Jason Chatfield mentioned that there’s a summer softball league in NYC where The New Yorker magazine crew plays various other media outlets in Central Park. They play Rolling Stone magazine and the Financial Times, NY Review of Books, Slate, and NY Public Radio to name a few throughout the summer.
Cartoonist Roz Chast designed The New Yorker “uniform,” it’s a two sided t-shirt. I would love one of those but they are all sold out.
The New Yorker “unform” designed by Roz Chast.
I’m in NY for part of the summer, so I’d like to stop by to watch a game or two. I’d love to meet some of cartoonists and magazine people involved.
Along with The New Yorker league, there is another league called The New York Media Softball League (NYMSL) which consists of other NY-based media organizations. There are teams from Forbes, BuzzFeed, the Wall Street Journals, Axios, the Associated Press, etc. This is the 17th season for that league.
I remember some years back I watched a few games with different soap opera actors playing each other in Central Park. Different shows played each other.
The NYMSL plays at various parks including Central Park, East River Park, McCarren Park in Brooklyn, Riverside Park and a few others.
I don’t usually understand a lot of the New Yorker cartoons, but this one by Asher Perlman really hit home.
The other day I was at the doctor’s office and I was asked about four times for my birthday, they do this now to be sure you are who you say you are. I guess there are people pretending to be someone else for medical attention. Or maybe the staff wants to be sure that they don’t want to cut your leg off if you are only there for an allergy.
But when I arrived, I checked in with someone at the front desk, they asked for my birthday, then a guy took my blood pressure, he asked for my birthday, then someone else, and then eventually the doctor.
My birthday is next week, so they all wished me a “happy birthday,” when they saw the date, which was nice.
If you haven’t been to the doctor lately, I guess this New Yorker cartoon is one of the ones that doesn’t make sense. But trust me, it’s funny because it is real life.
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As I was cleaning out my old room last weekend I found some old photos of me that I needed when I was applying for a job as a flight attendant. I think it was for Eastern Airlines. I was 18 or 19. They were images of me in a tan suit.
I remember that time. I went to the airport, met in a private classroom with many others and we had some sort of class and lecture. I never did get the job, thank god, and I think I know one reason.
We had a questionnaire, some sort of psychological thing and I was too honest on it. One question asked, “If you had the opportunity to be at a party meeting new people or staying home and reading a book, which would you choose?” I chose the book. Which of course is the total opposite of a flight attendant job. But that was the truth.
I’m still not sure why I wanted to be a flight attendant. Maybe I wanted to travel the world.
I a friend, also named Tom, who was a flight attendant. He traveled to exotic places all the time – mostly the far east. He was a runner, and he would tell me, “I ran on the Great Wall today” or “I jogged through Tokyo yesterday.” Things like that.
But it was a lot of work and travel. He lived in Miami but was based in Hawaii, so before he even set out on his job/journeys he had to travel thousands of miles to just get to work. He also didn’t make a lot of money. I would complain about things like, “I spent almost $35 for lunch today!” And he would say, “I don’t even make $35 a day.”
I am glad I never got the flight attendant job. Who knows where I would be now. But it was nice seeing those old photos of me, it brought back so many memories of my late teens.
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I woke up early this morning and I started scrolling Twitter and almost every other post was Madonna’s concert in Rio last night. She had a free concert to close out her tour and it was attended by over a million people. The stats say from 1.5 to 2.5 million people – all singing and dancing, in peace, I might add, at Copacabana Beach in Rio. You can see videos of it all over Twitter and other places today including right here, part 1 and 2.
I started clicking and watching clip after clip because it all brought me back to my youth. Whether we think about it or not, Madonna was a large part of our lives from the early 1980s and on.
I remember I was in a club back then and my friend Javier, who I’m sill friends with today, said to me as I was leaving one Saturday night, “Aren’t you staying for the show?” There were free shows in the clubs back then. I asked, who is performing? He said, “Madonna.”
“Who is that?” I asked. He replied, “You know, she sings ‘Burnin’ Up’ and ‘Holiday.’ ” I remember saying, “No, I don’t like that.” Which I did, I just meant to say, it’s getting late, the show was starting at 2 am, and I was tired and wanted to leave. Of course I regret that now because I would have been mere feet away from Madonna on that night as she performed.
I saw her in person many times after that – in concert, at the movie theater and driving in her car, where I almost gave her the finger! And ironically, it was a block away from where I live now. She lived down the block, next door to Sylvester Stallone. Remind me to tell you about the funny story when Javier and my friend Peter were caught almost stalking her and she went to Stallone for “protection” right in front of them.
Anyway, she was driving erratically and I was rushing to get downtown to meet my friends at Happy Hour on a Friday night and as drove by her, I put my hand up and gave her dirty looks. She seemed nervous behind the wheel, she was alone, in a black Mercedes. As I looked, I said to myself. “That looks like Madonna.” And then she turned onto her block and I was sure of it. I’ve felt embarrassed about that all these years, as if she know who I was. That’s how much she was in our lives – we felt we knew her (and she knew us).
The Rio concert is worth checking out, the music brings back so many memoires.
I have three favorite Madonna songs, that I’m sure people don’t expect me to say. In this order I love: “Live to Tell,” “Cherish,” and “True Blue.” I love all her stuff, but these are my three favorites. I noticed Debi Mazar in the True Blue video today, which I never noticed before.
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I’ve been seeing these reels on Facebook. I don’t know how to link them here, or I would.
I don’t follow them, they just sort of pop up. It’s a bunch of young British boys trying American food, which they seem to love. I’ve never been to England, but if these common everyday things are something new and exciting for these English guys, I shudder to think what they eat in England.
They love and freak out over Popeyes, Twinkies, pizza, cheeseburgers, root beer, lobster rolls, corn dogs, hot dogs (yes, hot dogs), pumpkin pie, a Thanksgiving dinner, hot wings, an everything bagel and bagels with lox, just to name a few. And iced tea. They don’t have iced tea in England?
All this food is what they are not eating in Britain. What are they eating in England that makes these common American foods so intriguing to them? I know they eat Pasties in England, a British pie thing that looks like an empanada.
Some years back, a neighbor exported peanut butter to France. I believe it was France. He would buy hundreds if not thousands of jars and send them by container to France, where apparently they don’t have peanut butter.
Things that make you go hmmm.
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My brothers and I have been cleaning out my parents’ house, but it is slow going. We would go one Saturday, work a few hours and leave, but then we wouldn’t return for another week or two because things came up. But we are almost down to the wire.
Last weekend, I finally got most of the things out of my old closet in my old room. After weeks of cleaning the room out I found one box that was a treasure trove of my life. It was the last thing left in the closet after I went through everything else. It was quite large, sitting at the back of the closet and it contained a hodgepodge of things. There were old newspapers – ones I saved with news stories I thought were interesting and school newspapers I had printed, when I handled that with my printing business.
But there were lots of newspapers and magazines that I saved because my cartoons were in them. I used to do cartoons for local publications when I was in high school and college. I had forgotten about that. Some of them are excellent. I also had a lot of comic strips I was working on as a kid, they are not bad either.
I threw out a lot of the excess newspapers that weren’t needed, but I’ll show you some of the cartoons I had published and the comic strips I was working on when I get a chance. I noticed that the newspapers I had saved were of tragedies, like the Miami Herald with stories of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew – things I would rather forget. Those I dumped. I didn’t need to revisit those times.
I found awards in the box, and diplomas from high school and college and lots of boy scout stuff – awards, badges, things like that. I also found letters – letters and post cards that friends sent me so many years ago. And I found random photos of myself and my family and friends. And everything brought back memories. There were lots of old computer parts and old computer programs from the early days of PC’s.
I worked at a local newspaper at one point and I sold ads as well as working in production putting the paper together for print. I drew a lot of things for them back then – I drew political cartoons but also I did drawings for advertisements that ran in the paper. I can see I really put a lot of time into them.
I found a color aid pack which I used in college. I still don’t understand the point of it for my classes after all these years, but I remember I couldn’t find it at the time and I needed it. My father ended up finding it in downtown Miami somewhere. It was expensive I remember, and I think we used it once or twice in class to cut out colors for something. Literally I used one or two color swatches from the whole packet.
I remember in one art class we used magazines to cut out colors from the printed images and we recreated famous art from that, gluing the odd shaped pieces into art. I did a small image of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. I’m hoping to find it as I clean out my old room, I’ve been looking for it all these years. I’d like to frame the little thing.
My recreation was only 3″ x 3″ and I remember seeing the original for the first time – it’s huge, it blew me away at the size after seeing the small piece I created so long ago. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon seems so large to me and my favorite, Starry Night is so small. Both at MOMA – worth the trip.
Anyway, I’ll show you some of the cartoons and things I found when I sort them out and hopefully some other things.
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It’s been on three separate occasions. These three men can get up to 12 years in prison for this.
It’s nice to see how strict the gun laws are in other countries, but I have one question for our country – how did the bullets get by the TSA at our American airports???
I’ve been stopped and searched for a pair of tweezers in my luggaage and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve randomly had my hands swabbed for explosives. So how did bullets get by the TSA process?
I’m not for guns of any types – hunting or whatever, so I have mixed emotions about these guys who had bullets in their luggage. I know they were leftover from hunting trips and such, but still – random bullets just floating around in the bottom of your luggage? How careless can you be?
And the next time a TSA agent stops me for something stupid, I’m going to say, “Why don’t you check for real problems, like bullets in luggage that you seem to miss.” But I better not.
One funny story about the tweezers – I was leaving NYC at JFK and an agent calls out, “Whose luggage is this?” I calmly walked over and said, “It’s mine.”
He then says, “Don’t touch it!” And I responded, “I know, I know, I watch ‘To Catch a Smuggler,” and he laughed and said, “So do I.”
He let me go with my little pair of tweezers.
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The last year or so I noticed this strange phenomena in Whole Foods. People are on their phones, usually on Facetime, showing someone what they are buying and asking their advice.
I thought it might be the Amazon delivery service people, I know at times when I used Instacart they would text me, asking me questions about something I had ordered or telling me they needed to substitute something, but I don’t think this is that.
The people shopping for the service usually have carts with lots of brown bags on them and they are shopping for multiple people at once, it seems. They are easy to notice. These people I see on the facetime calls are usually without a shopping cart and usually at the hot bar. They are asking people on the phone what they want to eat or what they should buy to eat. And it’s usually Latin people, because the people talking are speaking in Spanish.
I’ve seen more than once a person go through all the items at the hot bar and salad bar, explaining to the person on the phone what’s what. It almost seems as if they are speaking to another country and showing off what an American supermarket looks like.
It’s annoying and rude and almost as annoying as those jerks with dogs on a leash in the store. Even though they have signs around that say, “No dogs allowed,” people have dogs in the supermarket, around the food.
Publix seems to be strict about the no dogs policy, I never see dogs there anymore and I also don’t see the Instacart people there anymore. They must pick up the food at a different location and not directly from the actual stores. Not too long ago, the aisles were crawling with these Instacart people who would push anyone out of their way to get to what they needed. They were crazy and pushy in their quest for the freshest loaf of bread or whatever.
Some aisles had quite a few at once and it was difficult to shop. I haven’t seen that in a long time, which is good.
I have a friend that says I’m always at the supermarkets, which I am. He says I like it. Which I don’t. I go because I need food and I prefer to go in person rather than use a service. I’m in and out, since I know where things are, so it’s not a chore. I just do my routine and I’m quick.
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I live in a small condo, there are only 14 units. We have a building text string that has almost everyone on it, about 21 or 22 people. It’s annoying at times, but useful.
It gets annoying when someone asks something like, “Did anyone see my Amazon package? I can’t find it.” And you get 10 responses with, “Not me,” “not me,” not me,” and the beeping gets out of hand with every “not me” that comes in. I usually never respond, so of course they think it’s me, since I’m silent.
But the purpose of this post is to talk about one of our young neighbors. He’s 24-years-old or so and all the rest of us are so much older, yet he participates in the building and never shuns us as most people of his age would – they would just ignore the older folks, but he never has and never does. He’s always part of our little community.
His texts to the building always start politely. like last night he posted a text that started with, “Hi Friends,” and then he goes on with his text. He usually starts his texts with “Good morning,” Or “Good evening,” and then he goes on to say what he has to say. Whenever he says, “Good evening,” I always think of that old Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv show. I recently watched a few reruns so it was on my mind.
I find it charming. Especially since most people just start right in with the text. And his generation uses all sorts of abbreviations, like ty, u, lmk or tbh or brb. Yet he doesn’t. He is proper with his texts, almost as if he is writing a letter. I saw an article somewhere on the proper way to text, maybe its a thing and he learned it college or somewhere.
I like it. It has character. I started saying “Hi,” a lot of times before I text now. Maybe because of him, who knows, but many times I’ll text someone something like, “Hi, I’m on my way,” or “Hi, what time are we meeting?” Things like that. It seems a polite and nice way to do it.
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