We went to the 32nd annual Florida Renaissance Festival on Saturday. I hadn’t been for years. I went with some of my family this past weekend, but in the past, for many years, I would go with my friends, maybe two or three carloads of us would head to Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach to attend.
It was just as I remembered. You travel back in time to the 16th century, it seems they want a lot of things paid in cash this year, I remember paying with “MasterCard and Lady Visa” in the past.
We ate a lot, we drank a lot, we spent a lot. After having such a cool/cold winter (for Florida), Saturday seemed to be the hottest day of the year.
Vendors for food and items made by artisans who are on site, are set up all over the forested park, around the lake, and there are performances and performers everywhere from horse jousting (my favorite) to archery, a maze, the human flying carrousel, glass blowing, minstrels, magicians and so much more. The king and queen are just a few of the “characters” who wander around the park.
The Festival runs until March 24, weekends only.
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Have you ever done this? Or looked up the price of gifts you may have received online?
I got this cartoon idea because I was checking the price of something I bought and it just came to me. It wasn’t a gift. I bought a new mattress and went online to check to see if I got a good price after the fact. It was on sale at Macy’s. I did get a good price.
I’ve done this with a lot of things. After I bought my car a few years ago, I went online and checked the price of the car to see if I did the right thing. I bought a long overcoat recently, a trench coat. I checked that price, too; after the fact.
I did check the price of these things ahead of time, but I wanted to be just check afterwards, too. I’m not sure why, as I wouldn’t be returning anything, but I just get curious that way. I do check reviews ahead of time when buying things online. It’s funny, an item could have 1000 five star reviews, but I dwell on the one negative review and may not purchase the item because of that.
I do that with hotels. If someone leaves one bad review, something stupid, like the elevator noise kept them up at night, I’ll pass up that hotel and go to the next one.
But to be honest, I’ve never ever checked the price of a gift, or looked up ratings or reviews of a gift. After all, you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. There’s a cartoon in there somewhere.
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I’ve been thinking of going to Paris. And Italy. But this is a perfect reason to visit Paris.
I saw this report on CBS Sunday Morning about Vincent Van Gogh and a new digital feature about him and his art.
The Musee D’Orsay in Paris has a new exhibit of Van Gogh called, “Hello Vincent.” Anyone can go up and ask Vincent anything they would like to know about him.
His replies and his image are AI generated and the answers come from the over 900 letters he wrote in his life, where he told (in the letters) about everything from his health, personal life and art. You just walk up and ask him anything, and he’ll look at you and answer.
Seth Doane (and Vincent) on CBS Sunday Morning.
It works along with the art because people ask serious questions of Vincent; things that they really want to know about.
Maybe the exhibit will travel to the U.S. and I won’t have to go to Paris, although I still want to go to Paris. And Italy.
Digital Vincent Van Gogh
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Some people call my cartoons memes. I don’t know why, and I’m not crazy about that, but I have been known to use #meme as a hashtag at times. But it’s a comic or cartoon. Not a meme.
I also have been described as having an “old school” or “old fashioned” style of cartooning. It’s called drawing, not A.I.ing or computer generation. I guess the future is that – A.I. generated or some sort of electronic design. Like an NFT-type image.
Then there are the people who don’t get some of the cartoons. That’s a whole different category. But I do find that different gags don’t work in different parts of the world, even if we speak the same language , things come across different or confusing at times.
I mentioned in a previous post that my method was called drawing in an “exposition box.” I looked exposition box up and it says: “An explosion box is an origami box that pops open and “explodes” as soon as the recipient takes the top off, revealingpictures, messages, and even gifts inside. It’s a bigger version of our Explosion Cards project.”
I hardly think I fit into that category.
Must we label it? If so, it’s a cartoon or a comic or a comic panel or a comic strip. That’s it. People used to call online comics “online comics,” now they are just “comics.” But there are categories for them when it comes to awards. The National Cartoonist Society Ruben Awards (like the Oscars for cartoonists) has categories like, “newspaper strip,” “newspaper panel,” “online long form,” “online short form,” “gag cartoon,” and so on.
The gag cartoon is a panel cartoon like mine. Online long form can be a comic strip or longer and online short form is usually a single panel like mine.
Categories and labels all for basically the same thing.
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I’m sure you saw this in the news. A couple of activists threw soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris over the weekend.
“What is more important?” The one activist asked the shouting crowd. “Art or healthy sustainable food?”
The protest had something to do with France breaking its climate commitments and they want France to give people access to more healthy foods. I’m sure it was a good cause, but it’s a case of alienating the people who are on your side by doing something stupid to bring attention to the cause.
Warhol’s soup cans at MOMA.
I’m not sure how this involved trying to destroy the Mona Lisa, luckily she is covered with glass. But wouldn’t it make more sense throwing the soup on Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can Art? Which I hope never ever happens. I’m just sayin’.
Showing Starry Night my t-shirt.
I remember the first time I saw Starry Night, my favorite painting, so many years ago. It wasn’t covered in glass, as it is now. You could literally put your face right up to it. Luckily it’s protected with glass now.
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This cartoon makes me laugh whenever I see it. It just really makes me LOL.
I know “Hugh” is pronounced with the “Hush” sound, but it seems to work here.
I redid it, adding “Em” to the group, as a reader suggested that. I also seemed to have left out Mr. T and CeCe. I guess it’s turned into a word game, which I like. And one person in a comment said, “Casey” which is KC, which I like.
I was watching tv one day and the guy says his name is Jay. And thought does he mean the letter J. like people use or does he mean Jay, the actual name. I thought to myself, “It’s confusing when people are named after letters,” and of course that how that came to this cartoon.
I started thinking of the alphabet and the various names that sound like letters and one thing lead to another.
Another way of doing this could have been the actual letters in a bar and have the letters say, “Hello D, hello, B, etc. But I don’t usually like doing inanimate object cartoons and I think it works well the way it is now.
On Reddit, I got lots of comments, many nasty. Apparently people don’t know Bea is pronounced BEE and Hugh is mispronounced U, but that seems to be a U.S. thing, because the cartoon was put down for being “an American thing.”
Other rude people on Reddit didn’t like the drawing style or that it was one panel. And apparently, this gag has something to do with Men in Black, which I’ve never seen.
Some comments from Reddit:
“It’s a shitty premise being in a shitty exposition box, but then it goes and gets greedy with Hugh.” Not sure what an exposition box is, maybe a single panel.
“Hugh has a brother, Double Hugh.” “Nah, his twin brother would be UE.” “Hugh is a stretch but passable.” “What about multiple letter names like Petey and Emilee?” “I suppose Elle is pronounced L?” “My friend Ivy is named after two letters?”
And it goes on and on. But people seem to be very hung up on “Hugh” being “U.”
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CBS Sunday Morning did a profile on Sharon Stone, the actress. But it was all about her artwork. She’s a painter/artist.
I love her work, some of it is on display in a gallery in Greenwich, CT these days, which I would love to see. Maybe when the weather gets warmer I’ll check it out.
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I saw this random picture on Facebook the other day – Carol Channing, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, and Lauren Bacall, and I realized I saw two of these ladies in person – in real life situations.
Carol Channing was in front of me in Gristedes once, in NYC and Ann Miller was leaving her Broadway musical called “Sugar Babies.” With Ann Miller, I was walking down the street and a door opened and two white poodles ran out the door, across the sidewalk and into a waiting limo, and right behind them was Ann Miller. I hadn’t seen the play, I was just walking by.
With Carol Channing, I didn’t realize who she was until she opened her mouth and I recognized the voice. I didn’t say anything to her, she just did her thing and left.
I was watching Beat Bobby Flay the other day and Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Carla Hall were guests. Here they are with Bobby. And oddly enough, I’ve seen all three of them in person. Not together, but I’ve seen them.
I saw Bobby coming out of store a few years back, I saw Jesse in a one man show on Broadway and I saw Carla at the Union Square Green Market a few years ago. All three in NYC!
Another supermarket person I saw was Mary Wickes who was in front of me in line at a Grand Union in Miami some years back. She spoke to me, mentioned something about what I was buying, just small talk. The thing about her was that we usually picture her with jet black hair, but it was snow white that day.
I was thinking of all the people I’ve seen in person, you know, people from tv and movies, but what about everyday people? How many thousands of people do we see in our lifetime (millions?) and we just pass by them? But when we recognize them it’s a whole different experience. But so many people we pass are probably so important, but they aren’t celebs, so we don’t notice them.
We might have passed and brushed elbows with guy who is on the verge of curing cancer, or an astronaut who may go to the moon soon or someone who invented something that we use every day. It reminds me of those old American Express commercials – “Do you know me?” Where you know the name, but not the face.
I’ll tell you about the time I had a mini traffic altercation with Madonna or the experiences I would have almost daily with the Burn Notice guys, who filmed the show in my town. And some others . . .
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This actually happened. Not the kneeling part, but the barista calling out, “Neil! Neil!” for his coffee. Of course my mind got to working when I heard that and I came up with this cartoon.
One time in Starbucks in NYC, there were four of us in there waiting for our orders. It was about 8:00 pm and they were getting ready to close down. All four of us customers were men.
They called out, “Tom!” And I went to pick up the order, but it was for another Tom who was there. And the same thing happened a couple of other times – there were four Toms in Starbucks waiting for our orders. No other customers in there, just the four Toms.
That was some sort of Universe message or something. Not sure what but I’m sure that will never happened again anywhere.
Every time I pass that particular Starbucks at 26th and Broadway, I think of that Tom incident.
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A friend posted this on Facebook: “Annoying in the moment but everyone is grateful afterwards.”
She was referring to a quote: “Take pictures of everything and everyone. I don’t care who I annoy by constantly taking pictures, in the end they will be all we have left. Every photo is a memory – capture it.”
I had to laugh because for years I would take pictures of everything – with a camera. This was before cellphones. So it was with an actual small camera that I carried around.
I would take pictures of us on the subway or on a bus, or in the middle of the street and one of my cousins, who I was always with, would get embarrassed and annoyed. He would always tell me to stop it, but in the end, he would always ask for a copy of the picture(s).
Every once in awhile he brings that up and we laugh.
Even today, with my cellphone I still embarrass people at times, even though everyone is constantly taking pictures all the time. I’ll say to a stranger who we ask to take our picture if they mind, “We are from Kansas, we aren’t used to all this city stuff,” I’ll say. I think the person knows I’m joking.
I read once that in this age of non-stop picture taking, we are losing something that in the old days was a part of it all – the scrapped pictures – which have a life of their own. But these days I assume most of us take a bunch of pictures and only save the ones we like, deleting the ones we don’t like, losing those scrapped, interesting pictures for good probably.
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