tomversation

Getting back in the game

**Sunday’s triathlon, the bicycle part**

I wrote in a previous blog post about getting back into village life, but this past weekend, I really extended myself. it felt like old times.

On Saturday night I went to a family birthday party, it was a lot of fun. As I was leaving, one of the guys in our condo texted me about the elevator – it was stuck. I know how to unstick it, so for the next hour or so, someone else and I worked on it.

Yes, we called the elevator company, but they ended up coming hours later, so we fixed it and I headed out to the family party.

Got home late, but then woke up early Sunday morning to go to a triathlon, my sister-in-law was participating.

I drove out to Key Biscayne where it was, met up with some of my family members and we cheered Laura on. That was a lot of fun, too. It was at a beach I’ve been going to for most of my life, I must have been there 1000 times.

It was beautiful out. I live near there, so it was a quick drive over. Thousands of people were there. It was exciting. Most of the activity was out of sight since they swam, ran and rode a bicycle for 12 miles. But were there there at the finishing line for the bicycle and running parts.

Laura came in third in her category!

**My breakfast, avocado toast with egg.**

From there we all went to breakfast (in the village) which was nice. I had avocado toast with an egg on top.

After I parted with everyone, I spent a lot of time at the mall looking for jeans – I wanted Levi’s 513s, supposedly the fit is the best, from what I read.

I went all over the place from department store to department store and finally went to the Levi’s store where I was told the 513s are discontinued – I should try the 511 or 514 instead.

I found a pair of 511s at J.C. Penney, and waited for this cashier to ring me up, but he took so long with the previous customer, I just dropped the jeans I chose and left. I wasn’t really crazy about them anyway. And I had time to think while waiting on line.

I made a pit stop at Whole Foods and headed home.

At home I checked the jeans I was trying to replace because I didn’t like the fit and lo and behold, they were Levi’s 513! I spent all that time at the mall looking for a discontinued pair of jeans, which I own, which look like new. I just didn’t like the fit.

So it was a busy weekend. I’m glad to be back in the game.

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How often do you think of the Roman Empire?

How often do you think of the Roman Empire?

There is this TikTok video which started this conversation. A girl asks her boyfriend how often he thinks of it, and oddly enough, he thinks of the Roma Empire quite often. Now others are asking their boyfriends/husbands and these guys say they think of it a lot.

Do you?

I think I do, but honestly, I think of ancient Egypt almost daily.

Seriously.

I’m obsessed with ancient Egypt and I think I probably would be an Egyptologist if I did my life over. I have been thinking of the Roman Empire lately because I keep trying to think of a cartoon that is Coliseum-related.

I have done quite a few cartoons related to Egypt over the years and maybe that’s why I think of it a lot – to get cartoon ideas. But I do watch a lot of tv shows based on Egypt, but also ancient Italy, including Rome.

I know that the Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 during a war. A soldier found it in a fort. It had hieroglyphics at the top portion and an ancient Egypt translation on the bottom portion. People were able to decipher the hieroglyphics from that. It was the first time they were deciphered.

The first word they deciphered was Ptolemy – which was Cleopatra’s family/dynasty. And who was Cleopatra? The last pharaoh of Egypt, which was then taken over by the Ancient Romans – when Augustus invaded and that ended the Ptolemy dynasty and all of the centuries of pharaohs and Egyptian rule, which became the Roman Empire.

I learned some of the alphabet from the Ptolemy hieroglyphic – a P is a square, a T is a half circle, an L is a lion and so on.

See how it all fits together?

Just last night I watched a tv show on Cleopatra on Mysteries at the Museum.

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Getting back into village life

I’ve been a hermit lately, ever since the start of the pandemic. I mean I do go out and I do travel, but I’m not doing what I used to do. I’m sort of stuck in that staying in mode. I used to be out all day and night. Now I’m not. I used to participate in the community, in a big way. Now I don’t.

Yesterday I went to a memorial in our village. It was for someone who was big in the town, who was almost the godfather of our town.

The memorial was in one of the parks in the village and there was a large turnout. There was a proclamation from the city in his name and a few beautiful trees were planted in his name. We have quite a few parks in the village, but this was his favorite, so it all centered around this park and him.

My point is that there were so many people there and I know 90% of them. I hadn’t seen many in quite awhile, ever since I stopped publishing the daily news here. When I covered the news I was everywhere every day, gathering up news, covering events. It’s a small village so it was easy to see most people most days.

The funny thing is that as I looked through the crowd, it seemed as if my news gathering caused a quarrel between many of the people present and me at one time or another, they weren’t too keen on things I wrote. I literally had issues over the years with half the people who where there yesterday.

Half of them yelled at me , or threw me out of their offices or called me names over the years. Yet in the end they gave me many awards and accolades. We were/are a dysfunctional family.

I remember the deceased telling me at a meeting once, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And at another point he says, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And a third time, he said, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And I held up my pad and said, “I have not written a sentence. You haven’t said anything worth repeating.” And the whole room laughed. I guess we did have good times through it all.

At one point, we thought it would all make a good reality show of the craziness we lived through daily. One of my friends worked for Endemol, a producer of reality tv, and she would always tell me to come in and pitch the idea, which I never did.

I caught up with so many people yesterday. The thing is, we all still live here and while the village is quickly turning into a city, the people are all the same.

I think I need to get out there again – go to things, participate again. Go to bingo at the women’s club, go to a meeting this week where our town’s yearly parade is planned, go to an arts festival meeting, attend a village council meeting. The good part is that I won’t be covering any news and it won’t be a job. I’ll just be one of the village people like everyone else.

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Shades of Frannie

This Strange Brew cartoon by John Deering came at a perfect time. We were recently talking about updates we need to do at our condo building and I was talking to the neighbors about things we had done in the past – so many years ago.

There was one neighbor who was a bully. She was a young wife, in her mid 20s, about 4’5″ tall or smaller, 90 lbs . wet, and married to a guy who was on the board. Let’s call her Frannie. She was from Italy, so this little dynamo talked with a thick Italian accent, bullying her way around the building.

She decided what color to paint the building, which tiles to use for the pool renovation, what the gardening should look like, which lights should replace the ones we had around the building and so on.

The “shades of white” cartoon reminded me that one day these guys showed up to show us shades of something – I think it might have been for an awning in the front of the building, it might have been tiles, I can’t remember.

I do remember telling them, “Let me call Frannie to look at these.” I didn’t dare make a decision without her, even though I was president of the board. As she was coming down to meet us, I told the guys, “See these three brochures you are showing us? All these choices? Frannie is going to take her time, go through every color and choice and then ask you if you have another catalog or brochure for her to look at.”

And right on cue, that’s what happened, after carefully looking it all over while we all remained silent and waited, that’s just what she did, she asked them if they had another brochure to look at.

We all bust out laughing and to this day, I don’t know if she know why.

Frannie and her husband were terrible neighbors. They moved some years back and rented their condo unit ever since. Over the years they have rented to awful people. Not one decent person, including the current tenant. I have to tell you some time about the one tenant who picked up stray dogs off the street and how two got into my apartment and practically destroyed everything in the living room.

One totally wild mongrel was jumping around like a kangaroo, he broke so many things in his way. I still have his dirty footprints on my white leather sofa to remind myself of that nightmare incident. They are covered by a pillow, but they are still there. It’s a conversation piece.

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Aieee! It’s Arnold!

I’ve written about “Arnold” before. One of my favorite comic strips from the 1980s. Arnold ran from 1982 through 1988. Kevin McCormic, was the cartoonist and Arnold Melville and his friend Tommy Jordan were the main characters. Mr. Lester, their teacher, rounded out the cast. That was it. Only the three characters were shown. If there were other characters, we would only see/hear their voices, but never see the person, sort of like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

Well recently a book came out, it’s volume one of what will be three volumes featuring the strips.

Cartoonist Charles Brubaker knew how much I loved Arnold and Charles contacted me to let me know that with Kevin’s cooperation, Charles is reprinting the entire run of Arnold in the three volumes.

I had to tell Charles he was too late, I had already ordered volume one!

You can get it here at Amazon and also have a look inside there at Amazon where there’s a brief history that can get you right into the strip.

I ordered it Friday and it arrived Saturday. I can’t put it down! Aieee!

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Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes

I was shocked and saddened to hear of Jimmy Buffett’s death Friday. Living in Florida, he was a big part of our lives. I never cared for tequila or margaritas, but I lived the Margaritaville lifestyle for most of my life.

It was a life of spending almost every day at the beach – for an hour or for eight hours. In crowded beaches and secluded beaches. I would find fallen coconuts on the beach, crack them open and use the milk as suntan oil.

Meeting friends on the boardwalk was a common thing, we would run, then head to happy hour at a beach bar. I would work out or relax at secluded beaches. Many times, grabbing lunch, then head to a quite beach and eat, then head back to work. I did that last week.

Years ago, I would skip school and when I got home, my mom would ask me why I had a tan. I would make up some sort of excuse.

Regarding my cartoons, there was period of time where I would go to the beach daily and make a rule where I would not be able to leave until coming up with two cartoon ideas. Many ideas and gags were water and beach related, but most weren’t. It was a fun, interesting exercise. I must have done a good job of it because during that period, I sold a lot of single panel cartoons to magazines and newspapers. Looking at some of those old cartoons, I can remember where I was, at what beach, where the ideas came from.

I spent a lot of time in Key West, too, where Jimmy is worshipped. But he was worshipped all over South Florida. Every time I drive by the old Miami Marine Stadium in Miami these days, I think of Jimmy, he did concerts there in his early days and while I didn’t attend, I guess it was big news around here, so it sticks in my head.

I found some Jimmy Buffet music and books and stuff here at Amazon.

**Jimmy jumping into the bay after a concert at Miami Marine Stadium in 1985.** (Photo courtesy: Beth Hodle / Parrot Head Handbook)

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The black kettle

This cartoon is a remake of one I did in the 1980s. I found it along with my school stuff.

I’ve been cleaning out my old room at the house I grew up in and I found lots of old cartoons and stuff; things I created so long ago.

I had one cartoon called “Opal” and this witch cartoon above, is a take-off on the Opal cartoon here.

I used to draw a lot of different comic strips with different characters and themes.

I also found a big batch of rejection letters from syndicates. Not sure why I saved those, but they are interesting to read when they have little notes attached, you know, they aren’t just form letters.

I didn’t submit most of the work I did, I just drew and drew without a plan in mind. My issue was that I didn’t set a date or have a plan. I know now to set a date to submit work. Have a plan in mind, write it down, work toward that goal and then send the work in on said date. Maybe have a date to complete writing the series, then a date to draw everything out, maybe a separate time to color them and then finally the submission date.

Of course those rejection letters will come, but at least the work was submitted.

I once sold advertising for a newspaper. My boss used to say, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” But also, it goes without saying, “If you don’t submit your work, you don’t have a chance of being published.”

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Dirty deeds

I reworked this old cartoon I did some years back. It came to mind because all weekend I’ve been seeing this quick 15 second commercial for Walmart using the ac/dc Dirty Deeds song. You can see it here.

So after hearing it over and over I looked in my archives and there was Lucy at her doctor’s booth ready to do some dirty deeds. Usually it’s five cents for a doctor’s visit, right? So maybe it’s the same cost for a dirty deed or two.

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The string beans

I was at Whole Foods the other day getting lunch at the hot bar. I was at the mixed veggies and there were string beans next to them. In this picture you can see two sets of tongs, but when I was getting the food, only the mixed veggies had the tongs, so I used that for both – I took mixed veggies and some string beans.

Well, a lady who worked there started yelling at me – “Sir! Don’t do that with the tongs, you are causing cross contamination!” And she gave me a second set of tongs.

I was shocked. Not because she yelled at me, but because she spoke English. You see, every time I’ve have a question or complaint in the past they would tell me they don’t speak English and they would quickly walk away. That day they spoke English!

I didn’t say anything to her, but I was thinking the cross contamination comes from all the customers’ hands all over the tongs, and all the people breathing and sneezing all over the food. Not from tongs going from string beans to mixed veggies, which by the way, had string beans in with them. I’m not sure why I was taking them from another bin, I think I was probably taking the shallots that were in with the one batch of string beans.

When I have complained in the past, it was about the empty bins at the height of lunch. It’s not uncommon for 50% of the bins to be empty, you can see that by this one photo below that was taken about 12:30 pm one day. And the bins there have no variety anymore. Nothing new. Same old, same old. It’s like they are trying to save money at the customers’ expense.

The rest of the staff is always nice. I just notice the people with the hot food and salads are moody. I guess they get complaints every day. I only took that photo below with the empty bins because there were a lot of people complaining – not so much to the staff but to each other and just saying things in the air. I mean, you come for lunch and that’s what you are greeted with. And it’s like this almost every time I stop by.

Whole Foods has been going down hill for a couple of years now. There’s a new Sprouts opening in my neighborhood next month. I don’t think I’ll be going back to Whole Foods once Sprouts opens.

**Empty food bins at lunchtime at Whole Foods. Almost a daily occurrence.**

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No respect from the newspapers

Friends ask me how my comic “career” is going.

I always tell them these days, that it’s going well. No, I’m not published in newspapers, but honestly I don’t want to be.

Being published in newspapers was always my goal but those days are over. I sometimes wish I was part of the height of the cartooning days, when cartoonists’ works were worshiped. From the turn of the last century until possibly the 1980s, I think that was the time to be part of it all. In the very early days, they were treated like movie stars.

I think the 1940s and 1950s might have been the best time. Now I think it’s all about online publication.

Just as new performers, singers and such, are discovered online and on apps, so are new cartoons and comics. It’s where the readers are, and viewers. Many people watch tv and movies via apps now, they aren’t subjected to the scheduling and whims of tv networks.

It’s where I can be creative, do my own thing, have short deadlines and just not be controlled by a large corporation – gaining the same readership as I would if I was printed, maybe more.

I’ve lived by cartoonist Jason Chatfield‘s quote: “Don’t curate your art to what gets likes. Curate it to what you like.” In that way, my readers find me, rather than me searching for readers.

And now he introduced a new one that I am living by: “We need to forget the newspapers. They forgot us a long time ago,” referring to cartoonists and comic strips. Keef Knight, another cartoonist, said it first. But Jason brought it to my attention.

And it’s not just cartoons. I’ve been reading newspapers online from other areas of the country. I subscribe to them and read the e-papers which I like flipping through. I noticed that so many of them don’t seem to be published locally, even though they are local daily newspapers.

One newspaper in upstate New York had as their main above-the-fold headlines stories on Nevada’s wet weather and a story about Olympians from California. Nothing related to upstate New York on the front page, not one story! I unsubscribed from that paper after a few days. It wasn’t what I was looking for. It’s owned by USA Today and it seems that that is the news that they print – what USA Today prints in all the newspapers they own.

Back to Jason Chatfield – he took over an old Australian newspaper comic strip called Ginger Meggs a few years ago. It will be 102 years old this November. It’s gone through quite a few cartoonists since it’s inception in 1921.

Well, the newspapers in Australia that publish the strips has cancelled Ginger and that’s the end of his 102-year-old newspaper publication. It appears as if the newspapers there have abandoned all cartoons. There seems to be a newspaper monopoly ownership in Australia.

Ginger Meggs will continue online at Jason’s website: gingermeggs.com and GoComics will post reruns here: gocomics.com/gingermeggs.

Hence, the quote: “We need to forget the newspapers. They forgot us a long time ago.” But I’ve been way ahead of Jason and Keef on this one for quite a few years now.

I interviewed Jason a few years back for my 10 With Tom series when he was president of the National Cartoonist Society. By the way, he is also a New Yorker magazine cartoonist.

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