I’ve been in NYC a lot this year, been back and forth from Miami.
I came back for a couple of weeks for Thanksgiving. When I left Miami it was 76 degrees, it was 32 degrees in NYC! But when we landed, it was 39 in NYC and that’s not bad when the sun is out. It’s actually refreshing.
I stopped by to see a friend and then checked out the Union Square Green Market and Holiday Bazaar, which opened this weekend for the season. I’ve purchased so many gifts here over the years.
I checked out Washington Square Park and Greenwich Village, my usual haunts.
Glad to be back, even though I was here last month, and the month before . . .
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There is a new Vincent Van Gogh exhibit in Detroit, called “Van Gogh in America.” CBS Sunday Morning featured the museum and their plans for showing Van Gogh’s work on the 100th anniversary of their aquiring their first Van Gogh piece 100 years ago.
One hundred years ago the Detroit Institute of Arts became the first museum in the U.S. to buy a piece by Vincent Van Gogh. Now, the museum is honoring the century by featuring 74 of his works from around the world, which explores America’s introduction to the artist, who by the way, is believe to be American’s favorite artist, living or dead.
I fit in a Van Gogh cartoon whenever I can, I love him and his work so much.
I came up with this cartoon idea from the segment on CBS Sunday Morning. In the tv piece, curator Jill Shaw said, “The texture of his paint strokes is like cake icing.” And it is!
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I’m not getting the views I usually have. It’s been about a week since I’ve seen this. Were the algorithms changed?
I used to get thousands of eyes on the cartoon daily and lots of comments, likes, etc. Now it’s a handful.
My Instagram site seems to be the same regarding views and algorithms and so does my dedicated website, TomFalco.com. Those get thousands of eyes on them, but I’m concerned about Facebook. You can see below one of the cartoons that reached over 2 million views on Instagram; it has over 83,000 likes. So when it’s being seen, it is really being seen and interacted with.
It makes no sense that people subscribe or “follow” a page and yet they don’t see it in their feed. If I follow a page for old movies, or baseball or whatever, don’t I wish to see the latest posts that come up daily?
I know many cartoonists have moved away from social media and focus only on their websites and subscriptions. Their blog and cartoon/comic are one. And they publish once or twice or three times a week – not daily.
I’m trying to think what to do. In the meantime I’m trying to figure out this Facebook algorithm. I like Facebook because people share the work and many more eyes see it this way.
I saw cartoonist Harry Bliss along with Steve Martin on The View the other day. They were promoting a new book they collaborated on, called Number One Is Walking, their second book together. Harry was great, but he started the interview by saying he was so nervous being on live tv. I found that very humbling and endearing and like him even more for that.
I think I reached out to him before to interview him for 10 With Tom, but never received a response. I’ll maybe try again since he’s out and about promoting his book now.
I barely boil water and don’t like to cook, but I love watching cooking shows. I watch them all. I find them relaxing.
I know what a chocolate ganache is, how to make a roux, I know the best way to crack eggs and I know the best extra virgin olive oil to buy, but I don’t cook. I just eat.
I was on a plane recently and I started watching an Ina Garten show called Be My Guest With Ina Garten. It’s an hour show where she has people come to her Hamptons house and the first talk for about half an hour over a drink and then they cook together. The best part is the first half hour because you learn so many life lessons from people from different walks of life. One guest is better than the other.
I’ve been DVRing the show and I watch it when I can.
The episode I watched on the plane was with Julianna Margulies where she talks about living life on her own terms. I’ve never seen ER, but she talks about leaving that show. She was offered $27 million to stay for two more seasons after she decided to leave, but she left. People talked bad about her, saying she was thinking she was too big for her britches, when in reality, she left the show to move from Hollywood to NYC where she directed a play for $270.00 a week. $270.00 vs $27 million.
Years later, she was offered the show, The Good Wife, she loved the concept, but she did not want to move back to California, so they ended up moving the whole production to New York, just for her! I have a cousin who worked on that show, as part of production and also the spin-off show – The Good Fight.
I saw Nathan Lane and Emily Blunt and Marcus Samuelsson, who has an incredible life and story.
They talk during the cooking segment, but the best part is when they are sitting across from Ina, telling their story. I learn a lot from their journeys. I’ve rolled back the episodes and watched segments again.
And of course, they go out into the Hamptons at times to shop and that’s a place I love. I was there recently this fall. And if the village of Southhampton didn’t change the schedule, I’ll be at this year’s Tree Lighting and Christmas parade again in a couple of weeks.
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This Doctor Who cartoon was published recently. It’s re-do of one from 2014. The original is Matt Smith as the doctor, but if you swipe the image, you can see the new doctor, David Tennant is the doctor.
David Tennant played the doctor from 2005 to 2010 and Matt Smith played the doc from 2010 to 2013, right after David. But for I think, it’s three episodes, David Tennant is back for the 60th anniversary specials. So I thought it would be cool to make the cartoon reflect that.
I know they don’t look exactly like either guy, but it’s just a suggestion in both cases because Doctor Who changes so often, that I wanted to cartoon to be timeless. When I first did the cartoon, I didn’t realize that a lady would play Doctor Who, and that happened from 2017 to 2022 with Jodi Whittaker as the doctor.
I’m not a great Doctor Who fan, I’ve only seen a handful of episodes, but the gag is obvious and it’s been done by other cartoonists over the years. I’m surprised the old Abbot and Costello bit stands up to this day, but people do get the gag and like it.
A guy left a comment on one of the published pieces of David Tennant’s Doctor Who here and said he looked like Colombo. Maybe he does by the way he is touching his chin thinking. I have done a Colombo gag or two over the years. Here is one. Similar, but no way David Tennant, not that the Doctor Who cartoon is either, but you know what I mean.
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This pumpkin cartoon was published today. I drew it last week and was holding it to run the day after Halloween, but I had so many other cartoons running related to Halloween, that I ended up running it today. I was going to hold it back until next year, but that didn’t make sense.
You can see my Halloween related cartoons here at TomFalco.com.
Mine originally did say, “rough night?” like John’s, but I changed it to “rough week” when I knew I would be running it a couple of days after Halloween.
I did almost pull mine after seeing John’s work, but why? This has happened so many times over the years – I guess there are only so many cartoon ideas, but these look so similar. It doesn’t bother me now, but for years it did.
For many years I was insisting people were stealing my work, until I saw things like this, where I published the same thing after another cartoonist did.
I’ll chalk it up to great minds thinking alike. I did question it, and wonder if it was funny or not, but I guess we both can’t be wrong. Looks like John’s guy had a rougher night than mine, though.
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I get this thing called “informed delivery” from the post office. Every morning, around 9 am, I get an email with photos of my mail that is being delivered that day.
I got it because I travel often, and sometimes I get important business stuff in the mail, so this way if I see anything that needs to be attended to, I can ask my neighbor, who takes my mail in for me when I’m away, if she can open it and let me know what it says.
Truth be told, that has never happened. It’s been about 10 years that I have this service and I don’t think I’ve ever had to have something opened because it was important and couldn’t wait until I get home.
I try not to look at it daily because my mail comes late – sometimes 6 pm and if I see something that I question or concerns me, I worry about it all day. Like yesterday – this happened yesterday.
I saw a notice/letter from the IRS. All day I worried about it. Do I owe them money? Are they going to audit me? What is it?
Finally, about 6 pm, I went to the mailbox, got the mail and know what it was? A pin code that I requested a week before. Apparently to get into your IRS account online, you need a pin code, which they send via snail mail.
This happened not long ago. I saw an IRS notice and freaked out and when I ended up opening it, it was a letter telling me they were adding interest to a refund they owed me. Since they were late sending out the refund, they added interest.
I’m thinking of getting rid of “informed delivery” or at least not looking at it when it arrives in my email.
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As I was leaving from getting the MRI the other day, I ran into my UPS delivery guy. I live next door to the hospital, so we share UPS, Amazon, FedEx and the US mail carrier. I’ve seen them all over at the hospital one time or other.
I walk over to the hospital often, because I’m walking around the neighborhood and I walk on their campus/grounds and I walk over to get lunch sometimes, there are a couple of restaurants there. So I get take-out.
I was telling the UPS guy about my MRI and my hernia. He wanted to know what I was lifting that gave me a hernia when I told him about it. Who knows. Something at the gym I suspect.
I’ve know the UPS guy for years, we have each other’s phone numbers, he knows my brothers. A couple of Friday’s ago, I was waiting for my new iphone to be delivered, it got to be about 6 pm and I called him and asked, “Where is my iphone?” He laughed and said he was on his way. They deliver all day to the hospital and other businesses in the village and then get to us late in the day.
In the past as I was walking around the downtown area in the village, he would see me and give me my packages right there on the spot, earlier in the day, so I wouldn’t have to wait till 6 pm and sometimes 7 pm for delivery.
When I was in NY recently, he called me from Miami, to ask me to call a neighbor because he had a delivery that need to be signed for and the neighbor wasn’t answering his door. So I called my neighbor back in Miami from NY and he got his delivery from UPS.
I was talking about the oncologist in the last post. Well, back then I was sitting in the waiting room and in walked the UPS guy and after him the FedEx guy and they both saw me sitting there and almost started crying. They asked if I was ok, how I was doing. They literally had tears in their eyes. I told them I was fine.
Recently I saw my mail carrier there when I walked over for lunch. I said, “You deliver here, too?” She said, “It’s part of my route!” I said, “No wonder we get our mail so late in the day!” And she laughed. I didn’t, I don’t like getting mail at 5 pm.
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I saw this “Speed Bump” comic, by Dave Coverly, the other day and it reminded me of a doctor I had.
About 10 years ago, maybe more, I had this thing removed and the doctor thought it could be melanoma – it wasn’t, but he had me go to the oncologist. And the oncologist had me get a CT scan often. She kept me going and said, “Keep going until the insurance runs out.” And that explained our U.S. medical system in a nutshell. “Keep putting yourself under that harmful radiation, until we don’t get paid anymore.”
I bring this up because yesterday I had to go to get an MRI. I have a hernia and the doc sent me to get an MRI to be sure that’s what it is before they operate or do whatever it is they do.
I worried about it all weekend because it’s so claustrophobic and sort of willed it to be where I go feet in first. I kept thing, “maybe I can go in feet first.” And know what? That’s what happened – I went in feet first! So my head was sticking out and I was totally fine with it. And good thing too, because it literally took a half hour or more in the machine! The tech said she wanted to do a “slice” or something like that, so it took long. I can’t image being confined in that tube head first for a half hour.
Anyway, I had another other doctor one time that wanted me to give myself shots for an allergy, which is gone now, because I don’t think it was an allergy at all. Anyway, he insisted and insisted, I kept telling him I didn’t need the shots. When I told him the deductible was very high, after he was trying to force me to take the shots for so long a time, he stopped on a dime and said, “Forget it, you don’t need this.” It’s all about money.
Back to the oncologist. She was fabulous and what I mean by that was she was loud and big and out there, sort of like Maude, she in fact, looked like Maude, and she was all in white, as doctor’s are, but she wore red high heels. And she would float through the complex with a big smile on her face and waved and seemed to know everyone. She was a star. I haven’t seen her for years, but I remember she liked my comics and would always ask about them and how it was going, etc.
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People ask me how I come up with ideas, so I grabbed a few recently published cartoons and will show you my twisted mind works.
This one was easy. I got a new iphone and they did away with the thumb imprint for signing on, so now it’s either punch in the pin number or use face recognition. After you set up the face recognition, they ask if you would like to do it again this time wearing a mask!
At first I thought of doing a cartoon with someone wearing a Halloween mask, but then thought of other things, like what if someone was in an accident or had a facelift or some sort of procedure where the phone would not recognize them anymore. And I remembered a previous cartoon that was published, this cartoon, where Dracula takes a selfie, only his image doesn’t come up, and from there I got to this cartoon above.
This one started with pumpkin picking. Every year my cousins and I go to the Hudson Valley in New York State to pumpkin pick. And I think it’s more about the Hudson Valley, than the pumpkins. It’s a gorgeous area with spectacular mountain and river views along with the changing leaves in the fall. Only this year, we went to the north fork of Long Island instead, because we needed to be closer to the south fork, where we were going to an event after the pumpkin picking.
I got to thinking – will my pictures be as nice in the north fork as they are up in the mountains and the valley? How will it all look on Instagram? And from there, I got to the cartoon above, and changed the Hudson Valley, to Tuscany, to make it more of an extreme travel plan.
As for this one – I live in Miami – I hear the words “Gulf Stream” almost daily, and this is what I thought of when I heard it one last time.
I’m in museums a lot and I always notice that the guards are ignored by everyone. And even when I say hello they sort of keep to themselves. One time I was in a museum in NYC that was being renovated, and there were only two big rooms open. I was in there with one other person, who happened to be John Lithgow, the actor.
I didn’t speak with Mr. Lithgow, but he spoke to the security guard who was on hand in one room. I didn’t hear what they were saying, but I found it interesting that he reached out and engaged with the guard. Other than that, I often think the guards could be on the phone, eating and even sleeping as no one seems to notice them, or maybe if they did lie down on a bench, like the cartoon suggests, then people would notice them.
Recently I posted something about the Baltimore Museum of Art having an exhibit totally curated by it’s museum guards, which sounds like an excellent idea. So in that case, they were noticed by people.
This trunk one came simply from the fact that luggage was being lost all summer by the airlines.
And of course this museum window one, which I have written about a few times before – I thought it was funny to think of the guard being so blasé about the art after seeing it day after day, that it was more interesting for him to look out the window to see what was going on.
And yes – there are windows next to the art in many museums. Here’s proof taken last month at MOMA in NYC.
And there you have some of the workings of my mind – how I juggle ideas in my head to come up with Tomversation cartoons.
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