tomversation

Stolen credit cards

Someone was using my credit card in NY the other day. VISA contacted me to tell me that someone tried to spend $1075.00 at a Versace store, but they stopped them and blocked the card. They knew it wasn’t me from my spending habits! Which is correct, I don’t wear Versace. I’m a t-shirt and jeans guy. Basically a slob.

The only reason I bring this up is that I find it interesting that our credit card companies know more about us than Google or Facebook. They know what we spend on everything these days – people use credit cards to buy a cup of coffee. If I drink coffee every day and order tea one day, will they see this as fraud?

A few months ago I wrote about having my card declined at a gas station which was a few miles from home – it was out of my usual buying pattern.

A few years back I was notified by American Express – they said someone was using my card fraudulently. I asked them how they knew – they said they were buying motorcycle parts – which was out of my buying pattern. The same week, VISA contacted me, again it was a case of fraud. How did they know? Someone was buying Avon – which was out of my buying pattern. So I guess my buying pattern is somewhere between motorcycles and Avon.

I’ve been extra careful with my credit cards, I keep them in special sleeves so they can’t be scanned, but I guess there is always a crook out there who knows a loophole or two. I’m glad that the credit card companies are stopping sales in their tracks and not letting them through. Still – it’s all about getting new cards and dealing with changing all that info on auto billing places.

Last month I had to change my American Express card – someone set up a fake account on Etsy and they were charging small sales to people. They charged me for four items at $62 each. I only noticed because I have this thing set up where they email me every time I use the card where the card is not present – mostly online. Even when I guy something they send me an email, which I like.

They don’t send out new cards overnight like they used to. What they do is give you the new number through secure means and you can use that number until you get the actual card. I already changed out my Apple Pay account with the new card info.

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Art curated by museum guards

I saw this piece on CBS Sunday morning. It’s about the security guards at the Baltimore Museum of Art curating the art.

It’s fascinating because they are usually shadows. I totally ignore them when I’m at a museum. For one thing, I always feel they are watching me. They have asked me to stop filming more than once – snapshots are ok, filming not so much, I’m still not sure why, but usually because of that reason, I avoid them.

As one lady says in the piece above, the guards are around the art more than anyone else – day and night. And they know about the art. If you have a question, they probably know the answer. The question I most ask them is, “Where is the exit,” because I’m always getting lost.

But I see them in a whole new light and next time at a museum, I won’t ignore them, I’ll say, “Hello!”

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All is not fresh at the farmers market

I was watching a tv show on farmers markets and someone said, “Buy Local. Buy Fresh.” But I found out a few years ago that that is not always the case. One of my favorite farmers markets is the Green Market at Union Square in New York City. It’s my first stop when I get to New York and it’s a Saturday morning ritual. It’s where I get my first Mr. Softee ice cream of the summer and where I see fall pumpkins for the first time, also where I see Christmas trees being sold for the first time of the season.

But is everything straight from the farm? I’ve always pictured all those vendors trudging down from their upstate New York or Long Island farms, setting up and selling their fresh fruit, veggies, flowers, pies, honey, etc. But a few Novembers ago, I stopped at one booth to buy a small bottle of eggnog. I grabbed the bottle from the ice chest and handed the guy the money. There was no one else at the booth and he was standing in the center of a foldout table, you know, one of those 6′ x 3′ tables?

Well, he wouldn’t take the money. I tried to shove it in his hand, but he refused. He told me to stand in the center of the table on the 6′ side; I was at the 3′ end of it, where the cooler was. Again, there was no one else there and his hand was in reach of me handing him the money. Again, he said, “Stand in front of the table to pay me.” I got angry, put the drink down and walked away.

A few blocks away, I was walking by Eataly, the Italian grocery store at Madison Square, right across from the Flatiron Building, and I went in. I went to the dairy case and pulled out a small eggnog. It was the exact same company and bottle that the guy at the green market was selling. It had a homey name, Ronnybrook Farm, it was the same stuff for less money. This guy at the green market lost a sale because of his whatever it was, and he is selling corporate eggnog, which I pictured him making by hand in his Hudson Valley kitchen somewhere at his family’s Ronnybrook farm.

The New York Times describes Ronnybrook Farm’s as the “Dom Perignon” of dairy, so there is that, and they are in the Hudson Valley, so there is that, too.

After that I started noticing pies and fruit and things like that and realized anyone can sell at the farmer’s market, whether you own a farm or not. Just source your goodies, mark them up and sell away.

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Check it!

Professional bartender serving a cocktail in the glass with one big ice cube on the bar counter in the blurred background

I heard someone say, “check it” the other day, and it all came flooding back.

One night in the late 1980s, I went to a club in NYC with two of my cousins. I had purchased a brand new jacket, a thick, expensive winter coat.

In the club, I layed my jacket over some sort of room divider or half wall or something and this girl comes by and puts her drink on it. The drink looked like this image, same glass, but with lots of ice and lots of dripping on my jacket.

I started yelling at her, “Look what you did! That’s my jacket!” She yelled back, “Why don’t you check it!” Now being from Miami most of my life, I am not familiar with coat checks, so I thought, “Why don’t you check it!” was some sort of insult. So I yelled back, “You check it!”

And life went on. I remember that same night on our way home we stopped in front of the NY Public Library on 5th Avenue and got out of the car and danced to Pump Up the Jam, which was new at the time. Anyway, that’s my remembrance of the night.

20 years later, in 2009, I’m watching a movie on tv, literally 20 years later – and one guy says to the other, “Why are you carrying your coat around, why don’t you check it?” And that sentence came flooding back to me all those years later and it dawned on me, right then and there, that the girl was telling me to check my coat with the coat check.

The funny thing is I never wore that jacket again. Not sure why. I think it seems too puffy. I still have it in the closet somewhere.

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The stamina to not eat what you hate

This cartoon got quite a few comments yesterday. It seems that everybody has a story on what they hated to eat as a kid. I think I didn’t like liver and possibly spinach. Spinach I like today. Liver never.

I don’t think my mom forced me to eat what I didn’t like, but I do remember her telling me to try it.

One thing I have almost daily is olive oil, I take a spoonful daily for the omega threes and to be in step with those blue zones around the world, and I also put it on things when eating. But I didn’t like it as a kid and my mom was telling me how good it is for your health, I remember. She said I would get used to the taste. I eventually did.

One lady mentioned spaghetti, in a comment. She didn’t like that and was forced to eat it as a kid. I can sort of understand that, as I am not a big fan of spaghetti, but I’ll eat it, I don’t have to be forced to eat it, but I wouldn’t order it in a restaurant.

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The influence of cartooning

I saw this meme or whatever it is, on Facebook the other day, and I was transported back to being high school age again. It was sort of like when you smell something and that smell instantly transports you back in time? Well this did it for me.

I was working at a department store after school many years ago and I was in the cafeteria with co-workers, there weren’t many of us there, a handful perhaps. I can picture it now – dark lighting, red leather seating, black tables. Right there in the cafeteria, I drew up a little cartoon on a napkin that said something like this meme above – something about the managers getting paid to stand around and do nothing. And I guess it was a picture of a manger with his or her arms folded.

Karen (her real name), one of the supervisors/managers, saw it and asked me to tear it up. I refused. She was really upset over it. I don’t know what happened next, but I don’t think I got in trouble, and I don’t think I tore it up either.

I was maybe 17 or 18 and Nancy, the boss, was maybe 25. It’s so funny to think about it now, we were kids. On that day, at that moment, it gave me the knowledge of how important and influential cartooning was. I’m sometimes a packrat but I don’t think I saved that cartoon. Wish I had. To think, this napkin drawing, which was never published and probably ended up crumpled up somewhere, had such a huge effect.

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Wallace the Brave

*Click on the images for larger version.*

Almost five years ago, I interviewed Will Henry, the cartoonist who does the comic strip Wallace the Brave. The comic strip was new at the time, but I saw something I loved about it and reached out to Will for the interview. Today Wallace the Brave is syndicated in newspapers around the country and it’s just as charming as ever.

Wallace the Brave is reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes, yet it’s unique.

PBS did a short interview here. with Will recently, right out in his muse – the Rhode Island waterfront (and his liquor store, where it all started)

I often ask people I interview, which comic strip they would like to crawl into and visit for the day. Wallace’s world in Rhode Island is where I think I would like to visit.

You can read Wallace the Brave online daily at GoComics.com here.

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The changing, and shrinking, comics

I saw in The Daily Cartoonist today, that cartoonist Jim Keefe, cartoonist for Sally Forth, who previous was the writer and artist of Flash Gordon, wrote in his blog a few years ago, about the size, or rather, lack of size of the printed comic strips today.

A few years back I showed this example here, the comics in the Miami Herald – smaller than postage stamps!

I think this is the time I realized that my dream of being a published newspaper cartoonist was not my dream anymore.

I know people read the newspaper comics, but not many. I haven’t read the actual newspaper comics for years, and by years, I mean a decade or more. I think I gave up with The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County left the comics pages. Today I read them online, where you can pick and choose your favorites and sort of make up your own comics page at GoComics.com and Comics Kingdom and other sites like Webtoons.

I think one of the best places these days to publish and to read comics is Instagram. You can follow the comics you like, flip through them one panel at a time and they easily come up in your daily feed, you don’t have to look for them. I publish there Monday thru Friday.

I’m enjoying reading old “Our Boarding House” comic panels featuring Major Hoople, from the 1920s and ’30s, on Facebook. A couple of groups post one Major Hoople panel a day, it has a lot of devoted fans.

In the past I always felt that I had to be published in the newspapers – it was why comic strips were created – to be in the newspapers. Just like movies – created to be seen on the big silver screen. But today big features show up on streaming services and most comics show up online or on social media.

And with both of these situations, you can control what you see, when you see it and how you see it. You can watch a movie on your 3 inch phone or 65 inch tv – same with the comics and those tiny, postage sized comics can be easily blown on on any screen for easing viewing.

By not being confined to daily newspaper publication, you can vary your schedule, you can change the size of the panels – make them longer, shorter, etc. Not be edited, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it, and probably the best part – publish instantly without a four to eight week lag time. I can’t imagine these days completing a comic strip or panel and then waiting eight weeks to see it in print.

Of course, publishing online rather than with a syndicate in newspapers has one major drawback – no money – you don’t get a salary. But times are changing. NFT’s seem to be something interesting to look at these days along with other money-making ideas for artists and cartoonists.

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With one foot in the past, just how long will it last?

The last few months I’ve been driving a different direction than usual and I pass a school that I dealt with for many years. I used to print school newspapers (well, I was a print broker, and handled printing the newspapers) and I drive by one of the schools I had as a client for 20 years. They were the longest running school client I had.

Now each day as I drive by, the 1980s and 1990s flood into my mind, mostly the 1980s – and I go back in time. I can picture myself in the office, speaking to the ladies there, picking up the job, delivering the completed newspapers – for 20 years! The ’80s flash by in my mind.

The other morning I saw a report on Tears for Fears, who to me, was the sound of the 1980s. The report was about them getting back together and going on tour this summer with a new album. So of course I dug around for one of my favorite albums, “Songs From the Big Chair,” which I couldn’t find, so I download my favorites from that album.

To me “Shout,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and “Head Over Heels” scream 1980s – the best decade for music and just about everything!

I’ve been listening to this in my car and yesterday, as I drove by the school with the song on, I went back in time – like a time machine. I was back in time. It was surreal.

There are so many great songs from the 1980s, but for some reason, these three songs from Tears for Fears bring me back to that era and shout, no pun intended, 1980s.

I had it blasting so loud in the car, that I couldn’t hear a truck driver yelling at me and calling me names because I passed him on the road. I was in stuck 1985 anyway, out of his realm.

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Winter Arts Festival time

We did our local arts festival yesterday and will go back again today. When I say did, I don’t mean we showed our art, I mean we walked around, ate, drank, kibitzed and enjoyed the show. For one thing, the town is mobbed with people and it’s impossible to get in and out so it’s best to just stay put and enjoy the event.

It is getting a bit out of hand with the $25 entry fee and $15 gyros and $18 taco dishes, but it is what it is.

This weekend every year is the busiest weekend of the year in Miami. There are a few arts festivals, the boat show and some other things. They say it’s impossible to find a hotel room or rent a car – they’re all booked for the weekend.

Oddly enough, it was cold all winter, where I love, but yesterday and I guess today, when a bunch of us go back, it will be very hot.

I ran into my nephew’s friend, he told me that he and his wife got in for free. He said to the people at the gate that they forgot to stamp him when he left and then he rubbed the wet stamp on his wife’s hand after they stamped him – sort of like we used to do at the clubs. So he saved 50 bucks.

I used to be part of this as a sponsor when I did the daily news around here so I would get lots of tickets to give out free. But not anymore, I’m now a peon like everyone else (which I love being by the way), but people didn’t know and I got so many texts and calls from friends and family asking me for tickets. Even the UPS guy was hounding me for tickets. How he got my phone number I’ll never know.

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