Today’s comic made me think of the real thing. What if there was a moving company called “Van Go” and and all of the movers looked like Vincent Van Gogh? We’ve all seen people in real life who look like Van Gogh, right?
But I guess it would be hard to gather a bunch together and have them work as movers, right? But it’s an interesting idea.
Or another idea I had was a arts and antiques moving company that used people dressed as or look-alike artists or art subjects. Like for instance you had the Mona Lisa delivering a painting you won at auction or Monet delivering a vase you got at a tag sale.
I remember years ago there was a restaurant in town that gave you famous names as you walked in along with your table buzzer. When your table was ready they would call out, “Marilyn Monroe, table for two!” “Clark Gable, table for four,” etc.
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I had applied before but was denied in the past and recently was accepted.
What I love most about it is that I am part of this group of people who I’ve admired all my life. Every cartoonist you can name – they are/were part of this society. And even greater was that I was unanimously approved, which means fellow cartoonists looked at my work and said, “YES! Let him in!” Now that’s an honor. It has put me on the map.
I should have done this years ago, but you know how it is, life takes ahold and sends you in other directions. But I’m here now.
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Amazon Prime Day is over and I’m gonna miss it. Not for the bargains, for the Jon Baptiste commercial!
It’s the song of summer! I can’t get it out of my head – the line that says, “I need some cocoa butter and camping supplies,” makes me laugh every time. I actually would wait for the commercial, which was not hard to do since it seemed to be on every few minutes. It’s short and sweet and catchy.
I had written it down to use in a cartoon and I couldn’t come up with anything. Them I remembered a cartoon I used for a past Prime Day and I added the text.
Now to be honest, the 1000 times I’ve seen the commercial, I thought he was singing “Cold, Cold Butter,” but a reader corrected me so I changed the cartoon early this morning before most people saw it.
Butter made sense to me because I thought they were trying to show that Amazon/Wholefoods, delivers food, too.
I did take advantage of Prime Day and I bought a new Surface Pro 8 computer so you’ll be seeing my new cartoons created on that.
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I was on a plane and as is the case often, a couple asked if I would exchange seats so they could sit together. I told them NO.
I think this is the first time I said no, as it’s happened to me more than once and I always accommodate people. But I think I’ve had it with that and I told them, “NO, I don’t want to move.” And for the rest of the flight, I felt uncomfortable and guilty. I avoided the guy who was sitting next to me the whole time, we didn’t speak, I didn’t eat or drink because I didn’t want the flight crew reaching over him and I didn’t want any interactions with him. I felt he was being a schmuck by asking me to move so his wife, who was sitting in front of him could sit next to him.
I know, I know, it sounds selfish on my part. But it’s not.
It was a husband and wife who wanted me to switch seats and they ended up sitting one behind the other for the trip. They also asked the lady sitting next to the wife, if she would exchange seats with the husband, who was sitting next to me, and she said no, too. She said she needed to sit next to the window because she feels “wonky” if she doesn’t. They literally wanted to take the window seat away from the lady or me.
I didn’t give a reason for not wanting to move, I just declined to move. And this moronic husband who wanted us to change seats says to his wife, “Oh well, you like to sit next to the window.”
I think people are getting tired of this seat swap, it’s become a regular thing. People just book flights and then deal with the seating situation later, I guess.
But I carefully booked my flight months in advance and I planned my seat months in advance – not over the wing so I have a view, and on this particular side of the plane so I could see the skyline as we lifted off, etc.
I’ve given up my seat many times over the years – one time to the large Bush family so they could all sit together, Jeb’s, not George’s. But this time I was not doing it. And through the whole trip, I ignored the guy next to me, so there were no pleasantries and it was an uncomfortable flight because of this. I felt guilty the whole time and I should not have been made to feel that.
And you know what? The lady in front of me who refused to give up her seat felt guilty the whole time, too. Know how I know? Because she didn’t talk the whole time to the wife who was seated next to her, but when they were departing the flight, she said, and I quote, “Goodbye, and I’m sorry.” So she felt the need to say she was sorry because she must have been feeling guilt about it the whole time, ruining her flight, too.
Selfish travelers plan ahead or just deal with the seats you’re dealt!
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A couple of us were walking around Madison Square Park on Sunday and we stopped to get something to drink from a food truck. There was a girl on the corner handing out Hint flavored water, but she said it was warm, so we passed that up and bought cold drinks from a store nearby.
We sat on a bench and drank and talked.
We were sitting across from Chelsea Clinton’s condo building. It’s a ritzy area, Jeff Bezos lives catty corner to Chelsea on the cross street.
And out came a guy from Chelsea’s building, I guess one of her neighbors. He saw the Hint water truck parked sort of out front and he said something to the doorman, who walked over to the truck. That’s it above.
We assumed he was going to complain about them being there and ask them to move along. But no, the doorman came back with two cases of free water. Not bottles – cases. The free samples.
The rich are different. Cheap, the rich are cheap.,
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I checked out the Matisse exhibit at MOMA yesterday. Henri Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911), depicts the artist’s work space in the Parisian suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux.
Of course I had to add Starry Night here. Since I was at MOMA, I had to visit my favorite painting.
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I’ve been using the unlimited weekly card for years – right now the cost is $33.00 for a week’s worth of unlimited rides which is 12 rides at $2.75 each, which is 6 round trip rides.
Well, if you use the OMNY system for the same purpose, it only works from Monday through Sunday. So if you start using it on Saturday, which I did last week, it is useless for that Saturday and Sunday. It literally starts on Monday and goes through Sunday. Read that again. If you start using the OMNY payment method any day of the week other than Monday, then you are screwed out of days.
I lost 7 or 8 rides from last Saturday or Sunday, a waste of $22.00, where if I used the MetroCard as I have for all these years, that would not be the case.
I called OMNY to complain and was told by some guy, “Too bad, that’s how the system works.”
So my suggestion is, DO NOT USE THE OMNY MTA SYSTEM. It’s a ripoff. I don’t consider myself a stupid person, so I consider their ad campaign stupid and the whole system is stupid. It screws over visitors especially.
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I finally visited Wegmans. It’s a super market, but it’s a super super market.
My mother spoke about it for years. Whenever she went upstate NY to visit my nephew in college, she returned with reports about Wegmans. It was never about the trip itself or of my nephew, it was about Wegmans.
A few years ago, they opened a Wegmans at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Brooklyn, NY and I’ve been meaning to visit, but I would forget about it. But yesterday, I remembered, so I took the F train from the city and visited.
It’s right next to the King’s County Distillery and there among a lot of the old navy yard.
They are opening a Wegmans in the city, at Astor Place, in about a year, so NYC will have two now.
It’s hard to describe Wegmans, it’s a supermarket, but huge. It has restaurants inside and a coffee shop, a pizza place and loads and loads of groceries. It’s almost like a Costco but with just food, no clothing or books or anything like that.
It’s an experience, sort of like the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.
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My flight left Miami on time, actually a half hour late, which is incredible since it seems that thousands of flights have been delayed or canceled all over the U.S. this summer. The whole flight was uneventful, which is the best kind of flight.
I finally remembered to try out my new technique to getting to Manhattan from LaGuardia Airport. I always think of it when we’re on the way stuck in traffic.
What I did was, I got the Uber at the airport, but instead of the driver taking me all the way to the city, I had him drop me off at the Vernon-Jackson subway station in Long Island City. I’m very familiar with this site as it’s where my cousins usually pick me up when I’m going to their houses in Queens or we are heading out to the Hamptons or even if I am just going to Long Island City for anything.
The Vernon Jackson station is one stop from Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
This saves a lot of time and money as it shortens the trip by a lot. The driver was even appreciative. He was glad not to have to go all the way into the city and sit in tunnel traffic for a long time. Even on a Saturday, getting into the Midtown Tunnel and getting to the city is a project.
So I hopped on and off the train in no time and was in the city in no time flat. I even used the new OMNY system that I wrote about recently, it worked like a charm.
Some first world problems I had – my first Mr. Softee ice cream of the summer, actually of the year melted all over my hand so I threw it out. The prices keep going up, but they still give you one thin napkin to maneuver the melt.
I also managed to get green paint on me in the subway somewhere. Later on I had gone to Union Square, which is my usual thing and as I came up from down under, I must have touched the paint on the railing or something and for the rest of the day I looked like a slob as I walked around the city and also Hoboken, NJ.
The paint was fresh from the signs they were painting for the SCOTUS protest at Union Square.
All in all, it’s been an interesting start to summer. But it’s been hot and humid, very hot and humid.
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Yesterday’s cartoon is an homage to an old Maxell ad. I came up with the idea of the guy sitting in his chair at home being bored due to economic issues of the day and the ad came to mind as I started drawing the cartoon.
One thing though – to get a photo as a reference, I googled “Memorex” and the photo came up – but the crazy part is that it’s an ad for Maxell! And I noticed people who commented on the cartoon mentioned Memorex, which is interesting because this iconic “Blown Away” ad is not serving its purpose – directing people to the correct product, it’s literally sending people to its competitor. But of course it’s one of the best photographs ever. It’s by photographer Steve Steigman.
Even the google search sends the Memorex reference to the Maxell ad. It’s sort of like those ads that we love but we don’t remember what the product is for.
This is the original advertisement, photo by Steve Steigman
Speaking of Memorex, I remember something from high school. We had a class called Rock Poetry and it was all based on current rock music. We studied the lyrics as poetry, which is what they were. We all had to bring in a record or cassette tape (yes, it was back then) and the teacher would pull out a random record or cassette and we would listen to a song and discuss it.
One time she reached into the box and pulled out a cassette and said, “Ok, the next one is Memorex.” And of course we all cracked up. We had to explain to her that Memorex was the cassette tape company, not the name of the recording or band.
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