I was supposed to be in New York today for the start of NY Comic Con, but I’ve been delayed, due to a family issue. Hopefully I can get there this weekend.
I am all set for my visit to the Jacob Javits Center. There is an app called “Clear” where you enter all your covid info – you have to scan a copy of your vaccine card, then scan your driver’s license, then take a current photo of yourself and then scan yourself live, to show that the photo you snapped is you!
They’re being quite careful, but still, thousands of people will be there shoulder to shoulder.
My cousin Michael is there already, he is showing his work at a booth, he’s a cartoon artist. And the photos are making me “homesick” for Comic Con.
A friend asked me yesterday what the big deal was – same thing year after year. I couldn’t explain it. It’s an experience. From the moment you get on the 7 train and see that most of the people on the train are dressed as a character from tv, movies or the comics, to the large crowds exiting the Hudson Yards train station, heading west to the Jacob Javits Center.
It’s electric. The whole four days are electric. Indescribable.
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This cartoon published Friday, hit a nerve with many people. The postal service is getting worse and worse. We get our mail late – days late and late in the day – some days our mail carrier arrives at 6 pm. One day our carrier had a special delivery at 10 am, she handed me the 10 am package and then I asked where is the rest of the mail? She said, “I’ll deliver it later in the day.” I said, “But you are here now!”
Years ago, the mail arrived late at our office, so I got a PO Box and rather than wait till closing time to get our mail for the day, I would be able to pick it up early in the morning – it was always at the PO Box early and I could grab it on my way into the office.
Last summer I ordered a book from a lady in California. It literally took a month to reach me in Miami. She mailed it June 3 and it arrived July 3. After all that time I never ended up liking the book – it was a graphic novel on cartooning, but I found it boring.
I had a very nice Etsy business going months before the presidential election. I was selling lots of political things – hats, t-shirts, etc. it was turning into quite a large business. We would ship the items in three days and the post office took a month or more to deliver! People were getting so upset and I was concerned about them not receiving the merchandise in time, before the election, so I stopped selling the stuff months before election day – losing thousands of dollars in the process! I returned so much money, too because of constant complaints.
I used a print-on-demand company that shipped the stuff via UPS, but then after a day or two it ended up at the USPS and there they sat for weeks or a month before they were delivered!
One time, a few years back, it took two months for my condo maintenance check to reach our accountant. And it only goes a few blocks away. I think they thought I was lying about paying it, but when it finally showed up they saw I had mailed it months before.
I hear that the guy running the post office wants it to go commercial; rather than have the government run it, have a private company run it. I’m not sure how that would work because he would lose his job if that happened, right? So maybe that’s not true. Who knows. But in this day and age, you would assume the US mail could arrive fast and on time.
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People always ask how I come up with the cartoon ideas. They just pop into my head. I don’t usually dwell on things, although sometimes I do, I might have a great drawing, but I hate the text, so I’ll let it sit – sometimes for months, and then the gag hits me and I change the text/wording in the cartoon.
Today’s cartoon – the Columbo – “watch one” came to me while watching (watching, see what I did there?) North Woods Law. I wasn’t even watching, I just overheard one of the officers say, “It happened on my watch, I’ll handle it.” And the rest is history. I used Columbo because he’s my favorite detective and he was popular in a past cartoon, where he used Siri for help solving a crime. And I read recently that he’s become even more popular with people during the pandemic.
This one from last year – the “Ice Hole” one, I explained once before, it came to me while watching Life Below Zero. I wasn’t really paying attention either, I think I was dozing off, and I heard Chip Hailstone, one of the people on the show, say to his kids, who were going ice fishing, “Hey, there’s an ice hole!” And it made me look up and laugh and just totally struck me as being hilarious. And voilà – there was a comic idea.
I played around with it a bit. At first there was a bear hibernating behind a bush and he heard the guys say “ice hole,” and he looked up with one eye open. It was titled, “Trouble Brewing,” but I couldn’t get the image setting right, so I made it another ice fisher.
Most times I’ll read something or see something or overhear something and just twist it in my mind for a bit. So many times I hear something and rush to write it down so I don’t forget.
After the cartoon is done, I end up changing it in some way – up until the last minute – sometimes it’s something simple like a color change, other times it’s the wording or maybe the expression on a character’s face. Never a dull moment.
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I had to go back and get something done on my car yesterday – flat tire. So I left the car and had to take an Uber back and forth. I made sure I had my phone on me at all times, didn’t want to go tracking it down again.
I didn’t know it was a flat tire, I thought it was a fan belt, because of the flapping noise the car made when I drove. The tire was not fully flat, so it was letting air out slowly and that’s why I didn’t know it was the tire. I had looked up what the sound could be online and it suggested the fan belt. I was telling the mechanic that’s it’s like WebMD, where you look up your symptoms and then you think you’re dying when you have a simple cough or something. Same with the car symptoms.
I brought the car in very early and the tire was fixed by 8:30 am, when he called me to pick it up.
Anyway, the Uber drivers – let’s talk about them. I had two, one to get home from the shop and one to go back and pick up the car. The first one and I talked the whole drive. He was very friendly and we talked about everything – but mostly about how over-developed Miami is these days, we reminisced about the old days.
The second driver didn’t say much. I had to force to say something every once in awhile, just to not appear rude in the back seat. It’s funny how people give off such different vibes.
Another thing I noticed is that each takes a different route to get to and from the same place. Even last week when I took Uber back and forth from getting work on the car, I noticed it. I guess their GPS adjusts to traffic patterns now, like Waze does.
In the past, I would tell them how to go, you know, how to take shortcuts; even going to the airport I would do that. But more than once we got stuck in traffic or hit a detour, so I keep my mouth shut now.
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I left my cell phone in an Uber the other day. You can imagine what that’s like.
I had taken the Uber to pick up my car, which was in for service. I had the driver leave me at a supermarket, which is in the same shopping center where the car was being worked on.
Anyway, she left me off across the lot, in front of the supermarket and as soon as I got out, I realized I didn’t have my phone. And there she went, driving off.
Luckily there was traffic in the parking lot and she wasn’t going that fast, but every time I reached the car, she drove on a bit. I kept reaching the back of the car and she kept driving more. I kept calling out, “Wait! Stop!” I’m sure people were looking at me wondering what happened. I’m glad I can run fast.
Finally I managed to run around to the front of the car and stop her and I got the phone. I’m glad I had her drop me on the other side of the shopping center, because if she had dropped me off where the car was, she would have been on the highway and long gone.
It’s scary how much we rely on our cell phones.
A couple of years ago, my cousins, mother and son, dropped me off at the train in Queens, NY so I could get the subway back to the city. As I walked up the steps (it was an El train, at Woodside, Queens), I realized I didn’t have my phone, I had left it in their car.
As I rode back to the city I realized I had no way to reach them, I didn’t know their home or cell numbers. It’s funny how we remembered all the numbers in the past, but these days we don’t need to, unless you lose your phone of course. So as was on my way back to the city, I tried to think of how to reach them. I didn’t know anyone else’s numbers and so I couldn’t call my cousins or aunt or whatever. I thought I would call my parents, I remember their number and then have them call my cousins and arrange something.
You fell so naked without the phone, your who life is on there.
When I got back to the city, realized I could leave a message for my cousins on Facebook. I did that and we arranged for me to pick up the phone the next day – in Hoboken of all places, one of my favorite places. One of my cousins works in Hoboken and I ended up going at lunch time and I got my phone and we had lunch.
I always wonder how people lose their phones, but it’s quite an easy thing to do.
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Every weekend, I have this ritual where I watch this bunch of kids head out in their boat and then return.
What I mean is, at the condo next door, I see a bunch of kids, who look to be about 16-years-old, possibly older, go out in a small boat. They leave in the afternoon and return at sunset, when the sun is at the magic hour. For some reason, I enjoy watching them. I don’t spend much time snooping, I just usually hear a lot of noise – music, people talking, etc. and I look outside and there they are.
I watch them head out and when I hear the music/noise at sunset, I see them coming in.
I think the boat is owned by an older man, because when they return, this silver haired guy goes out and checks the boat, locks it up, and does whatever it is he does. He must be the father or grandfather of one of the kids. I think one of the boys, because I’ve seen the boy alone with the older guy’s dog a few times, so it’s basically his father’s or grandfather’s boat.
That’s one crowded boat.
I love the energy that these kids have and how polite and helpful they are. They help each other on the boat and off the boat and when they return, they help with removing all the stuff, you know, coolers, towels and such.
The strange thing is that there are usually from 15 to 20 people on the small boat. Yes, I counted. The boat looks to be 20 to 24 feet, so I’m not sure how comfortable that is, but most likely they head out to a sandbar or “the flats” and I heard the older man mention Soldier Key one time. So the kids ride out and then spend the time in the water, I guess.
I know, I should mind my own business. But I just love the scene of them going out and coming back. I don’t know why. Maybe it reminds me of my youth. For so many years, I spent it boating or at the beach, I grew up in and around the water – I went to the beach almost daily for years. So maybe I’m remembering my youth. Whatever it is, I get a kick out of seeing them.
When they started this routine, it was the end of the school year, so I thought that this was their last hurrah after school ended, but it went on all summer. They usually go every Saturday and sometimes Sunday, too. Now that it’s September, they are still at it.
It’s about the same number of boys and girls – all friends and really good friends it seems.
I know a few of the people who live in the condo building next door, but not the boat owner, so I am speculating about who all these people are.
One funny thing is that on a weekday – usually a Monday or Tuesday, a lady and man come and clean the boat. I guess it’s full of sand, dirt, footprints and the like, and they spend hours there, cleaning, getting it ready for the next weekend. This photo below is the lady this morning. She’s there early, cleaning it up.
Right on cue, she’s there Monday morning to clean the boat.
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Today’s cartoon over at TomFalco.com is of the Addams Family. I drew this a few years ago, but I keep seeing them in the new Progressive Insurance commercials, so I thought I would dust it off and bring it out. There’s a new Addams Family movie coming out October 1. The cartoon originally had Lurch saying, “You Tweeted?” but I thought texted sounded more personal for the Addams household.
Anyway, notice the walls in the living room? Pink. Why? Because that’s what color they were!
I’ve been seeing this photo below, around the internet for years – it’s by Richard Fish, a well-known photographer at the time. It’s not colorized, this is the original color photo.
I never did find out why the walls were pink and green, but maybe that showed up better on black and white tv at the time and perhaps they thought the tv show would eventually be done in color.
Swipe back and forth and see the difference between color and black and white.
COMPARE – COLOR TO BLACK AND WHITE
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I didn’t think people would get today’s cartoon, but I’ve been living by Jason Chatfield‘s credo – “Don’t curate your art to what gets likes. Curate it to what you like.” So I did and people do get it. At last count, there over 2000 shares on Facebook!
Originally I did this cartoon years ago and it was Watson handing Sherlock a dress, which is called a “shift,” which I remember from my grandmother for some reason, she must have used that word. And he says, “No shift Sherlock,” handing the shift back to Sherlock, and the explanation is, “Watson does not like this week’s disguise.”
But I didn’t think people would understand that “shift” is a dress. According to a blog called Who, What Wear, “A shift dress refers to a short dress that hangs straight down from the shoulders with clean, simple lines.” But who knew except my grandma and me.
There is always one comment left on my cartoons that bothers me. I could have thousands of people like a cartoon, but the one person who makes a negative comment gets to me. But haters gonna hate.
I try not to leave negative comments on any social media posts. I don’t see the need for it. I have a friend who had a friend who used to do food reviews for the NY Times and she told my friend that if she went to a restaurant that she didn’t like, she did nothing. She just didn’t write about them. She felt that there was no point giving press to a place she didn’t like and what was the point of writing that she didn’t like the place.
I tried to live by that. What is the point of ruining someone’s day, usually a total stranger, for no reason at all.
But again, I get tons of nice comments and accolades, but the one person who probably isn’t intelligent enough to get the joke ruins my day.
I am trying to get a thicker skin. I guess any attention is good attention. I noticed years ago when I was written up in a publication during my daily news days, even if the write up was negative, my numbers would go up in readership and social media followers. As the saying goes, “Any news is good news,” or even better, “Say what you want about me, just spell my name right!”
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There’s a new thing where people are keeping their phone ring tones off permanently. They would rather get texts than talk to people on the phone.
I have a weird thing where I don’t answer my business phone line, I do answer my private line. My business line has a message that says text or email me and it seems to work. Although I remember years ago my accountant was doing my taxes and he said that my business was down a lot in the last quarter. He asked me why. I told him it could be because I removed the phone number from my website. And his response was, “Well, you better put it back on there.”
I don’t like speaking to strangers. I cringe at the thought. I have lost many large orders due to that, but that’s they way it is. I’ll go broke before I speak to a stranger, I guess.
I like texts. But there are a couple of texts I have the ringer off for. There is my building text – my condo – where we’re all one long string. That can be very annoying when everyone has to chime in on a text. Like someone will ask, “Did someone see my Amazon delivery?” and rather than just ignore it if you know nothing about it, everyone has to respond, “Not me,” Not me,” Not me,” Not me.” And it goes on. So I leave the ringer off for that. But it is odd when you look down at your phone and see “45 text messages” came in. Then you look and see it’s that nonsense.
Not long ago someone asked via text, “Who called the cops on the car that had the alarm going off?” I didn’t answer, so they assumed it was me. But for the record, I have never in my life called the cops on a neighbor, or on anyone for that matter.
With my family, the texts aren’t that bad, But one friend who we have all known since we are kids is on one of our family texts and when it is someone’s birthday (including Paul McCartney or any of the Beatles), he will send about 20 texts in a row, so fast, I don’t know how he does it. All saying “Happy Birthday” or “Happy Anniversary” or something, with pictures and texts and so many things. For about 10 seconds, the beeping goes on and on with texts coming in from him – so those texts are silenced, too.
But anyway, I remember when we all thought cell phones were so cool, and now we find them annoying. There’s an interesting article from a couple of years ago called, “The hidden stress of cell phones,” and it explains a lot.
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