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Where everybody knows my name

I was at the Starbucks in our village the other day with a few friends. I hadn’t been there in a while. It was strange to see that they are promoting Pumpkin Spice Lattes already – it’s still summer, isn’t it?

When I’m in NYC I am in and out of all the Starbucks around the city all day, especially in the summer, getting cold brew coffee. There aren’t as many Starbucks in the city as there used to be, but still, they are all over.

I remember years ago, there literally were four Starbucks on certain intersections in NYC. I mean at a busy intersection, there would be one Starbucks on every corner, so you didn’t have to cross the street to get coffee. Obnoxious, I know. But it’s not like that now.

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What I do like is that they seem to know you at the Starbucks if you go often enough. Even in NYC where I don’t live, when I order at certain locations, they don’t call my name when the order is ready – they just hand it to me, knowing who I am, which is nice.

At my local Starbucks, at home, everyone knows everyone, so that’s very nice.

I usually order using the phone app, it makes it very fast and easy. A few years ago, I was in our village and I ordered a hot coffee on the app. As I was walking, I ran into someone I knew. We talked for a bit, possibly 20 minutes to half an hour. We parted, and I went across the street to pick up the coffee.

To my surprise, the coffee was still hot. I asked them how the coffee stayed hot for so long. The girl behind the counter said, I saw you talking across the street so I held off making the coffee until I saw you start walking over. I was thinking to myself,” she said , “Is he ever going to cross over?”

I thought that was so great and thoughtful. And no, I don’t order Pumpkin Spice Latte’s there. I don’t like the taste.

I know we should be using mom and pop local places but for some reason, Starbucks has this homey feel when they know who you are and treat you well. No, this isn’t a commercial for them.

The pocket telephone

This cartoon is from 1919 – 106 years ago. It’s about “pocket telephones,” which of course were not a thing back then. Regular landline telephones were barely a thing, so it’s amazing that cartoonist W.K. Haselden came up with this concept.

And the thing is, all of these scenarios have happened to us at one time or other with cell phones today. So Haselden was really predicting the future.

When cell phones first became popular, I used to think of what a Seinfeld episode would be like with cell phones, you know, how would it fit into the show. I’m not sure why I thought of Seinfeld, because it could be interesting with any show from the past.

I pictured the characters in a store or something and a bunch of phones would ring at the same time and everyone would grab their phones and hilarity would ensue.

These days, most people text. I gave up answering my business phone years ago, which sounds strange, but I own an online business and most of the questions people ask need to be in writing – quotes, things like that. So I don’t answer the phone, I have a message that says, please email us at this address . . . “

A couple of people in my life, one of my cousins and one of my sisters-in-law will call me if I text them. I can text either one of them, “What time is the party on Saturday,” and they’ll call me back, rather than text me the time. So whenever I am going to text them, I make sure I am available to take their phone call which invariably is two seconds after I send the text.

When I text, I usually do it with one or two words. I’m quite famous for my, “OK.” For instance I’ll get a text telling me to meet so-and-so at 1 pm, I respond, “OK.” Or I get a text telling me not to forget the milk, and I’ll respond, “OK.” People didn’t like the one word answers, but they are used to it by now.

One of my brothers texts back “Okay” for “OK.” I asked him why he fully spelled it out. He said it’s because it just auto fills that in as he is typing.

I’m on a lot of text chains with family, friends, my condo neighbors, etc. Some of them are on silent, because once a text starts, it goes on and on and the beeping alerting me of next texts is non-stop.

At our building, someone will text, “I’m looking for my Amazon package, has anyone seen it?” And you get a dozen, “not me,” “not me,” “not me.” People feel the need to respond.

One friend sends out about 20 or more photos at a time. If it’s someone’s birthday or the Miami Dolphins scores or something to do with The Beatles, who he loves, he sends out images and text by the dozens. I have that alert sound off, so when I look at the phone and see 40 new text messages, it alarming, no pun intended, until I see it’s him sending us 20 Paul McCartney photos on Paul’s birthday, and the other 20 messages are from people responding.

I left my house without my phone one time. I felt totally naked and lost, but after a while, it turned out to be one of the most peaceful days I had in a long time. It’s hard to remember back to a time before we had cell phones.

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I’ll do it every time

I saw this old comic strip recently, it’s “They’ll Do It Every Time.” It’s from the 1940s.

This reminded me of me because I never wanted to go anywhere – to weddings, parties, communions, whatever, and my mother would always say to me, “You always say you don’t want to go, and then you’re the last one to leave.” And she was right, I did it every time.

I remember a few years back I was at a Chamber of Commerce event and at the end, I was sitting at a table with three other people, and as we were talking the restaurant staff was taking the table cloth off the table, telling us they needed to get ready for the dinner service, so we were basically pushed out.

One of the people with us was a friend named Robert, who is no longer with us, he was a nice guy. As we exited the building, I can remember him looking down at my shoes and saying, “Nice set of wheels!” Which I guess meant he liked the shoes. I had never heard that expression before, but it always stayed with me.

“They’ll Do It Every Time,” the comic panel is one of the ones I enjoyed as a kid. I was surprised to read recently that it ran new until 2008; it started in 1929.

I also liked “Hazel,” and “Our Boarding House” and so many single panel cartoons, which is why I probably do my Tomversation single panel cartoon today.

I see also old “Our Boarding House” cartoons posted daily on Facebook and I often watch the old Hazel tv show reruns.

While the cartoon above is not single panel, most of the time “They’ll Do It Every Time” was single panel.

I like the fact that single panel cartoons have to happen in that one panel. Of course, “The Far Side” was the best when I was growing up. I loved seeing that in the newspaper every day.

While I don’t have to be limited to a single panel or a single size since I’m publishing online and I could fill up a whole page with multi-panels if I wanted, I do enjoy having the one size – 5″ x 5″ where I have to fit it all in.

Once in awhile I do break it up, as I did with this one last week, but it’s very rarely that that happens. I like to keep it in the one panel.

There are many single panel cartoons that I don’t like, simply because I don’t enjoy them, so it’s not that every single one is enjoyable to me. But the format is what attracts me to it.

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So many things can wait

I saw this video by Bethenny Frankel online somewhere. She keeps popping up on my social media apps and she is engaging at times. She eats a lot of strange and new things and reviews them in real time, which I find interesting. But the other day she was talking about how we get cheated out of summers – especially kids. An interesting thing to think about as summer winds down.

Bethenny who calls it a “summer disruption,” was saying that schools, camps, clubs and sports chip into summer months and kids have to practice for these things – mostly football team, baseball, band, cheerleading, etc.

“As soon as summer starts, you’re planning for the summer to end,” says Bethenny. Her reel about all this is here.

And this affects the whole family – people have to shuttle the kids and cancel vacations and things like that.

I used to own a company that printed school newspapers. I remember many times the school wanted that year’s first newspaper out on the first day of school, so it had to be prepared and done during part of the summer. The kids had to get the stories, write the stories and put the newspaper together.

I had to meet with them, discuss the project and have the job printed and delivered, so it affected me, too. I canceled so many Thanksgiving trips due to this, too, but that’s another story.

To be honest, I needed the money and since there wasn’t much business in the summer, I appreciated the jobs coming in, even in the summer, but still, what if I wanted to travel and go away for that part of the summer? I couldn’t, and neither could the teacher (the newspaper sponsor), the kids and their families. We were all being cheated out of part of the short summer which was being chipped away.

It’s just something to think about. So many things can wait – including the school newspaper on the first day of school.

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Ancient Roman baths

Before I get to the gist of this post, I’d like to say I combined my daily cartoon emails with this blog email. In other words, if you subscribed to my daily cartoon, you will receive it along with my newsletter and if you subscribed to my newsletter, you will receive my cartoons.

But wait – they won’t be combined in one email and they won’t be daily.

The cartoons which went out daily, will now come once a week as five cartoons on a Friday – rather than one email a day with one single cartoon. If you would like to see the cartoons as they are published daily, you can do that online here:
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You can subscribe free to my Tomversation blog/cartoon list here if you are on neither and now will be on both, which is now one. Hope that all makes sense: https://tomversation.substack.com/

And now for today’s blog post:

I get ideas for cartoons from all over the place. I’ll hear something or read something and just sort of twist it around in my head.

Saturday night I was watching this tv show called Pompeii, the new dig. It was on PBS Passport, if you get that, you should check the show out. I’ve seen it on YouTube, too. I actually watched the first episode twice! There are four episodes.

This Roman (Pompeii) bath was being discussed, they were digging it out from a large private home, and the narrator said, “The baths were about making contacts and being seen.” And today’s Tomversation cartoon wrote itself!

I ran to my office to jot that down to remember to draw it up the next day.

Another cartoon I toyed with, but probably won’t do is a woman walking into a room in ancient Rome, and her earrings are clicking, announcing her arrival, and someone making a funny remark about that.

Gold and pearl earrings from AD 79, Pompeii

The idea wrote itself because on the same Pompeii episode, they showed a pair of gold earrings found with two pearls hanging from each earring. And they explained how the pearls clicked as the elite Roman women walked, making a specific sound, which “announced” their arrival when they showed up at various places. It was the “Gilded Age” thing to do at that time.

These earrings were called, “Crotalia.”

They found this pair of earrings in a box being held by a victim who passed away from the Mt. Vesuvius volcano. The earrings were in a box being held by the woman, all stopped in time, almost 2000 years ago.

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The best of summer

The Lake House was the best part of the whole trip. A dream realized.

I haven’t been writing here because it’s been a slow second half of the summer. I’m grateful for that.

Was all over New York State from late June into July – flew into Albany, then ended up at a wedding in Hudson, NY; was at a lake house across the Hudson River in Athens (on Tommy Trail!), which my brother obtained through Airbnb, then we all drove down to NYC and spent time in The Hamptons, too. Sort of a letter “L” shape for the early summer.

I felt sick at the wedding, not sure why, I think it was the heat – it was brutal from upstate all the way to the Hamptons – hot and humid.

One of my cousins feels that I was making it up because I didn’t want to be there – at the wedding – which makes no sense. I took two planes to get there, took an hour Uber ride to the house from the Albany airport, sent in two RSVPs (paper and online), made a special trip to get a gift card at Macy’s before I left home, had to lose a couple of pounds to fit into my suit pants, which was a joke with my friends and me for a month or so until I actually fit into the pants.

I bought a train ticket down to the city – arranged to be in the lake house with my family, originally I was going to get a hotel room and at the wedding, I did not touch any food or drink, until the end of the night when I had some ice cream, because who can pass u a big set-up of desserts anchored by a bar of ice cream sundaes?

I never ended up taking the train down the city, because I drove down with another couple of cousins, so that worked out well.

The wedding ceremony upstate in Hudson, was on the Hudson River and then across the street at the Basilica, an old factory that is an event venue now. I do regret not spending time on the river – I didn’t notice, but I am sure some of the guests grabbed a drink and took it across to the river and spent time there, where it looked like they had docks and boats – right there on the Hudson. Something I love.

I thought the Basilica was an old train station/depot, but I read that it was a factory in the late 1800s. Either way, a very impressive structure.

Just that should prove I was sick, for me to miss the Hudson River, which is right out my window, is a non-starter. That’s one of my favorite places.

Seeing Madame X, almost seeing Manhattanhenge (it was a bit cloudy), Mister Softee, MOMA, Brooklyn adventures and so much more. We did a lot.

Now I’m home, where it’s quiet – easing into autumn, which is my favorite season – where we will visit the Hudson Valley again, for pumpkin and apple picking! And ComicCon, can’t forget NY ComicCon!

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The cop’s hand signal

I felt old the other day when I had an interaction with a police officer.

Our streets had been blocked off due to construction in one area, so there were cops directing traffic on certain intersections.

I came up to one intersection, a block from where I live. It was a full stop, and the cop directing traffic looked at me and made some hand signals. It was sort of like a dog pawing at you with both paws, you know, “Paws up,” Lady Gaga style.

I thought he was signaling me to slow down, but I wasn’t moving. Then I realized, he was signaling me to put down the window so he could speak to me.

I was a bit taken aback, since the signal I would have given is the winding motion or cranking motion signal, like winding down the window – which isn’t a thing anymore and hasn’t been for a long time. But people, including me, still use that motion for opening a car window.

Strange and funny.

The cop wanted to ask me where I was going, that’s why he wanted me to lower the window.

I didn’t think about it until later, but that was a funny way of indicating me to lower the window. I guess that’s how it’s done now.

The good news is that the work on the streets was to take two weeks to complete, but the city got it done in four days! Unheard of – the City of Miami Water & Sewer Department got the job done in less than half the time. So no more cops, street closures or hand signals.

Impressive!

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He’s in Iceland, the island

I had to get in touch with one of our neighbors. I saw our maintenance man, Rick (not real name) who really is clueless about so many things, but of course knows all of our business around the building, and I asked him if Gary (not real name), my neighbor, was home.

Rick, the maintenance man, said that Gary may not be home. He noticed Gary’s boat was gone from it’s dock out back. I told him the boat was gone for awhile, it may be out getting work done or something, so I texted Gary, asking if he was home. He texted back and said he was in Iceland. “Iceland?” I responded. “Yes,” he replied.

I told Rick that Gary was in Iceland of all places and Rick responded, “See, I told you the boat was gone.”

I replied, “You think he took that small 15 foot boat to Iceland? Iceland is way up in the North Atlantic, almost in Europe!”

Rick laughed and thought I said, “He was on an island.” Miami is surrounded by islands, but if he was on an island, I wouldn’t say, “He’s in Island.” I would say something like, “He’s on Key Biscayne.” Or, “He’s on Eliot Key,” or “He’s in Key Largo,” etc.

We both laughed, but I found it odd that Rick would think I said, “He’s on Island,” rather than “He’s on an island,” which is almost equally as odd since that’s not an expression I would use.

Either way, maybe we are both right, because Iceland is an Island.

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Here’s my biz idea for the summer

It’s melted, but that’s my Mister Softee in NYC.

I was at a wedding in Hudson, NY earlier this month. Hudson is a beautiful villgae upstate in the Hudson Valley. My brother Chris got us all a beautiful lake house which was fantastic, but I digress.

I’m here to talk about a business idea. I keep seeing pop-up vidoes online about how to make money and different businesses to start – most are online digital things, but in this case, I have a business on wheels idea, which is perfect for upstate New York – it’s a Mister Softee truck! That’ s me above with my melted Mister Softee in NYC earlier this month, I did a story on the 10 With Tom shirt here.

You see, at the wedding, there was a big ice cream table where you made your own ice cream sundaes, and I joked with the lady behind the counter that I would like a large pile of ice cream, “sort of like Mister Softee.” The lady frowned and said they didn’t have Mister Softee in upstate New York.

I was surprised since it’s all over the New York City and New Jersey area, including Long Island, and I know there are many Mister Softee trucks in New England, which is just a stone’s throw from Upstate New York. And I’ve heard they are in 18 states, even parts of Florida.

So the thing is, if you are looking to start a business and have the franchise fees – Mister Softee is it – in Upstate New York! Mind you, it’s a summer and spring biz, so the rest of the year you can be shoveling snow or something as a business but perhaps you can sell Mister Softee in the summer months, which is sorely needed.

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Exploring Madame X: John Singer Sargent’s iconic portrait

My cousin Michael took me to the John Singer Sargent exhibit at the MET museum last week. I had never seen so much of his work in one place before. Of course the center piece were all of the drawings and paintings of the famous Madame X, dead center was his most famous painting of all.

Madame Pierre Gautreau known as Madame X in John Singer Sargent’s painting from 1884 was born in Louisiana as Virginie Amelie Avegno. She moved to Paris and was part of society there.

John Singer Sargent in his studio with the famous painting.

Sargent wanted to do something to enhance his name and he asked the celebrity at the time to sit for him, it was unpaid and not a commission.

The original painting had Madame X with one of the dress straps falling off, which caused a lot of ridicule in Paris at the time. Sargent painted the strap on but still, it was the talk of the town. It became his most famous piece of work and he painted and drew Madame X many times over the years.

Originally controversial due to its provocative pose and the fallen strap (later repainted), Madame X marked a turning point in Sargent’s career, showcasing his masterful technique and flair for drama. Virginie herself was a trendsetter in Parisian society.

Emile Hervet, wrote in La Patrie newspaper in 1884, “We regret to say that Mr. Sargent has produced the worst, most ridiculous, and most insulting portrait of the year.”

Sargent eventually sold the painting to the MET himself and it’s had a home there ever since.

If you watch the HBO series, “The Guilded Age,” you would have seen John Singer Sargent in the final scene of one episode. He painted Gladys Russell, who is supposed to be Consuelo Vanderbilt.