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If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry

So things have been sucky around here lately. I didn’t have a/c for three weeks and finally got a brand new system, but now there is an unrelated leak. There’s been leaks in this building since the day I moved in. And now there is another.

I saw this comic on Instagram Saturday night and could not stop laughing. We have a neighbor’s text where the whole building is part of it, so I texted it to everyone. And it got a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, it is so true around here. When there’s a problem, it seems as if you are on your own.

Recently, one of my rooms was flooded out and it’s still damp. I think it’s from the roof, but who knows and around here, who cares. I always liken our condo building to Anna Madrigal’s boarding house from Tales of the City.

One of my leaks years ago was water coming out of the light fixture! When it rained hard, water poured out. The only saving grace was that it was directly over the bathtub! True story!

The other leaks were not so fortunate.

This current leak now is in a spare room that I use for storage, so I didn’t notice it right away. We think it is from the room again, but not sure. I had a leak detector out and there is another one coming next week.

I ended up tearing the carpet out myself, so now it’s just a cement floor where it’s a bit easier to control the leaking as it builds up slowly. I had a guy coming over, a handyman I use, but he was unable to make it, so I did it myself. One of my neighbors offered to help, but I just cut up the carpet myself, doing small pieces one at a time. When I finished I got a text from the handyman who said he was on his way! Too late!

Anyway, the comic above is “Manchild Manor” at ManchildManor.com. The comics are so funny there, check them out!

‘Are you a cartoonist?’

I had flooding here. Yup, another thing gone wrong in 2020. Anyway, two insurance adjusters came over and they were looking all over the place.

One asked me, “Are you a cartoonist?” I smile and said proudly, “Yes I am!” and I gave him my card.

Isn’t that cool? I guess he saw things around my office which made him guess right.

When his partner’s phone rang, it played The Jetsons theme. The Universe sent me two perfect insurance adjusters.

It’s all about communication

When I look at today’s comic, it reminds me of a few years back, maybe 15 years ago. I have an online business that can be operated anywhere. But 15 years ago, even though it is the same business, which can be operated anywhere, I still felt tied to the office/home.

I had a neighbor, an attorney, who spent her time between New Hampshire and Miami and she told me, “It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you pick up the phone!”

And I always remembered that and it made my life so much easier. She said, “You can be lying on the beach, and I don’t think the client cares, as long as you answer the phone!”

Ironically, I’ve never been a phone person and I avoid answering the phone, I prefer email, which has suited my business very well. But I do answer the emails quickly, especially since I have my phone on me 24/7, but even back then, before iphones, I answered emails quickly.

It’s all about communication. Even from the beach.

The affogato cartoon

Today’s cartoon may be a flop. Not sure. If you don’t know what an affogato is, it makes no sense. I think I only learned about an affogato a few years ago at a local gelato shop. I loved them and had them often.

I just laugh when I see this one. You either know or you don’t.

An affogato is gelato with espresso poured over it. I usually would get chocolate gelato with this. You get them separately usually and you pour the espresso over the gelato yourself. Try it. The mix between the cold and the hot and the espresso and the gelato is so great.

Fall is here

So Fall is here! I’m going to miss the cold weather this year. I am usually in NY in October and November. In October, I go for Comic Con, which is postponed this year. Picture it – Comic Con and the fall leaves and cool crisp weather. Although I can remember a year or two ago when it hit 80 degrees in NYC in October.

But New York is full of Batman and Superman and all sorts of Cosplay people. It’s like a precursor to Halloween earlier in the month. Mix that with the cool air and turning leaves and it’s the perfect time of year. And then a month later I head back for Thanksgiving with my family. This year I was going to do one of my usual things – spend a few days in Boston and then take the train down to NY later in the week.

That fall trip by train through New England is pure pleasure. I wrote about one trip one time, which was more about inside the train than the actual views outside. I overheard two older ladies talking behind me the whole way and it was pure delight, you can read it here: “A delightful train ride.”

Last October my cousins and I went to the Hudson Valley and we picked pumpkins and apples. One of my all time favorite days. You know when certain things in life stick in your mind forever? Well that day is one of them.

There’s always next year.

The system is down

So I think I jinxed myself for doing that thermostat comic because the a/c had not been working for days. The guys that came out to clean the coils, screwed up everything. They came back a number of times, but still it would not perform correctly.

I did manage to get another company to come out Friday and they said the compressor was broken (which wasn’t like that before the other company got their hands on it). So now I need a brand new a/c, which I was expecting for years since it’s an old unit.

And it’s odd, but on Friday morning I woke up to no cable tv. I checked online and saw that the neighborhood was out. I called ATT Unverse just to get an ETA on the repairs. I guess when you are self isolating, tv is important.

But rather than tell me it was the neighborhood, some lady told me it was only my house that was down. She had me jumping through hoops for over an hour – turning the system off, rebooting, going through every tv in the house, disconnecting wires. She almost had me take one tv off the wall but refused.

She said she was going to send new dvr/cable boxes out, which would take a week. I asked her to send a cable guy out instead, she said they couldn’t do that. I said, “I pay you $500 a month for cable and phone service and you won’t send a repair guy here?” I asked her if she had ATT Uverse, which is out every other day, she said no. NO!

The other night I was watching something on the ID channel and just as they said, “The murderer is . . .” the tv went dead. Another time I was also watching a home make-over show and just as the reveal was coming on at the end, the tv went out! I just gave up and went to bed.

This reminds me of my old internet company – Earthlink. They used to host my business website. When the site went down, 99% of the time it was due to their servers being down. Which is fine, as long as it wasn’t me doing something wrong. But I would call up to check to be sure, and you know what? they never admitted it was the servers until making me jump through hoops first.

The first thing was always, “Do you have the site backed up? I am going to remove all 300 pages!” I would always yell, “NO!” Don’t do that.” They would have me then doing all sorts of things, rather than just say, “Yes, the servers are down, they’ll be back up soon.”

And we pay these companies all this money to jerk us around.

The thermostat

So you can probably guess where I got the idea of today’s comic if you’ve been reading this blog. I wrote about not having a/c a couple of weeks ago and that one of the culprits was the thermostat!

It’s one of those gags that makes you think. I like that in a comic sometimes, you know, it may go over some heads and not everyone may get it, which is ok, in that case it becomes an inside joke.

But for those who still don’t get it. It’s a thermos tattoo “thermos tat”, which is a “tat” these days. That’s what people call tattoos – tats.

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NCSFest

On Saturday I watched the NCSFest all day. It was a a cartooning festival put on by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation. It was storming outside, so it was a perfect day to stay inside. You can see over nine hours of the fest here on YouTube, watch the whole thing or pick and choose by scrolling through. The schedule is here so you can see what comes on when.

The main seminar/talk I was interested in was The Superstars of Instagram, I wanted to see how they work and mainly how they get so many followers. The Awkward Yeti, for instance has 1.8 million followers! I interviewed Nick Seluk, The Awkward Yeti cartoonist once, you can see that here.

I also liked the talk on Creating a Successful Online Cartooning Business.

There was a lot of good stuff. Jim Davis, the Garfield cartoonist spoke from his studio and so did cartoonists explaining their process from doing comic strips and panels to creating books.

In between, the yearly Reuben Awards, which are the Oscars for cartoons/cartooning, were announced. The ceremony and events were canceled this year due to the pandemic. Awards are given or best newspaper comic strip of the year, best comic panel, best greeting card comic, best online comic strip, etc. The Daily Cartoonist has a list of winners here. There is then the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year, which went to Lynda Barry.

I love this photo of Lynda, a real artist. The desk looks so comfortable, like you can just sit down and create. I am messy, but since I do all my work digitally on a Surface Pro, it isn’t strewn with all these wonderful tools and inks and pens and such. I literally have to turn on the computer and wait for it to set up. I can’t just get comfy and into it like Lynda here.

Garry Trudeau says that cartooning is like a public utility – you just expect it to be there when you want it.

It’s all about the hat

Yesterday I published a cartoon about a fishing trip. At the last minute I changed the hat color. I liked the red, but then I thought that has a connotation now and I didn’t want it to become political. I like the look of the red better than the blue hat in the cartoon, but the blue hat is generic, the red, not so much.

Slide the arrow back and forth on the image above to see the two colored hats.

It’s interesting. Talk about branding. Just the color of the hat brings out such strong emotions.

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