One of my favorites. When I drew it last year, the ’20s seemed 100 years ago!
Author: tomversation
Maintaining an institution
The Miami Herald, my daily newspapers, is dropping the Saturday edition this spring, they will only print six days a week.
A few years back, The Times-Picayune in New Orleans dropped a few printed editions during the week, but I think they publish six days a week now. And today I saw a story on tv about the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock’s daily newspaper going digital. It’s been published for 200 years or so and the current publisher Walter Hussma wants to keep it in business. Their new plan – give every paid subscriber an iPad so that they can read the paper online! His goal is just to pay the bills and to keep the institution going, not to make a killing in profits.
“It’s a lot more interactive. We have slide shows. We have video. You know, when the Arkansas River flooded a few weeks ago, we had ten videos on the front page,” said Hussma
When they first talked about going digital, someone asked, “But what if people don’t have an iPad?” So the newspaper invested $12 million in iPads and now every subscriber receives a free one!
These videos explain it all.
Jojo was limping all day; we were worried
So I went to my parents house yesterday for our usual family pizza night, I usually get there early to avoid traffic; I arrived about three hours before most of the others.
As I entered the house, I noticed their dog Jojo was acting weird, he was sort of walking on three legs. One of his front legs was extended out, as if he was avoiding walking on it.
I asked my father, “What happened to him? Did he run into a car again?” A few months ago, Jojo darted out of the house and ran right into a speeding car, luckily he wasn’t hit by the car, but he hit the car. My brother and nephew rushed him to the vet, but he was ok, he just had a hard time getting around for a bit, you know, like he couldn’t jump up on the couch and bed and things like that, but in a few weeks, he was as good as new.
So when I saw his leg extended, I assumed the same had happened. My father told me that he hadn’t run out of the house, he thought he might have hurt himself when jumping off the bed. And that was the explanation. For the rest of the day, he walked sort of limping, on three legs. It started in the morning and extended into the evening.
He had a hard time getting up on the couch, but he did jump up and down and when I held his leg in my hands, he didn’t flinch. I tried to look for a thorn or something in his paw but I didn’t see anything. So this limping went on and he really wasn’t himself, he was very lethargic the whole time. He almost had a pleading look in his eyes, as if to say, “Please help me!” He didn’t seem like he was in pain and I wondered if we should take him to the vet or hospital or something.
When people came to the door, he just remained on the couch, he didn’t run or bark and jump up and down at the door as usual. A bit later I took him for a walk and he seemed better outside. I didn’t force him, I asked him if he wanted to go out and he did. But he never whimpered in pain, he just had a hard time walking.
Anyway, a few hours later the rest of the family started showing up. My sister-in-law Laura took one look at him and called us all “idiots” or something to that effect. She solved Jojo’s leg problem in a second.
He had put his foot/leg through his collar. Picture it – his leg was through his collar around his neck – that is why his leg was extended. I am laughing out loud as I type this. I can’t stop laughing.
When she took his leg out of the collar, he was back to his old self – his old annoying self. All of a sudden he was jumping, running non-stop barking – just going crazy as his usual self.
For the rest of the night we all laughed and felt like morons. Poor Jojo. And stupid me – I literally put the leash on him to walk him and I took the leash off, and I didn’t notice the foot/leg through the collar.
I can still see him in my head hopping around on three feet with his one leg/arm/foot extended in the air. Even when he was lying on the couch next to me, he had his one leg extended, maybe trying to tell me something and I just thought he was babying the injured leg, which ended up not being injured at all. I can still see him looking at me, which I thought was in pain, but he had his leg extended and that look was saying, “Can you please release my leg?”
I’m still wondering how he managed to get his leg through the collar.
Another December, another Miami Art Week
Another Art Basel/Art Miami behind us, well almost, Sunday is the last day of the yearly event. It’s a thing called Miami Art Week where art is all over the city and tourists pour out of the woodwork.
The big thing this year was the $120,000 banana. Surely a publicity gimmick, but supposedly some artists sold a banana that was duct taped to the wall for that amount. It was the talk of the city, at our usual Friday night family night, everyone knew about it. I looked for it at the shows, but it got eaten by the time we arrived!
The one interesting and sad thing is that a couple of the Art Shows – Art Miami and Context are on the former site of The Miami Herald. The Herald moved out to western Miami-Dade County a few years ago and the site is now empty. So they put down pavement platforms and huge tents, larger than football fields, and the art shows go on once a year.
The view out back is spectacular because as was the case years ago, newspapers and factories and such were on the water for easy access by water and they occupied prime land. Now that land is open and spectacular and the Herald is on the other side of the airport somewhere. Long Island City, Queens and Brooklyn New York are like this, the old waterfront which was occupied by factories and such are now open to parks, restaurants and expensive condos. Society is reclaiming the waterfront, which was a dark, spooky place for so many years.
Missing the holidays in small town America
I had to come home to Miami from NYC a few days early, due to a Nor’easter or something similar coming this weekend. I left early Saturday morning and the storm is coming Sunday and Monday and possibly Tuesday. I had planned to come home Monday morning, which is no big deal except for the fact that I am going to miss the Christmas parade and event this year in Southampton. I have many pictures here from last year.
It’s such a great event, I looked forward to it for months. I drive out there from the city with some of my cousins and we make a nice day of it – eating, shopping, the Christmas parade, the tree lighting and fireworks, all in small town America!
I was lucky to be able to change my flight so easily. I had choices, too, so I wasn’t stuck with some awful flight. I got an early 8:00 am flight and by noon I was at Publix, home in Miami, food shopping!
One funny thing is that my aunt told me she understood that I was leaving early and hated to see me go, but snow can be scary. I think she thinks I’m scared of snow. First off, it’s a storm, where the weather lady on tv said don’t leave the house all day Sunday, and secondly, and mainly, ever see that chaos at the airports where flights are canceled and people are waiting around for hours, sometimes days, for a flight home? That’s what I wanted to avoid. And I did. Glad to be home, but I miss NY.
MOMA Mia
Went to one of my favorite places the other day – MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. They recently completed a $450 million renovation. I keep telling people it was $40 million, but it was $450 million. I of course, couldn’t see the whole thing, but I did make sure I saw Starry Night, my favorite. I searched and searched and it took me awhile, but I found it. Right there, all blue and beautiful like always.
The guards are quite scary, they look you up and down as if you are going to do something, they just pop out of nowhere and inspect you with their beady eyes. To be fair. there are many tourists during holiday weeks and probably more people are attending the museum than at quieter times of the year.
A perfect day in Central Park
We spent yesterday in Central Park and it was perfect – 60 degrees and sunny, you almost didn’t need a jacket.
After a little searching, I came across my favorite piece of 1887 graffiti. It’s above the Bethesda Fountain, up the big flight of steps. I’m sort of hesitant to share it but I know you guys will protect it. As you can see here, a few jerks put graffiti near it and almost toughing it. It’s almost 133 years old, you can’t have anything nice. That “L” or whatever it is to the left is not part of the original 1887 thing and neither is the PJE below it.
Stop and smell the art
It rained on Sunday, so I went to the MET Museum in New York, I mean I would have gone anyway, but usually I go the day after Thanksgiving as a tradition. And this time I did something different. I didn’t take pictures, or many pictures. I did post a few on Facebook, but then after a bit I put my phone/camera down and enjoyed the experience, which is something we don’t do these days.
No matter where we are, we are looking through the camera and not enjoying the actual experience. At the museum, at concerts, at a party at a ball game at a parade – everywhere, we are not enjoying the experience, we are missing it by trying to get the best photos.
There was a time at museums and concerts, where you were not permitted to take photos. Now they are permitted to do that, I guess they can’t control it anymore; and at concerts, videos are allowed, but for some reason they don’t like that at museums. They’ll allow snap shots but not videos. I got yelled at this past summer for taking videos at the MET.
Anyway, I put my camera away and enjoyed the experience and it was quite enjoyable. I was tempted to take the camera out when I saw others buried in their phones among the most magnificent art in the world – the Masters and ancient Egyptian and Chinese antiquities. I’m not sure what was so important on their phones, but Egypt and Matisse and Van Gogh and the rest were not as interesting, I guess.
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‘Ziggy’ installation at Flatiron District
I’m in NYC this week for Thanksgiving. I managed to get 30 Hal and High Water comic strips done before I left Miami. I submitted all 30 to the four major syndicates. Now I can enjoy NY.
This is a new installation at the Flatiron District, it’s right below the Flatiron Building which was hard to show in pictures because it’s all dark and scaffolded, they’re doing some sort of work on it.
But that intersection where 5th Avenue and Broadway meets is all lit up like this.
It’s the winner of the sixth annual “Flatiron Public Plaza Holiday Design Competition,” called “Ziggy,” created by New York-based architecture, art, and design studio Hou de Sousa. You can walk through it and interact. And since the Flatiron building is dark these days, it gives tourists something to focus on in that area.
Fall in Central Park
I have been busy, pumping out Hal and High Water strips. I’m almost ready to send them in to the syndicate. I’m going to NY at the end of the week for Thanksgiving week, so I hope to have the strips submitted by then.
I found this photo from last year. It’s the Bow Bridge in Central Park. You can’t see him him very well, but at the very end of the bridge is a guy playing an instrument. He’s all in black, see him just before you enter the bridge? I think it was a flute or a saxophone, I can’t remember. What I do remember is that I was trying to take a short video of him to put on Instagram and he kept turning his back to me. At first I thought it was coincidence, but then I realized, he didn’t want to be taped.
I usually tip these street/park musicians, especially when I take pictures or tape them, but I didn’t in this instance. So I never got him playing, but you can imagine being on the other side of the bridge and hearing his music in the distance, which brings me to this next photo.
This is incredible; the photo, but the experience.
It was November 2015. I was in Central Park and saw this view in front of me. Amazing. As I sat there on a park bench, I heard Adele singing “Hello” faintly in the distance. It almost sounded like angels! I looked around and didn’t see anyone. “Hello” was released a month before, in October 2015, so it was played all over. So to hear it in the park was strange, but not so strange, but the strange part was hearing it in the distance on a cool Autumn day, with this beautiful scene before me, with no other people around.
After I took the picture and was leaving, as I turned a bend on the path, there was a hot dog vendor with his radio blaring “Hello.” That’s where it was coming from, wafting through the park. Sort of disappointing at that moment, knowing where Adele was coming from!
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