Author: tomversation

The butcher the baker and the candlestick maker

cyclemessenger

In 1896, Alice Austen traveled around New York City taking photos of everything. Most images were of people working – police, city employees, mailmen, etc.

These were the people who made the city run daily. This is a photo of a bicycle messenger and there are photos of various other workers like a shoe-string peddler and a sponge peddler and a knife sharpener. Could you make a living doing these tings? Remember the scotch tape store that was a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live? It was a store in the mall that just sold scotch tape. That’s it.

The cost of living is so high these days that it makes you wonder how people survived by selling shoe-lace strings. But when most things cost a nickle or less (like wasn’t a newspaper a penny or two?) I guess it was possible.

Alice’s photos were donated to the Library of Congress. There are many shown here at Mashable. Check them out, they are really enjoyable to see.

My experience with ESP

I used to will things, you know, manifest, but not on purpose, I did this way before “The Secret” came out, I would just say or think something and it would happen. Often, not every time.

I also used to have a very good ESP. And this weekend I had a really good one. What I mean is that I was at Starbucks and as the girl was making my drink I noticed my friend Hank sitting outside. He hadn’t come in, he was just sitting at a table. I was thinking to myself, “Oh, there’s Hank, I have to stop by and say hello.”

As I am thinking this, the girl is putting my drink down and she calls out, “Hank?” And knowing that was my coffee, I asked, “Hank?” And she said, “Oh sorry, I mean’t Tom.”

How about that? She read my mind.

In the past more than once at a drive-thru place like Wendy’s or KFC or something I’ve looked at the menu from my car and thought that I would love to have something but changed the order when I got to the window. And when I got the order, it was the original thing I had thought of but never ordered. This has happened maybe four or five times over the years. Interesting, no?

NY Post has the best headlines

The New York Post has two of the best headlines this week.

Today’s paper is about Jeff Bezos being blackmailed by David Pecker.

nypost1
If you haven’t seen the news, Bezos, owner of Amazon and the Washington Post is being blackmailed by David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer. Pecker is threatening to expose Bezo’s pecker, literally, he has naked pictures of him. Story here.

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Yesterday’s cover is a play on the slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers.” The top guys in the state are all in some sort of trouble for either donning black face in their youth or sexual harassment. Story here.

These headlines are right up there with the NY Post’s 1983 headline: “Headless Body Found in Topless Bar.”

The best!

 

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He failed at promoting his comic strip

Sometimes people are their own worst enemies when it comes to promoting their business, especially cartoonists. The interesting thing is that you don’t have to do much in the way of promotion sometimes.

What I mean is I saw a comic strip I liked. The cartoonist posted it as a comment on another cartoonists post on Facebook, asking if the format was a good one or should he changed the strip to another format. I loved the strip he posted, it was funny and I loved the drawing style, so I promptly went to that cartoonist’s Facebook page since the comic strip didn’t have any URL to follow the strip. At the cartoonist’s Facebook page, which was private, there was no way to follow – mistake number one – always have a “follow” button next to the “Add friend” button.

With the follow button, it allows people to follow your public posts and you can keep all of your private posts private. Whenever he posts his comic strip on his Facebook page, it should be public so that everyone can see it.

Mistake number two – there was nothing in the “About” section, the second place I would go to find a link to the comic strip. Nothing.

I’ll post a link to the strip if I ever find it online, but this guy is making it a chore when it should be so easy to follow him and his work.

I wasn’t looking for compliments

snoopy

I saw this Peanuts comic strip over the weekend and I wish I had seen it and copied it a few months back. You see I approached the head of one of the syndicates, the top guy, and I asked him to look at my work. I felt that it was not getting seen because they would reject my stuff so fast, you know, not even having time to look at it.

His response was, “I’ll be glad to look at your work, but I know you’re looking for compliments and that’s not what I’ll do.”

I was sort of dumbstruck and I would have sent this comic strip in response if I had known about it at the time. I was sending him my work for publication, not to get accolades.

Needless to say, he didn’t like my work, he put it down in not so many words and that was that. That’s the day I gave up on syndicates and decided to just go it alone.

I know it’s been a long time coming, but I will be publishing my Tomversation comic strip/panel soon.

Another old NY Herald photo

nyherald

This is Christmas shopping at Herald Square in 1930. Love this photos, as it shows the New York Herald building at the upper right and at left is Macy’s.

Enjoying the Beaux Arts Festival

The Beaux Arts Festival is in town this weekend. Starting in January a whole bunch of art festivals take over the South Florida area. It’s a lot of the same artists that make the circuit and go from show to show, so there is not much new art to see, but it’s fun to be out and for my friends and me it’s a lot about the food.

The Beaux Arts Festival is a yearly event benefit for the Lowe Art Museum on the University of Miami campus. This is

the 67th year.

Dale Messick and Brenda Starr featured at Society of Illustrators gallery

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The Art of Dale Messick – the Brenda Starr cartoonist, will be on display at the Society of Illustrators in NY from January 3 to March 23, 2019.

I won’t be in NY during this period, but would have loved to see the work up close. As a kid, I would read all of the comics in the NY Daily News, including Brenda Starr. I used to like the way it was drawn as well as the stories.

The Society of Illustrators is a small gallery/museum at 128 East 63rd Street, a great place but easy to miss.

The first time I went, I was meeting my cousin there, it was raining and I knew the general area, but couldn’t find the museum. I stood under a red awning to get out of the rain and was looking around the area, wondering, “Where is this place?” only to turn around and realize the awning I was standing under was the awning to the Society of Illustrators entrance!

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Celebrating the King Mango Strut

We have a parade in our little village each year called the King Mango Strut. The last Sunday of each year the town comes out and we parody everything that’s gone on during the year – local things, politics, etc. I write the daily news for our town called the Coconut Grove Grapevine, and nine years ago, the Grapevine was one of the things parodied as the “Gripevine” – since people always felt we were constantly griping about things, here’s a little of that here.

Anyway, here is some of this past Sunday’s 37th annual King Mango Strut.

Trina as RBG with Regina
Trump and another RBG
That’s me on right with friends.
Start of the Strut
Trina and AnnaMaria
We don’t like Rick Scott.

A trip through New England with Weekends With Yankee

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Richard Wiese and Amy Traverso, the hosts.

I wrote about Annabel Langbein as having one of my favorite Saturday morning tv shows but I have another, it’s Weekends With Yankee, a half hour show that takes you through the back roads of New England. Yankee is a magazine and Weekends With Yankee is the tv show.

I usually hit the gym early on weekends – 7 am or so and I grab breakfast on the way home and settle in for these comfortable Saturday morning shows.

I think in another life I lived in New England, because I’m always drawn to it; I feel the same about Arizona and New Mexico, so maybe in a second other life, I lived there.

I’m always considering moving to Southern Connecticut. I like it’s location between New York City and Boston, and I like the small villages along the water on the Long Island Sound.

Anyway, back to Weekends With Yankee; what’s great about the show is there are three or four segments where they go all over New England. One segment may be a visit to a lighthouse, another might be a visit to a small bread factory in a small Vermont town, another might be lobster diving in Maine. You just want to be there as you watch.

It’s homey and informational and I want to be immersed in it all.