tomversation

The Cafe

In a previous post, I was mentioning that Babu cafe episode of Seinfeld, which is called The Cafe. What’s interesting is that I was at an Indian restaurant with a friend maybe 10 years ago in New York City and it reminded me very much of Babu’s cafe. They had just opened and the place was sparce. They didn’t have their liquor license so the owner, as he was waiting on us himself, said we could run around the corner and buy a bottle of wine at the liquor store and bring it back. I don’t think we did that. But the place reminded me so of much of that Seinfeld episode. In life, a lot of things remind me of Seinfeld episodes.

I’m happy to say, all these years later, that the Indian restaurant is still there in Greenwich Village, and flourishing.

Another reason I liked The Cafe mention is that I love a British sitcom, a Britcom, called The Cafe, which I watch on one of our local PBS stations.

Like so many British tv shows, there are only a few episodes over two seasons, only 13, which is sad because the show is so great. Another sad thing is that there must be commercials on these because you don’t see the commercials on PBS which makes the show only about 20 minutes long. So you get into it and it’s over!

But it’s so charming and sweet and quirky. It’s about this cafe called Cyril’s, on the ocean in Weston-super-Mare, which is in on the Bristol Channel. It’s a real cafe in a sort of octagon shape, that was built just for the show and plopped right on the boardwalk in that area.

The scenery and place is as much a character as are the characters. A mother runs the cafe with her daughter and her mother (the grandmother) sits around and makes wisecracks, and the characters from the town are in and out.

The writing is so great. The mother says, “Talk of the Devil,” every time someone comes in, even though she wasn’t talking to them. When people leave, they all say, “Laterz!” And when people first see each other, there is a around of “All right?” They all say one at a time, “All right?” “All right?” “All right?” It’s really charming.

Check it out on YouTube here.

Awkward lunch

There’s this new restaurant in the neighborhood, it’s a casual place. You walk up to the counter and order and they bring it to your table. It’s a sort of Asian bowl place, but you can get many things there, they have a large menu.

Well, it’s always empty. I’m usually the only one there when I stop in for lunch. There are maybe four or five employees behind the counter and some preparing the food in the kitchen and my $12 lunch probably doesn’t cover one of their salaries for the day.

babu

They have a few locations in Miami and I don’t know if they are a large chain around the county or just have the few locations here. The food is great at a great price, but no one is going. I’ve told so many people about it, too.

It used to be a Quizno’s and that place was always full, so it’s not about the location.

It reminds me of that Babu, cafe episode of Seinfeld.

As you enter, before you are even in the door, they are greeting you from the front counter, I guess they are so happy to see a person arrive. Then when your food is being prepared, you don’t know where to look, they all just stand and stare at you and when you look at them, they smile. Very weird.

I do hope they make it. I like the food very much and it’s a great place for lunch.

Black t-shirt insecurities

tom-falco I normally dress in a t-shirt and jeans, unless I’m going to a meeting or wedding or something a bit fancier than just every day stuff.

And that is how I want to dress daily – black t-shirt and jeans. Didn’t Steve Jobs dress like that? I think he did it because it was easy to just wear the same thing and not think about what you wear, although when you wear jeans and a t-shirt every day like I do, there really isn’t much to think about – green, red, black?

I like the black.

The only reason I don’t do it is because I don’t want people thinking I’m wearing the same shirt every day, even though I have so many black t-shirts and they are fresh when I put them on. I’m not sure why I care, all they have to do is sniff me to see the shirt is clean.

I literally have my finger on an Amazon order now, ready to hit “send” for a package of black t-shirts, but the thought of being seen as dirty is stopping me. The ironic part is that I wash my hands 20 times a day. I’m not neurotic, it isn’t that. I just do it when I enter the house or when I throw out the trash or before I eat, you know, things like that.

I do love my Batman/Starry Night shirt, so I’ll wear that once in awhile and I have plenty of other t-shirts that I like. When I go out to dinner or meetings, etc., I wear a dress shirt. But I like the black t-shirt and jeans look as my every day uniform. What do you think?

It’s funny, after I wrote this post I came upon this story on the CBS website called, “Should you wear a work uniform?” referring to wearing the same thing every day. It’s a growing trend where people voluntarily wear the same thing every day! The lady in the CBS piece says she was exhausted every day trying to figure out what to wear, I don’t feel like that I just feel like wearing the same thing because I like the look. No other reason.

Going into Town with Roz Chast

roz2 I finally got around to reading the “Going Into Town” book by cartoonist Roz Chast. My cousin had handed it to me one day in November, she said she thought of me when she saw it so she bought it. She knows I love New York and cartooning and this book is perfect for both.

She asked me if I had ever heard of Roz Chast and I had to laugh because I found one of my favorite museums in New York because of Roz Chast. A few years ago, The Museum of the City of New York had an exhibit featuring Roz Chast’s work. There was a lot of original cartoon art from her New Yorker magazine work and so much more.

I had never been to that museum so I took the subway up to 103 Street and fell in love with the area. It’s sort of a Latin neighborhood with bodegas and lots of people and activity and then you walk over to the 5th Avenue end, where the museum is, right across the street from Central Park and it’s a different world. Thanks to Roz Chast, I have visited that neighborhood and that museum numerous times over the last few years.

Anyway, I finally got around to reading the book and it’s hilarious. It’s written in Roz’s hand, literally. It’s not typeset, it’s spelled out in her handwriting. It’s all about New York City in a truthful and funny way with the cartoonist accompanying the narrative. I think it’s for tourists but it’s funnier if you know the city yourself, like where she explains that the sidewalks of NYC are a think shell covering a vast honeycomb of pipes and tunnels which is something you really don’t want to think about.

Roz explains the city’s street system – the grid system and uptown and downtown and she seems to like the random buildings in New York that have different businesses on different floors, you know, like very busy buildings with a dentist on one floor, a shoe store on another, a hat store on another and they are all displayed in the front windows as you look at the building from top to bottom.

She prefers cities to nature and she really gets into the city. It’s a funny book, and great for a person who loves New York City. You can see more about it here at Amazon.

roz1

Going to Town with Roz Chast

I thought I had written about it but guess not . . . I am talking about the “Going Into Town” book by cartoonist Roz Chast. I finally got around to reading it. My cousin had handed it to me one day, she said she thought of me when she saw it so she bought it. She knows I love New York and cartooning and this book is perfect for both.

She asked me if I had ever heard of Roz Chast and I had to laugh because I found one of my favorite museums in New York because of Roz Chast. A few years ago, The Museum of the City of New York had an exhibit featuring Roz Chast’s work. There was a lot of original cartoon art from her New Yorker magazine work and so much more.

Anyway, I finally got around to reading the book and it’s hilarious. It’s written in Roz’s hand, literally. It’s not typeset, it’s spelled out in her handwriting. It’s all about New York City in a truthful and funny way with the cartoonist accompanying the narrative. I think it’s for tourists but it’s funnier if you know the city yourself. Like where she explains that the sidewalks of NYC are a think shell covering a vast honeycomb of pipes and tunnels which is something you really don’t want to think about.

She prefers cities to nature and she really gets into the city. It’s a funny book, and great for a person who loves New York City. You can see more about it her at Amazon.

Venice in the Gables

Coral Gables has a new art installation called Venice in the Gables where 30 local artists are designing Venetian columns to celebrate the completion of the redesign of Miracle Mile. Miami has had many installations like this from the Peacock Tour in Coconut Grove in 2010 to roosters in Little Havana, Manatees in South Miami, dogs in Pinecrest and Coral Gables had flamingos at one time, too.

It is to celebrate the completion of the Miracle Mile renovation.

Frank Flor

Carlos Barbon

Grahame Menage’s work.

Eileen Seitz

Eight foot tall replicas of Venetian mooring posts will be placed around the streets in Coral Gables. My friend Eileen Seitz is part of the painting group, I stopped by the storefront on Miracle Mile where they are creating the columns. 100 artists submitted images and 30 were chosen for this project.

On May 18, there is a sort of unveiling party at the Museum of Coral Gables, then the plaster painted poles will be placed on the streets. Say that 10 times fast.

Here are a bunch of photos and stories on our Coconut Grove Peacock Tour in 2010 which I was a part of. I didn’t paint, but I helped promote it, plan it and distribute the peacocks. I was supposed to emcee the auction at the end of the peacock tour but luckily it ended up being an online auction so I didn’t have to do that.

Rejection

Michael Maslin has an excellent article in his blog about constant cartoon rejections. He shows an image which is a foot high of his rejected cartoons.

I sometimes equate cartoonists with actors. Actors have that cattle call lifestyle where they go from audition to audition and rejection to rejection and it’s hard not to take it personally.

So much of it has to do with personality I believe. You may remind the person making the decisions of someone they don’t like and you are in their gun sites forever for that reason. It may have nothing to do with your work.

But of course most of it is just too much competition. Too many people out there do the same thing and it’s easy to put others down. Art is subjective, so I may not like someone’s drawing style, but that doesn’t make it bad and I may not understand a comic gag line, but others do, so that doesn’t make it bad.

There was a time when I sold a lot of my work simply by submitting it. I would sell cartoons to magazines, books and newspapers. I was part of King Features’ “New Breed” concept, where they published various cartoonists in the newspapers, grooming us for better things to come. I stopped after a bit to start a business and have always regretted that.

I would send them maybe 20 comic panels and they would purchase maybe five of that lot. Not bad. I would sell a lot to magazines, too. They would buy what I sent them.

The good part about the internet and social media is that you can do your own thing and build your own audience. If you have good content, it’s not that hard to build an audience; making a living at it is another story.

Patience; patience in adversity

Guess the pink moon is not working in my favor. I reached out to three people this week for 10 With Tom interviews and was blown off by all three. Well, one never answered me. The other two told me they weren’t ready, one asked me to wait a few weeks and one asked me to wait six months!

The problem is they are hot now and in a few weeks or months the bloom will be off the rose. I’m feeling a bit dejected.

On a happy note, one of my favorite blogs, The Daily Cartoonist is back in action, having been on hiatus for almost two hears. In fact, tomorrow, May 2, will be exactly two years since Alan Gardner put the blog on hold. Now Andrews McMeel/GoComics owns it and has started it up again under the aegis of John Glynn the main man at GoComics and comic junkie D.D. Degg will be running daily operations and providing most of the posts.

On the first day cartoonists were popping up out of the woodwork. It’s amazing how much the blog is loved. It really covers the comics industry excellently. It’s mostly aggregating stories about comics and cartooning, but it’s the one stop shop for that info. I was thinking of hitting them up with some of my comic strip and cartoonist interviews that I do with 10 With Tom, you know, fresh content.

I’m still working on getting my Tomversation comics published at GoComics.com, too. It’s amazing to me that I’ve been published in books, magazines and newspapers for years, but I cannot break that bubble.

Patience. Patience in adversity.

The Batman/Starry Night t-shirt

tom-4-28-18-a I got that Batman/Starry Night t-shirt I liked that I saw in that story about the Starry Night house, remember?

They had it at Amazon and I had it delivered in two days via Prime.

Now what? Guess I’ll wear it around town and of course at this year’s New York Comic Con. tom-4-28-18-b

I finally cut the cord

phone

I finally pulled the plug on my house phone, the land line. I don’t know why I kept holding onto it, for 10 years or so I had it forwarded to my cell phone, so I never used the house phone. But boy, was it a bitch getting AT&T to release me. They gave me the run around. One guy refused to pass me onto the correct department until he looked at my account and tried to stick me with other services.

Then he passed me to another department and then they passed me to another and then I was on hold for a long time and then the lady who came on could barely be heard. It was some game they play in order to get you to give up. AT&T are bastards.

I finally went to the website and chatted with a guy and he did it within few seconds.

I then asked him about my very high cable and internet bill. He gave me a lower rate and gave me a faster internet speed, which I thought I was paying for all the while. I’m not sure why they just don’t give everyone the fastest internet, why would you not want that?

I want to learn what Sling and Hulu and all those anti-cable tv things are about so I can just tell the cable tv to take a hike.

It feels weird now not having a home land line, but like I said, I never used it anyway. It would just forward the calls all to my cell phone, which all were telemarketers anyway.

I also cancelled four websites I had with Earthlink. I had moved them long ago and was still paying for them. Earthlink is expensive and for almost 20 years I paid those rates!

They too tried to give me the run around. I kept trying to explain to the guy that one site was only $13 per year on WordPress, yet Earthlink charges me $45 per month. Why would I stay with them? My main biz site is now only $150 per year with a new provider, as opposed to their rate of $45 per month, which is $540 per year! At one time I had a lot of websites with them and I paid through the nose. I also had them return the $139 they charged me for SSL service which I never used. I got it free from my new web host.

Loyalty has its price. So does stupidity on my part. I’m glad I finally wizened up.