As usual, I am posting my favorite Christmas commercial from Publix. It may be my favorite commercial of all time.
It reminds me of my youth, for a number of years, from 1987 to 1996, it ran every season.
The music in Last Train Home is from Still Life (Talking) an album by Pat Metheny Group, released in 1987.
To this day, when Pat Metheny is performing, he’ll refer to the song as, “The Publix song.” Publix has a new Christmas commercial every year, but I always hope they will bring it back for nostalgic value, so when I hear it come on, like I did in the “old days,” I would just drop everything and run to the tv to watch and listen.
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I saw this cartoon by Bill Bramhall and it really brought memories back of Norman Lear. It’s sad that today’s generation doesn’t know so much about our history, including television history. I still pay for cable! I want to cut the cable, honest, but I can’t figure out if I’ll miss it or not.
Bill Bramhall is the excellent cartoonist for the New York Daily News, you can see his cartoons daily at GoComics here.
I grew up watching all of the Norman Lear shows from All in the Family to Maude to Sanford and Son and of course Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. And there were so many more. He basically created 1970s tv. For awhile there, All in the Family was must see tv. Norman died on Tuesday, he was 101!
I think our favorite was All in the Family. My mother and I used to mock Archie Bunker all the time. There was one thing that Archie did when Edith would over-talk, he would make believe he was killing himself. He would slowly load a gun and then shoot himself. Or he would tie a noose and hang himself. My mother would do that when I overtalked. She would just suddenly mime one of the actions, and we would both bust out laughing.
There was a period when Mom used to cut my hair and I would quote Archie. There were a few episodes when Archie was out of work due to a strike or something, and Edith would cut his hair, so when my Mom would ask me how I wanted my hair cut, I would say, “Without blood, Mom, without blood.”
And I would also say, “Go around the back, take some off at the top and when you get to an ear for Gawd sake, stop.” I would say God, the way Archie said it, Gawd.
Archie was a bigot and politically incorrect, we knew it. But so did the 40 to 60 million people who watched All in the Family each week.
I took an Uber to LaGuardia Airport from the city. As usual, I go early in the morning for early flights, I was coming home.
A lady named Miguelina picked me up. She seemed nice, she didn’t speak much English, so we didn’t speak.
As we approached the area of the airport, I didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t the usual way. It was early Monday morning, about 6 am, so there was no traffic to avoid, so she should have taken the usual route.
As I looked out and saw the airport in the distance, I was wondering, “Where are we going? Did I punch in Kennedy Airport by mistake? Are we going there?” I asked her and she said she didn’t speak English. I asked her in Spanish, if we were going to LaGuardia and she sort of ignored me.
We finally arrived, but it was at a place I had never seen before. I had just seen the Seinfeld “The Pledge Drive” episode where his grandmother is lost in a desolate area, looking for Chemical Bank. That’s what this was like. We were sort of underground somewhere – under the airport!
She told me to get out, in that rude way non-English speakers think they are speaking English politely. I said, “Wait, there is nothing here!” The airport is usually very well lit, you know, there are always cars coming and going and there is always plenty of travelers and staff around. This was bare. The lights were very dim, there was no other car or other person. She said this was my stop.
I told her we have to go to “departures” but she would not move. She looked at her phone, which meant nothing. Finally a security guard arrived and he yelled for us to move. She refused! The guard said we were on level 1, and get this, the baggage level and arrivals was up a flight to level 2 and the departures were level 3, we needed to go to 3. She didn’t care, she just sat there.
I asked the guard if I could just get in some way down in that dungeon area and climb stairs or something and he showed me a back escalator and I took that up two flights to the regular entrance area. I’m still not sure what that was or why we were there. Maybe it’s a loading dock area.
Scary trip. Scary driver. First time in my life I did not tip. The driver deserved nothing.
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This is the situation at the Hoboken bus terminal.
I’m back in NYC for Thanksgiving week. I took the Amtrak down from New England.
I was telling my friends how bad the drivers are in Boston, and I guess karma came and got me. I was almost mowed down by big bus in Hoboken yesterday!
I was leaving Hoboken, and it was cold and windy. I usually walk along the Hudson River to the train terminal where I could get the PATH train back to the city (NYC), but I took the back way and walked through the bus yard, which is part of the train terminal.
There were only three buses and they weren’t moving. The whole big lot was empty otherwise, so I proceeded to cut through to get to the trains. Just as I was standing in the center of the lot, one of the buses started moving, and it appeared to be coming right at me, but I figured the driver saw me, he was going to bypass me, there was 100 feet or more on either side of me.
But no, he came right at me. Then as he reached me, he proceeded to make a U-turn – right into me! I started running along the side of the bus, at the driver’s side window to avoid ending up under the bus. If I ran to the left, I would be under the bus, if I stood there, I would under the bus, so I kept running, and yelling and the driver didn’t see or hear me! He was alone on the bus, so there was no one to distract him.
Someone from above was there to protect me. It had to be, it was the only explanation. Finally the driver saw me and stopped. He opened his window and started yelling at me. Sure, I was wrong to cut through the lot, but I would assume a driver could see a man walking alone in a parking lot.
I was so pissed and upset, that I just ignored him and walked away. Another driver who witnessed this from her bus, started yelling at me. I told her I was lost and that’s not a reason to not be paying attention. If I was a stray dog, would he have run over the dog, too?
I walked away from her since they weren’t going to take the blame.
So after all these years of almost being hit by Boston drivers, I now have the distinction of being almost struck by a Hoboken City bus; at the bus terminal.
It was very scary. Remember that old Dennis Weaver movie, Duel? It was a bit like that. Not really, but almost.
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A couple of nights ago, about 2:30 am, as usual, neighborhood was dead quiet. All of a sudden, we hear loud booms! Sounded like bombs going off. I thought that was what it was because the houses and buildings shook. And the booms were so loud.
I heard voices and then assumed it was kids with fireworks which happens once in awhile, but the booms got louder and scarier. I then thought it was kids throwing bombs. What else could it be?
I looked outside the window and saw nothing but neighbor across the street was screaming, which made it worse. She then started yelling “Fire! Fire!” And when I looked out the window again, the street started to go in flames. Literally. Suddenly dark black smoke filled the sky and the flames grew to about 25 feet high and started spreading along the street as it grew bigger.
I was sure they were going to reach the electrical wires and travel from house to house. Looking at it all this the next morning, I was amazed that didn’t happen. Maybe the wires are fire proof.
What next, I thought? More of this? I was sure we were being bombed. More and more explosions happened. One of my neighbors told me that her synagogue has 24 hour watch due to problems in the Mideast. TV news reported about localized antisemitic attacks and I thought perhaps this was an attack against someone who lived in the neighborhood. But then I just thought it had to be kids on bikes or cars with homemade bombs just randomly throwing them.
The fire department arrived very quickly and attacked the fire, which relieved me. The police arrived, too, and I thought, perhaps they can find the culprits and stop them tonight.
I went out on the balcony to see, but the sky was black from all the smoke which grew worse as the killed the fire. Was it toxic? Was it dangerous?
I started to think of the people in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. This was a mini thing, but it was scary as hell. Random people bombing our homes? Invisible people at this point.
As soon as the fire department got it all under control, I was relieved to see it was two cars that were involved and not what I had suspected. One car blew up and caught fire. As it turned the corner, it just started popping and exploding, sounding like bombs. Each explosion caused the conflagration. Each explosion was louder and louder.
It was very close to another car, one of my neighbor’s cars, and it caused that car to catch fire because it all happened at that car’s gas tank.
It ended up being the newspaper delivery people’s car. The man and woman who deliver the Miami Herald. They were in the car driving around the bend delivering papers when their car exploded which caused the fire and all the chaos! Luckily they got out in time.
Neighbors all ran down but I watched from upstairs. I was still shaken thinking it was something else, which luckily, it wasn’t.
The fire was put out, the fire department and police left, the two cars were towed away and just a big black area in the street is all that is left. Glad that everyone is safe and the fire didn’t spread to the whole neighborhood.
This cartoon running today is weird and maybe a foreshadowing. The Herald lady wasn’t delivering my Herald. I unsubscribed the delivery part and I subscribe to it online and read the eEdition daily. So far no word of our incident in the Herald.
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I’ve been a hermit lately, ever since the start of the pandemic. I mean I do go out and I do travel, but I’m not doing what I used to do. I’m sort of stuck in that staying in mode. I used to be out all day and night. Now I’m not. I used to participate in the community, in a big way. Now I don’t.
Yesterday I went to a memorial in our village. It was for someone who was big in the town, who was almost the godfather of our town.
The memorial was in one of the parks in the village and there was a large turnout. There was a proclamation from the city in his name and a few beautiful trees were planted in his name. We have quite a few parks in the village, but this was his favorite, so it all centered around this park and him.
My point is that there were so many people there and I know 90% of them. I hadn’t seen many in quite awhile, ever since I stopped publishing the daily news here. When I covered the news I was everywhere every day, gathering up news, covering events. It’s a small village so it was easy to see most people most days.
The funny thing is that as I looked through the crowd, it seemed as if my news gathering caused a quarrel between many of the people present and me at one time or another, they weren’t too keen on things I wrote. I literally had issues over the years with half the people who where there yesterday.
Half of them yelled at me , or threw me out of their offices or called me names over the years. Yet in the end they gave me many awards and accolades. We were/are a dysfunctional family.
I remember the deceased telling me at a meeting once, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And at another point he says, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And a third time, he said, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And I held up my pad and said, “I have not written a sentence. You haven’t said anything worth repeating.” And the whole room laughed. I guess we did have good times through it all.
At one point, we thought it would all make a good reality show of the craziness we lived through daily. One of my friends worked for Endemol, a producer of reality tv, and she would always tell me to come in and pitch the idea, which I never did.
I caught up with so many people yesterday. The thing is, we all still live here and while the village is quickly turning into a city, the people are all the same.
I think I need to get out there again – go to things, participate again. Go to bingo at the women’s club, go to a meeting this week where our town’s yearly parade is planned, go to an arts festival meeting, attend a village council meeting. The good part is that I won’t be covering any news and it won’t be a job. I’ll just be one of the village people like everyone else.
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This Strange Brew cartoon by John Deering came at a perfect time. We were recently talking about updates we need to do at our condo building and I was talking to the neighbors about things we had done in the past – so many years ago.
There was one neighbor who was a bully. She was a young wife, in her mid 20s, about 4’5″ tall or smaller, 90 lbs . wet, and married to a guy who was on the board. Let’s call her Frannie. She was from Italy, so this little dynamo talked with a thick Italian accent, bullying her way around the building.
She decided what color to paint the building, which tiles to use for the pool renovation, what the gardening should look like, which lights should replace the ones we had around the building and so on.
The “shades of white” cartoon reminded me that one day these guys showed up to show us shades of something – I think it might have been for an awning in the front of the building, it might have been tiles, I can’t remember.
I do remember telling them, “Let me call Frannie to look at these.” I didn’t dare make a decision without her, even though I was president of the board. As she was coming down to meet us, I told the guys, “See these three brochures you are showing us? All these choices? Frannie is going to take her time, go through every color and choice and then ask you if you have another catalog or brochure for her to look at.”
And right on cue, that’s what happened, after carefully looking it all over while we all remained silent and waited, that’s just what she did, she asked them if they had another brochure to look at.
We all bust out laughing and to this day, I don’t know if she know why.
Frannie and her husband were terrible neighbors. They moved some years back and rented their condo unit ever since. Over the years they have rented to awful people. Not one decent person, including the current tenant. I have to tell you some time about the one tenant who picked up stray dogs off the street and how two got into my apartment and practically destroyed everything in the living room.
German shepherd footprints on the sofa.
One totally wild mongrel was jumping around like a kangaroo, he broke so many things in his way. I still have his dirty footprints on my white leather sofa to remind myself of that nightmare incident. They are covered by a pillow, but they are still there. It’s a conversation piece.
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I’m still finding things as I clean out my old room. In among to the school newspapers were newspapers that published my cartoon panel.
In the 1990s, I was part of a thing King Features called “The New Breed.” It was a different cartoon every day sent in by various cartoonists. They were grooming us at the time for better things. So many of the cartoonists that were part of the The New Breed are professional cartoonists today, with their cartoons published daily in newspapers.
I started a marketing biz at the time and sort of stopped after having so many cartoons published. I sometimes regret it now, but I guess that was my fate to go in another direction.
What I would do is send in a batch of cartoons and they would buy the ones they liked and have them published in hundreds of subscribing newspapers as part of the feature. This sample shown hre is from the Kansas City Star. I like how they have the feature at the very top of the page. There I am with Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, Marmaduke and Peanuts! Mine is the Santa one.
King Features would send back the ones they wanted changes on, after editing the cartoon – simple things like, “change this word to this,” or “take the shading off this.” I don’t know why they just didn’t make the changes themselves, but I guess they didn’t want to touch the art and they had the cartoonists make the changes on their own work.
This was all done by snail mail. I would mail in a batch and they would mail back the edited ones that needed changes. I would make the changes and snail mail the cartoons back and they would appear in the newspapers a few weeks later.
While I’m trying to grow my audience on my current work today, I don’t think I want to be published in newspapers. It’s too restrictive and most people read their cartoons online or on social media.
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Today is the first day of school in Miami-Dade County. The private schools started last week.
The reason I bring that up is because I started going through things in my old room at my parents house and I came upon so many things I had forgotten I had like these school newspapers.
For many years, I had a company that printed school newspapers among so many other things. I found all the newspapers I had saved that we printed – years and years worth of papers. I plan on giving them to the schools – a time capsule from the 1980s through the early 2000s.
I used to celebrate the start of school – I used to go to the beach on the first day – the beach was dead due to it being the first day of school – and I had the place to myself.
I was celebrating because business picked up again. My business was dead all summer. There were no school newspapers or other things to print since most of the work I did was seasonal. So I worked for nine months, but for those three summer months, there was no money or business coming in. But starting in the fall and particularly, the first day of school, business picked up again for the year.
It’s interesting going through the newspapers because most have the news of the world, not just school news. There are a lot of movie reviews from new movies of the time – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back to the Future and things like that. The kids loved the movies, by the way. There is national news that the kids were interested in and it’s interesting to see their take on all that and how it played out at the time. Lots of pop culture made it into the newspapers – music, movies, tv – Madonna!
I loved those days. The work was easy and I was in schools around the county almost daily. I would go by to pick up the work and then deliver it after it was printed. I not only handled the newspapers, but we printed year book supplements, literary magazines, sports journals and so many other things. I loved being part of that as it kept me young being in the high schools and junior high schools which became middle schools some time in the middle of all that.
I taught the newspaper classes sometimes – meeting up with classes and explaining the process. I was friendly with most of the teachers and office staff.
The black and white newspapers started experimenting with full color and computers took over the schools and rather than my company doing the typesetting and paste-up, the kids did it all and handed the job in ready to print. So I was there at that interesting time of all the tech changes.
I drive by so many of the schools these days and it brings back so many memories as I drive by. It all comes flooding back.
Back then I had my run of the schools. Toward the end of my doing the newspapers after doing it for so many years, something sad happened. Metal detectors started appearing at the front doors and many of the entrances. I had to show my ID to enter and it was the end of those innocent time.
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I saw an image of the Lepage glue with the rubber top on Facebook and memories came flooding back. I remember using it as a child. Then I remember all of these glues – Elmer’s Glue, rubber cement and white paste, also by Lepage.
The glue with the rubber top had a slit in the top of the rubber and you would press down to let the glue out, it looked sort of like maple syrup, only thinner. The Elmer’s Glue we would put on our fingers, the white would turn clear as it dried, and then we peel it off. The rubber cement we made into small rubber balls and we played with them. I think we used rubber glue more than most of them other types of glues here.
And the White Paste. What I remember about the white paste is eating it. Yup, we would eat the white paste. I don’t know why and I don’t remember what it tastes like, but that was the thing to do when you were eight years old.
I remember one time in class, I was “tasting” the white paste and I heard a shriek from the teacher – it was a shriek like you would hear when someone sees a mouse. She looked at me and said, “You’re not eating the paste, are you?” And even at eight years old, I was a quick thinker – I told her, “No, I was smelling it.” A stupid answer but I guess I thought it was better to be smelling it than eating it.
I can almost picture the teacher in my head, but she wasn’t our regular teacher, she was either a substitute or a teacher’s aid, something like that. I suppose the regular teacher was used to us eating paste so it was nothing for her to be shocked over.
It’s amazing how seeing something or smelling something brings back so many memories.
I used to see a Facebook page where pictures of old toys and games were posted. There wasn’t any text, someone would just post a picture and the memoires would start flooding back, people would comment about their memories about the toy or game.
I guess my brothers and I were spoiled because I can’t remember seeing an old picture of something that we didn’t have. Every toy and game that was shown we seemed to have – Trouble, Skittle Pool, Clue, Monopoly, Flintstones things, Operation, Lite-Brite, Creepy Crawlers and even the Hasbro Frosty Snowman Machine, and lots of models – we used to make lots of plastic models and do puzzles.
I don’t know what happened to all these things, I guess my mother threw them out, but when I think of what they are worth now.
The interesting part is that my brothers and I must have shared everything no matter whose toy they were because I can’t remember who owned what. We must have kept everything in one place in the house and just picked and chose what we wanted to play with.
Now it’s all about electronics. Kids have so many electronics that one day will probably seem quaint to them.
Hasbro Frosty Sno-Man Sno-Cone Machine.
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