Category: art

You ever see that Seinfeld episode called “The Revenge“ where George is fired, but he goes back to work as if nothing happened? I’m sure you have.

This is a true thing that happened to Larry David, who wrote the episode, and it happened to me, too! When I was 16.

I worked for Sears in the stock room. My family was going up to New York from Miami for a few weeks and I asked my manager for time off. He told me no, but I guess I thought he was kidding, he was a very dry person, never cracked a smile. And it was my first job, and I didn’t really know how things worked.

So, I went to New York with my family. We were gone for a couple of weeks.

When we returned to Miami, I went back to work. I guess I just walked in and started working. Vince, the manager, called me over and asked what I was doing there. I don’t remember the whole conversation, but I said I was back. I guess that didn’t sit well with him, and he told me I had been fired because I left town when he said I could not.

I don’t remember walking out after that, but I guess I just said, “OK,” and walked out.

I was a 17-year-old high school boy, loading boxes at Sears. This jerk felt I should be fired.

Many years later, I was in church and saw Vince sitting a few pews in front of me. He had a long Polish last name, which I still remembered. And I said in out loud, but in a whisper – which I have a tendency to do – say things out loud that I think I am thinking in my head, “Is that Vince so-and-so?” I spoke.

I said it loud enough for my sister-in-law who was sitting next to me hear. She said, “Yes, that’s him, he’s a jerk.” I asked, “You know him?” She said, “Yes, he’s a member of the church.”

The odd part is that he looked the same as he did so many years ago – guess this church-going-jerk made a pact with the Devil to stay young.

I was talking about AI and licensing last week and coincidentally, the next day, I was contacted by someone at Cartoon Stock to tell me that someone was using my work without being licensed, which I thought was strange since it had my copyright on it, so I know they didn’t get it from Cartoon Stock. But it was nice of them to keep an eye out.

They wanted to go after the people and charge them a fee. I told them I would handle it.

I emailed them and asked them to remove it, only because they did not give me credit by linking back to me and they basically cut off most of the copyright info. So that to me is a no.

They removed the cartoon and all is right with the world.

I only mention it here because I had recently written about it and here it was come to light.

Until next time . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

I’m considering adding Art Cards, better known as ACEO (Art Cards, Editions and Originals) to my art line.

My wall art pop art is doing great, and occasionally I get emails asking about the Art Cards, people seem to want to purchase those with my cartoons on them.

Art cards are specific items, with specific specs – they are on card stock, and strictly measure 2.5″ x 3.5″ inches and are sort of like baseball cards, but with original art drawn on them. I also see that they can be reprinted from other items, like some of my cartoons.

This is one of the pop art wall art pieces in a pizza shop. The cards will be similar, only much smaller, of course.

About 10 years ago, my friend Sherri, who owned a gallery in town had an Art Trading Card event. It was a happy hour, gallery show featuring the cards.

ATC’s – Art Trading Cards are traditionally traded from one person to another in person – sort of like Olympic buttons and other things that people collect. But ACEO’s (Art Cards, Editions and Original) are created specifically to be sold and collected. It’s a whole thing with their own rules.

Many are sold on ebay and Etsy. And that’s where I’m thinking of adding mine since I am selling the wall art pop art on Etsy now. They sell for a few dollars and up.

All sorts of mediums are used – pens, watercolor, acrylic paints, ink – just about anything that creates the art.

I need the materials to get things started. While I’ll print out cartoons on the cards, I would also like to draw original art, not cartoons, but my cartoon style art.

I went to Michael’s that crafts store, to get some things I needed, like the blank cards themselves, some markers, sleeves that they are presented in and some other items, but unfortunately, they didn’t have most of the items I need, so I ordered them online.

Oddly enough, I could not find a pencil in the house. Since I draw my cartoons digitally, I don’t use a pen or pencils, or paper, for that matter, and I would like to lightly rough out the sketches with a light pencil.

As I approached the elevator coming in from Michael’s empty handed, there was a yellow #2 pencil on the floor, staring up at me! I had forgotten to add pencils to my list of things I needed. So I picked up the pencil and have it now. I guess that was the Universe telling me to go ahead with the project. So I will.

I already ordered the supplies I need online, and we’ll see how it goes.

Until next time . . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

I was at Whole Foods over the weekend and they had so many of my regular things on sale – the peanut butter I like, the Ceylon cinnamon I use, the apples I like, the oat bran I use and so much more of “my stuff” was on sale. I didn’t know any of it was on sale, so each time I went to get an item, I was pleasantly surprised to see it on sale.

I spent a lot of time going around piling up the hand carrier, that thing you carry around. It was quite heavy.

I finally get to the check out – the self-checkout, I like that, and the lights go out. The whole store went dark. The electricity was out in the whole building.

So all the customers waited around for the lights to come on, but that didn’t happen. We were then told to “evacuate.” They used that word and rushed everyone out.

We had to walk up the escalator, which was not working, to get to the garage, which is upstairs from the actual store, and as I reached the top, I asked a guy who was standing there, why we were told to leave and he said, “Because the electricity is out!” And I responded, “I thought it was some sort of emergency, you keep using the word “evacuate.”

I thought it might be a fire or who knows what. But it was just the electricity according to them, so we evacuated.

I was thinking they should have let everyone walk out with the stuff they had in their carts. So much of it was just sitting in the dark perishing and may be thrown out, like the prepared food and soups, etc. I mean are they even going to put back tomatoes and avocados and bananas and stuff one at a time after people handled it all and carried it around the store?

The next day I went back to get the stuff, I had to re-shop. When I went to get watercress, the same guy was halfway in the cooler, working there. I excused myself so I wasn’t in his way. I remembered him from the day before.

I mentioned to him that we did the same routine the day before and he remembered that, also, and said, “Yes, it was about the same time, too.

I asked him about the electrical problem and asked if that was all it was. He said that was it. I mentioned the word, “evacuate” and thought it might be worse because of that. He said, “That’s a silly word for them to use.” So we both agreed about that.

I got my sale items and other stuff and ended up spending twice what I usually do, so the sale wasn’t really a sale after all, was it?

Until next time . . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

We all use AI once in awhile, or often, whether we know it or not, even when you search for something on at a search engine, most times, the AI answers come up first.

The one thing that bugs me is being pushed to add AI notifications on my cartoons. WHICH ARE NOT AI GENERATED!

Here is an example, above, see it? It’s a cartoon I was posting to Facebook, and you’ll notice at the top it has a toggle switch that “reminds” me that the AI label is off. Should it be on? Not one part of this cartoon is AI generated, I drew every box one at a time, and I wonder how many AI agents have stolen it to use for future AI requests from others, but it’s drawn by hand, by me.

On Instagram, when I go onto a cartoon to make a change, usually a typed typo in the description below it, the first thing that comes up is not the caption where I need to edit, which should be the only thing available for edit, but what comes up first is an AI toggle switch, doading me to turn it on! It says, “Add AI Label.”

I see a day, not too far in the future, where every sententce,every article, every photo, every drawing will have an AI toggle switch, asking us to turn AI off, and to tell audiences that it is an original creation.

Right now cartoons and cartoon style sare being “used” by AI and the worst part- they are now copying signatures.

This signature may turn up one day in an AI image. Even though I did not draw the image. But I guess I should be glad that they are giving me credit for my stolen image, if that’s what they are using.

There’s a webiste that is all clickbait. In the past, they have taken 60 of my cartoons and posted them as content. Without permission. When I complained to them, they dropped it down to 30 cartoons.

They now know they are forbidden to touch any of my work.

Not long ago I came upon a law firm that had my cartoons on their site. I wasn’t looking for a laywer, I think it popped up on google alerts or something. When I complained, I was told, “We gave you credit and linked back to your site.” The site they linked back to was another site that stole my work and posted it. They infringed from another infringer.

To give them credit, the law firm was mortified and removed all the images.

AI does it every day without being mortified.

Until next time . . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Two recent cartoons really got a lot of interest. This one with the doctor wait time and the coffee shop one. When cartoons hit home, they really take off.

I wrote about one of my creepy doctors who kept me waiting for hours, so I just got up and left and all this time later, just over two years, I still have not been contacted to ask where I went. Horrible doctor, horrible person, horrible office staff.

One time they would not renew a prescription because the renewal came in under Tom and not Thomas, which they had as my name on file. So rather than change the name to Tom in their files, everyone else – other doctors, pharmacies, etc., had to change everything to Thomas, which I hate, because every time someone calls me Thomas, I know they don’t know me because everyone I know calls me Tom or Tommy.

Then to find out after all that, that they have both names on file there all this time, Tom and Tommy.

Another cartoon, this coffee shop one, is an ongoing thing, where people set up shop and don’t buy anything. They take up space, use electricity and wifi, and that’s their office for the day.

One location in NYC has told me to get up more than once because I was sitting on a bench at the front vestibule. I explained that I was ordering coffee on the app. They said people are not allowed to sit there – on the bench! even though I told them I was ordering coffee, and showed them my phone. They didn’t care.

Yet, these morons have people sitting at tables, setting up camp inside all day long taking up space. I did notice in NYC and in Hoboken, that many Starbucks have taken out indoor seating. Panera Bread has done it with almost all of their locations, too. They say it’s to keep homeless people out, but it’s keeping paying customers out, too – but also the people who camp at tables all day, I guess, so there’s that.

Some places encourage people hanging out, a couple of national banks are now set up as coffee and work spaces and I’ve seen places in NYC where they seem to want more people in the place working, than actually spending money. At these banks, you walk in and are in a coffee shop and you have to look hard ot find the bank, all the way in the back.

I guess the real questions are whether we’re in a coffee shop to buy coffee, work, or simply find a place to sit – and apparently, every location has a different answer. And at the doctor’s offices, we spend more time sitting than seeing the doctor. Fact!

Until next time . . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

So I never made it to New York, I would be there at this time normally. But I don’t mind not being there. I miss it, but I’m glad to be home, too.

I was going to fly in yesterday and when I woke up early yesterday morning it was nice not having to rush to get to the airport. I put the tv on at 6 am and was thinking, how nice it was, dark, quiet in the living room, when I would have been leaving for the airport at that very time, going downstairs at 6 am, waiting in the dark for an Uber to pick me up.

I won’t be pumpkin picking, well I probably will right here at home at the the Boys & Girls Club where they sell pumpkins locally. And I won’t be at Comic Con I have my pass, but I don’t know how to resell it, I have a friend in New York who likes to go, I think I still have time to send it to him. My cousin who goes works there at a booth, so he already has a vendor pass.

It’s interesting that I keep having “memories” pop up on Facebook from a year or two ago, showing me at Union Square surrounded by pumpkins and all the fall things. I think it’s going to be warm this week in NYC and it must have been last year, because one of the images had me eating a Mister Softee ice cream cone at Union Square. Usually Mister Softee is in for the winter by now, but with climate change and all, the ice cream trucks have still been out.

I did make plans for Thanksgiving, so hopefully I’ll be in NY for that. I’m looking forward to that, I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday now. It used to be Christmas, then I think Halloween, then for a bit Fourth of July, but now it’s Thanksgiving.

I’m not down about not being there now. I like the fact that I am sleeping in my own bed, not having to travel (the airports are no fun these days) and I’m in my usual routine.

I was thinking I do everything out of routine. When I was younger I was adventerous, now it’s all the same old same old and I like it, which is the problem. I shouldn’t be enjoying the same old same old.

Anyway, I’m home for October and I like it.

Until next time . . . .

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.

Subscribe via email to my blog and cartoons here – the cartoons will arrive each Friday plus occasional short blog posts are sent during the week.