art – Page 12

Our TV Channel Shake-Up

We may be switching tv channels again in Miami.

In the 1980s this happened twice, what I mean is that the affiliates – ABC, NBC, CBS changed channel numbers – twice.

Well, not, ABC, that always remained channel 10; but now it looks like Channel 10 will not be showing ABC and the weird thing is that Channel 7 will pick up ABC. The reason it is weird is because Channel 7 is now Fox. But it will remain Fox.

At one point, that song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” played incessantly on all tv channels to tell us about the channel changes and not worry about it.

Channel 7 will remain Fox and Channel 7.2 will become ABC. Crazy, right?

When I was a kid, Channel 4 was CBS, then it became NBC now is CBS again. Channel 6 was an independent channel that showed reruns like I Love Lucy and the Adams Family, then it became CBS and now is NBC. I remember watching Dallas on CBS 6 at the time.

Channel 7 started out as NBC and then became independent and then Fox.

Channel 10 was always ABC and now will be nothing, I guess.

Our PBS stations – 2 and 17, stayed like they were – stable. So far.

I’m in NY a lot and sometimes I’ll put on Channel 2 to watch PBS, but there it is Channel 13. I’ll realize it after a few minutes and then switch over.

The tv channel game.

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A Weekend at the Florida Renaissance Festival

A bunch us went to the Florida Renaissance Festival over the weekend. It’s in Deerfield Beach for eight weekends from February through March. This is their 33rd year.

It’s a trip in time back to the 16th century. Over 100 artisans sell their wares, there is a lot of food and entertainment, too.

Glass blowers, horse jousting, face painting, the marketplace and lots of shows throughout are amazing and always fun. There’s a beer crawl and pub sing, too. We ate and drank ourselves through the park.

Tents are all spread throughout the area and you really fell like you are in another time and place.

Along with the usual fair food – turkey legs, ice cream, gyros, etc., they even had pickle pizza, which I’m sure is a new thing but it was delicious!

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Saying less is more

Do you ever avoid speaking about your favorite movie because it’s your favorite movie?

People bring it up in conversation or online or wherever – for various reasons, to discuss it or ask about it or just ask, “What’s your favorite movie?”

I avoid it for one reason – it’s the answer to so many of my security questions. I don’t want to put it out there what my favorite movie is.

I had one for a long time, then changed it to another. I didn’t do it on purpose, my favorite movie just changed, but it was almost like changing a password.

But here’s what everyone misses, sometimes on Facebook or places like that someone asks what year you graduated high school. I think that’s a red flag, too.

I was thinking when I interview people for my 10 With Tom column, which hasn’t been lately – I ask weird questions like that – not on purpose, I just ask random questions.

Lately, 10 With Tom has been just a list of things because after so many years I am having trouble getting people to answer my request for interviews. I’m not sure why. Maybe people are just being more cautious these days, which is a good thing, except when I want to interview them.

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Ollie and Jacomo are back!

So I decided YES! on Ollie and Jacomo, they are starting their adventures tomorrow, Monday!

My Tomversation cartoon is on hiatus and Ollie and Jacomo are doing their thing now. You can find links below each cartoon for social media sites, if you’d like to follow them daily on Facebook or Instagram and there is also a subscription link, where you can have them in your email inbox daily. Or you can just go to the website and see what they are up to there daily.

We last left them off at the Paris Olympics this past summer, now they are home in Coconut Cove. Today they are dealing with the time change due to Daylight Saving Time, like so many of us.

I was explaining in the last post how I read about a guy pretending to be a cat on Reddit for years and people loved it, they behaved as if he was a real talking cat. I thought that would make a good comic strip, although there is Garfield and Heathcliff, Top Cat and Felix. But I remembered I had animal friends – Ollie and Jacomo, and decided to bring them back.

Hope to see you over there – OllieAndJacomo.com – they are waiting for you!

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Guy Pretends to Be a Cat

I read a thing on Reddit where this lady wants to divorce her husband because she found out he is secretly roll playing as a cat on Reddit! I think she is joking about the divorce, but she is quite surprised to find this fact out about being a cat after him doing it for three years!

She says, “He’s popular. Like top posts, awards, thousands of followers. People genuinely think he’s a cat. He has INTERNET FRIENDS that think they’re talking to some sassy British shorthair named Mr. Whiskers. He gets into fights with other cat accounts about territory and kibble brands.”

She doesn’t like it but I love this whole thing! I want to know his handle so I can follow him. It sounds like he has a great imagination, and I want to follow that.

It first reminded me of a voice over thing – like he is being the cat from behind the scenes for a cartoon – you know, being a cartoon cat. Then I thought of it as cosplaying, like people do at ComicCons.

Then I thought it would be funny to draw a cat cartoon, making him say funny things in a daily comic panel. And it reminded me that I already have cartoon animals – Ollie And Jacomo, who I haven’t visited in a while – since the summer Olympics, I believe. So I may bring them back for a bit. You know, take a break from my Tomversation comic panel and spend time with Ollie and Jacomo.

I’ll think it over this week. Stay tooned.

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‘Economic Boycott’ today

Today, February 28, there is a 24-hour economic blackout. Consumers and activists are protesting corporate greed and DEI rollbacks. So we aren’t supposed to participate in things today.

We aren’t supposed to spend money anywhere if possible, so I’m wondering about our weekly lunch that some of us do on Fridays.

Most of these boycotts don’t make sense in that the money will just be spent the next day. for instance if you need gas for our cars, which I actually do, we can just buy it the day before or after. And the same with groceries and things like that.

I guess the silence is what it’s about – sort of like the pandemic, when there was no one out or on the streets. “Enjoy the Silence,” as Depeche Mode says.

The whole thing is to mainly to boycott the high cost of living. It shows the economic power of everyday people.

So fast food, gas and major retailers are on the list to boycott for the day, which again, will only have the items purchased the day after. But the idea is to have no one in these establishments to prove a point.

If we must spend, it’s recommended that we only support small local business, none of the big stores and places, so maybe my lunch at a local restaurant can still happen.

We’ll see.

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Confusion at the supermarket

This cartoon idea came to me last week when we were at the arts festival.

For years they had the same artists in the same spots. I was friends with one of the organizers and I said to him, “Why don’t you move the artists around? They are always in the same spaces?”

He said, “We do that so their regular fans/customers can find them.”

Which I thought wasn’t a good idea since if people had to walk around the festival to find their favorite artist, they would get to see everything, not just make a beeline to their favorite.

So this year, there were new organizers and finally, they moved the artists around which made the whole thing feel fresh.

But as we were talking about it, one of my friends mentioned how we were all irritated when the supermarket’s changed the aisles around, and that’s how I got the idea for this cartoon.

Now that I think about it, it’s been awhile since anything has been changed at my Publix or Winn-Dixie. Hope I didn’t put this idea into the Universe.

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Prolific blogging

I have a bunch of blogs going, plus my Tomversation cartoon site, where I use a blogging platform on WordPress, so I’m considering that a blog, too.

Why? I don’t know, I come up with ideas and then there is a blog for it.

I’ve morphed various blogs into something else, just using the name since I own the URL. For instance I recently changed The Morning Grapevine into a blog on blogging.

What I mean is, people are always asking me about blogging, for many years I ran a very successful blog, with lots of readers and subscribers, and it made money. So after 15 years of that, I think I know a thing or two.

I’ve helped people set up blogs and guided them into the world of blogging. I look at blogs as the magazines of today. You know, each has its own niche and audience and there is something for everyone.

I don’t now what this Tomversation blog is, I guess it’s a “personal blog” tied in with my cartoons.

I’ve thought or writing a book on blogging, or at least a booklet, so I wanted to teste the waters. So I put a blurb on a couple of Reddit subs saying something to the effect like I described above – “I published a blog for 15 years, it was very successful, made money and had lot of readers.” Something like that, but worded better.

Anyway, I got tons of responses, people asking me questions about their blogs and I thought that it might be a good idea to start a blog about blogging and The Morning Grapevine, business blog, became that blog about blogging.

I plan on having anecdotes in it, too, so as not to have it come off too boring, but I will explain how to get readers, how to decide the niche to write about, things like that. There are a few articles posted so far.

I have a message like this at the bottom of most blog articles now:

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So if you are shopping at Amazon, which I think most of us do, if you use that link, I get commission on things you order. There is no extra charge to you. And it’s a little money out of Jeff Bezos’ pocket, going to me.

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Another arts festival weekend

Spent the weekend at the 61st annual Coconut Grove Arts Festival. Went with friends on Saturday and another group on Sunday.

Ran into so many people I hadn’t seen for awhile. Was really a great time.

For the locals, it’s more about the comradery than the art, although we all love seeing and buying art. But it sort of reminds me of NYC, where the locals spot and see each other in the crowds of tourists and the tourists sort of blur into the background and the locals have the city for themselves.

The fun part is that we know some of the artists exhibiting and we visit with them as we all mix and mingle around the festival. We eat, drink (love the old fashioned English tea cafe where I had scones and tea, as I do every year) and enjoy the art. We always end up at the cafe and sit around and talk and laugh for an hour or so, in the midst of the show.

Since I had not seen some people for some time, I may have talked some ears off. I was talking to one guy who works for the festival, he was in a golf cart. He was attempting to drive away as I was talking. I said to him, “Did you hear what I said?” He said, “Yes.” I responded, “I don’t think you did, because you almost ran over my foot.”

Good times.

Today is the final day. I may or may not attend, I’m sort of worn out from non-stop action on Saturday and Sunday.

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Why I love single panel cartoons

I was watching this video by artist Mika Song about comic panels. She had a lot of good things to say about the panel. A lot of it was about restrictions. Which I like.

Even though I can do anything with my Tomversation cartoon, since it is distributed online, and there are no parameters, I enjoy the parameters. The image can be made larger, longer, a multi-panel strip and be changed from day to day, where in the newspapers, I would be limited to the same daily allotted space, I enjoy the single panel imitations and the same daily allotted space.

I’ve always been drawn to single panel comics. Oh sure, I read all the comic strips growing up, but I enjoyed the single panel stuff – Hazel, The Addams Family, Ziggy, The Far Side, Our Boarding House, Dennis the Menace, Marmaduke, etc. I liked having the whole story told in one box, usually with one short sentence or text.

It’s interesting setting up the story because I have to figure out how to fit the characters and the text to make sense in the small 5″ x 5″ space.

In recent years I’ve done away with the speech balloon, although I do use it once in awhile, but I like have the letters just floating above and having one single drawn line showing who is speaking. I’m not sure where I got that from, but I know it’s from cartoons I’ve seen in the past.

I also went digital some years back. I use a Surface Pro, to draw, which I love. It has a keyboard so I can use it as a laptop computer when I’m traveling. It’s compact and easy to use and has everything I need.

I’ve done comic strips in the past and I have a few that I have done but am not publishing, but I don’t enjoy drawing the same characters over and over, not just in each pane for that day’s strip, but every day of the week. I like that I can have animals talking one day and ancient Egyptians the next.

Many single panel cartoons have the same characters. I enjoy reading the old Our Boarding House panels, where they tell a continuing story day after day, in a single panel, with the same characters. But for my own work, I enjoy using different characters each day.

Above there are six samples of my comic panel, Tomversation. You can see how I use speech and thought balloons and how sometimes I mix the two. Somethings they are not full balloons, but just part, indicating a border to separate the text from the art.

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