A dog and cat are part of my new Ollie and Jacomo cartoon. They will start showing up in cartoons later this summer.
Jasper is the dog and Richard is the cat. I always liked the name Jasper for a dog and Richard seems quite funny as an animal or pet’s name to me.
Years ago, my parents had a next door neighbor who had a dog named Richard. She would often call out to the dog who was out lost in the neighborhood somewhere, “Richard! Richard!” The first time I heard the lady’s high pitched voice calling, I asked my mother, “Who is Richard, her son? Her husband?” And my mother replied, “Her dog.”
I never got over it, every time she called out to Richard over the years it always made me laugh. I don’t think I ever saw Richard or the lady. I guess I was too lazy to look out the window. I didn’t live there at the time, I had long moved out, so I was just over visiting and I guess I really didn’t want to spoil the image by seeing what Richard and the lady looked like.
That reminds me of that train trip I took where I listed to the old ladies the whole trip and didn’t want to know what they looked like, but did see them in the end and was disappointed. That story is blogged here.
Anyway, I hope you are enjoying Ollie And Jacomo. I know it’s started out slow, but I had to introduce the premise. It will pick up now. Here’s today cartoon. It sort of hits home because lately I’ve been noticing that everything seems to be half full or less these days – in cans, packages, whatever. You open the package and wonder where the food is? It’s worse with clear packaging, you really feel gipped.
You can see Ollie and Jacomo at these locations if you would care to keep up with their adventures in Coconut Cove:
I was going to put Tomversation toons on hiatus many times and start up Ollie and Jacomo again, which I did earlier this week finally and I hope you’ll check it out. But each time I was going to make the switch, a current Tomversation cartoon would get millions of views (one cartoon had over 2.5 million views just on Instagram) and it would egg me on to keep going. One day cartoons would get a few thousand views and then overnight, one cartoon would get millions. It happened more than once and so I kept putting Ollie and Jacomo off.
This cartoon about the one hour film processing ran last week. It was one of my most popular cartoons. It has been seen by almost 1.5 million people so far on Facebook alone, and shared by thousands and debated and commented no non-stop. You can see the stats below. There are over 1000 comments, and over 3000 shares.
It’s still being shared and commented on today, almost a week later. The odd thing is that I meant to say, “One Day Service,” not “One Hour.”
And originally when it was published, I spelled “whoa” wrong. I was corrected by readers, as they are so quick and gracious to point out one’s mistakes.
Many camera aficionados or people who simply worked in photo places at the time told me that One Hour Service started some time in the early 1980s. But it’s interesting either way how many memories this cartoon has brought people, mistakes and all.
I love when a cartoon hits a nerve in some way – in a good way, that is – jogging good memories is always a good thing.
My Ollie and Jacomo cartoon started Monday, June 12, hope to see you there for something new and different from me. You can see it here.
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Ollie and Jacomo, my new cartoon, started publication this morning. It starts off slow, to introduce the characters and will get funnier by the end of the week. Promise. 🙂
I keep going back and forth in my head about starting up my “Paws” comic panel again.
Some of you may remember it, I first started posting it in 2013 – 10 years ago! I’m not quite sure why I stopped.
It stars a Rabbit and a Mole – Ollie the Rabbit and Jacomo the Mole. Ollie was called Tombo at one time, but he’s back to being Ollie, his original name.
Back 10 years, ago, in 2013, I saw a cute black and white cartoon daily on Instagram. A 19-year-old guy from Norway or that area of the world would post this great cartoon about a 5-year-old boy and a snowman. Each day it was sort of a full adventure in one comic panel and without any words! It was that good. It was quite amazing. And that’s what gave me the idea to start up “Paws” which I’m sure was called something else back then.
I was enthralled by the artwork and concept from the guy from Norway and I wish I had remembered his name. He started branching out, selling his work as greeting cards and things like that. The reason I may have stopped following him was that at the end of winter and these charming cartoons, he had the snowman melt! Yes, the snowman melted and that was the end of the adventures of him and the boy and he probably stopped posting things so his account just went dormant.
Anyway, I’ve played around with the characters and really like them. I now have things set up, I changed the whole thing from “Paws” to Ollie And Jacomo and got a new URL and set it all up, I reworked the characters and premise, renamed some and am ready to start publishing.
I don’t want to do two things at once – Ollie and Jacomo along with my Tomversation daily cartoon panel, so my Tomversation comic panel is going on hiatus for the summer, maybe shorter, maybe longer, I’ll see how I feel. I may publish Tomversation toons intermittently all summer, we’ll see.
I have this idea about cartoons having seasons, like tv shows, you know, one cartoon will run for a bit, then take a break, then another will run in its place and so on. And then the other will come back with new episodes and so on .
Recently this old west cartoon was published regarding the Pony Express. By the way, the pony express only lasted 18 months – from April 1860 to October 1861. It went bankrupt in that short time, and by then the telegraph was being used which made it obsolete.
I like to do these “living the dream” cartoons once in awhile – it’s usually regarding something that was ultra modern back in the day and we laugh about now. I’ve done old tv sets that were new at the time – getting a whole three channels on a big 12 inch screen; and I’ve done cavemen all confused about the new fangled tech device called fire.
I often think of those times – 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, whatever. Even today, we think we are living in the most modern of times, but think of 100 years from now, how so many of the things we think are the highest of tech will be laughed at as being primative.
I may have goofed with this old west cartoon because people are joking about that being post office is today, only they really aren’t joking.
I ordered a book not long ago which was shipped from California on the same day I purchased it. It got to Florida exactly one month later. One month to the day.
There was a time during election time where I was selling a bunch of election stuff on etsy – a lot was selling, but I had to discontinue because the items which normally take 3 days or less in shipping time, were taking a month or more!
Some of the comments I got from readers regarding the this “living the dream/pony express cartoon,” are:
“It’s still 12 days, with all our automation and computers, only 163 years later.”
“Looks like we need to go back to the pony express.”
“Takes that long to mail something from one house to the neighbors now.”
“Some things never change!”
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I’ve been doing a thing called Cloudy With A Chance of Faces, where I post images of clouds that look like things. I wrote about it here if you’d like to see more examples and links to the sites if you care to follow.
But now I am always looking at the clouds, seeking out faces and things. In the past, I would catch the image by accident, but now I am hunting for them. And it’s turned to all sorts of things.
As you can see here, I have a cowhide rug in my living room and I see things in that.
I see a dad walking a child to school, who has a dog on a leash. See it?
A guy or maybe a lady, looking at the clouds.
A child praying.
A southern lady entering the ballroom as a lady to her right ushers her in, that also looks like a heart dancing to her left.
The cowhide rug.
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There’s a new word – “Tipflation,” it’s regarding those non-stop tip requests. I hear that even self check-outs are asking for tips now. That’s how I came up with this cartoon. It’s also called, “tip creep.”
I love using self-checkouts, it’s great for introverts, we don’t have to interact with people and it seems to go faster, but so far, I have not seen this tipping request. I use the self-check out at supermarkets, Home Depot, drug stores, etc. So far, so good. No tip requests. But it really makes on sense. You don’t tip the cashier when she checks you out, so why would you tip a machine where you are checking yourself out?
But I do see it on lots of take-out apps. I use them a lot. It’s easy to order and just go and pick-up. I have used it for food delivery services, and alarmingly, I recently read about these delivery drivers asking people for extra tips if they want their deliveries to arrive! What do they do, throw the food out if they aren’t tipped enough?
I think I wrote about this before – at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was afraid to go anywhere, I would use the delivery services for supermarket delivery – Publix, Winn-Dixie, Whole Foods, etc. There were so many people using the services at that time, that they literally would take days to deliver the food.
They would let you know in advance, for instance, you would order on a Monday and they would have openings for food delivery on Thursday at 8 pm, something odd like that. But I read somewhere that if you tipped a lot, you will get faster delivery. So I tried that, I would normally tip $5.00, but I upped it to $20.00 and sure enough, the food would come days earlier, many times the same day! So there is something to be said for tipping ahead of time, although I’m not really a fan of tipping before I receive the service.
I tip on apps like Subway and other food apps where they are preparing my food, because unfortunately, they ask for the tip before the order goes in and I feel that they might do something with my food if I don’t tip. My mother used to always say you don’t argue with people handling your food and I guess that goes the same for tipping them.
At my local Starbucks, I don’t tip on the app where I order and just pick walk in and pick up the order, but every once in awhile I do tip $5.00 or $10.00 and I make sure they see me putting the cash in the tip jar.
I like these new hand-held things that restaurants now how. It’s just the push of a button and the tip is added and you don’t have to deal with doing math. The problem with all that is you never really see the final bill. I’ve asked for it to be printed out, but it never is.
I’ve also heard of people tipping flight attendants after a flight. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done, but that seem a bit strange. What next, we tip our doctor or dentist for a job well done?
Years ago I bartended for a short amount of time. I didn’t care about the job and didn’t care if I got fired or not. It was for a Hyatt hotel and I had to deal with all that corporate crap which is insane many times.
If a customer left me a quarter tip for a beer or two, I would give it back to them. I would pick it up off the bar, hand it to them and say, “Here, you must need it more than I do.” I found it insulting and I wasn’t gonna scrounge for their tips. The staff knew I didn’t care about being fired, so they would use me to tell customers off.
One night of the week, there was ladies night and ladies would drink free. But they never tipped! So the waitresses would come to me and ask me to say something, so I would – and of course I would get attitude back like, “Oh, so that’s how it is?” And the non-tipping customer would walk away. But of course they never complained because they couldn’t walk up to a manger and tell them they weren’t tipping for their free drinks they were getting all night.
I always tip Uber, but I read recently that only 16% of people tip, which I find astounding. I’ve always tipped a taxi driver, why not Uber? I always put the tip on the app, and as I exit the car I say, “I’ll add the tip to the app,” and I leave. I usually forget until a bit later, but I always add it, and then I’m concerned about what the driver thinks, does he/she think I stiffed them? But now seeing that only 16% of people tip drivers, I guess just as long as I’m leaving the tip, even if it isn’t immediately, that’s a good thing.
So I guess I’ve been on both ends of the tipping spectrum, but I still find it odd to tip a self-check out register.
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I came across this great Al Jaffee video where the Mad Magazine cartoonist talks about his life and Mad Magazine-related things.
Al passed away in April at the age of 102. My father always used to say all of these old comedians lived long lives because they laughed all day and every day – George Burns, Milton Berle, Jack Benny, etc. I guess you could add Al Jaffee to that list.
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My friend was saying it’s a thing that happens, things sound and look the same.
A few years back I wrote about a little book I have called Steal Like an Artist which says says that there are no original ideas – everyone steals from each other.
Over the years I was positive people were stealing my cartoon ideas. I was so admant about it until it happened to me and I looked as if I was stealing others’ ideas. It just happens, there are just so many ideas. I don’t call it stealing, I just call it life.
Recently a guy suggested I took one of his ideas, but I wrote about how I came up with the cartoon and it has nothing to do with his cartoon.
I saw a cartoon recently that I came up with years ago. Only thing is I never published it and never told anyone about it, but there it was, created and published by someone else, and now I feel that I can’t ever publish my cartoon. I had been putting off redrawing it to fit the format I use now and I wanted to freshen it up a bit, but putting it off just caused me to look as if I am stealing someone’s work, so I guess it will never see the light of day now.
Many years ago I sent cartoons to a syndicate and a month or so later, I saw one of my ideas in a famous comic strip. I was convinced that the cartoonist saw my work at the syndicate some way and used it. Never mind the fact that he published 365 cartoons a year, I was convinced that one was taken from my idea.
My cousin sent me the link to a movie called Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, he was explaining it to me, he saw it the other night on tv. I told him that was Mama Mia! So it happens, whether the writers agree or not to the fact. In this case, the Mama Mia movie and play people say it isn’t the same thing.
So anyway, I’m glad Ed Sheeran was not convicted of anything. Things sound the same all the time and things look the same all the time. It’s the zeitgeist of life.
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Another great story on CBS Sunday Morning this past week.
Bill Blackbeard, over 30 years, has preserved 2.5 million comic strip artifacts – actual ephemeral newspaper comics sections. I love this, but I do wish he would have saved the whole newspaper of the times! Some go back to 1904.
He drove around the country with his wife and friends, collecting old newspaper comic sections, a lot from libraries who would microfilm the newspapers and then have no future use for them after filming them.
The comics are being featured at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University right now.
Included with the newspapers is the whole original set of 1931 comic art pieces of Blondie – actual drawn pieces of art from the time.
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