I had to reset my internet user name and password. For some reason, it just disappeared from the list, I couldn’t sign on or get internet – so a lady on the phone at the ISP reset it all for me.
She asked me for a new user name and password. I gave her a silly word for the password and felt embarrassed, so I told her it was my cat’s name. I don’t have a cat. Or a dog for that matter.
And that made me think of this cartoon. So many people use their pets’ names for their passwords.
A lot of people liked the cartoon and shared it, so I guess it hit a nerve.
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I never pay attention to Google Alerts about myself. In fact, I took myself off of Google Alerts years ago because most things written about me where not nice.
When I was doing the daily news, I would get written about and mocked for things I wrote on almost a daily basis, so I just removed myself from the alerts – ignorance is bliss.
But I put myself on the alerts again once I started my Tomversation cartoon but I never look at them when they arrive in email (the alerts, not my cartoons), this morning I looked because there is a guy with a blog called Tomversations – with an “s” and I thought to myself, “Let me see what he’s up to.” But it was me that was in the alert – and it was all featured items of my cartoons.
There are a lot of sites that seem to be copying each other, I think the Bored Panda thing that was done a few months back and then other sites all seemed to have gone through my comics and picked out their favorites and featured them.
I don’t mind because I’m given the credit and it’s free publicity.
A couple of us went to the Beaux Arts Festival in Coral Gables yesterday. It’s the 71st edition.
It was smaller this year, I guess due to covid, and they moved the location south a bit – it’s still on the University of Miami grounds, just not in the grassy, shady, lake area, near the Lowe Art Museum – it was more in a parking lot.
There wasn’t much food. A friend of mine, who fell off his bike, for like the 5th time, asked me to bring him his favorites from the festival, since he is still laid up – conch fritters and gyros. Only they didn’t have them. I think there were just a few food booths and nothing great. So I stopped by empty handed to visit him afterwards.
At the festival I saw a lot of friends, many of them are artists, who had booths set-up and were showing and selling their work.
It’s one of those things that comes around year after year at the same time – repetitive, but we look forward to it.
The weather was perfect, bright, sunny and cool – in the 60s. Today a cold front is coming through so it will be rainy and windy most of the day.
But that’s the beginning of a bunch of our art shows for the year. 2022 has started.
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I did my first interview for the new 10 With Tom site. I had the chance to interview Tauhid Bondia who is the cartoonist of one of my favorite comic strips called Crabgrass. I had written about them in 2020 here.
The comic is about two young friends in the 1980s. I felt it relevant now because Crabgrass is starting newspaper syndication on March 28. It will continue to be online as well.
This year has not been kind to our family. We lost three family members – my mother, my aunt and a cousin. My father lost a wife, a sister and a first cousin (none from covid).
When my aunt passed this past Spring, I asked my cousins for something personal of hers. I wanted something with her energy attached – a coffee mug, an earring, etc. They gave me this little painting she made. It was in her dining room for many years – this little snowman image.
I took it home in July, after I spent time in New York and it sits on a table in my living room.
I would look at it daily. I thought, “It looks like a Christmas card – the snowman, the snow and birdhouse evoke Christmas. And it’s the size of a Christmas card.” And from there, I got the idea of making an actual card out of it. So in late July, that is what I did.
I held onto the card all summer and fall until this week when I mailed it. I didn’t tell anyone about the card, I wanted it to be a surprise. I only had 20 made and I sent it to my immediate family and my cousins and uncle. It went over well, everyone was touched and surprised at the image when they opened the envelope.
Let’s hope for a happier and healthier 2022.
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It’s not Christmas without a visit to the Union Square Green Market. Seeing people carrying Christmas trees through Manhattan really sets the season. I love the Green Market on Saturday mornings. It’s a ritual when I’m in town.
We went to The Hamptons for the Holiday parade on Saturday, but I stopped by the Green Market first.
There’s a holiday bazaar every years – booths set up at one end of the park. The same thing is set up in Bryant Park behind the library and in a space inside Grand Central Terminal.
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I’m proud to be a part of CartoonStock, which is a searchable cartoon archive on the internet where editors, and just about anyone, can find cartoons for their publications from newspapers, magazines, newsletters and online publications. At CartoonStock, people are buying the rights to publish the cartoons.
In 2018, CartoonStock was acquired by longtime New Yorker Cartoon Editor and Cartoonbank.com creator Bob Mankoff, and cartoon lover/philanthropist Lawrence Benenson.
Cartoons available were published in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, National Lampoon, Barron’s, and The American Bystander, as well as online collections from The Weekly Humorist and Narrative Magazine.
“By joining CartoonStock’s talent and technology with our longtime publication connections, we’ve created the platinum level in the cartoon universe, allowing us to showcase distinguished cartoonists alongside upcoming talent with content that is hilarious, insightful, and relevant,” says Bob Mankoff.
There are curated cartoons on various subjects, or you can check out each cartoonist individually and see their work, or you can type in keywords for whatever subject you are looking for and the various cartoons pop up.
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Bored Panda featured me a couple of weeks ago. I had forgotten that they contacted me about an interview a few weeks back, so it was a pleasant surprise to see this.
The feature came out great and I love what Hidrėlėy, the author, wrote about me, he really gets me:
“This artist creates old-school, one-panel comics. They are filled with absurd humor and unexpected twists, weird characters, and situations that not many of us run into.
“The style that this artist uses is very reminiscent of newspaper comics and there’s something very nostalgic about them. The comics are very simple, but at the same time have quite a lot of detail and expression. The artist enjoys puns and wordplay. He sometimes even includes a little dark humor in his comics.”
Bored Panda has 116 million readers a month and 15 million Facebook followers. Not a bad place to be promoted!
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People always ask how I come up with the cartoon ideas. They just pop into my head. I don’t usually dwell on things, although sometimes I do, I might have a great drawing, but I hate the text, so I’ll let it sit – sometimes for months, and then the gag hits me and I change the text/wording in the cartoon.
Today’s cartoon – the Columbo – “watch one” came to me while watching (watching, see what I did there?) North Woods Law. I wasn’t even watching, I just overheard one of the officers say, “It happened on my watch, I’ll handle it.” And the rest is history. I used Columbo because he’s my favorite detective and he was popular in a past cartoon, where he used Siri for help solving a crime. And I read recently that he’s become even more popular with people during the pandemic.
This one from last year – the “Ice Hole” one, I explained once before, it came to me while watching Life Below Zero. I wasn’t really paying attention either, I think I was dozing off, and I heard Chip Hailstone, one of the people on the show, say to his kids, who were going ice fishing, “Hey, there’s an ice hole!” And it made me look up and laugh and just totally struck me as being hilarious. And voilà – there was a comic idea.
I played around with it a bit. At first there was a bear hibernating behind a bush and he heard the guys say “ice hole,” and he looked up with one eye open. It was titled, “Trouble Brewing,” but I couldn’t get the image setting right, so I made it another ice fisher.
Most times I’ll read something or see something or overhear something and just twist it in my mind for a bit. So many times I hear something and rush to write it down so I don’t forget.
After the cartoon is done, I end up changing it in some way – up until the last minute – sometimes it’s something simple like a color change, other times it’s the wording or maybe the expression on a character’s face. Never a dull moment.
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Today’s cartoon over at TomFalco.com is of the Addams Family. I drew this a few years ago, but I keep seeing them in the new Progressive Insurance commercials, so I thought I would dust it off and bring it out. There’s a new Addams Family movie coming out October 1. The cartoon originally had Lurch saying, “You Tweeted?” but I thought texted sounded more personal for the Addams household.
Anyway, notice the walls in the living room? Pink. Why? Because that’s what color they were!
I’ve been seeing this photo below, around the internet for years – it’s by Richard Fish, a well-known photographer at the time. It’s not colorized, this is the original color photo.
I never did find out why the walls were pink and green, but maybe that showed up better on black and white tv at the time and perhaps they thought the tv show would eventually be done in color.
Swipe back and forth and see the difference between color and black and white.
COMPARE – COLOR TO BLACK AND WHITE
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