Swipe back and forth and you’ll see the two different text choices.
I changed the text on this cartoon just before it was published. At first it said, “You uninvited your brother to the BBQ?” and then I changed it to, “Your brother uninvited us to the BBQ?” I thought the brother uninviting them worked better. What do you think?
It makes the guy I drew here the protagonist . . . but maybe not, since he was uninvited.
My family isn’t dysfunctional, but my small condo building is – in a funny, nice way. I always compare it to Mrs. Madrigal’s boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane in Tales of the City. When I mention that to people, they start laughing, because they can see that about our building and the comparison is right on.
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This Dinette Set cartoon really hit home with me when I saw it the other day. This actually happened with my friends some years back.
I was going to a BBQ with my friends Audrey and Bill. As we were getting ready to leave, Audrey went to the fridge to take a chocolate cake out, which we were bringing and there was a slice missing. Bill had eaten it!
Audrey was very upset and started yelling at Bill, who saw nothing wrong with that. Bill was very laid back, he blew up my Compugraphic typesetting machine once while trying to fix it, but that’s another story.
Anyway, we headed to the BBQ with that cake. I guess I was young and nothing bothered me back then so I just went along with the partially eaten cake. But if it was today, I would have insisted we stop and get another cake somewhere. I think I drove us to the party, so it would have been easy to just pull into a supermarket or bakery and get another cake.
By the way, the very talented Judy Larson, the Dinette Set cartoonist, passed away a couple of years ago. I read that recently in The Daily Cartoonist. I’ve always enjoyed her cartoon.
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It’s interesting when you have one idea in mind when you create a cartoon and then people see other ideas and meanings to the cartoon.
This one in particular came easy to me. I am eating more farro these days. Farro is an ancient grain, eaten by the Egyptians, Romans and others and it came back into fashion in the past few years.
It seems that you can’t just say, “Farro,” you have to say, “Farro, the ancient grain.” And that’s where the cartoon idea came from.
So what if it’s an ancient grain? Was it a magic grain that was mighty and powerful? Did it extend life expectancies? I don’t think so. The mom is feeding the baby Farro, so he could live to a ripe old age, which was 30-years-old back then. I was thinking that when I hear, “It’s an ancient grain!”
Some read the cartoon as meaning the boy was King Tut and he wouldn’t live past 19-years-old anyway. He was just a random boy, but if they want to think that is Tut. That’s fine.
Others felt that if that was King Tut, he was King, so Farro was good for him. But he was only king from ages 9 to 19, so Farro didn’t keep him alive. It’s thought he died from either malaria and/or a bone disease. Both things not prevented from all that farro he may have eaten.
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I don’t usually understand a lot of the New Yorker cartoons, but this one by Asher Perlman really hit home.
The other day I was at the doctor’s office and I was asked about four times for my birthday, they do this now to be sure you are who you say you are. I guess there are people pretending to be someone else for medical attention. Or maybe the staff wants to be sure that they don’t want to cut your leg off if you are only there for an allergy.
But when I arrived, I checked in with someone at the front desk, they asked for my birthday, then a guy took my blood pressure, he asked for my birthday, then someone else, and then eventually the doctor.
My birthday is next week, so they all wished me a “happy birthday,” when they saw the date, which was nice.
If you haven’t been to the doctor lately, I guess this New Yorker cartoon is one of the ones that doesn’t make sense. But trust me, it’s funny because it is real life.
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I donated to the Kickstarter for “How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page,” by Glenn Fleishman.
Glenn has put together his research and collections of comics and cartoon artifacts, along with interviews he’s done with cartoonists and other to put this book in print.
It’s more than just a reprint of comics, although there should be that, but it explains everything about the history of comics and comic strips from 1890 to present and explains how certain techniques were done and includes info on newspaper comics along with webcomics.
The project is almost funded but of course you may still want to order now. Publication is planned for October 2024.
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I’m switching back to Ollie And Jacomo for a bit, taking a little break from my single panel Tomversation cartoon. Hope you follow along. It starts today.
I keep getting subscribers on the Ollie And Jacomo website and on Facebook and I’m not sure why, as I haven’t been promoting them, but they are being seen somewhere I guess. So I figured I should give them a little attention.
While new episodes of Tomversation are being “filmed,” I will dedicate my time to the new Ollie And Jacomo season. It’s my “seasons” thing, where comics have a season.
I wasn’t sure if everyone would get today’s cartoon, mostly the younger generations. Do people know who Larry Fine is? If you don’t he’s one of The Three Stooges. You know, Moe, Larry and Curley, or Moe, Larry and Shemp. When I was younger, The Stooges were all over tv. I remember in high school I worked in the stockroom at Sears and at 3 pm, everyday, we took our break to watch The Three Stooges on tv in the break room.
I noticed this image online, after I drew this cartoon and it made me feel a bit better, especially since I hate to explain cartoons. It’s a large mural of Larry somewhere in Philadelphia.
Not too long ago I was towed. I should have been fined/ticketed, but the City of Miami thought it was a good idea to tow me.
I was in a parking space that I had parked in for years. I paid the meter and wandered off. Apparently the city changed the parking hours at that space and rather than just ticket me so I would know the new rules, they felt a towing was in order.
I had visions of Parking Wars, the tv show, where people are towed and eight hours later they are still at the towing location, trying to get their cars out. But I was pleasantly surprised. I Ubered to the car lot and I was the only one there, which was surprising, since Miami tows anything at any time for no apparent reason. But it was just me. I was in and out in three minutes! Really! It made the whole experience less painful.
One thing did bother me though. On Parking Wars, a lot of the hold up is that people don’t have their insurance card with them. When I asked the attendant if she wanted to see my insurance card, she told me that was not needed. That explained Miami drivers in a nutshell. No car insurance proof needed?
As for the cartoon, I’m not sure where I came up with the concept of “Larry fine isn’t fine, etc.” It just popped into my head. I didn’t see Larry on tv or hear his name or anything, like where a lot of my ideas come from. It almost reminds me of these memes that show why the English language is so difficult for foreigners trying to learn English.
Like too, two and to, and he’s fine with the fine and read and read (Read to me, I read it).
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Some people call my cartoons memes. I don’t know why, and I’m not crazy about that, but I have been known to use #meme as a hashtag at times. But it’s a comic or cartoon. Not a meme.
I also have been described as having an “old school” or “old fashioned” style of cartooning. It’s called drawing, not A.I.ing or computer generation. I guess the future is that – A.I. generated or some sort of electronic design. Like an NFT-type image.
Then there are the people who don’t get some of the cartoons. That’s a whole different category. But I do find that different gags don’t work in different parts of the world, even if we speak the same language , things come across different or confusing at times.
I mentioned in a previous post that my method was called drawing in an “exposition box.” I looked exposition box up and it says: “An explosion box is an origami box that pops open and “explodes” as soon as the recipient takes the top off, revealingpictures, messages, and even gifts inside. It’s a bigger version of our Explosion Cards project.”
I hardly think I fit into that category.
Must we label it? If so, it’s a cartoon or a comic or a comic panel or a comic strip. That’s it. People used to call online comics “online comics,” now they are just “comics.” But there are categories for them when it comes to awards. The National Cartoonist Society Ruben Awards (like the Oscars for cartoonists) has categories like, “newspaper strip,” “newspaper panel,” “online long form,” “online short form,” “gag cartoon,” and so on.
The gag cartoon is a panel cartoon like mine. Online long form can be a comic strip or longer and online short form is usually a single panel like mine.
Categories and labels all for basically the same thing.
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This cartoon makes me laugh whenever I see it. It just really makes me LOL.
I know “Hugh” is pronounced with the “Hush” sound, but it seems to work here.
I redid it, adding “Em” to the group, as a reader suggested that. I also seemed to have left out Mr. T and CeCe. I guess it’s turned into a word game, which I like. And one person in a comment said, “Casey” which is KC, which I like.
I was watching tv one day and the guy says his name is Jay. And thought does he mean the letter J. like people use or does he mean Jay, the actual name. I thought to myself, “It’s confusing when people are named after letters,” and of course that how that came to this cartoon.
I started thinking of the alphabet and the various names that sound like letters and one thing lead to another.
Another way of doing this could have been the actual letters in a bar and have the letters say, “Hello D, hello, B, etc. But I don’t usually like doing inanimate object cartoons and I think it works well the way it is now.
On Reddit, I got lots of comments, many nasty. Apparently people don’t know Bea is pronounced BEE and Hugh is mispronounced U, but that seems to be a U.S. thing, because the cartoon was put down for being “an American thing.”
Other rude people on Reddit didn’t like the drawing style or that it was one panel. And apparently, this gag has something to do with Men in Black, which I’ve never seen.
Some comments from Reddit:
“It’s a shitty premise being in a shitty exposition box, but then it goes and gets greedy with Hugh.” Not sure what an exposition box is, maybe a single panel.
“Hugh has a brother, Double Hugh.” “Nah, his twin brother would be UE.” “Hugh is a stretch but passable.” “What about multiple letter names like Petey and Emilee?” “I suppose Elle is pronounced L?” “My friend Ivy is named after two letters?”
And it goes on and on. But people seem to be very hung up on “Hugh” being “U.”
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I laugh every time I see this cartoon, not just because it’s mine, but because it’s true.
I was recently in New York and Boston and I saw it, and every winter/fall, there is some guy in shorts and t-shirt running or just standing in the city while everyone else is bundled up.
Is he showing off or does he not feel the cold?
He’s probably from a cold climate and 30 degrees is not cold to him. Maybe he’s from Alaska or Canada or some northern European city.
I know that when I’m home in Miami, when it gets to 70 degrees, I need to wear a hoodie or jacket or something, but when I’m in NY, I can go out in a t-shirt in 50 degree weather and when it’s been 39 degrees and sunny, I can walk with an open jacket and t-shirt in NY and not feel the cold. I think it may have something to do with the humidity in Miami and maybe lack of it up north. It just feels colder down south when the temp drops.
I remember one year, it was 19 degrees at the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade in NY and I was fine out there. I was bundled up and dressed for the weather and I think only my nose was cold. But I was bundled up, I wasn’t in shorts and a t-shirt.
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tomversation.com 