There are two cartoons published today – same concept, two images.
I wasn’t sure which version to use, so I did two of them.
As you know, lately performers have things thrown at them from the audience. Not sure why, seems like a stupid thing to do. Cardi B threw a mic at one guy who threw water from a plastic cup on her!
The story goes that Cardi B was asking the audience to throw water on her because she was burning up in the Las Vegas heat. So this person threw the water. But when Cardi B threw the mic into the crowd, she hit someone else – a lady, and now the lady is suing because she is “bruised.”
The world we live in today.
Even the Sign Guy agrees. Saw this on his Facebook page.
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Today’s cartoon reflects the changes at Twitter, or is it now “X”? Not sure.
I will miss the little bird. It’s been the mascot/logo since day one. I don’t think the look ever changed after all these years like so many logos do. In this case, it just became a whole new thing.
The X in this cartoon is a shuriken, a ninja star, killing the poor Twitter bird.
I don’t use Twitter these days as much as I used to. I mostly read it and get news there. I recently signed up for Threads. The new alternative to Twitter.
If you want, you can follow me on Twitter/X at: twitter.com/tomversation And Threads at: @tomvesation.toons
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It’s a pink weekend. Between the new Barbie movie and Lionel Messi. the soccer superstar’s USA debut, it’s all pink. You can swipe back and forth for both cartoons here.
Pink is of course the theme of Barbie and Messi’s color is pink. Messi’s pink a little bit lighter in color, but still, I think this deep, bright pink makes the point (cartoonwise).
I first did the Barbie cartoon and at the last minute I thought of Messi. Here in Miami, it’s Messi all over the place. Murals are appearing on buildings, soccer tickets have zoomed up in price and that’s all you hear about – Messi, Messi, Messi.
On the national news, I’ve seen lots of reports on Messi, so I thought I would add it to today’s cartoon as a second option, to add to the pink theme of the weekend.
Barbie and Messi
The Oppenheimer movie is opening this weekend, too, and people are buying tickets for both Barbie and Oppenheimer and will do a double feature, sort of like the old days. The big debate there is which one to see first so as to set the tone for the next movie.
I couldn’t fit Oppenheimer into the pink theme. It’s anything but bright and pink.
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Today’s cartoon is about the Hollywood actor’s strike. First off, let me say I am in favor of everyone being paid what they are worth. And I’m in favor of the actor’s receiving their due. I also know that the majority of actors are not paid millions of dollars and some barely make a living wage. I know that.
This is just one view of how some people see the strike. It could be because they have big names as the face of the strike, like Fran Drescher, Jason Sudekis, Susan Sarandon and Brian Cox, who are just a few that have been shown on tv talking about the issue. I know the big names get the air time.
If it was a character actor that we don’t know, then perhaps people might feel differently. But again, I understand the SAF-AFTRA issue. They want their fair share, they don’t want their likenesses used with AI formats and so on.
When I started my Huffington Post column, 10 With Tom, my goal was to interview up- and-coming artists and musicians – people who were not known, but I was asked to write about well-known people, because that’s what the readers apparently wanted to read. So it’s the same here, publicize the famous stars rather than those in the picket line who really need to strike.
I know the writers are on strike, too, and many of them barely make a living wage.
I’m hoping for a good outcome for everyone involved.
When I first wrote the cartoon, I used a husband and wife watching tv, worried about their cable bill or streaming bill going up due to the eventual outcome of the strike, but I thought the two homeless guys would make more of an impression.
Originally, this was the cartoon.
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This Our Boarding House cartoon is from July 10, 1929. Almost 100 years ago, and we are probably still drinking our coffee the same way in the U.S. – with cold milk, if we add milk.
I live in Miami, so when we order coffee at a restaurant, if you order coffee, you get Cuban Coffee, which is espresso with about eight, yes eight, teaspoons of sugar.
If you want a regular cup of coffee, you order “American Coffee” and then you’ll get it. But in many cases, they give you warm/hot milk on the side if you ask for milk or cream with it. You have to ask for cold milk, like The Major here in the cartoon.
I guess it makes no sense to have hot coffee and then put cold milk in it, but that’s how it goes in the rest of the U.S. if you’re not in Miami. For some reason I skeeve hot milk put in hot coffee. As for iced coffee, I like it ice and coffee. That’s it. No milk, no sugar. I’ve ordered it at a McDonald’s and I have to explain to them more than once that I don’t want anything else in it, just the ice and coffee. They could not wrap their minds around the fact that I didn’t want anything in it.
I live on Cold Brew Iced Coffee when I’m in New York in the summer, usually from Starbucks, I order it on the app and pick it up. These days, as you know, it’s sweltering in summer so I drink that a lot. They know me at a few of the Starbucks in NYC and they just hand me the coffee when they see me without calling my name – I’m there that often. But they get it – ice and coffee. Nothing else. Well, one thing – they used to have these little square bites – they were lemon coconut, something like that. They no longer have that as an item on the menu. So it’s just the iced coffee, nothing else, right now.
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I saw some Berry’s World cartoons online the other day. It reminded me of Ralph Dunagan, who I wrote about here. Both of them seem to be big influences on my drawing style – on the way I draw comics. I love their styles, which are very similar.
When I was a kid I enjoyed both cartoonists’ work.
Jim Berry’s “Berry’s World” was a daily cartoon which ran from February 18, 1963, through March 1, 2003, with a Sunday color comic.
Jim received the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1965, 1966, and 1972 for his work on the strip.
I see so much of my own work in both of these cartoonists and until recently I didn’t realize that they were a big influence on my work.
Here are a few images of Dunagin’s work.
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In Florida, while mosquitoes may be a problem, Palmetto Bugs are the worst. If you’ve never seen one, picture a large black roach, sometimes two inches long – that flies!
I’ve lived in Florida practically all my life, but I’ve never got over seeing one in my house. I remember years ago I practically destroyed my house like this cartoon, trying to kill one, which was climbing up the wall. I can picture it in my head now, crawling along a painting above the tv. I was getting ready to go out for the night, but I couldn’t leave until I got it, which eventually I did.
A couple of weeks ago I walked into the kitchen at night, turned on the light and there was a big, and I mean big, palmetto bug sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. I had the bug spray in my other room across the house, so I went running to get it before the bug disappeared and in the process, I slipped on the floor, put my hand out to steady myself and fell into the closet doors, which are now broken and need replacing!
I did get the bug in the end though. I bought this new eco friendly stuff that paralyzes the bugs but is safe for people and the environment.
It’s funny, when I’ve mentioned to people that I broke my closet doors by falling into them, they ask me if I tumbled into them because I was drunk.
I hadn’t seen a palmetto bug inside my house for over 10 years. Now every once in awhile one pops up, I don’t know what changed. I’ve taken to spraying once a month now under the stove and at entrances, sort of like an exterminator would.
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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. 🙂
tomversation.com 