culture

Left on Tenth

Four of us went to see the play, “Left on 10th” yesterday. I wasn’t sure what to expect. It started slow, but got good. It’s an adaptation from Delia Ephron’s best selling book about here life.

It stars Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher, two tv favorites of mine.

The ending was surprising to me, which made it more enjoyable.

Julianna plays Delia, Nora Ephron’s sister, and the play is about her fight with cancer and her meeting Peter and falling in love at the same time. It’s sad at times, but mostly it isn’t. And knowing that it is all a real story, makes it even more interesting.

They meet up again after the death of both their spouses, they had gone on a date many years before but Delia/Juliana doesn’t remember and it goes on from there.

Left on Tenth refers to the direction Delia would give to people to help find her apartment in the West Village in NYC.

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How old is too old for Halloween?

Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) in Meet Me in St. Louis

Hold old is too old to trick-or-treat?

I say you’re never too old. There’s a thing where certain cities have age limits, I don’t know how they enforce that. Do they ask 12-year-olds to show I.D. to be sure they are not 14 and over the limit? And what sort of I.D. do 12-year-olds have?

If a 16-year-old wants to go through the trouble of dressing up and walking around trick-or-treating, so what? What if a 50-year-old wants to do that? So what?

If you’re gonna be cheap about handing out candy, then turn the lights out at your house and don’t participate.

I don’t think as many people as in the past trick-or-treat. I know when I was a kid the whole neighborhood was out and it went till late. Now I don’t see as many people, but maybe it’s just around where I live.

One of my favorite parts of one of my favorite movies, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” is when the kids are doing Halloween in 1903. So Halloween has been a long-standing thing in the U.S., and many other countries.

Adults have parties, they dress up at banks, schools, even the car dealership, so if these people want to trick-or-treat after work – so what?

I dressed up for years, my whole town did. I didn’t trick-or-treat, but I did go to parties and things. I think I only ended it because I didn’t want to be bothered making a costume every year. But I enjoy seeing everyone else dressed up and enjoying the day.

Give everyone candy if they are dressed up and come to your door. Full bars if possible!

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New York Comic Con

Went to NY Comic Con yesterday, opening day.

The usual cosplayers were there, but this year I didn’t see Spider-man, Superman or Batman, at least not many. In years past, there were so many of them.

But still it was fun. It seems to be more about video games and movies and tv, not so much about comics, as was the original premise.

I ran into my cousin, who is there all the time, at the booth for the company where he works, it’s an auction house for original cartoon art. I’ve purchased some things from their auctions.

We kibitzed for a bit and then I walked around to check out some other comic booths.

It’s sold out for the year, but if you ever get a chance to go to a comic con in any city, I highly recommend it.

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Visited MOMA, again

Visited one of my favorite places again yesterday – MOMA – Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

My favorite painting, Starry Night, was crammed with people again, trying to get selfies of themselves in front of the painting, and I tried to get pictures of people taking images of themselves in front of the painting.

NYC has been very busy with tourists this week. Today is the opening of New York Comic Con, maybe that’s why. I’ll be at Comic Con, I’ll post about it Friday, subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss it. I’ll also have a story and images on our trip upstate to pumpkin and apple pick, as we usually do each October.

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’10 With Tom’ is on Substack

I’ve been publishing my work on Substack, since it seems like it’s the thing to do. I publish cartoons and my blog posts there and I also started publishing my 10 With Tom column there.

My 10 With Tom is now at Substack at substack.com/@10withtom . It started out at the Huffington Post some years back. I interviewed celebs and news people, athletes, all sorts of people you may know. I moved it to my own url at 10WithTom.com and now at Substack.

I interview people in 10 random questions. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and yes, a slew of folks you probably know. While I mainly covered famous people and celebs, I want to go back to my original purpose – interview people coming up in the world – everyday people. Everyone has a story, that’s what I would like to include in the publication – a new guitarist, a new author or artist; a teacher, the mailman!

I’m still working my way around Substack, but it’s a blogging, publishing platform, where you can make money from having people subscribe to your work, although at this point, everything I publish is free, even to subscribers.

There is a section called “Notes” which is sort of like Twitter/X, and there are long-form stories and published pieces. Many well-known people publish on Substack and they have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers. It seems like every regular contributor on these cable news shows, now has their own writing space on Substack.

I mostly follow other cartoonists and artists. I like that community. I am all in with this project, I even have a t-shirt, which is for sale on the site (and here).

Substack is slow going at first, but that is to be expected until the algorithm notices you. But I have noticed famous people get lots of subscribers right away. Sort of like the rich getting richer. This one guy made believe he was Keanu Reeves, he didn’t post anything other than introducing himself, and he got so many followers just for that reason. And therein lies the rub . . . .

Hope to see you at my new Substack for 10 With Tom, hopefully you’ll subscribe, which is free, and every time I post a new interview, you’ll receive it via email.

Aug-tober; it’s a real thing

Aug-tober. It’s a thing. It’s celebrating October, and specifically Halloween right now – in August!

Many stores, including Home Depot and Target have Halloween items out already and I’ve seen items being featured on tv on QVC. But of course, we know that as soon as September comes, the Christmas items will start showing up.

I see old movies and tv shows where people are buying and putting up the Christmas trees on Christmas Eve. I don’t want to go back to that, but I do think we should celebrate each holiday and season in the order that they come.

I have to admit that I do put up my Christmas tree in mid-November – only because I leave for New York then and don’t return until December, and I like to have it up when I get home so I don’t have to think about it.

I don’t light it. I start lighting it up a couple of weeks before Christmas.

One year I had it up in October! It wasn’t decorated, but it was stored in my spare room and I had a friend sleeping over, so I had to remove it from the room (it’s artificial, of course), and it seemed that it was easier to just put up the tree where it stands usually in the living room, but it wasn’t decorated. It just was there.

I do have my plans for October, regarding travel. I think it’s my favorite month. I’ll be at New York Comic Con as usual and I’ll be pumpkin and apple picking with some of my cousins in the Hudson Valley, which is always a favorite thing – seeing the leaves change, being in the cool weather, going to farms for the pumpkins and applies, having hot apple cider and apple cider doughnuts . .. it’s perfect! And sometimes we do the Oyster Festival in The Hamptons and so many other fall things.

**Dude With Sign loves Halloween, too.**

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Less is more

I’m still feeling FOMO about the Paris Olympics. I want to be in Paris. The 2028 summer Olympics are in Los Angeles – meh. For me it’s about the Olympics and Paris as a combo, not simply the Olympics, so LA has no allure as far as I’m concerned.

I started up my Tomversation single panel cartoon again, along with the final week of Ollie And Jacomo in Paris, so they are overlapping. My single panel had been on a two week break while I concentrated on Ollie and Jacamo.

I’ve been playing around with Substack, the blogging platform, but it seems to be overwhelmed and hogged by a few other cartoonists. I don’t follow them, but they seem to be dominating the platform in an annoying way. One cartoonist is very thirsty, he posts something every few seconds it seems, which is really being too extra. It’s all about him it seems where Substack is concerned.

He draws in the park and announces it. I’ve seen so many people drawing in the park in NYC and I don’t think any of them announce it. It’s sort of like these street musicians, they just appear and play, I don’t think they announce it to everyone, “Hey, I’ll be in Madison Square Park by the fountain playing at noon.”

This one guy drew something on a stain on the wall in a public restroom and had to post that image.

It reminds me of when my condo board was doing things around the building but not telling everyone about it as a courtesy. One person said, “I’ll tell you the next time I sneeze or pick my nose, Tom!”

I guess less is more. In every situation.

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Is he today’s Michelangelo?

Saw this on CBS Sunday morning. A story about an Italian artist named Jacopo Cardillo, known in the art world at just Jago. he’s called the modern day Michelangelo due to his incredible sculptures.

One of his current marble pieces was placed in NYC this week, I missed it by a few days, hopefully it will still be there when I return in the fall. It’s called, “Look Down,” it s a sculpture of a baby, laying down on the ground. It’s in Thomas Paine Park, a small park a few blocks north of City Hall.

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Came to Miami to cool off

Glad to be home, I had to leave NYC to get some cooler weather – in Miami!

NYC was brutal. Heat indexes over 100 made it unbearable at times. This red hoodie cartoon reminded me of my favorite red hoodie, which I brought to NY with me, thinking I might need it at nights like most summers, but even the nights were warm this year, there really was no cool air other than the airconditioned places. I heard a weatherperson on tv describe it as the Northeast having “no airflow.”

I was living on iced coffee.

One day, I felt I was getting heat stroke, really – I wasn’t sure what to do, but I managed to get back to the a/c and my bed and I drank a lot of color water, and in time, I got back to normal. I wondered how I would get back across town, from uptown to downtown, as I waited on those roasting subway platforms.

Also, this year Manhattanhenge was a bust – too many clouds blocking it both nights.

But in spite of all the heat, I did have a lot of fun. A lot of my family from Miami was up north and we had good times mostly in The Hamptons. In the city I did a lot of my favorite things and went to many of my favorite museums, including Cleopatra’s Needle, behind the MET Museum and the JP Morgan Library, which I had passed a few times, but never visited.

Ate in a lot of new places – three Greek restaurants ironically. But I forgot to check out Maria Loi’s place, Loi Estiatorio, which I see on tv a lot. I like her Mediterranean cooking style.

I’m looking forward to cooler temps in the fall, when I return for NY Comic Con and pumpkin and apple picking in October and Thanksgiving and so many more things in November.

***Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park***

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Tommy the pinball wizard

A bunch of us went to see The Who’s Tommy musical on Broadway last night. I loved it. There were a few slow moving parts, but the music and the flashing lights and loud production was the thing.

Two small kids played Tommy at ages 4 and 10 and what was remarkable was that they didn’t have much or any dialog but their presence and silence and they way they were swung around and turned upside down and just thrown around as if they were dolls was amazing. When the stage was full of other singers, dancers and actors, you couldn’t keep your eyes off the young kids.

Of course, I knew most, if not all of the Who’s music and that made it great.

The story of course is of a boy who witnesses a murder, in his own house, at age 4, and that causes him to turn into himself and he becomes deaf, dumb and blind, as the song goes. It’s a great, loud production.

I heard various reviews from the people I was with and it seems as if I am the one who was the most enthusiastic. But at the end of the musical, the whole audience was up on their feet cheering and singing and leaving the theater smiling. A day later I can still hear the music in my head.

The musical is at the Nederlander Theater on 41st Street in Manhattan.

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