This cartoon got quite a few comments yesterday. It seems that everybody has a story on what they hated to eat as a kid. I think I didn’t like liver and possibly spinach. Spinach I like today. Liver never.
I don’t think my mom forced me to eat what I didn’t like, but I do remember her telling me to try it.
One thing I have almost daily is olive oil, I take a spoonful daily for the omega threes and to be in step with those blue zones around the world, and I also put it on things when eating. But I didn’t like it as a kid and my mom was telling me how good it is for your health, I remember. She said I would get used to the taste. I eventually did.
One lady mentioned spaghetti, in a comment. She didn’t like that and was forced to eat it as a kid. I can sort of understand that, as I am not a big fan of spaghetti, but I’ll eat it, I don’t have to be forced to eat it, but I wouldn’t order it in a restaurant.
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Almost five years ago, I interviewed Will Henry, the cartoonist who does the comic strip Wallace the Brave. The comic strip was new at the time, but I saw something I loved about it and reached out to Will for the interview. Today Wallace the Brave is syndicated in newspapers around the country and it’s just as charming as ever.
Wallace the Brave is reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes, yet it’s unique.
PBS did a short interview here. with Will recently, right out in his muse – the Rhode Island waterfront (and his liquor store, where it all started)
I often ask people I interview, which comic strip they would like to crawl into and visit for the day. Wallace’s world in Rhode Island is where I think I would like to visit.
I saw in The Daily Cartoonist today, that cartoonist Jim Keefe, cartoonist for Sally Forth, who previous was the writer and artist of Flash Gordon, wrote in his blog a few years ago, about the size, or rather, lack of size of the printed comic strips today.
A few years back I showed this example here, the comics in the Miami Herald – smaller than postage stamps!
I think this is the time I realized that my dream of being a published newspaper cartoonist was not my dream anymore.
I know people read the newspaper comics, but not many. I haven’t read the actual newspaper comics for years, and by years, I mean a decade or more. I think I gave up with The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County left the comics pages. Today I read them online, where you can pick and choose your favorites and sort of make up your own comics page at GoComics.com and Comics Kingdom and other sites like Webtoons.
I think one of the best places these days to publish and to read comics is Instagram. You can follow the comics you like, flip through them one panel at a time and they easily come up in your daily feed, you don’t have to look for them. I publish there Monday thru Friday.
I’m enjoying reading old “Our Boarding House” comic panels featuring Major Hoople, from the 1920s and ’30s, on Facebook. A couple of groups post one Major Hoople panel a day, it has a lot of devoted fans.
In the past I always felt that I had to be published in the newspapers – it was why comic strips were created – to be in the newspapers. Just like movies – created to be seen on the big silver screen. But today big features show up on streaming services and most comics show up online or on social media.
And with both of these situations, you can control what you see, when you see it and how you see it. You can watch a movie on your 3 inch phone or 65 inch tv – same with the comics and those tiny, postage sized comics can be easily blown on on any screen for easing viewing.
By not being confined to daily newspaper publication, you can vary your schedule, you can change the size of the panels – make them longer, shorter, etc. Not be edited, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it, and probably the best part – publish instantly without a four to eight week lag time. I can’t imagine these days completing a comic strip or panel and then waiting eight weeks to see it in print.
Of course, publishing online rather than with a syndicate in newspapers has one major drawback – no money – you don’t get a salary. But times are changing. NFT’s seem to be something interesting to look at these days along with other money-making ideas for artists and cartoonists.
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The last few months I’ve been driving a different direction than usual and I pass a school that I dealt with for many years. I used to print school newspapers (well, I was a print broker, and handled printing the newspapers) and I drive by one of the schools I had as a client for 20 years. They were the longest running school client I had.
Now each day as I drive by, the 1980s and 1990s flood into my mind, mostly the 1980s – and I go back in time. I can picture myself in the office, speaking to the ladies there, picking up the job, delivering the completed newspapers – for 20 years! The ’80s flash by in my mind.
The other morning I saw a report on Tears for Fears, who to me, was the sound of the 1980s. The report was about them getting back together and going on tour this summer with a new album. So of course I dug around for one of my favorite albums, “Songs From the Big Chair,” which I couldn’t find, so I download my favorites from that album.
To me “Shout,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and “Head Over Heels” scream 1980s – the best decade for music and just about everything!
I’ve been listening to this in my car and yesterday, as I drove by the school with the song on, I went back in time – like a time machine. I was back in time. It was surreal.
There are so many great songs from the 1980s, but for some reason, these three songs from Tears for Fears bring me back to that era and shout, no pun intended, 1980s.
I had it blasting so loud in the car, that I couldn’t hear a truck driver yelling at me and calling me names because I passed him on the road. I was in stuck 1985 anyway, out of his realm.
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We did our local arts festival yesterday and will go back again today. When I say did, I don’t mean we showed our art, I mean we walked around, ate, drank, kibitzed and enjoyed the show. For one thing, the town is mobbed with people and it’s impossible to get in and out so it’s best to just stay put and enjoy the event.
It is getting a bit out of hand with the $25 entry fee and $15 gyros and $18 taco dishes, but it is what it is.
This weekend every year is the busiest weekend of the year in Miami. There are a few arts festivals, the boat show and some other things. They say it’s impossible to find a hotel room or rent a car – they’re all booked for the weekend.
Oddly enough, it was cold all winter, where I love, but yesterday and I guess today, when a bunch of us go back, it will be very hot.
I ran into my nephew’s friend, he told me that he and his wife got in for free. He said to the people at the gate that they forgot to stamp him when he left and then he rubbed the wet stamp on his wife’s hand after they stamped him – sort of like we used to do at the clubs. So he saved 50 bucks.
I used to be part of this as a sponsor when I did the daily news around here so I would get lots of tickets to give out free. But not anymore, I’m now a peon like everyone else (which I love being by the way), but people didn’t know and I got so many texts and calls from friends and family asking me for tickets. Even the UPS guy was hounding me for tickets. How he got my phone number I’ll never know.
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My fascination of ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece and all sorts of archaeology goes way back. I studied it in college as part of Art History. My textbooks, which I still have, are in my living room and I glance at them every once in awhile. Guided tours of ancient Egyptian sites are part of my bucket list.
I do a lot of cartoons based on ancient times, I enjoy doing those.
And now that I think of it, if asked, what I would do if I wasn’t doing what I do now, I might say, “I’d like to be an archaeologist , digging around in Egyptian deserts. But not now, I think.
A MEME THAT POPPED UP THE OTHER DAY.
I was shocked into reality the other day while watching a tv show on Egyptian and Greece archeology. They were digging up ancient Greek tombs and relating them to Egypt at that time and one of the archeologists said something like, “We’re lucky to find this one in tact. The tomb raiders did not find this tomb, but we did through sonar (or radar, he said something like that.” And I was stunned. Why is a modern archeologist, digging up ancient tombs any better than ancient, or even current tomb raiders.
The main difference is that tomb raiders are taking gold and silver and precious items. Archaeologists are taking bodies; actual bodies. Why is this any better?
One lady archeologist, I can’t remember her name, has a life quest to find Cleopatra’s tomb. And do what with it when she finds it? Display her remains to the world? Another has a quest to find Alexander the Great’s and Cleopatra’s ancient Alexandria under present day Alexandria, I guess that’s ok, as they are looking for cities, not entombed bodies.
I can understand digging up and finding ancient cities, but I’m having second thoughts about digging up entombed, embalmed bodies.
So I have to think on it now. Is desecrating an ancient body permissible in the name of science? Is it ok to dig it up, pillage, analyze it and show it off in museums? I’m wondering. I’m sure I will still do ancient Egypt related cartoons, because in my cartoons the people are alive and in their time in their settings.
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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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Today’s newsstands – no news – but lots of candy and drinks.
I was in Boston and New York for a few weeks in November and I only saw one newspaper the whole time. It was on Thanksgiving morning at one of my cousins’ houses. She had the NY Times on her dining room table. The rest of the time I did not see any newspapers. No Boston Globe or Boston Herald. No NY Times, NY Post, Newsday or Daily News. Nothing.
Until a few years ago, I would see some at the newsstands. Some – not a lot. These days the “newsstands” sell candy and drinks. That’s it. Maybe an iPhone accessory or two, but gone are the days of actual newspapers.
I noticed at Hudson News in Grand Central, there are no newspapers and if there are – they are few and far between. They seemed to have cleaned the place out – the once cluttered store is now basically empty. Same with Hudson News in the airports. I was in three Hudson News locations in JFK Airport in November, and I tried to find some newspapers. Not one in any of the Hudson News locations.
Now this is a newsstand – an image from yesteryear.
I subscribe to the Miami Herald at home and am lucky when the paper arrives. I complained once and in return I received a nasty hand written note from the delivery girl, telling me I am lucky that I get a newspaper at all! No joke. Oddly enough, the day I was heading to Boston, I was waiting out front about 6:30 am for Uber. The news delivery girl drove up in her car – onto the lawn, did not get out – handed me the newspaper, backed off, and was on her way.
I remember when I delivered the Long Island Press as a boy. That’s a long story I won’t go into, but we didn’t do anything like that. We actually serviced the customers. I remember when it snowed, I walked around the block with the papers piled up on a sled.
Anyway, I was born in the wrong time period because if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I worship newspapers – printed newspapers, but over the years, I have read them less and less. They seem to be phasing out and that’s a sad thing. I wonder what it was like in the days of cities like NY having 14 daily newspapers – morning and evening editions.
I remember in the 1980s when the NY Post and the NY Daily News competed fiercely. There were maybe eight editions a day. It seemed that every time you walked by a newsstand in one day, the front page headlines were different with the different editions. I miss those days. Well, hell, I miss everything about the 1980s.
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Will Comic Con be affected by my travel plans in 2022?
Got most of my Christmas shopping done. Did it online. Now I just sit back and wait for the deliveries. I also made some donations to various causes, including Wikipedia! I had never donated to them before; an ad popped up on Facebook for them so I donated. I use them almost daily, so why not? I kept ignoring that thing at the top of their page this time of year, but some reason, the Facebook ad worked on me.
I know I should shop local, and I do. But I gave up mall shopping years ago, although the last time I was in a mall wasn’t that long ago. For my mother’s funeral in October, I needed a new pair of pants to go with my black suit. I put on a few pounds during the pandemic and the pants didn’t fit. So I want to the mall with a friend, got a new pair of black pants and we had lunch. So we shopped local.
Glad to say since I have been back to working out, I don’t need those over-sized pants. But I’ll save them just the same.
Speaking of suits, I was making airline plans for a wedding I have to got to in September. The reason suits reminded me of that is because I seem to only wear suits at weddings and funerals. The issue with the wedding date that it is going to screw up my NY Comic Con for 2022. The wedding is about three weeks before Comic Con, so I can either stay in NY for those three weeks or come home after the wedding and then go back again a few weeks later, which I don’t think I’ll do.
I was talking with a friend the other day and was telling her that after my long trips, I come home and totally forget them. Not on purpose, but I tend to forget the fact that I left town and I’m just right back into my routine here at home. I was just in New York and Boston and basically have no memory of Boston. Well, I do, but I have to actually sit down and think about it, it’s not like it just comes to mind as a recent memory.
My friend said the trick is to travel for short periods – like maybe three days – and go to many different places. I may just try that. I’ve been doing the opposite – going for long periods of times, but what is the point if I return home and feel as if I never left the house?
First world problems.
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