I bought some of these Whale Tracking Bracelets as Christmas gifts this year from Club Ocean. People loved them.
I got a variety of colors, dark blue, light blue and pink.
Originally I thought there was a chip or something in the bracelet that let you track the whale, but there is a card with each bracelet that has the whale’s name along with a QR code which takes you to the GPS where the whale is. If you save that info on your phone, you can easily pull it up whenever you want to check him/her out.
Merlin’s tracks
My humpback whale, Merlin, a female, is off the coast of Australia. She is about 45 feet long.
Club Ocean also has other animals you can follow and donate to. There are turtles, sharks, polar bears and dolphins along with the whales. And there are coral bracelets, plushies, caps and other accessories you can purchase.
The bracelets took almost a month to arrive, even though I paid for rush shipping, as I wanted to have them in time for Christmas and maybe the Christmas rush is what delayed the delivery, but they did arrive the day before Christmas, so that worked out well.
Check them out here. and support sea animals and get a cool item in the process.
If you swipe back and forth on this image, you can see the two options for today’s cartoon.
The stovepipe hat won out in the end. Not just for Abraham Lincoln, but for the cartoon. At the last minute, I changed from the “caught dead” cartoon to the “more formal” one.
I saw a picture of Lincoln the other day and thought, I would love to draw Lincoln. It was the stovepipe hat which drew my attention, and in the end, the hat, which is the star, never made it to the drawing board. At first I thought of funny ideas for the stovepipe hat but the red beanie won out.
I thought it would look funny to put a red woolen hat on him and the cartoons emerged from there. The “over my dead body,” was dark and I’m glad I changed the final cartoon to the fashion-based one.
I’m not sure why I keep calling it a stovepipe hat, rather than a top hat, but I guess in Lincoln’s era it was called a stovepipe hat. In the 1920s, it was called a top hat.
What’s even stranger about the hat is Lincoln here, in 1862, wearing the stovepipe hat on the battle field. It doesn’t seem like the type of thing to wear in a battlefield.
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This one with the rooster of course came from our neighborhood rooster. I wrote about him a couple of times before. Well, the other day I was walking and and I heard him crowing non-stop – it was about 8 am. I kept looking for him, but couldn’t see him. I saw the female chicken and babies but no rooster.
Then I looked up and there he was – up on a fence outside a neighbor’s house. I wanted to video him crowing, but he shut up as soon as he spotted me as I took this photo, but no video of him crowing.
The rooster up on the neighbor’s fence.
I have a friend who says Miami is the home of Peacocks and Palm Trees, we have to add roosters to this list. The other day when I was driving out of Publix, I had to stop for a family of chickens crossing the parking lot. Literally. They stopped right in front of my car and there was no way to get around them. I got out of the car and shooed them away. When I looked up, I saw a police officer watching and laughing at me. Just another day in the life.
This Temu idea came from the fact that I bought this beautiful trench coat on Temu – for $37.00! That’s it, no shipping charges and no sales tax. The thing is, I was looking for a coat like this for the winter and I went to Macy’s and the prices were $495.00 for the coats I wanted. I was actually prepared to pay $300.00, but I couldn’t see myself paying $495.00 for the few days I’m up north in the winter.
I tried them on in the store and fell in love with them, but I just couldn’t. So I ended u buying the coat on Temu. I’m not sure how, I am not a Temu shopper and I am guessing the good old internet saved my cookie from Macy’s and sent me ads online including the Temu add.
Anyway, the coat is beautiful, but knowing it was from Temu and $37.00 bothered me. Perception.
The Kors coat I bought from Macy’s.
I saw an ad on tv for Macy’s one day sale, where things were up to 70% off and I ended up buying the coat from Macy’s for only $137.00 plus sales tax. I had to order it online because when I went back to the store they had all been shipped out somewhere to make way for Spring clothing.
I ended up getting a gorgeous Michael Kors Wool Cashmere Blend Overcoat. It is so nice. To be honest, I don’t know if you can tell the difference between the Temu coat, other than the colors – Temu is black, Michael Kors is Charcoal.
But I’m all set for winter now. It seems way to dressy for me, I usually wear a bomber-style jacket in winter. But I’m looking forward to walking around the city in this new overcoat. I noticed that the charcoal coat at Macy’s is now $199.00 but all the other colors are back to the original price of $495.00. When I purchased the coat, they were all $137.00. The games retailers play.
I tried giving away the Temu coat, but I always preface it by saying it’s from Temu, and that sort of lessens the value in people’s eyes, so no one wants it.
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Over the years, I had these published in the Huffington Post, my own blog, Medium and other publications. I’ve interviewed, cartoonists and featured cartoons and comics and artists, comic strip creators including Jason Chatfield, Rina Piccolo and Scott Adams, among so many others. . But I’ve also interviewed authors, designers like Betsey Johnson and even Ryan Holt from Naked and Afraid.
I was was planning on doing more interviews for the Huffington Post, but I thought these columns should have a home of their own, rather than be at other websites. They live on forever and are always being seen and read.
Some of these stories have hundreds of thousands of readers, The Stephan Pastis article has over 1 million views! So why not have people read them on my own site, rather than other places? I wouldn’t mind 1 million hits! Huffington Post, Medium, and various newspapers didn’t promote the stories, people found them by doing searches, so why not have readers find the articles on my own site, right?
I now have 10 With Tom here, where you can find some of the past interviews and where I’ll add new ones shortly.
You can subscribe to 10 With Tom, and you’ll only receive 10 With Tom interviews (not this Tomversation blog, that’s a separate subscription), but I’m not sure if all the past stories I added will come up as one big email for your first email that you receive after subscribing. So if that happens, forgive me. You’ll usually just receive one interview after it is published.
I’m getting excited about New York ComicCon in October. As far as I know, it’s still on. I saw an ad on Instagram yesterday for ticket sales, so I assume since they are selling tickets, it is still on.
I lost my Batman/Van Gogh shirt. I like to wear it at ComicCon one of the days. I also have a Spider-man shirt and a Captain America shield shirt that I wear. That’s as far as I go with costumes.
Anyway, I ordered a new Batman/Van Gogh shirt and it arrived yesterday. I think I probably left the old one in New York a couple of Octobers ago, because I think that is the last time I wore it. It must have fallen off a chair or something and I didn’t pack it when I was heading home.
Anyway, you may remember, in April 2018, there was a story on the news about a guy in Mount Dora, Florida, who painted the exterior of a house with Van Gogh images. He had on this shirt and it was two of my favorite things combined, so I did a search online and found it. You can see the picture and video of the house and the guy wearing the shirt on the news here.
It’s just September 1 today, so I’m not trying to rush the month away. But I am getting excited for October.
Speaking of September 1, for some reason, as I get older, things move in slow motion, rather than fast motion, which you would think. For instance in the past, on September 1, I used to tell friends, remember this date, because before you know it, it will be January 1! And that was always the case.
But the past few years, maybe five, six or seven years, life has moved in slow motion and of course I love that. So September 1 to October 1 will hopefully take awhile to happen. I know Ferris Bueller says life moves too fast and you have to slow down and take a look around, but in many cases, it moves slow, and I like it that way.
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A friend suggested I design a character or something that could be sold on items or as posters, etc. I came up with this design. I’ll do more.
This is the first design, but I’ll get into it more when I get a chance and do themes. For instance, say NYC, I’ll do a piece with all NYC images or Paris with Paris images and so on. This one is a mishmash of different happy images and I like it.
I like these superhero face masks, but I don’t know if I would wear them. The logo is too big.
I’ve seen some fun ones with Charlie Brown and Snoopy, I Love Lucy and others.
Right now I wear a solid black one, which I like, it’s a bit heavy though and I’m thinking of changing it. But I’ve ordered so many and unless you buy them and then try them, there is no way of knowing if they fit right or if you can breathe through them and things like that. I must have 12 of them about now, and only like one or two.
I do like this Batman one with the logo small to the side. What do you think? Too geeky?
People are going crazy with the masks now. I notice on tv, the news reporters are matching their ties now. If they have on a red tie, they wear a red mask, and so on.
There’s a new fashion statement these days – face masks, and I’m here for it! Have you noticed all the different designs? I ordered a few and they came from multi-colored fabric, but I’ve been using the plain white one that I got at the doctor’s office.
I saw a cartoon where a lady was color coding her many masks to match up with her clothing.
Let’s bring back the newsies caps, but not the smoking.
Some of us were talking and we have a feeling that a lot of the 1920s will come back in the 2020s. I’m talking about maybe fashions and sayings and things like that. Maybe even reprisal of silent films as a goof. It may all start as a goof.
I have so many of those newsboy/newsies caps, but I never wear them. Possibly some guys may start wearing them as a goof and they’ll catch on and become the fashion. Maybe sayings will come back like, “horse feathers,” and “Don’t take any wooden nickels,” and “four-flusher.” You can see a full list here.
Other fashion statements of the 1920s were beaded dresses, argyle socks, Cloche hats, art deco and flapper styles. Maybe guys will slick back their hair and wear straw hats.
Podcasts are sort of like old time radio, aren’t they? And maybe sepia toned photos could be a common thing on Instagram. And what about cars, people might drive more restored cars around as a common thing – Model T’s, Model A’s, The Hobnocker, Bugatti, etc.
Pez was invented in the 1920s and so was Pineapple upside down cake and Kool-Aid and sliced bread! Water skiing was invented and the dial telephone, and the jukebox and sunglasses! And of course newspapers were at an all time high in circulation, every city had their fair share. And it was the Gatsby and the Charleston dance era. Who knows, even if just one or two things came back for a bit, it would be interesting.
I never liked when the years changed or the decades passed. I don’t know why, I guess I didn’t like the passage of time. But for some reason, I’m all into the 2020s. I’m looking forward to them.
