friends

Ready for the Fall

This recent cartoon received a lot of talk lately. It seems another cartoonist did the same thing, a few weeks after mine was published and it might be a meme, too.

Over the years, so many cartoons have appeared that were the same or similar and it bothered me, but I’ve learned to get over it. There’s no way of knowing where the ideas come from, although this one particular cartoonist seems to have quite a few of my ideas pop up a week or two after mine are published. Coincidences, I guess?

I got this idea from a friend who actually asked me, “Are you ready for the fall?” And I laughed and said, “Of what, civilization?” And we both laughed. When he first said, “ready for the fall,” I thought of my favorite Madonna song, “Live to Tell.” In it she sings, “I was not ready for the fall.” I never saw the movie it’s from, “At Close Range,” but I’m assuming she isn’t singing about October.

The fall is special to me – Autumn, that is. In October and November, I’m in New York and there is a lot to do this time of year. I attend New York Comic Con in October and also in October, my cousins and I take our usual trip from NYC upstate to pumpkin and apple pick and to see the leaves changing.

In October, we sometimes go to the San Gennaro Feast in the Hamptons and also there’s an Oyster Festival, out east, too. This year, I see San Gennaro is in September. And of course, October is capped off with Halloween!

In November, we do Thanksgiving, and then the Saturday after Thanksgiving is the Southampton Christmas Parade, where all the small Hamptons towns get together for a light parade at dusk, then there is a tree lighting and fireworks afterwards. One of the best events of the year.

So yes – I am ready for the Fall – September, October and November.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

This takes the cake

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.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

Polite texting

I live in a small condo, there are only 14 units. We have a building text string that has almost everyone on it, about 21 or 22 people. It’s annoying at times, but useful.

It gets annoying when someone asks something like, “Did anyone see my Amazon package? I can’t find it.” And you get 10 responses with, “Not me,” “not me,” not me,” and the beeping gets out of hand with every “not me” that comes in. I usually never respond, so of course they think it’s me, since I’m silent.

But the purpose of this post is to talk about one of our young neighbors. He’s 24-years-old or so and all the rest of us are so much older, yet he participates in the building and never shuns us as most people of his age would – they would just ignore the older folks, but he never has and never does. He’s always part of our little community.

His texts to the building always start politely. like last night he posted a text that started with, “Hi Friends,” and then he goes on with his text. He usually starts his texts with “Good morning,” Or “Good evening,” and then he goes on to say what he has to say. Whenever he says, “Good evening,” I always think of that old Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv show. I recently watched a few reruns so it was on my mind.

I find it charming. Especially since most people just start right in with the text. And his generation uses all sorts of abbreviations, like ty, u, lmk or tbh or brb. Yet he doesn’t. He is proper with his texts, almost as if he is writing a letter. I saw an article somewhere on the proper way to text, maybe its a thing and he learned it college or somewhere.

I like it. It has character. I started saying “Hi,” a lot of times before I text now. Maybe because of him, who knows, but many times I’ll text someone something like, “Hi, I’m on my way,” or “Hi, what time are we meeting?” Things like that. It seems a polite and nice way to do it.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

“Annoying photos

A friend posted this on Facebook: “Annoying in the moment but everyone is grateful afterwards.”

She was referring to a quote: “Take pictures of everything and everyone. I don’t care who I annoy by constantly taking pictures, in the end they will be all we have left. Every photo is a memory – capture it.”

I had to laugh because for years I would take pictures of everything – with a camera. This was before cellphones. So it was with an actual small camera that I carried around.

I would take pictures of us on the subway or on a bus, or in the middle of the street and one of my cousins, who I was always with, would get embarrassed and annoyed. He would always tell me to stop it, but in the end, he would always ask for a copy of the picture(s).

Every once in awhile he brings that up and we laugh.

Even today, with my cellphone I still embarrass people at times, even though everyone is constantly taking pictures all the time. I’ll say to a stranger who we ask to take our picture if they mind, “We are from Kansas, we aren’t used to all this city stuff,” I’ll say. I think the person knows I’m joking.

I read once that in this age of non-stop picture taking, we are losing something that in the old days was a part of it all – the scrapped pictures – which have a life of their own. But these days I assume most of us take a bunch of pictures and only save the ones we like, deleting the ones we don’t like, losing those scrapped, interesting pictures for good probably.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

2023 Hail and Farewell

CBS Sunday Morning had a nice tribute to the people who left us this year. So many people it seems.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

Finagling out of going

When I was younger I went to a lot of parties. I don’t know if I was a party animal in the sense that I went to every party, which I didn’t, but I enjoyed going to quite a few, plus all my friends were there, so I sort of had to go. These days I don’t really care to go. I do, but I would rather not attend.

There’s a condo get together next week, just about a dozen of us are attending, I would love to not go, but I guess I should. I mean I just have to take the elevator down a few floors.

A few years back, I didn’t go to my brother’s for Easter. I had just seen my family a couple of days before at Pizza Night and I didn’t feel like taking the long drive out to their house. When my nephew asked me why I didn’t show up, I said, “You expected me to drive all that way for a fukn slice of ham?”

I can still see the look on his face, his reaction. He jumped back, the way Charlie Brown does when he sees the little Christmas tree all lit up and decorated at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas. I laugh every time I think of it. I’ve been to so many events at their house over the years, I just didn’t feel like going that one year.

I was just with about 20 people at Thanksgiving at a cousin’s house in New York – that’s a yearly thing, I wouldn’t miss it. And this Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I’ll be with my family here in Miami, I wouldn’t miss any of that.

One time I didn’t go out on New Year’s Eve. It was my first time being alone, ever. I’m including when I was a baby and a child up to adulthood. I was never alone.

I don’t remember the reason for being alone this one year, but it was very uncomfortable at first. I’ve always been with family or friends or at parties or whatever. But this was so odd. I didn’t know how to react. But you know what? I loved it. I look forward to not doing anything on New Year’s Eve every year now. As they say, that’s a night for amateurs to go out.

I’m known for not doing things I don’t want to do. Typical Gemini.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

Getting back into village life

I’ve been a hermit lately, ever since the start of the pandemic. I mean I do go out and I do travel, but I’m not doing what I used to do. I’m sort of stuck in that staying in mode. I used to be out all day and night. Now I’m not. I used to participate in the community, in a big way. Now I don’t.

Yesterday I went to a memorial in our village. It was for someone who was big in the town, who was almost the godfather of our town.

The memorial was in one of the parks in the village and there was a large turnout. There was a proclamation from the city in his name and a few beautiful trees were planted in his name. We have quite a few parks in the village, but this was his favorite, so it all centered around this park and him.

My point is that there were so many people there and I know 90% of them. I hadn’t seen many in quite awhile, ever since I stopped publishing the daily news here. When I covered the news I was everywhere every day, gathering up news, covering events. It’s a small village so it was easy to see most people most days.

The funny thing is that as I looked through the crowd, it seemed as if my news gathering caused a quarrel between many of the people present and me at one time or another, they weren’t too keen on things I wrote. I literally had issues over the years with half the people who where there yesterday.

Half of them yelled at me , or threw me out of their offices or called me names over the years. Yet in the end they gave me many awards and accolades. We were/are a dysfunctional family.

I remember the deceased telling me at a meeting once, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And at another point he says, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And a third time, he said, “Tom, this is not for publication.” And I held up my pad and said, “I have not written a sentence. You haven’t said anything worth repeating.” And the whole room laughed. I guess we did have good times through it all.

At one point, we thought it would all make a good reality show of the craziness we lived through daily. One of my friends worked for Endemol, a producer of reality tv, and she would always tell me to come in and pitch the idea, which I never did.

I caught up with so many people yesterday. The thing is, we all still live here and while the village is quickly turning into a city, the people are all the same.

I think I need to get out there again – go to things, participate again. Go to bingo at the women’s club, go to a meeting this week where our town’s yearly parade is planned, go to an arts festival meeting, attend a village council meeting. The good part is that I won’t be covering any news and it won’t be a job. I’ll just be one of the village people like everyone else.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

The speakers

My neighbor asked me if I wanted two large speakers he had. I didn’t. But this reminded me of a story from some years ago. These aren’t the speakers my neighbor had, but they look like the ones I am going to tell you about

Many years ago, I was leaving Macy’s with my friend Jorge and a couple of guys approached us. They wanted to know if we wanted to buy these two big speakers, like the ones shown here. I don’t know why, but I agreed. Oddly enough, I had my checkbook with me, which I never carried around, but I was about 22, and I guess I didn’t have credit cards yet. I wrote the guy a check, we took the speakers and left.

Jorge and I went home to my apartment and left the speakers and other stuff we got at Macy’s and we went out, I don’t know where, probably to lunch or something.

When we got home for lunch, there sitting on my kitchen counter was the check I gave the guys outside Macy’s and the speakers were gone! I had the guy’s phone number and I called him to ask him about this. He told me the bank, I think it was Centrust at the time, wouldn’t cash the check for them. I guess these guys looked quite shady, which they were.

I asked him how he got into the apartment, he said he broke in through the window. And this did not faze me, because I guess when you’re 22, things don’t faze you. It is creepy to know now that the “secure” building was not so secure from the front building entrance to my window. Both easily broken into.

I told the guy to bring back the speakers, I wanted them. He came back and I don’t remember if I gave him cash or we went to the bank together or what. But I ended up with the speakers.

And you know what? For many years, they just sat there. I never used them; never attached them to any music equipment and they were mostly used as sort of plant holders or end tables. I don’t even know if they ever worked. I had to have them, but never even tried them to see if they worked.

Ahh, to be young and carefree again, not letting anything bother me. Although I don’t think I let many things bother me now.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

Saying ‘ok’ is okay

I saw this quote and it’s me! I do this all the time. But I didn’t know it was a sign of maturity. I do it so that I don’t have to have a long conversation. It seems easier to just say, “Ok” and leave it at that.

I say “ok” a lot on texts. I also do it because I don’t want to type, or dictate a text. A couple of my cousins sort of mentioned it. They sort thought it was rude for me to just respond, “ok” to their texts.

I do it to be agreeable and to answer a question or statement concisely. There’s a thumbs up thing now, so I can do that rather than even type “ok.”

For instance, I’ll get a text that says, “We’re meeting at such and such place at 2 pm.” And I respond, “ok.” Or they text, “We want Italian food, so we are going to such and such restaurant,” and I respond, “ok.” They have said, “Take the R train because the M train isn’t running,” and I respond, “ok.”

But seeing that they don’t care for those “ok’s,” I’ll sometimes answer, “Ok, looking forward to it,” or “That damn M train is always out of service!” or things like that, just not to be “rude” which I don’t think I’m being, I think I’m being economical.

One interesting thing is that two of my brothers type “okay” when they respond, they spell the whole word out, which I find interesting. I don’t think I have ever done that.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here

Vincent’s photos

I was wishing someone a happy birthday today on Facebook, and something new came up – past photos of that person with me, come up along with the birthday wish. This reminded me of my friend Vincent.

Years ago, when Vincent would send Christmas cards, he would include photos of you from the past year. I don’t know if he took the photos deliberately or not, but he would have photos of you at a Fourth of July picnic, or a birthday party or a trip we went on together or whatever.

Usually every December, when you opened your Christmas card from Vincent, out would drop two or three photos of yourself with others, including Vincent (0r not). It was usually some event you had forgotten about, nothing grand like a wedding but always a small event that faded from memory.

I was thinking of Vincent’s photos when the photos popped on on Facebook today, the Facebook photos aren’t current because I don’t take as many photos as I used to. I forget or feel awkward when we’re at a party or event or whatever, I think people may wonder, “What are you going to do with that picture?” But truth be told, everyone is taking pictures every minute of the day, so I wouldn’t be the only one. And 9 times out of 10, they say, “Send me a copy of that!”

Many times at events – with family and friends, I’m tempted to go around and get pics of people. Sometimes I’ll hand my phone to one of my cousins and say, “Go around and get pictures,” but they never do either.

One of my cousins is starstruck and he’s the first to get pics with some famous person or other, whether they want that or not. But I don’t have enough pics of family and friends. I’ve got to make an effort.

I don’t think I have anything from our family Christmas or Easter this past year when we all were together. There was a wedding a few months back, I don’t think I have many from that either.

I’ve got to make an effort to start getting pics of everything.

Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here