Fun

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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Pumpkin picking in the Hudson Valley

A couple of my cousins and I did our usual October outing. We drove up to the Hudson Valley from NYC to pumpkin and apple pick.

This year we ended up at this huge farm in Hopewell Junction, which is near Wappingers Falls.

The weather in NY state has been incredible lately. 80 degrees today, 70s over the weekend. Bright, and clear.

The farm was sort of in a valley, we were surrounded by mountains an all four sides. We had a hayride and had hot apple cider and apple cider doughnuts.

We got a lot of stuff to bring home – pies, doughnuts, flowers, pumpkins. It was a perfect day.

We went to Beacon, NY, a very popular small town, on the way home. I’ll publish photos in my next post.

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Falling into Fall

The quote, “And all at once, summer collapsed into fall,” is by Oscar Wilde.

Fall/Autumn is my favorite season. Again.

I say again, because I think most of my life Fall was my favorite, but for some years recently, summer ended up being my favorite. I don’t know how it became summer, but I’m glad it’s back to fall.

I live in Florida, and yes, we can feel the fall here, too. I was standing outside over the weekend and I could feel the fall. The light is different, there is a breeze in the air. It just feels different. There is less light and cooler temps.

This final quarter of the year is the best, as far as I am concerned. My favorite holidays have changed over the years, too. Of course Christmas has to be the best. And then I loved Halloween. Now my favorite is Thanksgiving. I don’t mind New Year’s Eve either. One of my friends always had New Year’s Eve as his favorite holiday, and I can see that now. I guess it’s the anticipation of a whole new year.

On Thanksgiving, I go to the Macy’s Parade, I stay about an hour, and then one of my cousins picks me up at the subway station in Queens and we go to her house and have brunch. Just three of us and Sara, their dog.

I get to the house before the parade is over, so we watch that and then the dog show which comes on tv afterwards. At 2 pm, we go to my other cousins not far away, and about 20 or more of us have Thanksgiving. We overeat, argue, laugh, just have a nice family time.

We sometimes do the Southampton Christmas Parade the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and it ends up being a perfect four day weekend. In between all that, I am in NYC and enjoying the buildup to Christmas, with all the holiday things the city has to offer.

Of course, October leads into this and upcoming in a few weeks in New York Comic Con and a few of us go upstate New York to apple and pumpkin pick. That’s a perfect things, too. I’m hoping the next few weeks go slow leading up to it all because I don’t want it to all happen and be over with. I want the whole season to last.

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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.

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Media softball in the park

Cartoonist Jason Chatfield mentioned that there’s a summer softball league in NYC where The New Yorker magazine crew plays various other media outlets in Central Park. They play Rolling Stone magazine and the Financial Times, NY Review of Books, Slate, and NY Public Radio to name a few throughout the summer.

Cartoonist Roz Chast designed The New Yorker “uniform,” it’s a two sided t-shirt. I would love one of those but they are all sold out.

***The New Yorker “unform” designed by Roz Chast.***

I’m in NY for part of the summer, so I’d like to stop by to watch a game or two. I’d love to meet some of cartoonists and magazine people involved.

Along with The New Yorker league, there is another league called The New York Media Softball League (NYMSL) which consists of other NY-based media organizations. There are teams from Forbes, BuzzFeed, the Wall Street Journals, Axios, the Associated Press, etc. This is the 17th season for that league.

I remember some years back I watched a few games with different soap opera actors playing each other in Central Park. Different shows played each other.

The NYMSL plays at various parks including Central Park, East River Park, McCarren Park in Brooklyn, Riverside Park and a few others.

The schedule for this summer’s NYMSL games is here and Jason has The New Yorker games listed here.

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Cloudy with a chance of faces

I’ve been doing this thing called “Cloudy With a Chance of Faces” since last April. It’s me seeing things in clouds. I posted Lincoln and Washington on Monday for Presidents Day.

It started innocently enough, I would look out my window and occasionally see things. Now I look for the images. The good thing is I only look out my own window usually first thing in the morning. I don’t walk around all day with my head “in the clouds.” I don’t really even think about it once I check out the clouds in the morning.

This Lincoln was caught by surprise. I took a picture of my favorite intersection in NYC, Madison Square, and when I looked back at the picture, there was Lincoln! It wasn’t planned. Unfortunately there is a huge building blocking the Empire State Building now, so the image is not the same, when I’m in NY next I’ll take a picture of the mess that is there now and I’ll show you.

But anyway, when I looked the picture later on, I saw Lincoln staring down at the city!

Now I look outside in the morning and if the clouds are puffy, I can get some nice images. The nice thing about Miami is that the clouds move fast, so if I see something and don’t catch it right away, it morphs into something else, which is also good, because sometimes I can just stand out there for a few minutes and in that short amount of time, I get many images to play with.

I saw an alligator wearing sunglasses the other day when we were driving back from the Renaissance Festival, but I didn’t catch the image fast enough. In New York in November, I saw Washington in the sky, but I didn’t catch that. But the Washington I show here I caught off my own balcony in my own backyard.

Monday thru Friday, I post Cloudy With a Chance of Faces at:
Facebook at: facebook.com/CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces
and at Instagram at: instagram.com/cloudywithachanceoffaces

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Visiting the 16th century

We went to the 32nd annual Florida Renaissance Festival on Saturday. I hadn’t been for years. I went with some of my family this past weekend, but in the past, for many years, I would go with my friends, maybe two or three carloads of us would head to Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach to attend.

It was just as I remembered. You travel back in time to the 16th century, it seems they want a lot of things paid in cash this year, I remember paying with “MasterCard and Lady Visa” in the past.

We ate a lot, we drank a lot, we spent a lot. After having such a cool/cold winter (for Florida), Saturday seemed to be the hottest day of the year.

Vendors for food and items made by artisans who are on site, are set up all over the forested park, around the lake, and there are performances and performers everywhere from horse jousting (my favorite) to archery, a maze, the human flying carrousel, glass blowing, minstrels, magicians and so much more. The king and queen are just a few of the “characters” who wander around the park.

The Festival runs until March 24, weekends only.

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The name game

This cartoon makes me laugh whenever I see it. It just really makes me LOL.

I know “Hugh” is pronounced with the “Hush” sound, but it seems to work here.

I redid it, adding “Em” to the group, as a reader suggested that. I also seemed to have left out Mr. T and CeCe. I guess it’s turned into a word game, which I like. And one person in a comment said, “Casey” which is KC, which I like.

I was watching tv one day and the guy says his name is Jay. And thought does he mean the letter J. like people use or does he mean Jay, the actual name. I thought to myself, “It’s confusing when people are named after letters,” and of course that how that came to this cartoon.

I started thinking of the alphabet and the various names that sound like letters and one thing lead to another.

Another way of doing this could have been the actual letters in a bar and have the letters say, “Hello D, hello, B, etc. But I don’t usually like doing inanimate object cartoons and I think it works well the way it is now.

On Reddit, I got lots of comments, many nasty. Apparently people don’t know Bea is pronounced BEE and Hugh is mispronounced U, but that seems to be a U.S. thing, because the cartoon was put down for being “an American thing.”

Other rude people on Reddit didn’t like the drawing style or that it was one panel. And apparently, this gag has something to do with Men in Black, which I’ve never seen.

Some comments from Reddit:

“It’s a shitty premise being in a shitty exposition box, but then it goes and gets greedy with Hugh.” Not sure what an exposition box is, maybe a single panel.

“Hugh has a brother, Double Hugh.”
“Nah, his twin brother would be UE.”
“Hugh is a stretch but passable.”
“What about multiple letter names like Petey and Emilee?”
“I suppose Elle is pronounced L?”
“My friend Ivy is named after two letters?”

And it goes on and on. But people seem to be very hung up on “Hugh” being “U.”

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“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.

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Pumpkin and apple picking

We did our usual pumpkin and apple picking this past weekend at one of our favorite places Dubois Farms in Highland, NY, in the Hudson Valley.

The leaves didn’t turn yet but it was still beautiful and fun. The temperature finally dropped into the 50s, so it felt like fall. We had apple cider doughnuts, hot apple cider and pumpkin pie. We left with a bunch of large mum plants, too.

Driving through the winding roads in Upstate New York is really wonderful. I keep thinking that it might be a great place to live. The views of the valleys and Hudson River and beautiful, too.

On our way back to the city, we stopped at Tarrytown and Sleep Hollow, what a treat that was. I’ll post the photos here in a day or so.

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