I’ve been doing a thing called Cloudy With A Chance of Faces, where I post images of clouds that look like things. I wrote about it here if you’d like to see more examples and links to the sites if you care to follow.
But now I am always looking at the clouds, seeking out faces and things. In the past, I would catch the image by accident, but now I am hunting for them. And it’s turned to all sorts of things.
As you can see here, I have a cowhide rug in my living room and I see things in that.
I see a dad walking a child to school, who has a dog on a leash. See it?
A guy or maybe a lady, looking at the clouds.
A child praying.
A southern lady entering the ballroom as a lady to her right ushers her in, that also looks like a heart dancing to her left.
The cowhide rug.
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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.
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I started this thing called Cloudy With A Chance of Faces. It’s images I see in clouds.
I’ve been posting pictures over the years and a friend suggested I make a thing of it. I add a few outlines to show what I’m seeing and there it is.
I live in Miami, right on the Bay, that combination makes for interesting visions in the sky. The clouds here move very quickly, if you see a formation, you have to capture it quick or it’s gone.
Every morning when I wake up, I look outside and there is something staring me in the face. Many times the clouds look like mountains, other times Snoopy or a lady or whatever.
You could get addicted. I could literally stand in one place and get so many images in a short amount of time. Now that I’m doing this Cloudy project, it gets a big hard not to be obsessed and just be staring at the clouds all day long, waiting for the next image to appear. But oddly enough, when I’m deliberately looking, I don’t see anything. It seems to be an organic thing, you know, it just happens when you least expected, you look up and something is staring down at you.
Snoopy over the bay.
A friend visiting from New York once said that our clouds have layers. I take that to mean they are very expressive. And they are.
If you’d like to follow my venture, I have set up two social media sites. I have the website CloudyWithAChanceOfFaces.com, too, but I haven’t done anything with that yet. I just wanted to get the name while it was available.
Still lots of things going on this season. I missed the Lake Worth Chalk Festival last weekend and a few other art events, but managed to get to this past weekend’s Gifford Lane Art Stroll, which is a block party in our village. It’s a yearly thing – 25th year, this year and it brings out the whole village. It’s like a tv show where the full cast shows up for an event and they are all in one scene.
It was also “305 Day,” on Sunday, which is the area code for Miami and on March 5 (3/05).
The hit of the block party is cucumber punch which is delicious on a hot day, which always seems to be the case for this event each year – it’s been a cool winter, but Sunday was totally hot.
The first year I went, 20 years back, I didn’t know the cucumber punch had gin in it, and I really had my fill, I was feeling no pain. Now that I know the ingredients, I take it easy.
They used to serve the gin at a friend’s house where everyone lined up outside his green door and he and his wife and friends would serve it up to thousands. I guess after 23 years they felt enough was enough with the non-stop traffic through their house, so they have it out in someone else’s driveway now. So last year, I went to the driveway for the first time and got some punch and people started talking to me. But the homeowner was not having it, she started yelling, “Tom, you have your punch, now get out of here!” I couldn’t argue with her, because she is 97 years old! She’s a spry 97, but still.
This year while it was outside her house, she wasn’t around. She’s an avid bike rider at her age, so maybe she was out bike riding!
Anyway, it was a great day, I think I saw everyone I know there which is always nice. There’s a lot of food, live music and kibitzing. A perfect day for a small village.
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We had a parade yesterday – the King Mango Strut, started in 1982 it’s usually the last Sunday of the year, but this year it was a week later, on Sunday, Jan. 8.
It’s a great small-town event and the best part is that most people know each other. It’s like Cheers, where everybody knows your name.
It was put off a couple of years due to the pandemic, but it was back this past weekend and it was so much fun. There are bands and lots of parodies of things that happened over the year – statewide, local and national. All one big parody.
It started as an offshoot of the Orange Bowl Parade and took on a life of its own. The center of town is shut down and the Strut takes over. If you haven’t seen people all year, they are sure to show up here on this very day.
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People ask me how I come up with ideas, so I grabbed a few recently published cartoons and will show you my twisted mind works.
This one was easy. I got a new iphone and they did away with the thumb imprint for signing on, so now it’s either punch in the pin number or use face recognition. After you set up the face recognition, they ask if you would like to do it again this time wearing a mask!
At first I thought of doing a cartoon with someone wearing a Halloween mask, but then thought of other things, like what if someone was in an accident or had a facelift or some sort of procedure where the phone would not recognize them anymore. And I remembered a previous cartoon that was published, this cartoon, where Dracula takes a selfie, only his image doesn’t come up, and from there I got to this cartoon above.
This one started with pumpkin picking. Every year my cousins and I go to the Hudson Valley in New York State to pumpkin pick. And I think it’s more about the Hudson Valley, than the pumpkins. It’s a gorgeous area with spectacular mountain and river views along with the changing leaves in the fall. Only this year, we went to the north fork of Long Island instead, because we needed to be closer to the south fork, where we were going to an event after the pumpkin picking.
I got to thinking – will my pictures be as nice in the north fork as they are up in the mountains and the valley? How will it all look on Instagram? And from there, I got to the cartoon above, and changed the Hudson Valley, to Tuscany, to make it more of an extreme travel plan.
As for this one – I live in Miami – I hear the words “Gulf Stream” almost daily, and this is what I thought of when I heard it one last time.
I’m in museums a lot and I always notice that the guards are ignored by everyone. And even when I say hello they sort of keep to themselves. One time I was in a museum in NYC that was being renovated, and there were only two big rooms open. I was in there with one other person, who happened to be John Lithgow, the actor.
I didn’t speak with Mr. Lithgow, but he spoke to the security guard who was on hand in one room. I didn’t hear what they were saying, but I found it interesting that he reached out and engaged with the guard. Other than that, I often think the guards could be on the phone, eating and even sleeping as no one seems to notice them, or maybe if they did lie down on a bench, like the cartoon suggests, then people would notice them.
Recently I posted something about the Baltimore Museum of Art having an exhibit totally curated by it’s museum guards, which sounds like an excellent idea. So in that case, they were noticed by people.
This trunk one came simply from the fact that luggage was being lost all summer by the airlines.
And of course this museum window one, which I have written about a few times before – I thought it was funny to think of the guard being so blasé about the art after seeing it day after day, that it was more interesting for him to look out the window to see what was going on.
And yes – there are windows next to the art in many museums. Here’s proof taken last month at MOMA in NYC.
And there you have some of the workings of my mind – how I juggle ideas in my head to come up with Tomversation cartoons.
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Yup, New York Comic Con is back. Last year’s event was a bit subdued due to covid and the year before was totally canceled, but now it’s back.
From Oct. 6-9, all your favorite, movies, tv shows, pop culture, comics and super heroes will be at the Jacob Javits Center, just as they’ve always been.
After four days of rain in NYC, the sun came out for New York’s favorite fantasy fest.
Most tickets are gone, but you may still be able to find a few at newyorkcomiccon.com.
Tell Spider-man, we sent you!
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I have some traveling to do in the next week and beyond. But it’s a crazy schedule.
I’m going to NY for a few days for a wedding, coming home to Miami for three days for a funeral, and then going back to NY for 10 days for Comic Con, along with pumpkin and apple picking and the usual fall stuff.
I’ll take you along for Comic Con and Pumpkin and apple picking, the other stuff, probably not.
NY Comic Con, October 2018
Pumpkin Picking, Hudson Valley, NY, October 2021
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I saw an article on line about Days of Our Lives, the soap opera – it’s moving from on air to the Peacock streaming platform.
The only reason it caught my attention is because seeing this hour glass and logo reminds me of summers so long ago. Way back when our mothers would watch this, I think it came on at 2 pm. How do I know? Because we kids would run around the neighborhood jumping from pool to pool at each other’s houses and as we ran along the sidewalks, we would hear the theme playing, “Like sands through an hour glass, these are the days of our lives,” and then the music would play.
Almost every summer day we would hear it coming out of each house as we ran down the block. I guess people listened to tv’s quite loud in those days and also people didn’t have air conditioning, so they weren’t locked in and confined in their cocoons and the sound came blasting out.
I had a similar experience in Boston a couple of times. When the Red Sox play, it seems like every tv and radio in town has the game on. And as you walk down the street, particularly Newbury Street, you can hear the game coming from each establishment. So you actually hear the whole game as you are walking – from pizza places, clothing stores, restaurants and so on.
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Tomversation 