I’ve been watching the Olympics occasionally, depending on when I catch it. I am feeling FOMO of not being in Paris, it looks like it’s the place to be this summer.
When I was a kid, I watched it all – from opening ceremony to closing ceremony. I knew every Olympians life story if it was reported on tv and I watched hours and hours of it. Of course we didn’t have 1000 tv channels back then, so since there weren’t many choices, I watched the main event for two weeks.
Ollie And Jacomo at the Olympics.
I did catch the men’s gymnastics and I stuck with it because one of the guys is the spitting image of one of my neighbors. He could be his brother. They look so much alike. I’ve seen still pictures of this Olympian online and he doesn’t look like my neighbor in still shots, but on tv, moving, he looks just like him.
I haven’t told my neighbor because I don’t know how he would take it, sometimes when people tell you that you look like someone it isn’t a compliment. My neighbor is much younger than me, more like a son, and I yelled at him one day, as a father would yell at a son, only he isn’t my son, and it caused bad feelings. He’s back talking to me, so I don’t want to be stupid by saying anything that might be stupid.
For years I’ve said things out loud that I think I am only thinking in my head. I’m not sure how or why that happens, but really, I think it and I think I am only thinking it, and I end up blurting it out.
I’ve been having fun with Ollie And Jacomo, setting them in Paris during the Olympic games. It’s given me lots of ideas and themes to work with.
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This 1957 cartoon was posted on Mike Lynch’s blog the other day. It’s by cartoonist Tom Hudson.
It reminded me of my new GE washer/dryer, which started out at a reasonable price and ended up being way over priced.
I have a very small space for the washer/dryer in my condo unit so I am limited as to what I can get. I found one at Best Buy. It was delivered, but it didn’t fit in the space all the way, it was sticking out a bit. The delivery guys who installed it blamed the vent in back, but the previous unit had the same dimensions and vent and fit in fine for all these years.
I tipped them $40.00 ($20.00 each) and they left.
I decided to live with it. Only it started making strange grinding noises, so I went back to Best Buy and managed to find the washer/dryer I liked to begin with. It’s ventless, so there is no worry about the size of the vent in back. We swapped out the units.
I didn’t get the unit I liked to begin with because I didn’t know I had two plus behind the washer/dryer, but when the guys were installing the first unit, I saw I had both – 110 and 220. So now I could get the washer/dryer I liked, an LC brand. The first unit delivered only used the 220 socket.
The new washer/dryer was delivered and installed, but then the delivery/installation guys told me the washer didn’t work! They said the 110 socket was not working, where the 220 for the dryer was working fine. I was told to get an electrician to check the breaker.
I tipped these two guys $40.00 ($20.00) each and they left.
By now, the original $1400.00 unit cost me another $940.00 for the new LC unit and the $80.00 for the tips for the drivers – $2420.00 total.
Now for the electrician – another $120.00 – for nothing. Because it turns out the 110 electrical socket was working fine. The installers just must have had the plug in there too loosely.
So another $120.00 for a total of $2540.00 for my original $1400 unit.
But I like the new washer/dryer and I’ve been happy with it. And contrary to reports on ventless dryers not drying the clothing fully, that’s a myth, because mine come out great. The towels come out dry and fluffy, too.
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I heard someone say, “The clams are clamming,” and thought it was funny, so I used that, but then I guess my subconscious, in the middle of the night, liked the other version.
This happens often. I don’t lose sleep thinking of the gags all night, it just sort of pops into my head at some period and there I am, up at 3 am, changing it.
What I like about this is I am picturing these two guys on the beach in New England this summer. Two locals. One is walking the beach, sees the other guy clamming and asks him about it. The one guy in the flower shirt could also be a tourist asking about the clamming. I only say that because of the flowery shirt, it sort of looks like a tourist thing.
I can almost hear the seagulls in the background.
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Swipe back and forth and you’ll see the two different text choices.
I changed the text on this cartoon just before it was published. At first it said, “You uninvited your brother to the BBQ?” and then I changed it to, “Your brother uninvited us to the BBQ?” I thought the brother uninviting them worked better. What do you think?
It makes the guy I drew here the protagonist . . . but maybe not, since he was uninvited.
My family isn’t dysfunctional, but my small condo building is – in a funny, nice way. I always compare it to Mrs. Madrigal’s boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane in Tales of the City. When I mention that to people, they start laughing, because they can see that about our building and the comparison is right on.
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This week was my birthday. And as usual, I got tons of texts, Facebook messages and a few phone calls, which is all great. People I hadn’t heard from all year, including past neighbors, reach out, who I enjoyed hearing from.
Our condo building text blew up. Our building prez doesn’t like frivolous texts, he feels the text string is for important things, like if the elevator is stuck or something. But they are texts, they aren’t important messages for posterity so who cares if someone sends a frivolous text, aside from the non-stop beeping when all the texts come in.
I don’t think many people save texts, they get rid of them eventually to make room on their phones, but to tell you the truth, I think I have ever text I ever received over the years. I’m a packrat when it comes to that.
But in those birthday texts, on my birthday itself, were requests from charities, car dealerships, restaurants, and other pests. Is this a new thing – on your birthday, all these requests for money and sales come out of the woodwork? I like the Starbucks free drink reminder, I did forget to use it, but at my local Starbucks they know me, so when I show up a week or so later and say I never received my free Starbucks drink, they just give it to me.
But the other texts I don’t remember happening in the past before. I guess when I give to a charity or something, they take my birthday down, so they can hit me up for more money on MY DAY! I blocked those numbers.
I gave a donation recently to a political organization and they kept texting and emailing me, but not on my birthday strangely enough. I guess it’s because I blocked the emails and texts after receiving the requests for more money so many times after my first donation. They didn’t even wait, they started asking for more right away.
Anyway, I just thought it was curious that all those requests for money and notices of sales, etc were coming in via text, which I found intrusive, especially on MY DAY!
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I don’t usually understand a lot of the New Yorker cartoons, but this one by Asher Perlman really hit home.
The other day I was at the doctor’s office and I was asked about four times for my birthday, they do this now to be sure you are who you say you are. I guess there are people pretending to be someone else for medical attention. Or maybe the staff wants to be sure that they don’t want to cut your leg off if you are only there for an allergy.
But when I arrived, I checked in with someone at the front desk, they asked for my birthday, then a guy took my blood pressure, he asked for my birthday, then someone else, and then eventually the doctor.
My birthday is next week, so they all wished me a “happy birthday,” when they saw the date, which was nice.
If you haven’t been to the doctor lately, I guess this New Yorker cartoon is one of the ones that doesn’t make sense. But trust me, it’s funny because it is real life.
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As I was cleaning out my old room last weekend I found some old photos of me that I needed when I was applying for a job as a flight attendant. I think it was for Eastern Airlines. I was 18 or 19. They were images of me in a tan suit.
I remember that time. I went to the airport, met in a private classroom with many others and we had some sort of class and lecture. I never did get the job, thank god, and I think I know one reason.
We had a questionnaire, some sort of psychological thing and I was too honest on it. One question asked, “If you had the opportunity to be at a party meeting new people or staying home and reading a book, which would you choose?” I chose the book. Which of course is the total opposite of a flight attendant job. But that was the truth.
I’m still not sure why I wanted to be a flight attendant. Maybe I wanted to travel the world.
I a friend, also named Tom, who was a flight attendant. He traveled to exotic places all the time – mostly the far east. He was a runner, and he would tell me, “I ran on the Great Wall today” or “I jogged through Tokyo yesterday.” Things like that.
But it was a lot of work and travel. He lived in Miami but was based in Hawaii, so before he even set out on his job/journeys he had to travel thousands of miles to just get to work. He also didn’t make a lot of money. I would complain about things like, “I spent almost $35 for lunch today!” And he would say, “I don’t even make $35 a day.”
I am glad I never got the flight attendant job. Who knows where I would be now. But it was nice seeing those old photos of me, it brought back so many memories of my late teens.
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I’ve been seeing these reels on Facebook. I don’t know how to link them here, or I would.
I don’t follow them, they just sort of pop up. It’s a bunch of young British boys trying American food, which they seem to love. I’ve never been to England, but if these common everyday things are something new and exciting for these English guys, I shudder to think what they eat in England.
They love and freak out over Popeyes, Twinkies, pizza, cheeseburgers, root beer, lobster rolls, corn dogs, hot dogs (yes, hot dogs), pumpkin pie, a Thanksgiving dinner, hot wings, an everything bagel and bagels with lox, just to name a few. And iced tea. They don’t have iced tea in England?
All this food is what they are not eating in Britain. What are they eating in England that makes these common American foods so intriguing to them? I know they eat Pasties in England, a British pie thing that looks like an empanada.
Some years back, a neighbor exported peanut butter to France. I believe it was France. He would buy hundreds if not thousands of jars and send them by container to France, where apparently they don’t have peanut butter.
Things that make you go hmmm.
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My brothers and I have been cleaning out my parents’ house, but it is slow going. We would go one Saturday, work a few hours and leave, but then we wouldn’t return for another week or two because things came up. But we are almost down to the wire.
Last weekend, I finally got most of the things out of my old closet in my old room. After weeks of cleaning the room out I found one box that was a treasure trove of my life. It was the last thing left in the closet after I went through everything else. It was quite large, sitting at the back of the closet and it contained a hodgepodge of things. There were old newspapers – ones I saved with news stories I thought were interesting and school newspapers I had printed, when I handled that with my printing business.
But there were lots of newspapers and magazines that I saved because my cartoons were in them. I used to do cartoons for local publications when I was in high school and college. I had forgotten about that. Some of them are excellent. I also had a lot of comic strips I was working on as a kid, they are not bad either.
I threw out a lot of the excess newspapers that weren’t needed, but I’ll show you some of the cartoons I had published and the comic strips I was working on when I get a chance. I noticed that the newspapers I had saved were of tragedies, like the Miami Herald with stories of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew – things I would rather forget. Those I dumped. I didn’t need to revisit those times.
I found awards in the box, and diplomas from high school and college and lots of boy scout stuff – awards, badges, things like that. I also found letters – letters and post cards that friends sent me so many years ago. And I found random photos of myself and my family and friends. And everything brought back memories. There were lots of old computer parts and old computer programs from the early days of PC’s.
I worked at a local newspaper at one point and I sold ads as well as working in production putting the paper together for print. I drew a lot of things for them back then – I drew political cartoons but also I did drawings for advertisements that ran in the paper. I can see I really put a lot of time into them.
I found a color aid pack which I used in college. I still don’t understand the point of it for my classes after all these years, but I remember I couldn’t find it at the time and I needed it. My father ended up finding it in downtown Miami somewhere. It was expensive I remember, and I think we used it once or twice in class to cut out colors for something. Literally I used one or two color swatches from the whole packet.
I remember in one art class we used magazines to cut out colors from the printed images and we recreated famous art from that, gluing the odd shaped pieces into art. I did a small image of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. I’m hoping to find it as I clean out my old room, I’ve been looking for it all these years. I’d like to frame the little thing.
My recreation was only 3″ x 3″ and I remember seeing the original for the first time – it’s huge, it blew me away at the size after seeing the small piece I created so long ago. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon seems so large to me and my favorite, Starry Night is so small. Both at MOMA – worth the trip.
Anyway, I’ll show you some of the cartoons and things I found when I sort them out and hopefully some other things.
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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.
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tomversation.com 