Personal – Page 12

Wrong perceptions

cds A couple of summers ago I was walking through Times Square with a couple of my cousins, we were coming from seeing a play and heading to the car or subway or something. A black guy approached us and handed me one of his CDs. It was free and as so many guys do, he just wanted to get his music out there so he was passing it out.

It sort of looks like this photo only there were hundreds of people around going in all different directions. It was crazy and crowded, like Times Square usually is.

I sort of shrugged it off and said, “No thanks,” and we kept walking. But the guy’s response was quite disturbing. He seemed to think I was some sort of white dude from Iowa or something who never saw a minority before and he said, “It’s ok man. I’m a black dude. This is what we look like, we’re human, we’re harmless. Get to know us!”

I was shocked that he profiled me like that, which is totally the opposite of me, and I’m sure he himself is profiled every day of his life, but I turned him down because of so many reasons – basically I wouldn’t listen to his music. My music tastes are stuck in the ’80s and ’90s, so it wasn’t my thing. I also didn’t want to take the CD and end up throwing it away or throwing it aside in the back seat of the car or something, you know, wasting his money, and also I don’t think I even have a CD player! Also, in Times Square, there are people coming at you from every which way trying to hand you something or talk to you, it’s a crazy place, you sort of duck everyone subconsciously as you walk through. We were only there because we had to cross through to get out from the theater where we saw the play.

But of course disturbing about this is how the guy thought I perceived him, which was 100% wrong, just like his perception of me was totally wrong. It makes me sad whenever I think of it. What do I do in the future, take the CD, thank the guy and be on my way? Maybe.

Hey boomer!

So I had to grow a thick skin when I published the daily news for all those years. It really got rough at times and I don’t think I ever really got a thick skin. My solution was to take my name and anything to do with me off Google Alerts. Seriously. Hide my head in the sand, that’s me.

spicy-dan-print But now that I am publishing comics daily, I see it has come back – people leaving comments I’m not crazy about. One guy thinks I stole a comic from elsewhere, another doesn’t understand one comic and another called my one comic, the one about Dan and the angry spicy food which ran a week or so ago, “Boomer humor!”

Rather than get offended, which I did at first, I told him, wait for the next comic, you’ll really see boomer humor. And that was the Columbo comic. Speaking of this Columbo comic, a guy, a boomer in fact, commented that he hates Columbo and turns it off every time it comes on. I got offended at that. I really do need get thicker skin. I’m not even Columbo and I get offended!

colombo-print I’m guessing people know Columbo, even if they are 16-years-old, I mean everything is in reruns or available for instant streaming these days and if you don’t know Columbo you don’t know what you’re missing.

I am glad to get comments, it shows me that people are paying attention, you know, say what you will about me, just spell my name right – that sort of thing.

There is one cartoonist who on GoComics, has all comments turned off. I get it. I ran into him one time at a ComicCon and I didn’t really know what to say when we met, because I’m not really a reader of his comic so there was nothing to talk about, so I mentioned the “no comments” thing and we chatted about that for a bit. I guess it’s about putting your heart and soul into something and then having someone tear it apart, which I guess we are all guilty of on social media. It’s so easy to hide anonymously behind a keyboard.

A friendly reminder

hal-and-high-water It’s amazing how my whole life has been enveloped by comics, yet a few years back I was sort of out of it and didn’t think I would draw again. Not for any special reason other than I was underwhelmed with so many comics in the newspapers and felt the heyday was over and I ran a very successful marketing business, so I felt that was my future.

About 12 years ago or so, my friend Victor bought me a bunch of stuff as a gift. I was reminded of it as I was cleaning out the closets recently. He bought me pads and pens or markers, something like that – for a birthday or Christmas gift and he said he hoped it would get me back into drawing and cartooning. It was the sweetest thought.

The funny thing is that it was all items I wouldn’t use and never have. And I’m sure anyone would feel that way because you use your own materials when creating art. If I was a painter, but then again no, isn’t that a song? Anyway, if I was a painter, I would have my own canvases that I preferred and my own paints and brushes.

But Victor’s thought meant so much more than the items themselves. And I am back on the road to cartooning history after all this time with a friendly reminder from those pads and pens.

As you know I post my comic daily online at TomFalco.com
And on FacebookandInstagram

Locked out of Facebook

I was locked out of Facebook early Saturday morning up until Sunday morning. That was the scariest 27 hours!

I don’t know why, but when I went to look at it first thing in the morning, it had me locked out and asked me for a personal ID to get back into the account!

I sent them my drivers license.

It seems this has been going on for many years, but I had never heard of this before. If there is some suspicious activity related to your account, they want to protect you so they lock the account and ask for ID, which in the end works out because people cannot use your photos and clone you then.

Anyway, it’s a scary thing because you don’t realize all of your life that is associated with Facebook. I use the messenger service just as much as texting. I use Facebook for business daily. I run ads on it for my marketing company and I use it to converse with customers sometimes. I also use it to converse with friends and relatives and keep up with them like we all do. Also, when I was writing the news I would use it to verify the spelling of people’s names and sometimes I would get their photo from their to use in a news story, with their permission. It’s become such a part of our lives, it’s amazing the power it has over us.

I use Facebook for everything, not just communicating, but for news. I follow so many news sites – the usual, The NY Times, The Wash Post, etc. but also Channel 3 in Phoenix or The Boston Globe and the Cincinnati Enquirer. Why? Who knows. I follow all sorts of news sites. I follow a lot of cartoonists, too. Basically my whole life is on there.

And of course I publish Tomversation comics Monday through Friday on Facebook as well as other places like Instagram and at TomFalco.com. It was quite upsetting because I just started publishing my comics there and have worked up to quite a large number of followers/fans, but I noticed that if I make a temporary personal Facebook page, I can somehow get in there and continue to post and sort of make it work.

What riled me is that I have ads running on my business page. The account was down, I couldn’t get in but was being charged for ads and I couldn’t get into the account to stop them. This is a multi-billion dollar company, maybe trillion dollar company, with all of our info and there is no way to call them or email them. And you can’t use the forms to reach them unless you are signed into your account, which you cannot do if you are locked out.

One more thing – don’t ever sign up for other accounts through Facebook, I use my email account. You know when you go to join something else and it asks, “Would you like to sign up using your Facebook account or email?” Choose the email. Otherwise, you would be locked out of all those accounts, as well.

Leave me and my mojo alone

linus Things have really turned around for me – in a good way. I wrote about getting my mojo back before. I really think the daily news I published for years was dragging me down. I am free of it after 15 years and I have my mojo back. I am able to manifest and will things like I did for my whole life (minus the past 10 years or so). You may or not believe in The Secret, but I have been manifesting since I was a little kid. I don’t know how I knew to do it, but I just did, long before The Secret and The Power and all those books came out.

I believe the negativity was from non-stop stress. I would argue and fight with politicians and developers and stuff but also I was involved in everybody’s business whether I wanted to be or not. Just the other day I got an email from a girl at a local tattoo shop, she wanted me to fight their battles, which I would have done in the past – as part of my job, I guess.

The tattoo shops are closed, but beauty salons and barbers are open, she wanted me to write a story, come over and get involved, which of course would have lead me to the mayor and the local commissioner, who would have directed me to the governor’s office or something like that and for the next few weeks, I would have been dealing with people who I didn’t want to deal with. As you know this quarantine thing is right up my alley. I love mankind… it’s people I can’t stand. And I hated every second of doing that for the past 15 years.

I am friends with her boss, the owner of the shop, who incidentally called me a few weeks ago to say hello and check up on me, which I think was the nicest thing, it really meant a lot to me that he did that.

But anyway, my life consisted of this daily – who is doing what, do they have a permit for that? Why is this that way, who do I have to call? Who do I have to interview? While doing that for six years I was the condo prez, talk about stress. I also ran a business and published cartoons daily. Not sure where I got all the energy and time from, but it worked out at the time.

Now I don’t have to deal with anyone. Now I can be alone. I pay my bills and mind my own business. I am cartooning full time – my lifelong dream. I do like writing, so I write here on this blog but am not forced to cover news and events and I don’t have to write if I don’t feel like.

A friend who is a fantastic artist asked me to be part of his art project – me drawing cartoons on his Impressionistic paintings. I like the idea, but for now I want to be alone, like Garbo.

By the way, today is my birthday and I feel reborn! I feel like my life is starting over and I’m going to run with it.

My friend Arva

arva A friend passed away yesterday – Arva Moore Parks – she was a Miami historian who knew everything there was to know about our city and she saved so many great historic places in the city.

When I was growing up, I admired her. Every time I read about her in the newspapers or saw her on tv, I was impressed.

Some years ago, I saw her on a plane. I was starstruck, totally starstruck. I didn’t say anything, but I was honored to be in her presence. She was a person of such high regard and honor.

Years later I met her at a local protest. I was covering the news for our town and she was there protesting the demolition of a 100 year old church. She came up to me and she knew me. She knew my name! She said my name! I had never met her before but she knew my name. From that day on we were friends. Not friends where we would talk all the time, but she would contact me about things and I would contact her about things and she even honored me by writing about me in her book about the history of Coconut Grove – our village.

Over the years whenever I was writing the news, fighting with politicians and trying to save the world, I would think as I was writing, “What would Arva think?” Would she agree with what I was doing? She always did.

One of our local PBS stations shows a little thing on the history of Miami every night in between programs. The first voice you hear is Arva’s and then you see her on the screen explaining one thing or another. The music at the beginning of the segment is always the same and when I hear it, I say out loud, “Cue Arva!” and I point to the tv and smile as she comes on the screen.

You can see her obit and see how great she was in this Miami Herald obit.

This is the video when I hear the music at the beginning, I know Arva is coming on next.

Ignorance is bliss; I got my mojo back

calvin-and-hobbes

I’ve been seeing so many good things happen this past month or so. I don’t know if it’s the whole stop and regroup thing with this sheltering-in-place or something else.

In the past, most of my life, I was always in the right place at the right time, I would will things, seriously, I would manifest whatever I wanted. I did this before The Secret was a thing, I didn’t know I was doing it, I would just do it.

I had premonitions all the time, too.

But for some reason, it all stopped. I was off kilter, I was almost in the right place at the right time, but not exactly, I was off a few degrees. I had problems willing things and the whole system shut down.

Now that it is back – and in a big way – I realize that my doing the daily news here in my town for 15 years maybe have been a big part of the problem. It was all that negativity. I myself turned negative, I got swept up into politics and things I normally would not care about. And I am sure there was a lot of hate coming toward me from people who disagreed with me. I am sure I spewed a lot of hate right back at them. It was sort of part of the job – journalism can be ugly.

I don’t want to say the whole thing was ugly, because it wasn’t. I met so many people and made so many new friends to this day. I was part of so many events too, on the inside, where I would not have normally been a part of. I got preferential treatment all over and honestly in so many instances, I was treated like a celebrity. But I like that the run is over.

Now that I ended that 15 year run, I see a difference. I feel peace, I live positively and I shut out negativity. It could be the sheltering-in-place and the settling of the universe, too. But I noticed that I am able to turn the negativity off whereas in the past I was in the middle of it all whether I wanted to be or not.

Now, again I have been willing and manifesting things, I have been having lots of “good luck” and graces or whatever you want to call it and I feel like I have my mojo back and I believe it all has to do with changes I made, especially the change of not reporting the news around here and not being in the middle of all the quarrels and such. I don’t have a clue what’s going on around town and I love it! Ignorance is truly bliss!

Vanity before safety?

tom1 So I walked over to the hospital next door, usually once a week I go for a walk around their property/campus, it’s beautiful, big, wide open and on the bay. I went into Au Bon Pain which is there to get lunch. It’s usually empty, only me and the girl working there.

Well, yesterday there was a guy in scrubs, a doctor, tech, something like that. He told me I had my mask on wrong – even tough I looked at the video that a friend sent me on how to do it. Yes, I needed a video, and still got it wrong. He was a stranger getting lunch mind you, in line ahead of me. I didn’t know him.

He then proceeds to touch me! He took the mask off, fashioned it the way it’s supposed to be and then gave it back to me. Then he had the balls to Purell his hands, they had a Purell stand there. I Purelled too because it seemed like the thing to do.

So this hospital worker/doctor, who should know better is all Purelled up and I have his hands all over my face by putting the mask back on. I told him I had these flowery cloth masks at home that I was going to start using, too, but he said the one I had on was “safer.” I guess he means safer without his hand prints all over it.

I guess I was so embarrassed about having the mask on wrong and walking around like that that I didn’t care about the safety issue. Yet I did have the mask on for safety reasons. Go figure.

She died during the 1918 pandemic

I called my aunt in New York to say hi, to check up on them, you know, to see how things are going. She has kids and grand kids and my uncle and I talk to my cousins all the time, but not my aunt. She’s going stir crazy, she’s one to be out and about all the time, we go on lots of day and weekend trips when I’m up there – back and forth to the Hamptons, Oktoberfest, Christmas festivals, shopping, museums, etc. So to be locked up in the house this long is not her thing. I hope I can get there this summer to see them all as I usually do.

Anyway, we were talking about the pandemic and she brought up her and my father’s aunt Lucy who died of the pandemic of 1918. I had never heard this before.

My whole life I never knew my grandmother had another sister. She had a very large family, I think 11 brothers and sisters, so I guess Lucy got lost in the mix. But she passed away at age 28 in 1918. That means she was born in 1890. My grandmother was born in 1911, she was one of the younger ones and I guess only 7 when her sister passed away.

I asked my father if he had a photo of Lucy, he says he doesn’t.

Sad, but I’m shocked that this is the first time I am hearing this. I guess I should do one of those Ancestry.com tests to find out more about the family.

The PPP not the PPE

ruth-chris-print2 PPP and PPE are two separate things – PPP is the Paycheck Protection Program and PPE is the Personal Protective Equipment – two things many of us need these days.

I signed up for the PPP a few weeks ago and Chase Bank has been on top of it. They have emailed me every step of the way to tell me the process is going on, up until the money ran out, because of schmucks like Shake Shack, Harvard University and Ruth Chris’s Steak House.

I know they returned the money, but they are all still schmucks, but I don’t give them business anyway so I can’t boycott them and Harvard, well, whenever I am in Cambridge, which is often, I do visit the Harvard grounds, but next time, hopefully November, I’ll spit on the lawn.

Here locally, ritzy Fisher Island, the most expensive zip code in the U.S., got approval for a $2 million forgiveable loan! It seems that the owners may have taken the board to task and had them not accept the money. The greed in our country is sickening. Dallas hotel chain Ashford, Inc. received $$60 million and they are keeping it, they also put in for more of the newly released batch of money the government set forth. Their goal is to get $126 million! AutoNation was able to receive $77 million but they say they will return it now. These two greedy schmucks are now accounting for a very large part of the money that was released Friday by the federal government.

As for the measly few bucks I am asking for, after all this greedy brouhaha happened, I got another email from Chase telling me that the SBA, Small Business Assoc. turned down my request and Chase gave me a link to reapply. It seems that I left so much out of the first attempt regarding papers and licenses and proof of my business, and I am grateful to be able to reapply with the proper paperwork.

I got another email yesterday from Chase. This one was sort of an admonishment for the greedy millionaires in our country. You can see it here. “New guidance for the PPP.” They are giving these greedy folk a chance to redeem themselves, but unless they get caught do you think they will redeem themselves?

From Chase Bank:

We continue to work hard to prepare as many applications as possible for processing when the SBA begins taking new applications. However, the SBA recently issued new guidance that we want to communicate to customers whose application is in process as well as those who have already received funding.

The new guidance strengthens some of the language regarding qualifications for a Paycheck Protection Program Loan. Specifically, we would like to remind you:

When you applied you certified that “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant.”

You have the opportunity to withdraw your application if you do not feel you meet this criteria.

If you’ve already been funded, and you believe you do not meet this criteria, you can repay your loan by May 7, 2020 and the SBA will treat that repayment as being in good faith.

If you cannot certify and want us to stop processing your application or you want to return your funding, you’ll need to follow the instructions at the bottom of this email.

Then it goes on to say that large publicly held businesses cannot apply and that when you apply you are signing into law that you are telling the truth, etc. etc.