I reworked this old cartoon I did some years back. It came to mind because all weekend I’ve been seeing this quick 15 second commercial for Walmart using the ac/dc Dirty Deeds song. You can see it here.
So after hearing it over and over I looked in my archives and there was Lucy at her doctor’s booth ready to do some dirty deeds. Usually it’s five cents for a doctor’s visit, right? So maybe it’s the same cost for a dirty deed or two.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
Today’s cartoon is about the Hollywood actor’s strike. First off, let me say I am in favor of everyone being paid what they are worth. And I’m in favor of the actor’s receiving their due. I also know that the majority of actors are not paid millions of dollars and some barely make a living wage. I know that.
This is just one view of how some people see the strike. It could be because they have big names as the face of the strike, like Fran Drescher, Jason Sudekis, Susan Sarandon and Brian Cox, who are just a few that have been shown on tv talking about the issue. I know the big names get the air time.
If it was a character actor that we don’t know, then perhaps people might feel differently. But again, I understand the SAF-AFTRA issue. They want their fair share, they don’t want their likenesses used with AI formats and so on.
When I started my Huffington Post column, 10 With Tom, my goal was to interview up- and-coming artists and musicians – people who were not known, but I was asked to write about well-known people, because that’s what the readers apparently wanted to read. So it’s the same here, publicize the famous stars rather than those in the picket line who really need to strike.
I know the writers are on strike, too, and many of them barely make a living wage.
I’m hoping for a good outcome for everyone involved.
When I first wrote the cartoon, I used a husband and wife watching tv, worried about their cable bill or streaming bill going up due to the eventual outcome of the strike, but I thought the two homeless guys would make more of an impression.
Originally, this was the cartoon.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I was telling one of my cousins last week that I watch a lot of PBS. She assumed I watched a lot of “nature shows” or educational stuff, but I told her I watch a lot of British tv – britcoms, mysteries, etc.
The lighthouse was in danger of falling off of the cliffs, as the erosion got closer and closer. So a plan was set in place to move the much-loved and historic lighthouse back 135 feet to save it for another 150 years or so.
I kept picturing people 150 years from now doing the same thing- moving the lighthouse in another 135 feet, cursing the people in 2023 for not doing it at the time. But they can’t move the lighthouse too far back, – it still serves a purpose and needs to be visible by boats at sea.
It’s a fun program, talking about the history of the lighthouse, showing the village people of Martha’s Vineyard and the actual crew doing the job of lifting the lighthouse four feet off the ground and moving it without it collapsing under its own weight.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I’m loving Succession. I started watching it about a week ago. I never watched it during it’s initial run on HBO. Not sure why. There was a time when I watched all those Sunday night 9 pm shows on HBO and Showtime – The Sopranos, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, etc. But for many years now, I’ve been watching other stuff, I guess.
I did the same with Breaking Bad. I never watched one episode during it’s initial run and then after the show was over for about a month, I started watching it and got addicted. I think I’ve seen every episode about five or six times. My two favorite episodes are Dead Freight and Face Off.
Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy
As for Succession, I just finished season one. My favorite character is Kendall Roy played by Jeremy Strong. Love him – the character and the actor. He commands the screen when he’s on.
I do have one complaint – the darkness. The show is very dark. And I don’t mean the storyline, I mean the filming. It’s as if they are trying to save money on lighting or something. I guess it’s to set the mood, but so many times I can’t see what’s going on. The tv screen is almost black! Have you noticed that?
I literally have to shut the lights off in the room and make it pitch dark to see what’s going on. From an article in TV Line, regarding many tv shows: “Dark twists are fine, but scenes that are lit so dimly we can’t tell what is going on, or even with whom, are quite problematic.” The whole article is here.
Other than that, I love it all.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
Let me start by saying I don’t even boil water. I can, of course, but I don’t. Except to make tea. But I do love watching cooking shows. I guess it’s the same as DYI home shows, I don’t plan on renovating any time soon, or house hunting, yet I enjoy these shows, too. I find them relaxing. There’s not much thinking involved. Although I guess if you’re following the recipes, there is thinking. But since I’m not following the recipes, I don’t have to think.
Right now I have four favorite tv cooks/chefs – Ina Garten, Christina Pirello, Rory O’connell and Mary Ann Esposito.
Ina has her regular cooking show, Barefoot Contessa and her Be My Guest with Ina Garten, which I love. It’s a show where she has a famous person come to her East Hampton home and she interviews them and cooks with them. I found this show while on a plane.
The first half hour is a sit down interview where they sit at Ina’s kitchen table and talk. The best part, I think. The second half is them in the kitchen cooking and chatting, but I prefer the first part where you learn a lot about people and how they got their starts, their philosophies, etc. But now the Food Network screwed up the whole thing by having only the half hour cooking segment, and for the whole hour, you have to subscribe to a streaming service. So you now have to pay for the best part.
I read a reader’s comment somewhere that says the celebs are bubbleheads and this person who left the comment didn’t care what these “bubbleheads” had to say. He felt the cooking segment was the best part, but I feel the opposite and I don’t find Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Marcus Samuelsson, Nathan Lane and Julianna Margulies, bubbleheads, quite the opposite. They all have very interesting stories about their lives and how they got to where they are now in life.
And one more show I like, which is sort of a travel/cooking show is Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy show on CNN. It’s excellent and knowing that Stanley grew up in Calabria, Italy, makes it more interesting. The first street I lived on as an adult was Calabria (in Coral Gables, FL), so it comes full circle in a way.
Anyway, on with my favorite cooks – Christina Pirello, hosts Christina Cooks, a half hour cooking show, where she prepares what she calls Macroterranean food. – it’s vegan Italian/Mediterranean food. No meat, no butter, sugar, etc. All natural. I mostly love her personality, she reminds me of so many people I know from the Northeast – Staten Island, New Jersey, etc. Christina is based in Philadelphia.
One thing we disagree with is that she calls Italian sauce “gravy” but we always grew up with it being called “sauce,” and she insists it’s her way, but I disagree. How many times did my mother call me up and say, “I’m making sauce tonight, you wanna come over?” By sauce she meant pasta, meatballs, whatever was made with the sauce (not gravy). Gravy is brown stuff you use on meats!
It’s funny because at Christmas, one of my nieces, a vegan, made some sort of pasta that I loved. I said to her, it’s so light, the cheese not so overpowering. She said it was vegan. I said, “Oh right, I know of this Italian cook (Christina) who uses white miso instead of parmigiana cheese and it tastes the same, only lighter.” And my niece told me that that’s where she got the recipe – from Christina and it was white miso instead of cheese in this dish!
Rory likes to use a lot of wild greens and flowers in his dishes.
Next up, Rory O’Connell. He has a half hour cooking show, How to Cook Well from County Cork farmhouse, in Ireland. He has a thick Irish accent and I love to listen to him talk. He uses such great expressions, things we wouldn’t say in the U.S.
Rory uses a lot of plants and flowers in his cooking. He sometimes goes overboard and finishes a dish covering it with so many edible flowers, that you can’t see what the main dish is below all those blooms. But I like him a lot and find him entertaining.
Mary Ann Esposito has the longest running cooking show on tv called Cia Italia. She’s messy in her cooking, very homey and friendly and cooks in her own home kitchen in New Hampshire, where she lives.
Three of the four live in places I love – Ina lives in East Hampton, NY, Mary Ann lives in New Hampshire and Rory lives in Ireland. Christina lives in Philadelphia, meh, not my fav, but I still like her.
All of the shows I watch on PBS and Ina is on the Food Network and Discovery Plus for the full hour episodes.
And as Lydia Bastianich, another favorite cook says, “Tutti a tavola a mangiare!
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I was at the doctor’s office, in the waiting area, alone and a local channel was on the tv, showing the news. I decided to try and change the channel to the Today Show on NBC. There was no remote, but I saw some buttons on the side of the tv and I reached up to change the channel. Only for some reason, they didn’t work.
As I was doing that, I hear a lady say, “Don’t change the channel.” I turned and looked at her. She was a fellow patient. She asked me of I worked there. I told her no. I then attempted to change the channel again, but it wouldn’t change.
Again, she said, “Don’t turn the channel. I’m watching that.”
I said, “You just arrived! How were you watching this? I just wanted to put on the Today Show.” She looked at me blankly. I said, “You know, it’s a talk show.” She was horrified! “And news,” I said.
She then made talking gestured with her hands, “Talk, talk, talk, I don’t like that,” she said.
Since I couldn’t get the channel to change, I walked away. But then she said, “Ok, change the channel if you want,” as if I needed her permission.
She then said, “The banks are failing!” I guess she was panicked and wanted to watch the news.
I explained to her the banks were not failing, it was a couple of tech company banks and Pres. Biden said there was nothing to worry about. She looked at me as if she didn’t comprehend. Also, the local news was on, they literally mentioned the bank issue for 20 seconds and then went to the weather and sports. Perhaps I was changing to a financial channel to follow the banking story, maybe I wanted to put on MSNBC or Bloomberg, but she didn’t think of that.
She then walked to the other side of the room and told me to put on what I wanted. But of course, I couldn’t change the channel, so I walked to another side of the room and we ignored each other the rest of the time. I let her dwell in her ignorance and fear. She was a control freak, a tv control freak.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I watch a lot of British tv – sitcoms, called Britcoms, and dramas and dramadies.
My favorite three shows right now are Escape to the Chateau, Doc Martin and Midsomer Murders; in that order. I can watch Dick and Angela Strawbridge on Escape to the Chateau forever. I’ve seen each episode so many times, it’s basically background noise at this point. I want to live with them, live in the French countryside and do everything they do, except for all the hard work.
I also want to live in Portwenn, Cornwall, where Doc Martin lives. I love small towns. And as for Somerset county in England, I don’t know if I would want to live in all these charming small villages only because there seems to be non-stop murders on a weekly basis there!
I love so many other shows, the list is countless. But what I’m finding after all these years is that I am starting to use British terms and words. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I find it interesting.
My mother was always into British tv and movies. She loved to call a Jaguar car a “Jag-U-ar,” in that British way. And so many times when something was on tv like, Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) in Keeping Up Appearances or Are You Being Served, my mother would call me to ask if I was watching. My father and I would love Death in Paradise, which has been on for 12 seasons, with completely different casts, but with the same concept.
Doc Martin, driving on that side of the car, with Louisa, Aunt Ruth and PC Penhale
One thing I never understood was why British tv shows only have six to eight episodes per season. There really aren’t many episodes in a whole series. By the way, we call a tv series a whole body of work, the British call a tv season, a series.
I always use an expression from “Absolutely Fabulous” (Ab Fab) to a snob at a store – “Drop your attitude honey, you’re just a shop girl.” I think I’ve said it in my head more than saying that out loud, though. And don’t get me started on Vera, the female Columbo, or Broadchurch, which I finally got around to watching, and am obsessed with. Unfortunately, Broadchurch’s three seasons (series) are only 24 episodes total. That’s one single season on American tv. In America, that would be 72 episodes total.
I used a British expression last week that horrified me – I said, “He’s called Joe,” rather than “His name is Joe.” Ang I find myself saying Oregano as OR-E-GAA-NO. The British/European way.
And the strangest thing of all? The other day I was getting in my car which was parked at a meter at the curb and I attempted to get into the right side, the passenger side, to drive. For a moment I thought the steering wheel was on the passenger side, as it is in Britain. I draw the line at calling eggplant, “aubergene” though.
I have a friend who is the spitting image of Hyacinth Bucket, she walks and talks like her and has her build and high voice, minus the British accent. When she goes on and on about something I’ll say, “Ok Hyacinth,” and she gets it and laughs.
And I know it seems that all I do is watch tv, but I do have a life – I travel a lot, draw all these cartoons you guys read daily, I own a business and run it daily, am on the condo board and for 15 years I was editor and publisher of our local news and was at every meeting and event in town for all those years. So I do manage to get things done between watching the lives of Dick and Angela and Doc Martin.
I’m thinking I’ve got to get more of these people or more British stuff in my comics. It’s there for the taking.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
I got the idea about the snowballed kids really fast. I had a morning show on, I think the Today Show, and a guy was talking about how his social media post took off. He said it started slow and then snowballed.
And the word “snowballed’ just hit me. I heard the expression all my life, but in that moment, it struck me as something I could use for a comic. I thought of the snow people right away and I drew up the cartoon right then and there.
One of my neighbors and his wife go walking around the neighborhood daily, and I ran into them one day, we started walking together. I asked them if I was intruding and he replied with a funny quote that I think he made up himself. At that moment, I thought it would be good for a cartoon, but I just kept walking and talking and I forgot what the quote was.
A bit later, he asked where I get my cartoon ideas from. I said they just seem to pop into my head. I then mentioned the quote he had said a bit earlier and I said I thought that would make a good cartoon in some way, only I couldn’t remember it. So he repeated it and we laughed.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember it again and can’t use it. But that’s where I get my ideas – hearing things and twisting them around in my mind.
Speaking of the Today Show, Martha Stewart was on the other day, she was making her famous eggnog recipe and last week I ran that cartoon with the witches discussing Martha Stewart’s and Ina Garten’s eggnog recipes. It all comes full circle, I guess.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here / if you do already, maybe a friend might if you tell them?
I was having trouble with my AT&T Uverse a common problem. One day I will finally cut the cord.
My tv freezes often, it’s been doing it for years. The issue is that one of the tv’s is too far away from the main router and the signal just dies at certain times, usually at the point on a tv show where they say, “And the murderer is . . . ” or “And the winning number is . . . ” or something like that. I have a booster that AT&T installed, but apparently that doesn’t work well.
So when the tv froze, I reset the router, which I have done 100 times before, but in this case, the wifi was lost after I reset the router. So I called AT&T and a lady helped me. For some reason, my wifi lost it’s name and password I couldn’t find it on the list of routers, this had happened before. Apparently it reverted to an original router name/number like ACXVR123XXX35. She reset the name and password for me and things seemed to work. We hung up and I was happy.
I watched tv all night and then went to turn off the tv to go to bed and the tv would not turn off. The cable box would not shut down and the tv would not shut off. I tried for maybe a half hour to get it to turn off and finally just pulled the plug out of the wall, As I was doing this, the phone started ringing, it was late at night, so I ignored it. But I noticed it was coming from AT&T so I finally picked it up and wondered if they could tell on their end that I was having issues.
It was the lady from AT&T on the other end of the phone, the one who had helped me hours earlier! This has never happened before, I don’t remember them calling back to check on the issue from earlier in the day. I told her what the problem about not being able to turn the tv off and she had me do some things to fix this issue like pull the plugs out, which I had already done and wait 30 seconds for this and wait 15 seconds for that and so on. She also asked me to change the batteries in the remote. And I did it all while she held on.
Years ago, I used Earthlink to host my business website. Every time something went down, I called them and their first thing was to tell me to back up the whole website and to delete it and reinstall it. Of course, I freaked out and never did that and in the end it always was some server error on their end, which is really what I was calling about to begin with, I just wanted to be sure it was them and not something I did. It’s basically the same thing with AT&T – try everything until something works.
During all this going back and forth with the lady on the phone, I noticed I had two remote controls in the room. One was on the bed and one was in my hands. I realized as she was going through her spiel on the phone that I was trying to turn the tv off with the remote from the other room, my office. I don’t know how it got into the bedroom, but there were two in there all night and I never noticed. You would think the remotes would all work for all tvs, but they don’t. When I switched remotes to the correct one, it all worked out perfectly. The tv and cable box turned off.
I was too embarrassed to tell the AT&T lady about that, so I just said that what she told me to do on the phone was working and everything was fine now. I thanked her for her help and we hung up.
I still have red lights blinking on the booster/router in my office, but everything is working, so it will just blink sort of like a “check engine” light in the car. Just there, blinking away for no reason.
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
There is a new Vincent Van Gogh exhibit in Detroit, called “Van Gogh in America.” CBS Sunday Morning featured the museum and their plans for showing Van Gogh’s work on the 100th anniversary of their aquiring their first Van Gogh piece 100 years ago.
One hundred years ago the Detroit Institute of Arts became the first museum in the U.S. to buy a piece by Vincent Van Gogh. Now, the museum is honoring the century by featuring 74 of his works from around the world, which explores America’s introduction to the artist, who by the way, is believe to be American’s favorite artist, living or dead.
I fit in a Van Gogh cartoon whenever I can, I love him and his work so much.
I came up with this cartoon idea from the segment on CBS Sunday Morning. In the tv piece, curator Jill Shaw said, “The texture of his paint strokes is like cake icing.” And it is!
Receive an email each time I publish a blog post by clicking here
tomversation.com 