Visiting cartoonist George Booth

I see New Yorker cartoonist George Booth is featured at the Society of Illustrators in New York City.  I saw this great feature on CBS Sunday Morning today about Mr. Booth, this is it above. I’ll be in NY next week, so I hope to stop by and enjoy his work.

Last time, actually, the only time I was at the Society of Illustrators, was this past July, that’s when I went to see the Spider-man art exhibit with my cousin Michael.

When I was in New York last month, my cousin Beth handed me a book she bought for me, it was “Going into Town” by cartoonist Roz Chast. She said, “I thought you might like this, I don’t know if you are familiar with Roz Chast’s work but it was about cartooning and New York, so I assumed you would like it.”

I was excited. I told her that I had found one of my new favorite museums that way, the Museum of the City of New York. In all these years, I had never been, but I saw that last July (2016) there was an exhibit of Roz Chast’s work who I was very familiar with, so I went up to see that. I now love that museum and that neighborhood, so every time I’m in New York, I check it out.

Developer guilty of destroying graffiti

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Me at the Wynwood Walls, Miami.

I live near Wynwood, the Miami arts district, so a story I read in the NY Times caught my attention.

A Queens, NY developer was found guilty by a jury of destorying graffiti.

There was a graffiti filled complex called 5Pointz that consisted of almost 50 spray-painted murals. For 20 years, the Long Island City building was a collaboration between the developer Jerry Wolkoff and graffiti artists, very much like Wynwood in Miami. Then in 2014, Wolkoff had it torn down and turned into high-end apartments, which is what Long Island City has become these days.

Wynwood is a while neibhborhood covered in Graffiti, there is one section called the Wynwood Walls where they are literally painted walls inegrating with each other. This Queens desecration is almost as if someone came in and knocked down or white washed the Wynwood Walls.

The artists sued Wolkoff for violating what they call the Visual Artists Rights Act.

What’s interseting is that the murals in both locations – Long Island City and Wynwood, change often, they are painted over with new murals, so just the fact that there was a lawsuit and that the artists won is something, because in all honesty, the last set of murals would have been painted over by other artists eventually.

The jury awarded damages to the artists. I don’t know how much.

Here are some more murals from Wynwood in Miami.

Getting ready to submit my work

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So I have my new comic strip ready to submit to the syndicates. It’s all packed and ready to go. What I mean by that is I have the cover letter, character sheet and samples all set in tidy PDF’s. Now the wait. This is Hal, the main character.

I’m waiting for November 11 at 11:11 am to submit it – that is 11/11 at 11:11 am.

Four syndicates accept the feature electronically, one only accepts it by snail mail, so I may snail mail the one at 11:11 am at the post office and then wait until 11:11 pm to submit the remaining four electronically.

To be continued.

My favorite time of the week

My favorite time of the week is Tuesday night, about 9 pm. I don’t know why, but that’s the sweet spot for me. I also like the same time on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 9 pm are my favorite times of the week, Tuesday being the most favorite.

I’m not sure why.

Usually at that time, Tuesday at 9 pm and almost every night of the week, I go out to my balcony, which overlooks the bay and I sort of meditate, or I guess it’s more like contemplate. I’m only there a short time, maybe five minutes, but I do it almost every night of the week.  I step outside, there is no one around, no one can see me. It’s sort of special.

The bay is black and it’s quiet. On full moon nights, which is this weekend I believe, the bay is lit up and it’s really something special. I manifest then. I guess the best time to manifest would be 11:11, but I do it at 9ish.

Years ago I used to love Mondays. Monday morning was the best. I would go to the beach on Mondays and it was empty since most people worked and they would obviously go over the weekend. I think I worked weekends then, so maybe Monday was my weekend. Whatever, it was quiet, just like my balcony at home at 9 pm.

Years ago, my favorite time of the week was about 9 pm on Saturdays. It was the sweet spot then. I went out most Saturdays about 11 pm, and I suppose 9 pm was earlier enough to enjoy the anticipation of the night and also it was right about when I was watching tv and just enjoying the weekend. What do they say, “the shank of the evening?”

Ha, that’s what Tuesday at 9 pm is now, The Shank of the Evening; The Shank of the Week.

It pays to have a sense of humor

I was at the drive thru at McDonald’s about 7:30 am yesterday. It was nice and peaceful as I sat waiting to move up to the window in my car. Out of the bushes comes an old homeless man who scared the crap out of me.

This happened to me once in Ft. Lauderdale at a Popeye’s and it was late at night, so that really freaked me out.

Anyway, I yelled at the old man and said, “Why are you jumping out from the bushes? You’re gonna scare the hell out of people!”

He said, “So what? It’s Halloween!”

That made me laugh. So I gave him money.

There’s nothing like a clever old homeless guy. I wish he would use his sense of humor to get out of being homeless. But at least he has that going for him.

Why we need newspapers

Look at this. Amazing.

Japanese artist Chie Hitotsuyama makes intricate animals from newsprint. She uses rolled strips of wet newspaper.

“More than anything else, I’m particular about the realistic feel of the animals,” she says.

It’s all about the casting

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Here are two of the characters from a new comic strip I’m working on. This is Hal and Benilda. For the longest time, I wasn’t happy with Benilda, I was sort of writing her out of the strip after just a few episodes. There was something I just didn’t like.

I’m not going to show you the old image, but this is the new Benilda. I like her. I really did not like the old Benilda.

If she was an actress in a tv show or movie, the old Benilda would have been fired because she wasn’t right for the part. This new Benilda is just right.

It’s amazing how casting, even in comic strips, makes a big difference.

Breaking Bad, et al

breakingbadI DVR’d all of Breaking Bad when there was a marathon on AMC and for the past month I have been holding off on watching the final five episodes. I don’t want it to end. I know how it ends because it was all over the news the next day after the final episode. But still, those five final episodes are precious to me.

I’m not sure why I never watched it when it was on the air, I never saw Game of Thrones or Ray Donovan either. Not sure why, I used to watch all those Sunday night shows on HBO, True Blood, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire. I know Ray is on Showtime.

I guess one of these will be my next DVD- binge watch thing.

I’m always drawn to the desert Southwest – you know, Albuquerque, Phoenix, etc. Maybe I lived there in another life, who knows. I was talking to my cousin the other night and out of the blue she tells me that one of her sons is drawn to the desert, too. Like when he sees a scene in the movies or on tv, like in Breaking Bad for instance, he is drawn to it. Crazy right?

My thing with these tv shows is that I watch mostly reality tv, not sure why, so I don’t see much scripted stuff.

Russia Wants Bulgarians to Stop Painting Soviet Monuments To Look Like American Superheroes


This struck me as so funny.  Russia wants Bulgarians to stop painting the Soviet monuments to look like American super heroes. But it’s been painted over and over again as other things, too. There is one monument that is defaced often. It was painted bright pink to commemorate the anniversary of the Prague Spring and it was painted blue and yellow which are Ukrainian colors. But I think the super heroes are so funny, just the fact that they are American heroes (and Ronald McDonald) makes it hilarious to me.

 

Bad comic strips

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Ever read a comic strip daily, just because it’s bad?

I’m not going to mention any names and for all I know, my own work is in this horrible category, but I’ve noticed that I’ve always been drawn to terrible work. Of course, I love all the classics and read the best of the best, but for some reason, I am drawn to the bad ones. I’m not sure if it’s the content, the writing or the drawing, but I read these bad strips often. Many I see on Facebook, they pop up in my feed. I don’t seek them out.

When I was a kid, we used to get a few newspapers (I miss those old daily newspaper days), and some newspapers ran the lower-end comics, I guess they weren’t as popular and they were cheaper to purchase for the newspapers than say “Doonesbury” or “Peanuts.” So there was room for everyone back then with the multitude of newspapers and features.

We used to get the Miami Herald daily and the South Dade News Leader and I would sometimes buy the Miami News. We also had access to the Hollywood Sun-Tattler (love that name) and the Ft. Lauderdale News and Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. So we had daily access to six daily newspapers and if I would travel through the south end of our state, I would read the Naples Daily News and Key West Citizen. Lots of newspapers.

The South Dade News Leader had the lower end comics, most from the NEA Syndicate and I would read these and enjoyed them. I also remember free weekly newspapers that had the worst comics, but I looked forward to them.

Today online, I see comics that make me shudder. I don’t ever want to put down a fellow cartoonist, so I don’t ever put them down outside my head, but yet I read them, so there is something there. And I guess posting on Facebook works because I always click on them and read them.

Maybe it’s like a bad tv commercial. It may be terrible, but you remember the product.