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It’s a Down Under thing

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I’m always fascinated with Australia and New Zealand, I don’t know why but I enjoy a lot of tv based there. I am currently watching the new series, The Real Housewives of Aukland. No, don’t laugh, it’s a real show. And I enjoy The Real Housewives of Melbourne, too. I love how they talk.

I also like Doctor Blake Mysteries, which was recently canceled, not sure why, it’s an excellent show, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and A Place to Call Home. These shows are period pieces that take place in Australia, Dr. Blake and A Place to Call Home take place around 1954 and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries takes place in the 1920s, she’s a rich flapper who solves murders with the police. Sort of a younger Murder She Wrote in a different era.

And I came upon a funny comic strip called Bushscrubs by cartoonist Vince Steele, who lives in Tasmania of all places. Tasmania!

The strip is hilarious. Vince describes the strip as “An Australian comic strip. Meet the Bushscrubs as Gazza and his dog, Benny, live the dream by running a camping ground out in the middle of nowhere.”

Vince posts the strips on Facebook here, where I usually see them.

The top sample here is really funny, it’s been a continuation of Trevor, this bird, who somehow managed to get into ladies clothing and ended up on a tour bus. The tour guide keeps calling him Doris. The credit card went through because they needed voice recognition and for some reason, Trevor’s squawk into the phone did the trick and he has full access to everything on the tour.

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When Connecticut was the world

glass-house — This is sort of like the picture I had seen in a book when I was a kid – a glass house in the woods.

There is this cool article in Vanity Fair about so many cartoonists who lived in Fairfield County, CT, for a period of time, from the 1950s through the ’90s.

When I was a kid and read books on cartooning, it would always mention places in Connecticut where the cartoonists lived. We once went to the Museum of Cartoon art in Greenwich, CT when I was a kid and that was really the closest I ever got to all those cartoonists.

Ironically, over the years, I always pictured myself living in a glass house in the woods in CT. I saw an image in a book once, maybe it was about architect Frank Lloyd Wright, this was when I was about 14 years old and that always stuck with me and I thought it would be perfect to live that way in CT – all glass, surrounded by trees.

Ironically, I live up high in an all glass condo now, on Biscyane Bay in Miami, and if it was on the ground, it sort of would be the glass house of my imagination, only its not in CT and not surrounded by forest.

Anyway, the Vanity Fair article brought back so many memories of Mort Walker and Bug Sagendorf and Jack Tippet and so many more during the hey day of comic strips. I wanted to be like them, still do.

Now all they need is tinfoil

I read a funny story in the SF Gate, which originated in the WSJ. It isn’t supposed to be funny, but it is. The headline says it all: Millennials Unearth an Amazing Hack to Get Free TV: the Antenna.

I thought tv antennas would go on the list of Things From the Past, but maybe not. Remember using tinfoil to help with the signal? Next thing you know, these Millennials will be into black and white tv and maybe getting up to turn the channels.

Am I dating myself?

It’s about the parking; not the food

When I meet my friends for lunch, we’ll usually text or email and say, “Wanna go to lunch tomorrow? Where?”

I usually choose places where it’s easy to park, The others of course, choose based on the food, which seems like the normal thing to do.

I guess I really don’t care what we eat, I just don’t want to drive around the block five times looking for parking, so for me, it’s all about the parking. We don’t have restaurant ratings in Miami, but if we did, it would be all about the A-rating, too.

There’s a place in New York City that always looks good, a Chinese restaurant in Midtown East, I think around 50th and 2nd, I think. They are the only place I have ever seen with a C-rating. Then from that they went to an “Under Review” rating and now they are a B. What’s so hard about getting to an A?

The Mooch meets his match

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Foul mouth Anthony Scaramucci meets his match in Susie Essman.

The Mooch speaks colorfully

I did a Mooch comic, regarding Anthony Scaramucci’s Tweet saying that he admits to speaking colorfully. That was in regards to his filthy language in this New Yorker magazine interview (NSFW). Actually, he didn’t know he was on record, so it wasn’t an interview, it was just Scaramucci being The Mooch.

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Mooch Madness and Survivor

Friday’s NYC front pages. Parodies of March Madness and Survivor! Love ’em!

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Clever vandalism

Found these when looking for other things on the internet. Clever street art/vandalism from around the world.

This pole was made into a UFO beaming up a cow. Get it?

Marge!

Crochet art!

One line can ruin the whole thing. One simple line,

Summer reading; Little Free Libraries

library1 I have a friend who is fixated with the little free libraries that you may have seen around your town. There are only four of them in my town, this one shown here. Now our objective, is to have more added. Places like Lake Worth, Florida, have as many as 80 around their town! It started small and grew from there.

According to Lake Worth resident and artist AnnaMaria Windisch-Hunt, Palm Beach County has a REAP program (Resident Education to Action Program) that funds the boxes now through grants. The libraries started off with three, where AnnaMaria had a couple of sailors build the boxes. “The three were hand built with re purposed items and dumpster diving. One looks like the replica of the owner’s home. The other was done from a hope chest and mine incorporated [AnnaMaria’s late husband] Fred Hunt’s dresser,” she says.

She went on, “We ask all the talented artists in the community to paint one and they all come out. Now we have someone local who is able to build them. The only ones what required variance were in public right of ways. i.e Forestation, the ones by City Hall. Everyone is on board. In fact the Library used to divest of books via selling or trashing if they were in good condition they would now be kept and picked up by the Library Steward.” It’s so popular that she can no longer get books at the library but now they are looking to publishers for donations.

She has a story about the library boxes in her Lake Worth Every Minute blog.

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These Little Free Libraries or “book boxes,” as they are called are loved by the neighbors. There is one at LoKal, a local burger place, they call it the “bootleggers library.” That’s Adrian from Lokal, he enjoys the library and has some great suggestions for restaurant guests.

The advantage of these little libraries are that neighbors meet neighbors through them and in a way, they are sharing more than just neighborly visits. Books are being shared that were read by neighbors who are now sharing the books with fellow neighbors. It would be interesting to see what books are being shared in which neighborhoods.

A nice project would be to have a bunch of the libraries sponsored and then maybe painted by artists, like we did in our town a few years ago with painted peacocks. In this digital age, its nice to hold paper and ink in hand, have the smell and feel of an actual book and enjoy sharing it.

There are more than 50,000 book boxes around the world in 70 countries; they are in all 50 US states.

This is an excellent idea to share the books you already read and loved.

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Plans and tips for library builders

Set of plans

The Danger of Being Neighborly Without a Permit

The Low-tech appeal of Little Free Libraries

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Street art in the form of crochet trees

tree8 I was walking down Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, NYC on July 4 and noticed these cool tree cozies. They are sort of vigilante art, where they just appear in the middle of the night.

Most were on Christopher at Bedford. The first one I noticed was the barber pole made from the crocheted yarn, but then I noticed the barber pole, which is usually red and white, had blue in it, then realized it was a perfect red, white and blue for July 4th.

I particularly like the tree with the crocheted roses on it. So cool.