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Betsey Johnson just wants to have fun

10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes

I had the honor of interviewing fashion icon Betsey Johnson. Betsey made a stop at Macys at Boca Town Center in Boca Raton, Florida, to promote the premiere of TLC’s Say Yes to the Prom hosted by Betsey and Monte Durham premiering on April 1. It’s a 90 minutes special, which is a TLC tradition where the network partners with Macy’s to help make prom dreams come true.

TOM: I just saw a tv show recently about you and your daughter, I can’t remember what it was, I think it was CBS Sunday morning. I’m a man who knows nothing about fashion, and I know you, what’s it like being an American icon?

BETSEY: Great, I guess! I don’t really consider myself that, but I can tell you that to become appreciated for what you do you need to work hard and create a following. The word icon just comes over time, the happiness comes from your fans. I love my fans, they keep me going!

TOM: They said your fashion shows are like a three ring circus but there has to be some part you don’t like. What’s your least favorite part of your own fashion shows?

BETSEY: I have no least favorite part. I used to be afraid of critics in the audience but now I feel they love and support me. The whole process of a fashion show is pure fun to me!

TOM: I know you do a lot of the hand-drawn art yourself at the shows and there are DJ’s. Do you choose the music yourself?

BETSEY: Not backstage, I’m too busy running around getting everything ready to make the playlist. Up front, I work with a very skilled musical talent to create the music for the runway. Backstage it is just fun and free to start the party!

TOM: Your signature move is a cartwheel. When was the last time you did a cartwheel?

BETSEY: Not that long ago, but these days I lean more towards the splits which are easy peasy. Cartwheels make me a little afraid because I never know what I’m cartwheeling on and what will happen on that surface.I do love doing them so I will every now and then.

TOM: What was Andy Warhol like?

BETSEY: Quiet. A man of few words. Sweet, gentle and private.

TOM: What’s the secret to your success?

BETSEY: Lots of hard work, but most of all luck! And being nice to everyone you meet.

TOM: Favorite decade? Why?

BETSEY: By far the 60s! And for so many reasons, The Beatles, The Stones, Dylan, the moon, pantyhose and all the geniuses that were around during that time.

TOM: At what point did you realize you were famous?

BETSEY: Today, actually! At the airport I’ve never had so many fans come up to meet me. I’ve never taken so many selfies! I’m always surprised when I remember I’m a little bit famous.

TOM: What song would be the theme of your life. I think I can guess.

BETSEY: “I did it my way.”

TOM: In my mind, it was “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!”

TOM: Please tell me about Say Yes to the Prom, is that similar to the tv show Say Yes to the Dress?

BETSEY: Similar, but so much better since it is so wonderfully charitable! It has been such an honor to work with all the kiddos picking out outfits (especially the ones that are super pink, puffy and sparkly) for their big day. It makes me happy making so many kids happy.

TOM: Thank you Betsey, good luck with the show!

Better call . . . your friends

Wish I was in NY this week. They’re having a two-day pop up of Los Pollos Hermanos, that’s the chicken restaurant from Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul. The whole thing is a promo for the upcoming season of Saul, which starts April 10, the pop-up is at 243 Pearl Street on April 9 and 10 only.

This season, the restaurant owner and drug lord Gus Fring will be popping up on Better Call Saul, a prequil to Breaking Bad.

Not sure what type of food they will have in a the popup. In Austin, TX where the first of three debuted during SXSW, they had breakfast tacos, burritos, burgers and curly fries, no chicken though. The third stop other than Austin and NY is Los Angeles.

A few years ago, the Seinfeld apartment set was set up in New York in a storefront, on 14th Street, right near the Underline. I never got inside because the lines for the couple of days event was an hour or two, or more. I did see the apartment from the glass plate window though. It was the actual set, not a duplicate. Very cool. It was Jerry’s living room and kitchen and you could see the bathroom and hallway in the background as you would have seen it on tv. It was some sort of promo for Hulu I think, that was promoting it’s airing of the show.

Visiting Lincoln Road Antique Market

I visited the Lincoln Road Antique Market the other day. It’s held about twice a month on South Beach (Miami) Florida from October until May. The season is almost over.

Happy Birthday Wonder Woman

H. G. Peter’s original illustration of Wonder Woman (c. 1941).

Lynda Carter 1975

Wendy Williams as her favorite comic character.

Wonder Woman is 75 this year! Lynda Carter will always be Wonder Woman to me, but she was created in 1941 by Dr. William Moulton Marston.

H. G. Peter’s original illustration of Wonder Woman wrote a note to Marston, which said, “I slapped these two out in a hurry. The eagle is tough to handle – when in perspective or in profile, he doesn’t show up clearly – the shoes look like a stenographer’s. I think the idea might be incorporated as a sort of Roman contraption.”

Marston responded: “I think the gal with hand up is very cute. I like her skirt, legs, hair. Bracelets okay + boots. …” and the rest is history.

My Stories on Instagram

instagram-tomversation I told you about VideoCam, my favorite new app. That still is my favorite, but I’ve also been playing around with Facebook live and doing live videos and now I’ve gotten into the Story thingie on Instagram. It’s supposed to be like Snapchat, but I could never get into Snapchat, but I’m really enjoying Instagram’s Story feature where you add short videos which disappear in 24 hours.

I’ve been showing some of my upcoming comics and the work I’ve been doing getting my Tomversation comic ready for publication. You can join me at Instagram.com/Tomversation and if you follow me, you’ll get to see the Story videos when I post them. You have to follow on a cell phone, it doesn’t work on a computer or ipad, that’s the nature of Instagram.

Art on the tip of a pencil

Found this cool video done by Bright Side, which shows Russian artist Salavat Fadai at work. You can see Salavat’s process for other sculptures here.

Amanda the Great

10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes

I’m a big fan of Amanda El-Dweek’s daily comic strip, “Amanda the Great.” It started appearing on the GoComics website in November, that’s when I first noticed it.

TOM: I noticed all the strips are in black and white, in this age of full color webcomics, why black and white? (which I like, just asking).

AMANDA: Two reasons: I like the look of the black and white contrast (I also use an ink wash for gray tones). The other thing is, coloring is kind of piddly work, and I’m unsure I’d ever get done with the strips if I had to color them!

The comics I read growing up were black and white (newspaper comics), and I always thought they were so singularly beautiful that way.

TOM: Are all the stories/adventures true to life? Did they all happen to you or are some fiction and just there for the enjoyment of readers?

AMANDA: The story is my real life, and the timeline starts about a year before my husband and I were married. (I drew the comics this past year, but they are set in late 2012/early 2013 so far.)

Most of the things I draw did actually happen – sometimes I have to paraphrase things, and sometimes I have to kind of re-format how things happened in order for it to make sense in a three-or-four-panel comic strip format. Some of it is verbatim because if it was something funny, I wrote it down in a notebook, which is fortunate because sometimes I am a poor historian.

But – all of the events are real, and the characters are real. (Except the alter-egos, natch.)

TOM: Is “Amanda the Great” created digitally? Or do you draw with pen and ink?

AMANDA: I create Amanda the Great using smooth Bristol paper, a pencil, ink, brushes, and a Kuretake brush pen for the letters. I use an ink wash for the gray scale. Then I dust off the cat hair and scan them in.

TOM: Who were/are your comic/cartoon influences?

AMANDA: My first comic book was a Garfield book, and I also read a lot of Archie comics – I really tried to emulate these two when I first started drawing (I was pretty young). When I was old enough to pay attention to the newspaper, my favorites were Cathy, Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, and Foxtrot. My grandma always had those Peanuts, B.C., and Wizard of Id paperbacks around, which I enjoyed. I think Luann was in a girls’ teen magazine when I was young, which is the first place I had seen it.

All of these different comics kind of shaped how I wanted to do things, and how I wrote comics when I was younger. They still do, to some degree.

I enjoy character development – I always liked how the characters aged in For Better or For Worse. They experienced things as we do – the circle of life, death of charcters (Farley!), et cetera.

I have read here and there that some cartoonists won’t read other comics because maybe they don’t want the impact on their own stuff, but I don’t know – I think we were all inspired early on by someone’s work.

TOM: Which comic strip, other than your own would you like to crawl into and visit for the day?

AMANDA: I’d love to be in a Cul de Sac or Wallace the Brave comic strip – they have such beautiful backgrounds! My comics lack this feature, usually – haha! They are so beautifully drawn and colored. I want big curly hair like Viola’s (Cul de Sac) – mine isn’t big enough.

TOM: How far ahead do you work?

AMANDA: I should be further along, but right now I have strips drawn through March, and possibly into April? I need to hustle more!

TOM: Who is the most famous person you have ever met?

AMANDA: If you mean in real life, I met Ron Campbell at an art gallery in Bismarck, North Dakota – he was an animator for the Yellow Submarine movie. I don’t have much opportunity to see famous folks where I live, so that was cool!

TOM: What song would be the theme of your life?

AMANDA: Oh boy, Tom. I’ve thought a lot about it, and I don’t know that I can come up with one. I think my themes sometimes change.

TOM: Biggest fear?

AMANDA: I think it’s a tie between spiders, and everything else.

TOM: Superpower if you had one?

AMANDA: It’s hard to pick just one, isn’t it? I’d like something akin to the Force, but I’d just be tempted to use it Dark Side-style once in a while, so I probably shouldn’t have it.

Thank you Amanda!

amanda1 amanda2 amanda3

Images courtesy GoComics

The Warriors are coming

You know those Chinese Terracotta army/warrior figures, the life-sized solders that were burried Emperor Qin Shihuang’s tomb in 210 BC? Well they are going to be on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City from April 3 through July 16, 2017 in an exhibit called “Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 BC – AD 220).

The warriors were buried with the emperor in hopes of being his army in the afterlife, they were discoved in 1974 by local farmers who were digging a well.

There will be three sections of ancient Chinese art, 160 pieces, including a 2000-piece jade suite, musical instruments, vessels and so much more. A full program of lectures will go along with the exhibit.

I’m hoping the crowds won’t be too crazy. I’ll be in NY in parts of June and July, so I’m looking forward to seeing the exhibit.

Hanging Momma

I finally got some of the comics up on the wall. I had purchased a bunch of original comic art awhile ago and it’s just been sitting on my dining room table. Since these Momma by Mel comics were already framed. I hung them.

I had to touch up the frames a bit though. I tried shoe polish and that didn’t work, so I ended up using a Faber-Castell PITT artist pen. Fitting, in that it’s similar to what Mel Lazarus used to create Momma.

I have a Blondie, Winnie Winkles, Mutt & Jeff and some others. I need to get them framed.

momma1 momma2 momma3

What’s Comic Con without the cosplay?

Elite Con, a comic convention in Tampa Florida has announced that cosplay is not permitted at their event this weekend. It doesn’t seem to be anything new with them, they said that their market is premium collectors and it’s not a Comic Con like you would see in San Diego or New York. I get it.

But years ago, I left a Comic Con in New Orleans because there wasn’t much cosplay. It wasn’t that cosplay wasn’t permitted, it’s just that people just didn’t dress up, which I found odd for a city like New Orleans.

I enjoy New York Comic Con each year, I’ve never been to the San Diego Comic Con. I love the New York Comic Con because of the cosplay and can’t imagine it without cosplay. I don’t dress up myself, but I love what I see there. It’s all part of the fun. What I love about the New York event too is that it’s October and it’s New York. October in New York and Comic Con, all rolled into one. Perfect.

I look forward to attending again this year. It’s one of my favorite parts of the year. I took these photos a few years ago at New York Comic Con.