The company I keep; or hope to keep

interviewI’ve  been interviewing a lot of cartoonists lately for my 10 With Tom series. I’ve interviewed many people over the years from “real housewives” to authors, news reporters, fashionistas and actors.  But I think I enjoy the cartoonists the most since that’s what I do and I learn from the interviews. I ask questions that I’m curious about, mostly their influences and their techniques.

An interesting thing about most people and especially the cartoonists is how humble they are. They are all very appreciative of me asking for the interview and they seem to enjoy doing it. I like that about them, they are a great group, I like associating myself with them. I’ve interviewed “the greats” and those starting out, and they all are the same – nice, appreciative and kind.

There are some interviews I’ve tried to get but I either get the runaround or no answer at all. I like to think the email went to the spam folder on those, rather than the fact that they just plain ignored me.

But my point is that I am always amazed at the humbleness and gratefulness of these people I admire, who I am interviewing because I admire. Some become friends or friendly and we run into each other at places like Comic Cons and such and I like that. I like being part of that company.

I do all of the interviews for the Huffington Post but I’ve posted many of them after they run in the HuffPost, right here in my blog. You can see them here.

I had to laugh at one major cartoonist who said he didn’t like the HuffPost and didn’t want to have his interview there. When I asked if I could post it in my Tomversation blog, right here, he agreed. So I got that interview with him. That was gracious of him to to ahead with the interview anyway for the few thousand that read Tomversation rather than the millions who read the HuffPost. Just another example of why I like cartoonists.

No complaints

Saw this in The New Yorker. Hilarious. By Kim Warp.

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The Sun – it shines for all

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I saw this photo on Very Old Images of NY page on Facebook. It’s a great page with so many great historical photos.

It is 1896 on Park Row.  This milk wagon arrived to offer “Pure Ice Cold Orange County Milk, Fresh churned buttermilk” and malted milk offered for a nickel.

I love the photo because you can see the New York Sun and the New York Journal in the background. Not the newspapers – the actual buildings.

I’m always passing the Sun building in NYC, which is behind City Hall, away from newspapers row on Park Row and I had always thought it was the original Sun building, but I looked it up and the Sun moved to the 280 Broadway building behind City Hall in 1917. It was fist built for the A. T. Stewart Department store in 1846.

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The “new” building on Broadway is large and just went through an extensive renovation. In each corner, there is a big clock sticking out that says, “The Sun. It Shines For All.” Still there – 100 years later.

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Here are the two buildings in 1914. In the old days, they used to post the news and sports scores right outside the buildings. No digital banners. It was chalk and or ink on paper posted to boards out front. Here the crowd is looking at baseball scores.

Drawing All in the Family

all-in-the-familyI was talking about drawing Fred Flintstone and wondering if my mother ever saved any of my old drawings. I have to ask her.

Well, one of the things I always regret was giving away a full color comic strip of All in the Family that I created. It must have been an art class project, because I remember doing it in class. It was a Sunday strip, you know, full size. It was All in the Family, which was the number one show on tv at the time and I drew some sort of story line – three or four rows of comics, full color. Colored in with watercolor I remember. It was all the characters -Archie Bunker, Edith, Gloria, Mike; and the house as the background scenery in each panel – really a nice piece of art.

And I gave it away!

A classmate liked it and I gave it to him. Just like that!

I wonder if there is a way to put a call out for it now. You know – “Wanted, the old 1970s All in the Family comic strip I drew in art class.” Maybe I can do a lost and found thing on Craigslist or something.

I had this original TV Guide, too. I collected them all when I was a kid, I would just throw them in a box after we used them for the week. I had hundreds from the early 1970s until the 1990s. But they were all destroyed in 1992 in Hurricane Andrew. 😦

Fred Flintstone

I think the first character I ever drew was Fred Flintstone. Why? Who knows? You would think as a child I would be more into Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry, but I was always a Hanna-Barbera fan and for some reason, I would draw Fred all the time. I wish I had some of those original drawings, maybe my mother has them stashed away somewhere, you know how mothers save all that stuff.

I loved the tv show The Flintstones and also so many of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons – Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Magilla Gorilla, Peter Potomus, Touche Turtle and so on. I vaguely remember them being on tv early evenings, something like 7:30 pm and each night was another show – Mondays was Huckleberry, Tuesday was Quickdraw McGraw and so on.

One of my earliest memories was maybe when I was two or three years old, I remember my mother chasing me around our Brooklyn apartment, trying to get me into the bathtub and I remember Huckleberry Hound coming on tv. The theme song was playing as I was running around, trying to get away from taking a bath!

But even with that early memory, it was all about Fred Flintstone. And did I become a Hanna-Barbera fan because of my mother? I mean, I’m assuming she put those shows on tv for me, so she chose them rather than other things like Bugs Bunny. I remember our house was full of Hanna-Barbera toys – I remember life sized cut outs (at least for a three or four year old they were life sized), I remember a Dino mechanical toy. I remember that at my grandmothers’s house. I can literally see that in my mind, walking on her kitchen floor. I looked it up on Ebay and found this. This is it. It’s going for over $800! I saw one cheaper, about $44, but it isn’t in mint condition like this one.

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Where do you go to my lovely

I saw two great movies yesterday – Mama Mia, which I saw so many times on tv and I think two or three times in the theater when it came out in 2008. And the Absolutely Fabulous movie. I had never seen that before. I enjoyed that.

At the very end of AbFab, during the credits, they play this song that I loved, I looked it up. It’s called, “Where Do You Go To My Lovely,” it’s by Peter Sarstedt.


The lyrics are so great. It was released in 1969 and hit number one in the UK, where it stayed for four weeks. It only hit number 61 in the US, which is surprising.

It’s about a girl named Marie Claire who grew up in poverty in Naples, Italy and then became the height of jet set society, speaking many languages, jetting around the world, being the “it” girl. People thought it was about Sofia Loren because she grew up in poverty in Italy and became a famous jet setter, but Sarstedt claimed he had no one in mind when he wrote the song. Year’s later he claimed it was about his wife.

Mama Mia always makes me feel sort of how the Sarstedt song does – melancholy. Not because of the story, but because of the music. The Abba songs being back so many wonderful memories, starting, I think when I was in junior high school. When I hear the song “Waterloo,” I can picture myself in my mother’s car, with the song playing on the radio, like it was yesterday. That song was released in 1974, so it was 1974 I am remembering.

Other songs from later years remind me of being out in the clubs, when I was young and it was my first experience going out, so the memories are special for that reason. So as I listen to the songs in Mama Mia, I can almost remember where I was during certain periods of my younger life, it’s like going back in time. It’s exactly in my head like one of the Abba songs in the movie, Slipping through my fingers, which says, “Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture, And save it from the funny tricks of time.” When I hear the music in the movie, I can almost see a photograph in my mind of that time period. Weird.

He’s blue and he’s awkward, and oh yes, he’s a Yeti!

10 With Tom
10 questions in 10 minutes

I’m a big fan of Nick Seluk and his daily comic strip, “The Awkward Yeti.” The comic is often a clever commentary on the struggle between our hearts and our brains – it always hits home and many times provokes a belly laugh. The Yeti has a running dialogue many of his body’s organs. You can read The Awkward Yeti at GoComics.com here.

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Nick Seluk and friends.

TOM: Heart and Brain seem to have their own spin-off from “The Awkward Yeti” how did that come about?

NICK: Brain first joined Lars (the Yeti) to help me get deeper into the anxiety-driven inner dialogue of an introvert, but it wasn’t long before Heart joined as a counterbalance. Heart and Brain found a dynamic that worked well for me and for my audience, and before too long Lars was on the sidelines (although he stars in his own self-titled series online at Webtoons and still makes cameos). I found that through Heart and Brain I could express myself better, and in a way that many people could relate.

TOM: What did you do before you became a full time cartoonist?

NICK: Before going full time as a cartoonist I was a sort of graphic designer / art director type for several years. I worked in corporate America with tons of huge brands, a job I ended up hating enough to want to start my own business instead. I needed to do things my own way, but more than anything needed to escape the constant meaningless small talk.

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Lars, the Awkward Yeti, courtesy GoComics.com


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

NICK: There are over six billion people who have never even seen my work, so fame is pretty relative. But, having a line of people waiting, actually WAITING for me write my name on a book is very humbling. I guess you could say I was humbled first at San Diego comic con a couple years ago, when I was signing books with my publisher and they had to close off the line. But other than that, it’s not like people recognize me on the street or anything.

TOM: What bores you?

In defense of printed newspapers

It’s $2.00 for a slice of pizza and 50 cents for the Tribune. This is something someone says in a documentary on the death of the Tampa Tribune. I read about this in The Tampa Bay Times, which bought and killed the Tampa Tribune. It’s quite sad what is happening to daily newspapers.

Tampa Bay used to have the Tampa Tribune and Tampa Times. Across the bay was the St. Petersburg Times and one other I am not remembering now. The St. Petersburg Times became the Tampa Bay Times in 2012, they won the right in a lawsuit. This is sort of a dubious thing as it sort of was the writing on the wall for the end of the Tampa Tribune and reminiscent of the Tampa Times. But again, daily newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs and that’s sad.

Ironically, The Tampa Bay Times is featuring the documentary about their own killing off of the Tampa Tribune in a story in their own publication along with a movie trailer
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I still read the daily newspaper – holding in my hands the old fashioned way. I read the Miami Herald daily and sometimes the Sun-Sentinel which is the Ft. Lauderdale newspaper.

When I was a kid, I could read seven dailies in two counties – The Miami Herald, The Miami News, The Ft. Lauderdale News, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the South Dade News-Leader and the Hollywood Sun-Tattler. Loved the name of that one – the Sun-Tattler. That building is now a Holiday Inn, I believe. I also want to mention the Key West Citizen, which is still published daily. Love them.

My parents subscribed to the Herald and the South Dade-News Leader and I would occasionally buy the others. In New York, I used to read the four dailies – the Times, Daily News, Post and Newsday. I sometimes still do. When I was a kid, I delivered the now defunct Long Island Press.

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It’s shocking how small the Miami Herald is these days in size. In height and width, but also in content. When we were kids and we took road trips around the country, small towns in Tennessee and Georgia had tiny newspapers – at least they had newspapers. Now the Miami Herald is very small. But it still is delivered seven days a week and I read it, holding it in my hands, like the old days.

I do read many publications online that I normally would not if there wasn’t an online way to do it. I don’t read the whole newspaper, but I follow so many news organizations online that I read stories here in there from various newspapers around the country. So that is a great thing. But there is something about holding the actual newspaper in your hands, smelling the paper and ink, having it on your doorstep each morning. There’s something special in that.

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Newsies

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I changed the nameplate at top. They are newsboys from the early 20th century – newsies. You may have seen the play or movie “Newsies,” which is about the newsboy strike of 1899.

In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, newsboys sold newspapers on the streets of New York. They worked grueling hours and didn’t make much, many were homeless.

In 1899, Joseph Pulitzer who owned the New York World and William Randolph Hearst, who owned the New York Evening Journal, raised the amount of money they newsboys paid for the newspapers.

In 1898, due to the Spanish-American War, newspapers sold a lot of issues, this was the only means of news and people bought them up, wanting to know the daily status of the war. Newspapers raised the price from 50 cents to 60 cents per bundle of 100 newspapers. After the war, all newspapers dropped the prices back down, except for the World and Evening Journal.

I looked up the newspaper front pages from back then, you can see them here. They were one cent. So the 60 cents per bundle of 100, really didn’t leave much of a profit. You can read about the strike and get details here. The main outcome is still used to this day – the newspapers will buy back unsold copies of the papers. So if the papers don’t sell, the news seller is not responsible for them.

Things that make you go hmmm

iphoneThere is a new app called Text to Ticket which pays you to snitch on people who are texting while driving.

So far it only works in California. The tattle tale gets $5 for reporting the offending driver.

Question: How much do you get for video taping the person who is video taping and tattle taling while driving?

Now here is an interesting new app called Wag. It’s dog walking on demand, sort of like Uber for dogs. It’s only in a few major cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and LA.

A 30 minute walk is $20, a longer walk is $30 and you can add another dog to the walk for $5.