October is special in New York. The leaves are turning, the weather is cooler, everyone is out.
I was out and about the city today and every park was full with people. There were musicians, artists, skateboarders, greenmarketers and so much more.
Lots of tourists are in town, they usually are in October. I even caught Clark Kent and Lois Lane on the subway as you can see above.
I have lots of plans this week – NY Comic Con, pumpkin and apple picking upstate, family day with 17 of us at an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, and lots more. I’ll take you along.
I have this thing from Geico car insurance that monitors my driving. It’s an app on my phone called DriveEasy. In the past I had something similar from Progressive. But when I used the monitor with Progressive, it was something I plugged into the car under the dashboard and it monitored me for a few weeks, then I mailed in the gadget to Progressive.
The monitor determines your insurance rate based on how you drive.
But now all the insurance companies have the phone app, which is permanent! It doesn’t always work correctly, the Today Show recently did a story on this. A guy was on a rollercoaster and it monitored him as driving and raised his insurance!
I never pick up my phone when I’m driving, yet every once in awhile I get a pop-up telling me I was texting and it was ruining my good record. Other times I’m on the subway and it rates me, thinking I am driving my car.
I’ve thought of just turning it off and letting the chips fall where they may. My rates might go up, but is is worth it to not be monitored with every move I make, or don’t make?
I’ve thought of it, but then I thought what’s the big deal, just go with it. If the rates go down, I win. If they go up, it’s what I had planned by shutting the app off. But so far so good.
Have you been using this app with your insurance company? I guess it’s the same as being tracked by Google and Facebook and others who are watching the websites you visit and things you buy. In this case you are being watched by how well you drive or don’t drive.
I recently published a list of ways to help hurricane victims in North Carolina and other areas in my 10 With Tom column and just yesterday, I published a list of 10 top imports that would be affected if the port strike wasn’t settled.
Interestingly enough, toilet paper and water are not on the list. As you know, people ran out to Costco and places like that and started hoarding toilet paper and bottled water.
It’s a stupid and selfish thing to do and mainly stupid because toilet paper doesn’t come in through the ports, it’s manufactured in the U.S. and gets places via railroad. And the water is basically all locally bottled unless you want in import like Fiji or Perrier, and I don’t even know if those are really imported.
But I’m reminded of what a mayor of ours once said after a hurricane when people waited in line for hours at a truck for bottles of water. “People, just go home and turn on your taps.” That always made me laugh.
My 10 With Tom column has changed.
I’m having a hard time getting people to respond to my interview requests for my 10 With Tom column, which is strange because for so many years it was such an easy thing to do.
I would contact a person, they would say, sure, they would love to do it, I would email them the 10 questions and they would respond right away. Now it’s not like that. So to that end, I changed my 10 With Tom column to 10 random things – a list of 10 random things. But I’ll add the interviews of the 10 questions periodically if and when they come in.
I would just abandon the thing, but I have too many subscribers to give it up. So I’m doing the list thing now and people seem to like it. Like Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.”
I have upcoming lists like: The Top 10 Halloween Costumes The Top Fall Fairs at Farmers Markets Why Kathy Bates’ New “Matlock” is a must see tv show The Top 10 Brain Foods The Top 10 Ski Resorts in the U.S. this winter
And things like that.
They’re fun and informative and eclectic. My 10 With Tom is here if you want to check it out and hopefully subscribe.
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Hilary Price is known for her cartoon “Rhymes With Orange,” which is published daily in newspapers all over the country as well as online in various locations. Just recently, Hilary won Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year at this year’s 78th annual Reuben Awards, presented by the National Cartoonist Society – it’s like the Oscars for cartoonists. The winner is chosen by fellow cartoonists by secret ballot.
It’s a very high honor won in the past by famous cartoonists like Gary Larson, Richard Thompson, Al Capp, Chic Young, Charles Schulz, Chester Gould and so many more.
She is featured in 10 With Tom this week. I ask her where the title, “Rhymes With Orange,” came from and what her work space looks like, and why she likes to work with a partner, among other things. You can read it all here.
A sample of Hilary’s cartoon, “Rhymes With Orange”
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I don’t know how you read this blog, whether it’s online or via email subscription, but if you see it online, you may notice a different look.
Me in my new tee
I was changing some things around and screwed up and ended with what you see. Basically the same thing, but a little cleaner, I guess.
It’s the same with the 10 With Tom site. That was unintentionally cleaned up a bit too. What happened was, I was trying to clean up one blog and the I had the other one online instead, so in the end, they both got the “clean-up” treatment while I was experimenting.
No big deal, it’s the content that counts.
I have some new 10 With tom and Tomversation shirts. I wore one around town yesterday, trying to drum up readers. I actually wore the darker one, which I like better. You can see them here.
I’m looking forward to wearing them on the subway in NYC in a couple of weeks. And probably at NY Comic Con, too, but it’s such a cacophony of people there and so many cosplayers, that I don’t think I’ll be noticed. I’m looking forward to that yearly event.
Speaking of 10 With Tom, I’m working on new interviews. My recent one was last week with Elizabeth and Jonathan who produce the War and Peas comic strip, I’m sure you’ve seen that comic. You can see the 10 With Tom interview here: 10withtom.substack.com/p/meet-elizabeth-and-jonathan-of-war .
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I was mentioning us going apple and pumpkin picking in October. It reminded me of this guy that contacted me one day about writing gags for my comics. He was a gag writer. There’s a thing for cartoons and comics.
A few of us were headed upstate New York and this guy emails me just before we were to leave. He lived up where we were going – near Hudson, NY. He introduced himself and offered his services. He wanted to send me gags to buy for my Tomversation comic.
I emailed him back and thanked him for reaching out to me, but I explained that I don’t need that service because I write what I know and I express myself through the cartoons and I don’t think buying gags would be the same. Also, I strongly believe that 90% of a cartoon or comic strip is the writing. You’ve seen stick figure cartoons that have millions of followers – well, the people are there because of the writing, not the stick figures.
I told him I would keep him in mind, just in case and I mentioned the coincidence of us headed up his way that day. He invited us to stop by his house; of course we didn’t. But every time I think of us going upstate to pumpkin pick, I think of that incident.
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The quote, “And all at once, summer collapsed into fall,” is by Oscar Wilde.
Fall/Autumn is my favorite season. Again.
I say again, because I think most of my life Fall was my favorite, but for some years recently, summer ended up being my favorite. I don’t know how it became summer, but I’m glad it’s back to fall.
I live in Florida, and yes, we can feel the fall here, too. I was standing outside over the weekend and I could feel the fall. The light is different, there is a breeze in the air. It just feels different. There is less light and cooler temps.
This final quarter of the year is the best, as far as I am concerned. My favorite holidays have changed over the years, too. Of course Christmas has to be the best. And then I loved Halloween. Now my favorite is Thanksgiving. I don’t mind New Year’s Eve either. One of my friends always had New Year’s Eve as his favorite holiday, and I can see that now. I guess it’s the anticipation of a whole new year.
On Thanksgiving, I go to the Macy’s Parade, I stay about an hour, and then one of my cousins picks me up at the subway station in Queens and we go to her house and have brunch. Just three of us and Sara, their dog.
I get to the house before the parade is over, so we watch that and then the dog show which comes on tv afterwards. At 2 pm, we go to my other cousins not far away, and about 20 or more of us have Thanksgiving. We overeat, argue, laugh, just have a nice family time.
We sometimes do the Southampton Christmas Parade the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and it ends up being a perfect four day weekend. In between all that, I am in NYC and enjoying the buildup to Christmas, with all the holiday things the city has to offer.
Of course, October leads into this and upcoming in a few weeks in New York Comic Con and a few of us go upstate New York to apple and pumpkin pick. That’s a perfect things, too. I’m hoping the next few weeks go slow leading up to it all because I don’t want it to all happen and be over with. I want the whole season to last.
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I got my first paying subscriber on my Tomversation Substack account and I’m all excited. It’s $5.00 per month. The sad part is that it’s me. I signed up for my own subscription.
I was setting up the payment system and wanted to try it out to be sure it was working right. I don’t plan on charging for any of the stories until I build up a large subscriber base. I’m Substacking along.
Someone had asked me how I made money on my local news publication when I was editor and publisher. It would have been great to have Substack back then, I had thousands of subscribers, but there was no cost for reading. I made money through ads. The first year or so I didn’t take any ads, but people kept asking, so I eventually started running ads and I made quite a good living at it.
I turned down big developers though, even though there was a lot of money in their ads, but I couldn’t be a sellout. I wrote against over-development and greed all the time, there was no way I could make money off of the developments.
I did take ads from smaller building projects if they were in the same footprint as the buildings they were replacing. One time a very large condo building placed ads, we had discussed it for months, and I don’t know what I thought it was, but when the ad came in, it was for this humongous project, right at the entrance of Key Biscayne, it is still under development now and everyone who sees it can’t get over the size.
They were prepared to pay me a lot for a pretty large ad which would have run monthly. It would have been running over three years by this time. There’s a lot of money in development. That’s the problem.
I dream of moving up to the Hudson Valley one day, where nothing is really over-developed and those small little towns along the river look the same as they have for years. I’ll be up there in about a month doing the usual pumpkin and apple picking. So I’ll check out one of the small towns again to see if I feel a connection and feel at home there.
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For 15 years, I edited and published the local news in the village where I live. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. I was the only source of news and information around here. People depended on it and read it daily. But after many years, I gave it up. I had to, I just burned out.
To this day, almost daily, people ask me when I’m coming back. It is sorely missed. It really was the voice of the village and everything that was happening was published. My stories were republished in the Miami Herald and the Huffington Post. I was interviewed by others about local issues.
I won awards over the years and I was given a great honor at the end of my run – the City of Miami made February 14 “Tom Falco Day.” All this is not to blow my own horn, it’s just to set up the next part of the story.
Well, a new publication started up a few years ago, I helped them start it by giving advice and explaining the ins and outs of publishing the news. I was all for it, as we needed a local news source. The publication has changed hands and I noticed they have a section called “Village People.” It’s where they talk about locals and what they are up to, etc. At the end of the article, they ask for submissions and provide an email address.
Well, since I started my new 10 With Tom blog (an extension of this blog) at Substack, I thought it would be a good opportunity to pick up some of my old subscribers. Also, people keep asking me what I am up to, so I figured it would be an interesting read.
I sent in a press release, not long, but informative and guess what? I was turned down. By someone I know! A guy who I know well is the new co-editor of the publication. And to add insult to injury, he asked if I would like to write for them – after turning my press release down! The irony of it all.
I told him, “I am writing for you. I just sent you a story. Publish it.”
He refused. He said it’s not what they are looking for. He said this, “We do not print submitted articles. The [last Village People profile] article is different from what you’ve proposed in that we (the editors) came up with the idea and we assigned (and paid) a writer to do it. We are always looking for talented writers to add to our stable but only for producing assigned content.” And in another email, he asked if I would be interested in writing for them.
Crickets.
Assigned content? Talk about a total idiot without a clue. If he was a news person, an editor, he would grasp at all news/articles that came in. That’s how news organizations work. They accept news tips, press releases and stories – newspapers, magazines, tv stations, especially online publications – that’s how it is done.
He might not publish them as-is, but he would get a story out of it some way. He would re-write it, he would call the person and do a fresh story, he would make something out of it. He would realize that unsolicited news coming into the office is where most news comes from. You take the news that is given to you and make it something. One one hand this moron is asking me to write for them, and on the other he says they don’t print submitted articles that I have written for them.
We live in a small village. Everything is a story. Joe Schmo painted a new portrait, that’s a story. Wilma opened a new bagel store, that’s a story. Ed bought a vintage house – that’s a story.
I published everything – I wanted everyone to be heard in the village. I published articles on subjects this guy was interested in. He would contact me and discuss issues and ask me to cover the event or the subject. And I did. Now I asked him and was told, “no.”
The one thing I would not post was lost animal notices. That would have turned into a 24/7 non-stop thing if I did that. One guy on the Village Council called me a prick once because I would not post his girlfriend’s lost cat. Ironically, I personally had to hand this guy an award a week later for winning “best car” in a classic car contest. Yes, I also covered the contest and his winning the award as news, pictures and all.
I got the idea for this cartoon from a guy talking on tv. He was the CEO or some bigshot with a restaurant chain like Applebee’s or TGI Fridays, one of those type places. They were talking about the $5.00 burger and chicken meals that all of a sudden popped up all over the place at the fast food places. Where were they all this time? Out of the blue these businesses are able to manage a decent price for food.
Anyway, this guy said, “We’re a sit down restaurant, we’re not one of these burger in a bag places.” And that stuck in my head, it made me laugh. That might be a term used in the restaurant world, but I thought it would be funny to have a fast food place named, “Burger in a a Bag.”
Some years back, not too long ago, there was a place in Hell’s Kitchen in NYC called Burgers and Cupcakes. It’s closed now, but I stopped in once as I was walking by, just to see what it was all about. It was all about burgers and cupcakes. It sort sort of fits in with the Burger in a bag theme, don’t you think?
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