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Techie overcharges

Yesterday I spent hours on the phone with American Express, Door Dash, Venmo and GoDaddy.com. All issues which I guess were modern and technology related.

I paid an electrician last week through Venmo, his choice, and he still had not received the money. I called American Express since they were the ones I used to back up the payment, and they said it was approved and went through. As I was on the AmEx website I saw a $9.99 charge for Door Dash, which I had not used for months.

AmEx told me to contact both Venmo and Door Dash. I did.

Venmo, which is almost impossible to navigate, said the reason the payment was held up was because the electrician did not verify his phone number. I contacted him and to make a long story short, he was incapable of doing this one simple task, so I sent him a check.

Door Dash was charging me $9.99 a month for some sort of service I never signed up for. They easily refunded my AmEx card for the four months that they charged me for and I canceled my Door Dash account, for screwing me over, when I know I never signed up for whatever service it was.

As for GoDaddy, they added some sort of thing to my email accounts called the Quarantine List, which seems to quarantine everything and I have to go in and one by one approve or block emails. It was even blocking my own emails which I sent to myself. I send out my cartoons via one email address for example and it sends me a copy to the same email address. So it was blocking itself!

And I was being charged for this Quarantine service, like the Door Dash service, which I never signed up for. It looks like this is the new thing, sign people up for things they don’t know they are paying for and hope they don’t catch it.

Anyway, I think I solved all the problems. I was able to undo the money I sent through Venmo and I got a full refund from Door Dash. I didn’t hear back from GoDaddy yet, but I did manage to turn off the Quarantine thing.

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Clamming

As you click back and forth here, you’ll see two versions of today’s clamming cartoon.

I heard someone say, “The clams are clamming,” and thought it was funny, so I used that, but then I guess my subconscious, in the middle of the night, liked the other version.

This happens often. I don’t lose sleep thinking of the gags all night, it just sort of pops into my head at some period and there I am, up at 3 am, changing it.

What I like about this is I am picturing these two guys on the beach in New England this summer. Two locals. One is walking the beach, sees the other guy clamming and asks him about it. The one guy in the flower shirt could also be a tourist asking about the clamming. I only say that because of the flowery shirt, it sort of looks like a tourist thing.

I can almost hear the seagulls in the background.

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Animals and inanimate objects

I borrowed this recent cartoon from another one of my cartoons – it’s taken from Ollie and Jacomo. It’s popular, because people seem to like talking animals or inanimate objects. I’m not sure why.

I do cartoon on ancient Egypt and social events and cavemen and a play on words (but not puns) and the cartoons that get the most likes, shares and play are animals and inanimate objects.

Here’s the Ollie And Jacomo version. Interestingly enough, I haven’t published Ollie and Jacomo for quite awhile, yet it keeps picking up followers and fans around the internet. What do actors say about working with animals and children? Well, animals and inanimate objects seem to steal the spotlight, too.

I wanted to test the theory and that’s why I redid the cartoon for my Tomversation comic panel. And I was right, people love this cartoon. If I made the tree talk I’m sure it would be even more popular!

This recently “voted off the island” was very popular, too. Toast, salt, pepper, fruit, all in living form, what’s not to like?

I like to live by the quote: “Don’t publish for likes, publish what I like and the audience will follow.” But every once in awhile I’ll throw these animals and inanimate things because I need to grow my audience.

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Heel, Jim; Heel, Pam!

I wasn’t sure what tv show to use for this cartoon, but I ended up doing “The Office,” in hopes that people are familiar with it. I don’t see how you can’t be since it’s on almost 24 hours a day on some tv channels.

I thought of doing Seinfeld or I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island or some other well-known show, but The Office seemed to work.

I’ve been watching The Office constantly on Comedy Central and while I watched it on it’s initial run every Thursday night, I never realized what a jerk and creep Andy is. I always liked him, but as I watch the reruns now, I don’t see any redeeming qualities in him. I guess he was always been a jerk, on purpose. Dwight is a jerk, but he doesn’t know he’s a jerk; that’s the difference.

My sister-in-law has a few dogs, their names are Lucy, Ethel, Desi and I think Carolyn Appleby, not sure if there is a Fred, but I remember on one Lucy episode, they had a puppy named Fred on the show.

My parents used to have a next door neighbor whose dog’s name was Richard. I never saw the lady, but when I would visit, I would often here her calling Richard – “Richard! Richard!” I asked my mother if the lady was calling her husband, and my mother, with a straight face, said, “No, she’s calling her dog.” And the fact that I never saw the lady made it even funnier.

This was some years back. My parents also had good friends who lived across the street – the Earps, descendants of Wyatt Earp, but that’s another story.

We had dogs named Daisy, Hans, Ginger, etc. The usual names i guess.

This is one of my favorite pictures It was taken a few summers ago. That’s Molly and Me (that’s a movie, isn’t it?) on our way to the Hamptons in the back seat of the car. Molly was my aunt and uncle’s pet, they were in the front seat. I don’t remember if one of them took this picture or if I took it as selfie. Molly is no longer with us and neither is my aunt.

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His jam

Swipe back and forth and you’ll see the two different text choices.

I changed the text on this cartoon just before it was published. At first it said, “You uninvited your brother to the BBQ?” and then I changed it to, “Your brother uninvited us to the BBQ?” I thought the brother uninviting them worked better. What do you think?

It makes the guy I drew here the protagonist . . . but maybe not, since he was uninvited.

My family isn’t dysfunctional, but my small condo building is – in a funny, nice way. I always compare it to Mrs. Madrigal’s boarding house at 28 Barbary Lane in Tales of the City. When I mention that to people, they start laughing, because they can see that about our building and the comparison is right on.

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This takes the cake

This Dinette Set cartoon really hit home with me when I saw it the other day. This actually happened with my friends some years back.

I was going to a BBQ with my friends Audrey and Bill. As we were getting ready to leave, Audrey went to the fridge to take a chocolate cake out, which we were bringing and there was a slice missing. Bill had eaten it!

Audrey was very upset and started yelling at Bill, who saw nothing wrong with that. Bill was very laid back, he blew up my Compugraphic typesetting machine once while trying to fix it, but that’s another story.

Anyway, we headed to the BBQ with that cake. I guess I was young and nothing bothered me back then so I just went along with the partially eaten cake. But if it was today, I would have insisted we stop and get another cake somewhere. I think I drove us to the party, so it would have been easy to just pull into a supermarket or bakery and get another cake.

By the way, the very talented Judy Larson, the Dinette Set cartoonist, passed away a couple of years ago. I read that recently in The Daily Cartoonist. I’ve always enjoyed her cartoon.

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Reaching out on my birthday

This week was my birthday. And as usual, I got tons of texts, Facebook messages and a few phone calls, which is all great. People I hadn’t heard from all year, including past neighbors, reach out, who I enjoyed hearing from.

Our condo building text blew up. Our building prez doesn’t like frivolous texts, he feels the text string is for important things, like if the elevator is stuck or something. But they are texts, they aren’t important messages for posterity so who cares if someone sends a frivolous text, aside from the non-stop beeping when all the texts come in.

I don’t think many people save texts, they get rid of them eventually to make room on their phones, but to tell you the truth, I think I have ever text I ever received over the years. I’m a packrat when it comes to that.

But in those birthday texts, on my birthday itself, were requests from charities, car dealerships, restaurants, and other pests. Is this a new thing – on your birthday, all these requests for money and sales come out of the woodwork? I like the Starbucks free drink reminder, I did forget to use it, but at my local Starbucks they know me, so when I show up a week or so later and say I never received my free Starbucks drink, they just give it to me.

But the other texts I don’t remember happening in the past before. I guess when I give to a charity or something, they take my birthday down, so they can hit me up for more money on MY DAY! I blocked those numbers.

I gave a donation recently to a political organization and they kept texting and emailing me, but not on my birthday strangely enough. I guess it’s because I blocked the emails and texts after receiving the requests for more money so many times after my first donation. They didn’t even wait, they started asking for more right away.

Anyway, I just thought it was curious that all those requests for money and notices of sales, etc were coming in via text, which I found intrusive, especially on MY DAY!

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It’s all about the farro

It’s interesting when you have one idea in mind when you create a cartoon and then people see other ideas and meanings to the cartoon.

This one in particular came easy to me. I am eating more farro these days. Farro is an ancient grain, eaten by the Egyptians, Romans and others and it came back into fashion in the past few years.

It seems that you can’t just say, “Farro,” you have to say, “Farro, the ancient grain.” And that’s where the cartoon idea came from.

So what if it’s an ancient grain? Was it a magic grain that was mighty and powerful? Did it extend life expectancies? I don’t think so. The mom is feeding the baby Farro, so he could live to a ripe old age, which was 30-years-old back then. I was thinking that when I hear, “It’s an ancient grain!”

Some read the cartoon as meaning the boy was King Tut and he wouldn’t live past 19-years-old anyway. He was just a random boy, but if they want to think that is Tut. That’s fine.

Others felt that if that was King Tut, he was King, so Farro was good for him. But he was only king from ages 9 to 19, so Farro didn’t keep him alive. It’s thought he died from either malaria and/or a bone disease. Both things not prevented from all that farro he may have eaten.

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Media softball in the park

Cartoonist Jason Chatfield mentioned that there’s a summer softball league in NYC where The New Yorker magazine crew plays various other media outlets in Central Park. They play Rolling Stone magazine and the Financial Times, NY Review of Books, Slate, and NY Public Radio to name a few throughout the summer.

Cartoonist Roz Chast designed The New Yorker “uniform,” it’s a two sided t-shirt. I would love one of those but they are all sold out.

***The New Yorker “unform” designed by Roz Chast.***

I’m in NY for part of the summer, so I’d like to stop by to watch a game or two. I’d love to meet some of cartoonists and magazine people involved.

Along with The New Yorker league, there is another league called The New York Media Softball League (NYMSL) which consists of other NY-based media organizations. There are teams from Forbes, BuzzFeed, the Wall Street Journals, Axios, the Associated Press, etc. This is the 17th season for that league.

I remember some years back I watched a few games with different soap opera actors playing each other in Central Park. Different shows played each other.

The NYMSL plays at various parks including Central Park, East River Park, McCarren Park in Brooklyn, Riverside Park and a few others.

The schedule for this summer’s NYMSL games is here and Jason has The New Yorker games listed here.

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