This pumpkin cartoon was published today. I drew it last week and was holding it to run the day after Halloween, but I had so many other cartoons running related to Halloween, that I ended up running it today. I was going to hold it back until next year, but that didn’t make sense.
You can see my Halloween related cartoons here at TomFalco.com.
Mine originally did say, “rough night?” like John’s, but I changed it to “rough week” when I knew I would be running it a couple of days after Halloween.
I did almost pull mine after seeing John’s work, but why? This has happened so many times over the years – I guess there are only so many cartoon ideas, but these look so similar. It doesn’t bother me now, but for years it did.
For many years I was insisting people were stealing my work, until I saw things like this, where I published the same thing after another cartoonist did.
I’ll chalk it up to great minds thinking alike. I did question it, and wonder if it was funny or not, but I guess we both can’t be wrong. Looks like John’s guy had a rougher night than mine, though.
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I get this thing called “informed delivery” from the post office. Every morning, around 9 am, I get an email with photos of my mail that is being delivered that day.
I got it because I travel often, and sometimes I get important business stuff in the mail, so this way if I see anything that needs to be attended to, I can ask my neighbor, who takes my mail in for me when I’m away, if she can open it and let me know what it says.
Truth be told, that has never happened. It’s been about 10 years that I have this service and I don’t think I’ve ever had to have something opened because it was important and couldn’t wait until I get home.
I try not to look at it daily because my mail comes late – sometimes 6 pm and if I see something that I question or concerns me, I worry about it all day. Like yesterday – this happened yesterday.
I saw a notice/letter from the IRS. All day I worried about it. Do I owe them money? Are they going to audit me? What is it?
Finally, about 6 pm, I went to the mailbox, got the mail and know what it was? A pin code that I requested a week before. Apparently to get into your IRS account online, you need a pin code, which they send via snail mail.
This happened not long ago. I saw an IRS notice and freaked out and when I ended up opening it, it was a letter telling me they were adding interest to a refund they owed me. Since they were late sending out the refund, they added interest.
I’m thinking of getting rid of “informed delivery” or at least not looking at it when it arrives in my email.
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As I was leaving from getting the MRI the other day, I ran into my UPS delivery guy. I live next door to the hospital, so we share UPS, Amazon, FedEx and the US mail carrier. I’ve seen them all over at the hospital one time or other.
I walk over to the hospital often, because I’m walking around the neighborhood and I walk on their campus/grounds and I walk over to get lunch sometimes, there are a couple of restaurants there. So I get take-out.
I was telling the UPS guy about my MRI and my hernia. He wanted to know what I was lifting that gave me a hernia when I told him about it. Who knows. Something at the gym I suspect.
I’ve know the UPS guy for years, we have each other’s phone numbers, he knows my brothers. A couple of Friday’s ago, I was waiting for my new iphone to be delivered, it got to be about 6 pm and I called him and asked, “Where is my iphone?” He laughed and said he was on his way. They deliver all day to the hospital and other businesses in the village and then get to us late in the day.
In the past as I was walking around the downtown area in the village, he would see me and give me my packages right there on the spot, earlier in the day, so I wouldn’t have to wait till 6 pm and sometimes 7 pm for delivery.
When I was in NY recently, he called me from Miami, to ask me to call a neighbor because he had a delivery that need to be signed for and the neighbor wasn’t answering his door. So I called my neighbor back in Miami from NY and he got his delivery from UPS.
I was talking about the oncologist in the last post. Well, back then I was sitting in the waiting room and in walked the UPS guy and after him the FedEx guy and they both saw me sitting there and almost started crying. They asked if I was ok, how I was doing. They literally had tears in their eyes. I told them I was fine.
Recently I saw my mail carrier there when I walked over for lunch. I said, “You deliver here, too?” She said, “It’s part of my route!” I said, “No wonder we get our mail so late in the day!” And she laughed. I didn’t, I don’t like getting mail at 5 pm.
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I saw this “Speed Bump” comic, by Dave Coverly, the other day and it reminded me of a doctor I had.
About 10 years ago, maybe more, I had this thing removed and the doctor thought it could be melanoma – it wasn’t, but he had me go to the oncologist. And the oncologist had me get a CT scan often. She kept me going and said, “Keep going until the insurance runs out.” And that explained our U.S. medical system in a nutshell. “Keep putting yourself under that harmful radiation, until we don’t get paid anymore.”
I bring this up because yesterday I had to go to get an MRI. I have a hernia and the doc sent me to get an MRI to be sure that’s what it is before they operate or do whatever it is they do.
I worried about it all weekend because it’s so claustrophobic and sort of willed it to be where I go feet in first. I kept thing, “maybe I can go in feet first.” And know what? That’s what happened – I went in feet first! So my head was sticking out and I was totally fine with it. And good thing too, because it literally took a half hour or more in the machine! The tech said she wanted to do a “slice” or something like that, so it took long. I can’t image being confined in that tube head first for a half hour.
Anyway, I had another other doctor one time that wanted me to give myself shots for an allergy, which is gone now, because I don’t think it was an allergy at all. Anyway, he insisted and insisted, I kept telling him I didn’t need the shots. When I told him the deductible was very high, after he was trying to force me to take the shots for so long a time, he stopped on a dime and said, “Forget it, you don’t need this.” It’s all about money.
Back to the oncologist. She was fabulous and what I mean by that was she was loud and big and out there, sort of like Maude, she in fact, looked like Maude, and she was all in white, as doctor’s are, but she wore red high heels. And she would float through the complex with a big smile on her face and waved and seemed to know everyone. She was a star. I haven’t seen her for years, but I remember she liked my comics and would always ask about them and how it was going, etc.
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People ask me how I come up with ideas, so I grabbed a few recently published cartoons and will show you my twisted mind works.
This one was easy. I got a new iphone and they did away with the thumb imprint for signing on, so now it’s either punch in the pin number or use face recognition. After you set up the face recognition, they ask if you would like to do it again this time wearing a mask!
At first I thought of doing a cartoon with someone wearing a Halloween mask, but then thought of other things, like what if someone was in an accident or had a facelift or some sort of procedure where the phone would not recognize them anymore. And I remembered a previous cartoon that was published, this cartoon, where Dracula takes a selfie, only his image doesn’t come up, and from there I got to this cartoon above.
This one started with pumpkin picking. Every year my cousins and I go to the Hudson Valley in New York State to pumpkin pick. And I think it’s more about the Hudson Valley, than the pumpkins. It’s a gorgeous area with spectacular mountain and river views along with the changing leaves in the fall. Only this year, we went to the north fork of Long Island instead, because we needed to be closer to the south fork, where we were going to an event after the pumpkin picking.
I got to thinking – will my pictures be as nice in the north fork as they are up in the mountains and the valley? How will it all look on Instagram? And from there, I got to the cartoon above, and changed the Hudson Valley, to Tuscany, to make it more of an extreme travel plan.
As for this one – I live in Miami – I hear the words “Gulf Stream” almost daily, and this is what I thought of when I heard it one last time.
I’m in museums a lot and I always notice that the guards are ignored by everyone. And even when I say hello they sort of keep to themselves. One time I was in a museum in NYC that was being renovated, and there were only two big rooms open. I was in there with one other person, who happened to be John Lithgow, the actor.
I didn’t speak with Mr. Lithgow, but he spoke to the security guard who was on hand in one room. I didn’t hear what they were saying, but I found it interesting that he reached out and engaged with the guard. Other than that, I often think the guards could be on the phone, eating and even sleeping as no one seems to notice them, or maybe if they did lie down on a bench, like the cartoon suggests, then people would notice them.
Recently I posted something about the Baltimore Museum of Art having an exhibit totally curated by it’s museum guards, which sounds like an excellent idea. So in that case, they were noticed by people.
This trunk one came simply from the fact that luggage was being lost all summer by the airlines.
And of course this museum window one, which I have written about a few times before – I thought it was funny to think of the guard being so blasé about the art after seeing it day after day, that it was more interesting for him to look out the window to see what was going on.
And yes – there are windows next to the art in many museums. Here’s proof taken last month at MOMA in NYC.
And there you have some of the workings of my mind – how I juggle ideas in my head to come up with Tomversation cartoons.
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It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown won’t air on regular tv this year.
I know, I know, we can watch it on DVD’s and other methods, but there’s something about knowing when it’s on broadcast tv and we are all watching together.
This year, you can only see it on AppleTV+, and it is free for a couple of days, so you can download the app on your tv or wherever and watch it from Friday, October 28 to through Monday, October 31.
And it’s the same for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Those can be seen on AppleTV+ from Nov. 23-27 for the Thanksgiving special and Dec. 22-25 for the Christmas one.
I miss those old Dolly Madison and Coca Cola days when the shows were on CBS every year. Guess it’s time to move with the times.
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Five cents, Ten cents for a newspaper? Of course, years ago, that’s what it was. And not that long ago either. I remember when I was a kid, when I was a paper boy the newspaper was five cents for a daily paper. I delivered the Long Island Press for a few years.
It was five cents a day for the dailies and 30 cents for the Sunday paper – 60 cents for the 7 day week!
This paper from 1969 shows the price of 5 cents, so I guess that was the price for everyone, not just subscribers.
I used to have to “collect,” which is going around and getting paid from customers weekly. I had a little green book, which I think is still at my parents’ house somewhere, and I used to go around the block collecting.
At one point the Sunday paper went up to 35 cents, the dailies were still five cents – so it was 65 cents for the week! Today newspapers are $3.00 for the daily and I’ve seen up to $8.00 for the Sunday paper! They are much less if you subscribe and have it delivered.
Anyway, I went around collecting one time, and one customer yelled at me because the paper went up from 60 cents to 65 cents for the week. He was upset over the nickel. He said no one told him about the rise in price. I just shrugged, but I’m sure the Press put the info on their front page as they usually do, publishing in a box or something to inform readers of the change.
Now you can’t even get a candy bar for 65 cents.
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We did our usual October pumpkin and apple pickin’ this year, only we didn’t go up to the Hudson Valley, as we usually do, we ended up on Long Island’s North Fork because we were going to a couple of things afterwards on the South Fork – in the Hamptons. Lots of little villages filled the day.
It was gorgeous out, a bit chilly, but gorgeous, we got hot apple cider and pumpkin break and apple cider donuts and pumpkins and apples and such, but it wasn’t the beautiful Hudson Valley, which is the best part of the pumpkin pickin’ each year.
But still, we had fun and then ate in Westhampton and enjoyed a street festival then went to a bar where one of my cousins was performing, he’s a singer. It ended up being a long, but enjoyable day.
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Yup, New York Comic Con is back. Last year’s event was a bit subdued due to covid and the year before was totally canceled, but now it’s back.
From Oct. 6-9, all your favorite, movies, tv shows, pop culture, comics and super heroes will be at the Jacob Javits Center, just as they’ve always been.
After four days of rain in NYC, the sun came out for New York’s favorite fantasy fest.
Most tickets are gone, but you may still be able to find a few at newyorkcomiccon.com.
Tell Spider-man, we sent you!
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Was at MoMA again in NYC yesterday, seems like my home away from home. I saw people looking out the window again and it reminded me of this cartoon, which I’ve shown before.
It’s been shown around the internet and people always comment on it as if they are experts. People insist that museums don’t have windows next to the art, so the cartoon makes no sense. But of course I got the idea for the cartoon because in most of the NYC museums, there ARE windows next to the art – new buildings, old buildings, it just is.
Here are some shots from yesterday.
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