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No a/c in the hot summer

So here is a funny and weird story – I didn’t have air conditioning for almost two weeks. Yup, summer in Miami – no a/c. Oddly enough, the way my condo building is situated, it doesn’t get so hot on my side of the building, so I managed without the sun beating down on me. But two weeks – no a/c!

The unit was working perfectly, I only had to have the a/c guys out to clean the coils, because there was a leak, but as for cold air, it was blowing ice cold as usual. Well, the guys came and cleaned the coils and it all went down hill from there. From that moment on, I had no cool air coming out.

They ended up coming over four times, three of those time to try and fix the problem after they cleaned the coils, each time leaving and feeling it was all perfect. In the end – after their fourth visit – the problem was solved. The thermostat was turned off! There’s a button that puts it on “hold” and that stops sending contact to the main unit on the roof, so only room temperature air would flow, when you “unhold” the thermostat – cold air returns!

It’s like having your tv or computer not work and someone says, “Well plug it in!”

I had a feeling something was wrong with the thermostat, but try and tell an expert that you solved the problem and you get an earful on how you don’t know what you are talking about, “leave it to the experts!”

There’s a cartoon in this story somewhere, I’m thinking it over.

Social interactions

I’m trying to think what life was like before social media or before reader interaction. Even when I started blogging in 2005, there were comments. Good or bad, you always knew what the reader thought.

As much as I say I don’t like comments or interactions on social media, I think I do. Basically because it’s nice to see people responding to my comics. It’s not that I need likes and shares, but it’s nice knowing that people are seeing the work and enjoying it (or not) enough to leave a simple thumb’s up.

I have a friend who is against social media, and it sort of reminds me of him saying something like, “Is life about how many likes you get?” No, no it’s not, but when you write a book or paint a picture or produce a movie, you do want people to like and respond to your work.

Which makes me think of what life was like for cartoonists before social media, and maybe even today for those who are published daily in the newspapers. They create the comic and it’s published and then what? Crickets? There is an audience, but no instant response like you would have with a live audience. But I guess that’s how tv and movies have been for years, you put it out there and don’t instantly get the audiences response. Do they like it? Are they watching?

With social media, it’s instant and the reader is part of the process, right there – live.

One place where I don’t interact is on Instagram – not the comments section, I do interact there, but I’m talking about the private messages. The main reason is because most of it, 9 out of 10, are spam. But I did make a mistake last week of responding to a reader and it ended up being a bad thing – he was one of those stalker types who wanted to argue, so I regretted reading his messages and then responding to them. I won’t do that again.

But other than that, it’s nice to get a response of some sort, even a simple thumb’s up. Sort of like getting applause on a stage or something, knowing the audience is out there.

Life below zero

Yesterday’s “Ice Hole” cartoon got a big reaction and lots of shares on social media. I try to be cerebral but I guess the simpler and crazy ones are what the masses like.

This comic came to me while watching one of my favorite shows, Life Below Zero. I wasn’t really paying attention, I think I was dozing off, and I heard Chip Hailstone, one of the people on the show, say to his kids, who were going ice fishing, “Hey, there’s an ice hole!” And it made me look up and laugh and just totally struck me as being hilarious. And voilà – there was a comic idea.

I played around with it a bit. At first there was a bear hibernating behind a bush and he heard the guys say “ice hole,” and he looked up with one eye open. It was titled, “Trouble Brewing,” but I couldn’t get the image setting right, so I made it another ice fisher.

Oh yea, one more thing. People think those are women. They are men. But as I see them as women, I think it’s even funnier – sort of like Lucy and Ethel go ice fishing.

Slap dash and energetic

I read a recent review of a cartoonist who worked around the turn of the century – last century, and it said the cartoonist had a “slap-dash, energetic style,” which today’s reviewer liked. It made me take notice because one of the cartoon syndicate heads said that I draw too fast.

Would he have liked my work better if I drew slower?

I was fascinated that he said that because he never saw me draw, but he’s right, I do draw fast. It’s just the way I work. I watch movies and documentaries on cartoonists, as I mentioned in a previous post, and I see how slow they work. They are so meticulous with every line and I wonder how they ever get anything done at that rate. But they are syndicated and I’m not. So maybe there is something to the speed at which one works.

But look at the photo above, that’s me working at home – see that John Lennon painting? That’s a large 4′ x 6′ piece of art I bought at a charity auction years ago. It’s by an artist named Michael Israel. He does those “art attack” things, where he paints the image upside down in about 20 minutes, he turns it around and there you have an incredible piece of art! He works fast and comes out with masterpieces, so there may be something to slap dash and energetic.

Hand Drawn Life

I watched a documentary over the weekend called, “Hand Drawn Life,” it’s available on Vimeo and right here of course, and if you have a smart tv, you can watch it on large screen using their app. It’s listed as, “HDL_FINAL_FULL_Texted_1205” on Vimeo.

Hand Drawn Life just won a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award for best Independent Programming for its airing on KCET-PBS. It’s about the history of cartooning and interviews a number of cartoonists who talk about the craft, their work and the work of many others.

The past few years I’ve watched quite a few cartooning interviews and documentaries. Two great documentaries are, “Dear Mr. Watterson,” which is about Bill Watterson and Calvin and Hobbes. You can watch it on Amazon Prime and “Stripped,” which I got through a kickstarter a few years back, but I see you can purchase it here for just $4.99. Stripped interviews 70 cartoonists about the craft. They are both very enjoyable.

I also found a list of cartoonist interviews on Google here. I’ve watched some of these over the years, too.

What if it happened today?

This I Love Lucy comic was published today. It’s one of my favorites. I changed it a lot throughout yesterday, adding something, removing something, changing an arm, etc. It’s a classic episode that I think everyone knows.

I like taking something from the past, like a tv show, and putting it in the present to see how things would change. I did it with the Columbo comic in May and people liked it.

I have other ideas in mind for future comics and if you have any, feel free to email me with an idea of your own.

It’s all about the coffee

The last two comics published yesterday and today are coffee related. I guess I have coffee on my mind. Maybe it’s because I gave up drinking coffee a couple of months ago. I’ve been drinking green tea instead of my usual two or more cups of coffee a day!

The rough. Yes, this is a comic idea from a few years back.
That’s Jacomo diving into the coffee and Tombo asking, “How does he do that?”

The above comic was originally planned for Jacomo and Tombo, remember them? The mole and the rabbit comic I used to have called “Paws?” Jacomo was swimming in the coffee and Tombo was reacting. In theory anyway, I had this old scribble on my desk and I drew it as the comic above rather than having Jacomo doing the swimming.

This other one which is running today was also a scribble I had on my desk. I actually have hundreds of scribbles on scraps of paper. People ask me where I get my ideas from, I don’t really know, but I do scribble them down when they cross my mind. Sometimes they marinate for years until I use them.

Cultures

I was watching something on tv last night. A South African guy is married to an American woman. She wants to live in America and he wants to live in South Africa. Right now they are living in America. But he misses his friends and family and way of life in South Africa. They went back for a visit and he is homesick.

His wife brought up a very interesting point which I don’t think I ever thought of. She said that her South African husband’s sister had never met an American before, her sister-in-law (his wife) is the first one ever.

The American wife feels that in America, we have all cultures, we meet all types of people And I found that very interesting. Imagine never having met a South African person before or an Australian or French or Italian person ever in your life. I guess we take that for granted in the United States.

So many times I think it would be nice to live in Italy, but perhaps unless you are in the tourist areas, you may never see other cultures. It’s something to think about.

Menacing in the shadows

I don’t like to judge people when I first see them, but it’s human nature.

I go to this place in town for lunch often, maybe two or three times a week. You can’t eat inside, but you can eat out in the closed off street or you can take-out at the window. I’ve mostly go alone for take-out, but I’ve eaten there with friends sitting at tables, too.

From the first day I started going during the pandemic, months ago, I’ve seen these two guys there – every single time. No matter when I go, at lunchtime, there they are. Sort of near the take-out window, in the shadows, drinking beer. They usually have dark masks on or they are holding them and for some reason, they look at me and I look at them and no one says anything. I find them menacing.

I live in a small village, and everyone knows everyone else, but these two guys are strangers to me. But there they are, every single day at lunchtime, menacing in the corner, drinking beer.

Well, the other day as I parked my car nearby and got out, one of the guys was walking toward me on the sidewalk. I didn’t realize who it was until he said, “Hello.” When I looked up I realized he was one of the menacing ones.

But there he was, he was a harmless, skinny, gray haired guy in his 60s and didn’t look very menacing. I stopped him and said, “Tell me, what are you guys about? I see you every time I’m at the restaurant.”

He tells me he is a college professor and his friend is a computer IT guy or something like that. They are working from home these days (zooming as he called it) and they take a daily break to meet up for lunch/beer. He told me his name, so next time I go by, I’ll call out, “Hi so-and-so,” and I’m sure his friend will get a kick out it.

But it’s interesting how we judge people and how they are different in different locations and situations. They never said anything to me before, but I never said anything to them. We were just there. Seen but not heard.