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Today is Tom Falco Day!

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So this happened – February 14 is now Tom Falco Day in the City of Miami. I received a proclamation that says so. It may be just today, but I am claiming it in perpetuity so every February 14 is Tom Falco Day! That’s me at left with one of our City Commissioners Ken Russell.

For 15 years I published the news and was an activist in our little village and I decided to end the publication this month. So many of my friends and townspeople came out, such memories. It was bittersweet. It was so nice to see so many faces.

I am still living here, I’ll be around town, I just won’t be publishing the news every day, which is a big responsibility off my shoulders. I feel like it’s the last day of school. Forever!

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The Porsche show

Went to a Porsche show in the City of South Miami today. A friend called and asked me to meet him there. As you know from my last post, I’m not really into cars, but it was a beautiful day and nice to walk around and hang out.

I didn’t stay long because when I texted my friend that I had arrived he texted back that he was at a local restaurant/bar with a couple of friends he ran into. I didn’t know them by their names (he mentioned the names in the text), so I wasn’t up to meeting new people. As I get older, the introverted side of me comes out more. It’s either that or I’m just not into making small talk. It’s not that I’m shy, I think I just don’t want to be bothered.

So I took a few pictures and came home.

It was quite an obstacle course getting out and getting home, the Miami Marathon was still going on from earlier in the morning and traffic was re-routed all different directions. You want to go north and they send you south.

The good people of the world are washing my car

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I have a bad habit – I don’t wash my car. Not sure why, but it’s filthy for months on end. The car wash I used to go to closed, and the guy that used to come to my home stopped coming. But still, my dirty car has always been a thing.

Recently I came downstairs and the car was washed! It was sparkling! My car isn’t new, but when it’s washed it looks like the day I bought it. I’m thinking the maintenance man for our condo building did it because before Christmas he walked me over to my car one day and asked me why it was so filthy. He wrote his name on the dirty trunk hood.

It reminds me of about 17 years ago when I first moved into the building. One of my neighbors, I can’t think of his name now, he moved out about 16 years ago, used to wash my car for me. Only I didn’t know it!

He parked right next to me. The day I moved in he was washing his car, he seemed to love to wash his car, I guess it was a form of relaxation for him.

One day, maybe a year later, he asked me, “How do you like your car? Did you notice how clean it is?” And I said, “Yes, looks good.” And he says, “Well, I washed it!”

“You did?” I asked, and I remember his exact words, “Yes. It was so filthy I couldn’t take it anymore!”

I was a bit dumbfounded and thanked him. He then told me that he had been washing it for the past year every time he washed his car which was once a week at least. He asked, “Didn’t you notice?” I said, “Yes, but I thought the rain did it!” You know, when it rained and I drove in the rain, I thought that cleaned the car!

I don’t think he cared for that response and I don’t think he washed my car again after that. So last week when I saw the car washed it reminded me of that time. I haven’t seen our maintenance man, but I want to thank him and tip him if it was him and perhaps have him do it on a regular basis.

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Shameless

So this is sort of freaky. I started watching Shameless, the tv show in the 10th season. I did the same thing with Ray Donovan in the 6th season. I’m all caught up with Ray now, I ended up watching all of it from season 1 after my cousin read me the riot act. He couldn’t understand how I was happy watching the show in its 6th season without knowing what happened in the five seasons preceding that.

With Shameless, I watched all of season 10 without watching the previous nine seasons and when season 10 ended, I started watching from the start on Showtime on demand. And that’s the freaky part. The kids are the same kids but only 10 years younger. I barely recognize them!

Liam, who is about 11 or 12 now is a baby in season 1. All the other kids are 10 years younger, it’s like a time warp. One kid who is 20 now, Carl, is 10 then, Ian who is 21 now is 11. It’s so freaky!

I got right into it from the first episode, but I also got right into it from the first episode of season 10. Anyway, I’m now watching it all and hoping to watch all 9 seasons, and maybe season 10 again, before season 11, the final season, comes on this summer.

I keep binge watching it, I can’t stop. I love it. It’s up there with Breaking Bad. By the way, I never watched Breaking Bad when it was on for its regular run, after it ended I caught a marathon and fell in love with that. I started watching from the first episode ironically, it just popped on the tv one time, season 1, episode 1 and I watched it from there.

shameless1 — Three of the cast – then and now.

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Boteros everywhere

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I spent last Sunday on Lincoln Road on South Beach where they have a great Fernando Botero exhibit up an down the road. It was interspersed among the monthly antique market.

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There are a lot of Boteros where I live, a couple of restaurants in my neighborhood have big Botero works outside and there is a big park called Fairchild Tropical Gardens where there are Boteros as time all throughout the acreage there. I’ve also seen Chihuly’s there, as well, spread around the park.

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An earthquake? In Miami?

earthquake I was sitting here typing away on my desktop computer, when it started swaying. I thought I was imagining it at first. I didn’t look up to see if the blinds or other things were moving, I just noticed the monitor moving back and forth. It was shaking, sort of like when you shake your leg as a nervous habit – I thought I was doing that and making the desk shake.

I was at home in my home office in Miami.

At first I thought it was my neighbor upstairs on his treadmill or something. Then I thought it might be the construction crew down the block. When they first started building a new condo a couple of years ago, each time they drilled in the pylons, it shook the buildings in the neighborhood, we are on landfill. Lamps swayed, things shook, so I thought it was that again.

But I realized they were almost done with the job so it probably was not them. Then I thought, “An earthquake? Could it be an earthquake? Nah.”

I ran to the back balcony and looked out into the water, thinking someone was working out in the bay, again, maybe installing pylons. Nothing there, and then it popped up all over my Facebook feed that it was the residual effect from the earthquake between Jamaica and Cuba.

Kobe

When famous people pass, you get a feeling. A different feeling with each one. Most remind you of your own past, maybe of your own youth and you mourn them like the rest of the world. But there are others that you feel are family members and they hit you hard and I don’t know why. It’s so random.

I remember in the past when Elizabeth Montgomery passed, it hit me hard, and also Audrey Meadows. I didn’t feel the same as when Jackie Gleason passed, not that I didn’t mourn him, but Audrey Meadows felt like a family member and I don’t know why.

Lucille Ball felt like family and so did Anthony Bourdain. His death hit me like a brother. Weird. Tom Petty hit me pretty hard, too, and Prince. And so many random people.

I wasn’t a basketball fan, but for some reason Kobe Bryant’s death hit me very hard, too, like a family member.

My own bother passed away almost a year to the day six years ago (January 29). And I’ve had strange feelings about so many friends who have passed recently. I was driving home late on Friday night and for some reason, all my friends who are on the other side popped into my head. I started thinking about my best days in the 1980s – my favorite decade. And then the music started to play on the radio from that time, music that reminded me of my friends who were gone. Strange, but comforting.

It’s festival season

Art season has started in Miami. For the next few months there are lots of festivals and art shows. I attended two this weekend. Two old ones, they have both been around for years.

art1 — A scene on Ocean Drive, South Beach.

Today I was in South Beach for the Art Deco Festival and yesterday we went to the Beaux Arts Festival in Coral Gables. That festival is close to home, it’s on the University of Miami campus. I’ve been going to both festivals since I’m a kid. Yes, they’ve been around that long. It’s also Regatta season for the next six months, but I don’t really deal with that. I live on the water, but I’m not much of a boater.

art2 — Vintage cars lined Ocean Drive for Art Deco.

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I know a lot of the artists from over the years and from the neighborhood. They tend to go from festival to festival and so do I, so I guess I’ll see a lot of them this coming winter.

My favorite thing is to eat my way through the festivals. I love festival food and other great food and drinks. One of the festivals in February has an English tea room and for all three days of that festival I have tea and scones with friends. Whoever is around, I drag over with me and everyone enjoys that – English tea with scones with jelly and clotted cream! I go for three days because the festival is right in my neighborhood and it’s easy to just stay put for the weekend rather than deal with the traffic in and out of town. I’ll post pictures of that next month.

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Can a comic strip have seasons?

I’m working on my comic strip Hal and High Water, and hopefully will start publishing daily, but I have an idea that I’ve been considering. And that’s taking breaks, sort of having seasons, with breaks in between.

I know, I didn’t even start yet and I’m talking about taking a break! But listen, seriously. What I mean is, cartoonists work 365 days a year, they never stop, they never get vacations and if they do they have to build up that time by working extra hard to get a backlog of comics so that they can take time off. But what if the comic ran for a month or two or three and then there was a break, sort of like a tv show. The comic runs, ends with a cliffhanger, takes a month off, and then comes back for a new “season.”

A webcomic can do that very easily not so much a newspaper comic. But why not?

What if a newspaper comic ran for three months, then took time off and in that time another comic ran? What if three or four comics took up one space in the newspaper – sort of like the old days with tv, when a show would take the summer off and there would be a summer replacement. Years ago, that was the norm on tv and these last few years it’s been like that where there are not many reruns, other shows take up the time slot and there are usually three tv seasons now in a year.

So a newspaper comic would run a few months, maybe three months or six months, then take a break and in that three or six months another comic would run, then perhaps another comic or the original comic would come back, but they would run on some sort of schedule.

I’m thinking of doing that with Hal and High Water as a webcomic – running it for a period of time and then taking a short period of time off. Hopefully the readers will be there upon its return, but a good cliffhanger may be needed for that – sort of like a “Who shot JR?” cliffhanger.

I had written once about switching up my own comics over the year – run a panel cartoon for a few months, then a comic strip, then something else, but that would defeat the purpose of having time off. It would allow me to publish my different ideas and features over time, but it would not give me time off.

So I’m toying with the idea of taking breaks during the year – yes, even before I started publishing.

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Living in the Roaring ’20s

Some of us were talking and we have a feeling that a lot of the 1920s will come back in the 2020s. I’m talking about maybe fashions and sayings and things like that. Maybe even reprisal of silent films as a goof. It may all start as a goof.

I have so many of those newsboy/newsies caps, but I never wear them. Possibly some guys may start wearing them as a goof and they’ll catch on and become the fashion. Maybe sayings will come back like, “horse feathers,” and “Don’t take any wooden nickels,” and “four-flusher.” You can see a full list here.

Other fashion statements of the 1920s were beaded dresses, argyle socks, Cloche hats, art deco and flapper styles. Maybe guys will slick back their hair and wear straw hats.

Podcasts are sort of like old time radio, aren’t they? And maybe sepia toned photos could be a common thing on Instagram. And what about cars, people might drive more restored cars around as a common thing – Model T’s, Model A’s, The Hobnocker, Bugatti, etc.

Pez was invented in the 1920s and so was Pineapple upside down cake and Kool-Aid and sliced bread! Water skiing was invented and the dial telephone, and the jukebox and sunglasses! And of course newspapers were at an all time high in circulation, every city had their fair share. And it was the Gatsby and the Charleston dance era. Who knows, even if just one or two things came back for a bit, it would be interesting.

I never liked when the years changed or the decades passed. I don’t know why, I guess I didn’t like the passage of time. But for some reason, I’m all into the 2020s. I’m looking forward to them.