Getting Connected

I recently published a few blog posts. One was about a portrait of me taken by a semi-famous photographer and I mentioned a shirt I was wearing with my logo on it. Many people wrote to ask where they could buy one. Also I wrote another blog post mentioning I put lots of new original paintings in my ETSY store. More people wrote to me asking where they could find my ETSY store. I was a bit surprised because all you have to do is go to my blog. Along the right side I have many clickable buttons just like the ones I posted pictures of here. Click on the squirrel that says store and you will be sent to my ETSY store. Click on the Angelina photo and you will be sent to my t-shirt shop. It's easy. There are a million other buttons to click onto also. You can follow me on YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, my Facebook fanpage, Instagram and much much more. So if you haven't done so already, now is the time to get connected to Tommy Kane enterprises.

When Being Gross Is Great

I've written similar blog posts about this subject before, but each time it happens, I jump for joy. Every once in a while, I notice that the people making comments and liking my work happen to be the best artists in the world. At first, when I spot the comments, I scratch my head in disbelief. Then I check to make sure it is who I think it is. When it turns out to be true, I do the happy dance. One recent such visitor, who seems to be a fan, is the one and only Alex Gross. I consider him, one of the greatest living painters in the world today. If you think I'm kidding, just check out his work here. Click on the section that says, Paintings. Why this giant of the art world wastes his time looking and my scribbles is beyond me. But, I'm glad he does. Alex makes me feel like I don't have to sit at the kids dinner table but that I may be invited to hang out with the adults once in a while.

Bourdain Lover

I've always dug Anthony Bourdain. The dude's a great writer, decent cook and lousy dancer. Not that I've ever seen him dance but I imagine it so. His TV shows are hilarious. Traveling to exotic parts of the world, constantly smoking cigarettes, drinking booze, nursing hangovers and generally misbehaving. He's the Hunter Thompson of food. His new show on CNN is less about food and more about travel to out of the ordinary places. The world's greatest chefs topple over one another vying to hang out with him. I've been to many of the places he's gone to around the world. There's been many restaurants and hotels I've tried on his recommendation. All winners. It's like his job is to troubleshoot my vacations. This is my little tribute drawing to him.

The Bad LeBron

I love LeBron James's game. For a big man, he is multi-dimensional. He can play defense, run, rebound, block shots, pass, play-make and of course, score. I hated when he left Cleveland to play with the Heat. Cobbling together a best of team, to win titles. Very Yankee like. One good thing about it, is now I like watching basketball again to root against LeBron. By being the villain, he's made basketball fun to watch. His team is back in the finals and I hope the rickety old San Antonio Spurs can take them in 7. Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.

Post Hurricane

Had my first beach outing of the year. Went to the Jersey shore. The season hadn't really started yet, so the beach was nice and empty. Hurricane Sandy had apparently knocked down every other house on Long Beach Island. Miraculously they were all rebuilt better than before. The governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, recently said that he had no proof that global warming played any part in Hurricane Sandy flooding Manhattan and wrecking the Jersey shore. Even though a storm of this magnitude never hit the city before and combine that with all the tsunami's, tornadoes, hail storms, floods, twisters and other over the top weather events occurring on a weekly basis, he seemed to imply it was just another rain storm. Given that he doesn't think global warming had anything to do with it, then he must believe nothing has to be done with the way humans treat the planet. Deep down, I think he is a normal person and knows well enough that global warming played a big part in what happened. The problem for him is that he is a Republican and may run for president. This means he can't say he believes in global warming and that we should do something about it. If he did, the anti-science believing conservatives would make sure he couldn't get through the primary. His plan for New Jersey moving forward when the next tsunami hits the shore and knocks down every house, is to tell the people to go ahead and rebuild but not to worry because it was just another rain storm. Business as usual. The planet will also go about doing what is seems to do best now too. Expect the Brooklyn Battery tunnel to flood again. Lower Manhattan will be shut down once more. Half the homes on the Jersey shore will be swept out to sea. Maybe that will be the right time when we can ALL agree to do something about global warming.

Next Top Model

Recently I was staying at the Grand Hyatt in Seoul. Before leaving for work in the morning, I'd hang out by the pool and do a few hours of drawing. One particular day, the entire pool area was taken over by a television crew. They were filming an episode of Korea's Next Top Model. A long and very thin floating runway was built into the pool. It was very shaky and you could see that not all of the girls were going to make it down the runway without taking a dip in the pool. This would obviously make for a great show. It was early in the morning and I was the only guest at the pool. There were tons of set builders, stylists and cameramen everywhere. The amazon models were all together giggling, as models should. They seemed not to care at all that they were about to be humiliated on Korean national television. Speaking of humiliation, I ran into Arnold Swarchenegger, who was staying at my hotel while I was there. All I could think about was, is Arnold sleeping with his hotel maid while he's here or was that just something he liked to do at his home?

New Flickr Header

Flickr is the newest website to upgrade the look of their site. Like I've said in the past, this is a big pain in the ass. Now once again I had to redesign a header to fit into this ridiculous format. It took forever to make and remake and retweak and rejigger to get it fit. I hate the internet but I also love it too.

Not So Happy Ending

Growing up, I never owned cats or dogs. Pets just weren't my thing. When I got married, I inherited 2 cats. Their names are Ace and Happy, both girls. Happy's very tiny. Most people who meet her for the first time, think she is a kitten, but she's actually 10 years old. Recently when I was in Korea, Yun told me that Happy stopped eating completely. She took her to the vet and we found out she had cancer. She passed away 3 days later. Gone are our little rituals. Every morning at 5:30AM, Happy would come into our bed and jump on my head to wake me up. That meant feed her. I would drag my ass to the kitchen and put out food. She'd take one look at her meal and walk away and not eat it until later on in the day. I was being mocked or made fun of by her. It's not something I questioned. I just went along with the gag every morning. Once I had this really expensive Noguchi floor lamp. It was in the shape of a large ball. Did I mention it was expensive? Of course I did. For no apparent reason, Happy took a swan dive into it from my dresser. I don’t mean a clumsy kind of cat running around, slipping, jump dive. This was a Greg Louganis, get as much height as possible, full gainer dive. The lamp was obliterated. It was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever witnessed. Happy had this strange habit of staring at me intensely from one foot away. I’d see her coming down the hallway from a distance. Her eyes would be locked on mine, gaping like a lunatic. She’d keep walking slowing towards me, never breaking her glare, until we were face to face, 10 inches apart. She'd sit there and easily go 15 minutes without blinking. In truth it was somewhat unnerving. It was like having someone with supernatural powers stare into your brain and know what your stupid thoughts were. Cat power. Happy was very pretty. A model for sure. Her name said it all.

Blowfish

In Seoul, you see a lot of restaurants that have a huge scale model of a blowfish hanging out in front of the joint. I saw them a lot in Tokyo too. Well on this trip, I finally got to eat the famous poisonous delicacy. The chefs need a special license to handle the fish. People seem to eat tons of it, so how bad could it be. Turns out, it is a very light tasting fish. They served it in a soup, with big chunks of the fish still on the bone. We also had it fried in a batter which was quite good. Anyway I survived the meal without croaking. When I was a kid, my dad would take me fishing. Sometimes we'd catch some blowfish. It was cool to see them puff up when we took them out of the water. We always threw them back because we didn't know how to cook them. Plus we didn't have any license.