VINCENT J. TOMEO: You see him? Can you see him? I can't.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah. I see him. Absolutely. I'm looking right at him. He's bigger than you.
VINCENT J. TOMEO : Uh, and uh, why a hippo? Well, I I was in a funk and I was trying to get out of that funk and I thought of something that's going to make me laugh and I thought of a Walt Disney Fantasia and the dancing hippos in uh, ballerina tutus and uh, and it made me laugh. And so I wrote a poem about a hippo and that evolved into my chatbook, The Usefulness of Hippopotamus. And so I took a negative and made it into a positive.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: Awesome. Awesome.
VINCENT J. TOMEO : A friend gave me this. They said, "We have a gift for you." When my book was published, here's my hippo.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: That's great. Like I said, he's bigger than you.
VINCENT J. TOMEO: Marcus the Hippopotamus. Wonderful. LOGAN CRAWFORD: Wonderful. I can see why he cheered you up. Marcus the marvelous hippopotamus. VINCENT J. TOMEO: Oh, Marcus the marvelous hippopotamus.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: Okay, that's great. VINCENT J. TOMEO: Morris the marvelous.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: Morris. Okay, I'll get it straight eventually. VINCENT J. TOMEO: Okay. Okay. Okay. Wonderful. Wonderful.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: I can see why he cheered you up. Now, if that hippo came to life and could invite you out to get some tea, talk to us a little bit about what that would be like.
VINCENT J. TOMEO: Well, we will probably have scones since I like scones very much uh with uh cream and um tea. So, uh Earl Grey tea. And we would discuss uh what it's like being a hippo and how Yuma has helped hippos manage their uh uh their existence in the jungle.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, that's tea time. I'd like to be invited to. So if Morris the Marvelous Hippopotamus ever invites you to tea, let me know. I'll be there without a doubt.
LOGAN CRAWFORD: Awesome. Awesome.
VINCENT J. TOMEO : Well, this book uses humor as a form of medicine and I try to make people laugh throughout the whole book. um unlike my cemetery friends is more reflective you know it's uh it's a celebration of life in a garden which happens to be a cemetery but it's not uh doom and gloom and it's not uh dwelling on death but rather on life and uh the past the present and the future and walking through a cemetery has helped me during hard times and I walk there every day three and a miles through St. Mary Cemetery. I started doing that about 35 years ago and I've been doing it ever since I live in such a heavily populated urban area. So, I get in my car, drive to the cemetery, park the car and do the walk. And uh it helped me a great deal uh fighting depression which I'm really never depressed but uh just you know I feel good uh keep active exercise very important and yes.
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