S.T. Lewis

Bunnies Love Bears

2011-10-04T13:40:00.008-06:00

I know it's only October, but I finished this already, so I might as well post it. Happy Easter, everybody!

Motivationally Couraged

2011-09-15T22:40:00.003-06:00

The only thing a motivational poster has ever motivated me to do is "stop reading motivational posters." It is my hope that these two posters will inspire you to do the same. I doubt you'll learn much about "courage" from these things. The one thing I do expect you to learn is that there are scary things on the right side of yellow grass fields, so if you find yourself in such a place, then for goodness sake... run left!

Chumming for Humans

2011-08-04T22:25:00.005-06:00

In August of 2008, our bathroom scale accused me of weighing in at a hefty 255 pounds. As of this morning of 2011, I was down to 175 pounds, meaning I've lost 80 pounds in just three years. Fairly impressive, I guess, especially when you consider that I did it the old-fashioned, unpleasant way: eating sensibly and exercising.

While watching a series of Discovery Channel documentaries recently as part of the annual celebration of my favorite religious holiday, Shark Week, I realized there's a much easier way to lose a lot of weight in a fraction of the time with only minimal effort... shark attack! I could kick myself! How did I not see this before?! Think of all the exercise I could have avoided and the cookie dough I might have enjoyed if I had only considered the permanent kind of weight-loss you can only get from being the victim of a shark attack.

What does a leg weigh? Twenty? Thirty pounds? Why, you could lose that in just a few minutes of surfing in murky water while the sun sets. Under this new weight-loss program I'm developing, you could eat whatever you want to and still lose weight! In fact, the more bacon cheeseburgers and double fudge brownies you consume, the more likely you are to be mistaken for an elephant seal, and therefore, the more likely you are to be selected as a candidate for sudden, oceanic weight loss. (That's what I'm calling it, as "shark attack" turns a lot of people away before they've even given it a chance).

As long as you're still agile enough to wiggle your way down the beach and roll your giant body into the surf, I think "sudden, oceanic weight loss" may be for you! After all, it's less painful than diet and exercise.

Although it's been said many times, many ways... "Happy Shark Week to you!"

Pigs are Pigs

2011-07-14T09:35:00.001-06:00

Pigs are omnivorous, which means they'll eat anything... fruits, vegetables, hamburgers, soup, grass, VHS tapes, goats... anything you can think of. A pig would eat an airplane if he had the time for it. A pig would eat 62 hot dogs in ten minutes if it would get him on TV. A pig would even eat you if I needed to eliminate incriminating evidence after hitting you with my car (but I'm a better driver than that, so relax). Because pigs will eat anything they can get their snouts on, they have even occasionally been known to eat each other... which is gross. Then again, if any animal can be excused for exhibiting cannibalistic tendencies, it's a pig. Certainly they too must know what the inclusion of bacon does to a cheeseburger. So whatever it is pigs are eating, whether it be moldy bread, gum wrappers, Cajun shrimp, or each other, I hope they keep it up, because those things they're eating are the recipe for bacon. If "other pigs" is a necessary ingredient, then by all means, cannibalize away, you disgusting pigs! These arteries aren't going to clog themselves!

Cars 2: The Video Game

2011-06-30T15:15:00.001-06:00

Here are some storyboards I did for the Cars 2 video game. They're out of order and out of context, so don't expect to get much from them. Don't expect to see the movies they helped create in all of their fully-animated grandeur either. Unfortunately, every scene I boarded for the game got cut. Take that, me! The game's a lot of fun, though, so go buy it. And if you don't play video games in your home, please send the money you would have spent on the game directly to me. I'll know what to do with it.

Flying Giraffe

2011-05-20T09:30:00.002-06:00

As I sat down to draw this, I thought, "A flying giraffe... there's something new." It wasn't until after I'd drawn it, colored it, and given the sketch away to one of my Facebook fans that I started wondering just how original the concept of a flying giraffe was. I Googled it and found 1,260,000 other flying giraffes... so, not quite as original as I had hoped. At that point, I couldn't help but wonder how many non-flying giraffe images Google would find, so I did a second search for the simpler, more conventional "giraffe." That one yielded 2,430,000 images. So it turns out that only about one-in-three of the internet's giraffe population is capable of flight... which I'm pretty sure is the actual percentage you would find if you just went outside and looked around.

Hooray for Moms!

2011-05-07T22:20:00.008-06:00

I've been a dad for a few years now, and I've learned a lot of things about raising kids, the most profound of which is that, on my best day, I'm passably decent at it. I guess I do all right compared to some delinquent fathers, but I'm not even close to being the best parent in our house. This is probably true in most homes, because let's face it, moms are better than dads at about everything. Like when my daughter was coming around the corner and bumped her hand on the wall... my wife immediately gave her a hug and asked her if she was all right. What?! Where does she get this stuff? All I could think of to do in that situation was say, "I'm just glad you're still alive enough to cry about it." I've found that dads aren't generally very compassionate... at least not in our house.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there... especially my favorite moms, which includes my wife, my mom, my mother-in-law, my sisters, my sisters-in-law, my step mom, my grandmas, my grandma-in-law, my aunts, my cousins, my cousins' wives, all the moms who read my blog or are my Facebook fans, all the moms who are currently reading this or having it read to them because they like pictures but can't read, and any of you who aren't moms but someday will be or would be if you could be. Hooray for you! You're making our lives seem bearable on days when we know they really aren't. Thanks for all you do... and Happy Mother's Day!

Easter Dinner

2011-04-23T20:05:00.009-06:00

I've never tasted rabbit before, but thanks to years of cartoon-watching, and based on the opinions of Wile E. Coyote, Brer Fox, and whoever ended up eating Roger Rabbit, I have plenty of reason to believe that, of all the animals that talk, walk around on their hind legs, and occasionally wear clothes, rabbits are probably the most delicious.

If you find this picture upsetting, allow me to share a few facts that may offer you some much-needed peace of mind. First of all, this is a drawing, so no one's really going to be eaten... unless I draw someone being eaten... which I probably will. Second, the Easter Bunny probably has some kind of magic wand that allows him to leave eggs and candy all over everyone's houses in a single night, and he could easily use that wand to light a fox on fire if he felt his life was threatened. And third, the Easter Bunny is already dead.

If you're still feeling uneasy, consider one other thing. The peace you were experiencing before seeing this picture was only a pretended peace... the result of your own misguided ignorance. Foxes eat rabbits every day. I'm sure it's happening somewhere right now. The circle of life is spinning out of control just beyond your door at this very moment whether you like it or not, so just be glad that I didn't draw baby chicks in that frying pan like I had originally planned to.

Happy Easter, everybody!

Jumping the Shark

2011-04-13T09:55:00.003-06:00

This drawing was inspired by an episode of Happy Days, a little known television series that served as a springboard for the mega-hit, Joanie Loves Chachi. In September of 1977, Happy Days' Cunninghams took an infamous trip to the beach. While they were there, among other riveting plot lines, Arthur (a.k.a. "Fonzie") was challenged by a bunch of beach-toughs to water-ski off of a jump that led directly over some stock footage of a variety of deadly sharks. Having roughed up a jukebox prior to their vacation, the Fonz was feeling pretty brave, so he succumbed to the prodding of the beach boys (probably not the ones you're thinking of), suited up in his leather jacket and his finest denim cut-offs, and did the dumbest thing anyone on that beach or in their living rooms had ever seen... he jumped the shark.

This episode of Happy Days undoubtedly won several Emmy Awards, but that's not its only accomplishment. It also established a phrase that has come to signify that a show is out of good storylines and has most likely run its course: "jumping the shark." For example, Scooby Doo jumped the shark when Scrappy Doo showed up, The Brady Bunch jumped the shark when the lady met this fellow, and Flipper jumped the shark when he and Bud inadvertently swam into shark-infested waters... though that last one was more of a literal shark-jumping and was actually kind of heroic.

Anything can jump the shark... a TV series, a relationship, a greaser in a leather jacket and never-nude cut-offs, or even a blog. This blog jumped the shark when I became obsessed with animal jug bands, and this blog post jumped the shark when I mentioned Joanie Loves Chachi. She does, though.

Banjo-Strummin' Pig

2011-03-30T20:05:00.000-06:00

For the last couple of years I've had the pleasure of being obsessed with animals playing banjos, corn jugs, washboards, and washtubs. If you've browsed this blog at all, you already know that. The good news is I'm not alone! At least not about the "banjo" part. Did you know there's a whole blog dedicated to banjo-playing pigs? It's true! Wonderfully true! We're all very fortunate that the internet didn't fill up before this happened.

Jug Band O' Birds

2011-02-04T16:00:00.005-07:00

Humans hate birds. When we’re not shooting them, eating them, or chasing them into the sky to dice them with our airplane engines, we’re making up phrases that highlight how lame we think they are. For instance, something that is foolish or ridiculous can be classified as “for the birds,” someone who’s not very bright may be called “bird brained,” “killing two birds with one stone” is a bird-hating substitute for the term "multi-tasking," and if you mention to someone with a gentle honk that their texting is putting your life in danger, they will almost always thank you for your courteous warning by “flipping the bird.”

As if threatening and insulting the entire bird population with phrases like these isn’t enough, consider the negative connotations that are associated with individual types of birds... like chickens, turkeys, loons, cuckoos, dodos, stool pigeons, silly geese, and lame ducks. No one wants to be called bird names. That's mean... and it's not 1955.

Are birds doomed to be loathed by mankind forever? As long as we're using phrases like "a bird in the hand is worth squeezing to death," it appears so. Which reminds me... please start using that phrase.

Chuckle-to-Yourself Cats

2011-01-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I create fan art... especially fan art that openly mocks the thing I'm a fan of... but I decided to try it this once. These cats are based on my good friend Adam Koford's Laugh-Out-Loud Cats. Adam and I shared an office here at Avalanche for a few years before he was moved to another office last week to focus on another project. He's a funny man and an easy guy to share an office with, and I'm happy to say that his pleasant demeanor is as inoffensive as his scent.

I've shared offices with a bunch of guys in recent years, and while all of them have been subject to my interesting assortment of music, only most of them complained about it. I probably should honor all of them with fan art, but instead of that, I'll just post links to their blogs, a few of which have been updated in the last year. This is a good group of guys... some of my best friends. Many thanks to all of them for making "work" seem like "a little better than work."

Free Gift

2010-12-22T21:00:00.001-07:00

There's so much that I love about Christmas... the music, the lights, the food, the tree in our living room, the TV specials and movies, the day off of work, the Carpenters. But I think what I love most about Christmas is that it's yet another day of the year that we don't have a cat.

Merry Christmas, y'all, and y'all a good night!

The Hap-Happiest Season of All

2010-12-13T09:40:00.003-07:00

In 1963, Andy Williams released a song that has become a holiday classic: “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Since then it has also been recorded by Johnny Mathis, Harry Connick Jr., Amy Grant, the Muppets, and a bunch of other people who we forget exist the other eleven months of the year. What I find most surprising about this song is that, as many times as it's been re-recorded, no one has ever tried to improve the lyrics. They all just sing what’s been sung before without considering how dumb the words are. I think it's time someone examined these lyrics more closely than Donny Osmond or Gonzo ever did.

According to the song, one of the reasons the holiday season is so wonderful is that “everyone’s telling you, ‘Be of good cheer.’” Have you ever been cheered up by someone telling you to cheer up? Of course not. If you want to make someone smile, you do something nice for them or trip down some icy stairs in front of them. Telling someone to “be of good cheer” raises that person’s happiness level about the same amount as telling them you're going to drown a pillowcase full of puppies if they don't smile. In either case, they're only smiling to get you to leave them alone and go away... and possibly to save some puppies, but not because you cheered them up.

Next on the list of bad lyrical choices... jingle-belling? Mistle-toeing? Is “wassailing” responsible for this slippery slope? Just because someone turned a Christmas noun into a verb for their song once doesn’t mean you have to do it multiple times in yours. The guy who wrote this song needs a solid candy-caning.

As for "marshmallows for toasting" and "scary ghost stories"... I guess every family’s entitled to their own Christmas traditions, but are you sure you’re thinking of the holiday season here? Because what you're describing is camping… or possibly Halloween. You may be thinking, "But A Christmas Carol is kind of a 'scary ghost story.'" All right, but the song refers to "scary ghost stories," so name the rest.

And speaking of "the rest," "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" was co-written by George Wyle, the guy who co-wrote the Gilligan’s Island theme song with Sherwood Schwartz. Originally that song ended with the words, "...and the rest, here on Gilligan's Isle." And the rest? They only needed to mention two other people. That's like saying the seven dwarfs are Doc, Grumpy, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, and the rest. They later replaced that phrase in their song with, "The Professor and Mary Ann." It just made more sense. So if you can change the poorly co-written lyrics in the Gilligan's Island theme song, then why not offer the same courtesy to a song that has somehow managed to become a Christmas classic?

I'd rewrite the lyrics myself, but I just wasted all of my time making fun of the old ones. Maybe next year.

Toy Story 3: The Video Game

2010-12-06T00:45:00.002-07:00

Way back in June, Toy Story 3: The Video Game was finally released. I had been working on it for a couple of years, but even after all that time and work, I forgot to mention its release on my blog... until now. Here are six of the 1,800 storyboards I did during the game's production... and that's not just an exaggerated number either. I still have all of them. Clearly these boards aren't in sequence, and some of them were never used for anything, but I wanted to share them anyway... because these are a few that I actually toned. Ah, wonderful grayscale!

I'm very pleased with the way this game turned out... especially after watching my nieces and nephews become addicted to it. The "Toy Box" area is especially fun. That's where you just run around an old Western town as Woody, Buzz, or Jessie, doing whatever you feel like doing. If you want to shoot Bullseye with a rocket blaster for ten minutes straight, no one's stopping you... unless you're my nephew. After ten minutes I stopped him, because enough's enough! I also wrote a lot of the dialogue for the game, so if Hamm sometimes sounds like he's reading my blog to you, that's why.

I did these three drawings for a commercial that we made for Sony. They wanted a video that would highlight Zurg as a playable character in the Play Station 3 version of the game, and they left the rest of it up to us. I thought it would be funny to show Zurg having the time of his life, laughing it up like a crazy person, while Woody and Buzz watched in uncomfortable silence. In the final version, Zurg walks over and hugs the two of them. It works a lot better that way than it did in the boards, so three cheers to whoever added that part.So, Christmas shoppers, if your kids like Toy Story, I expect them to like this game. And if your kids don't like Toy Story, you should probably ask yourself where you've gone wrong as a parent.

Babysitting the Cubs

2010-09-30T23:15:00.000-06:00

Thanks to a combination of cartoons, children's books, a really vivid dream I once had, and a nature documentary that featured a segment about them, I pretty much know all there is to know about lions. I expect I'd know even more if the TV hadn't been muted during the documentary, but they're just big cats. How complicated can they be? I now want to share some of what I've learned with you, the easily-angered, blog-post-policing public. This should go well.

To begin with, female lions (or "lionesses" to those who enjoy stumbling through words that end in too many S's) do the majority of the hunting, most likely due to the fact that they yearn to be in charge and feel important. Because female lions spend so much of their time hunting as a result of their pride (or "for their pride" as it's generally stated), the responsibility to babysit falls on the unfortunate males.

Now, babysitting is never easy, but imagine doing it full time while you're also trying to get twenty hours of sleep a day. That's how much an adult, male lion sleeps. You may not know this, but you can't really get much done when you're only awake for four hours a day. I did it for about six years in college, and even if someone had been doing all my hunting for me, by the time I'd eaten dinner and watched Monday Night Football, there's no way I would have been up for babysitting. Male lions are getting robbed! And on top of that, sometimes they're raised by sheep.

Dogs Get Old Quickly

2010-08-31T22:30:00.003-06:00

It used to bother me when neighborhood dogs would bark and howl in the middle of the night, but then I realized something. Based on the calculation that a human year is equal to seven dog years, if a dog barks at 2AM on a Monday morning, to him he's actually barking at 5PM in 2084. He's probably just trying to protect you from burglars and alien invaders who will be snooping around your backyard in seventy-four years. Consider that for a moment. It's a fascinating thought, riddled with countless logistical holes.

How did someone figure out that a human year is equal to seven dog years? Were a lot of two-year-old dogs reading at an 8th grade level? Because that doesn't say as much about how time works for dogs as it says about 8th grade illiteracy. However this "human to dog" time relationship was determined, the discrepancy between the two explains why your dog celebrates excessively every time you return home. What seemed like a normal day at work to you lasted almost three days for your dog. Your week-long vacation? Nearly two dog months. If the people who provided my food left me home alone for unpredictably lengthy periods of time, I'd start chewing up the couch cushions too.

This coming Thursday afternoon, my wife and I will celebrate our 50th Dog Year Anniversary... which is equal to seven years and 52.14 days in dumb, slow-moving, human time. These fifty years of marriage have been the best years of my 244 year life.

Shark Week!

2010-07-31T08:45:00.002-06:00

It's Shark Week again! Time to fill our heads and our nightmares with a whole new set of facts, images, and terrifying tales about the ugliest, most tooth-filled demons of the sea. I've decided that the less you know about sharks, the more danger you're in, and the more you know about sharks, the more danger you think you're in. But no matter how much or how little you know about them, the one thing you can be sure of is that sharks are currently plotting your death. There's no way around that.

This drawing was inspired by my childhood fear of bubble baths and hot tubs. I was all right in a bath without bubbles because I could see everything in the tub around me. No shark's going to sneak up on a kid in a bubbleless bath. But as soon as bubbles were involved... well, any idiot can tell you that murky water is the ideal condition for shark attacks... and any idiot just did.

Happy Shark Week, everybody!

Filthy Animals

2010-07-18T20:45:00.001-06:00

As I watched volunteers cleaning the unfortunate animal victims of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I thought, "What a great thing to do... but why stop there? Aren't all animals stinky and gross?" A walk in the rain or a river crossing is the closest most of them ever get to taking a bath, and those activities so rarely involve soap that I'm not even sure they count.

Monkeys get clean by picking bugs out of each other's back hair... and then they eat the bugs they find. That's a little bit like taking a bath except, where a bath makes you clean, this just makes you disgusting. Other animals, such as lions, clean their young by licking them. In that way, a lion's tongue is like a wash cloth... a wash cloth that was just used to clean out a zebra's carcass.

So don't think you have to go all the way to the Gulf of Mexico to clean animals. Grab a brush and some shampoo and start tidying up the animals where you live. The ones that don't kill you will be slightly less gross because of the service you provide.

Bursting with American Pride

2010-06-29T14:00:00.001-06:00

It has been widely publicized in recent years that Americans are fat, but is this an accurate assessment or an unfair generalization? I looked up the statistics, and I was proud to find that nearly one in three Americans is barely fat at all, meaning that we, as a nation, score an unimpressive 67% when it comes to being overweight. Sixty-seven percent? That would earn you a D+ in most high school classrooms... hardly enough to cause your fellow students to refer to you as "the smart kid." Sure we're a little on the chunky side, but until we reach a respectable 90% obesity rate, shouldn't we be known for our cowboy hats, our poorly-made cars, and our arrogant self-importance? After all, our success rate in those fields is well above 67%.

As fat as we may seem, America isn't even the fattest country. Like most Olympic events, our chubby nation comes in third in that race. Did you know that the U.S. has more bronze medals than China, Canada, Spain, Russia, and Germany combined? We're the third-placingest country on the planet! If we ever hope to become the fattest country, we must first find a way to out-eat and under-exercise American Samoa and Kiribati. What? There's a country called Kiribati? When did this happen? Maybe we assume we're the fattest country in the world because we haven't heard of the other countries yet, and it's this disregard for the world beyond our borders that seems far more "American" to me than the two-in-three guys who have to turn sideways to get off of a bus... which raises the question... how did they get on there in the first place?

Happy 4th of July, my fellow fatties! It's time for some grillin' and explodin'! Yee-haw! (We shall now throw our cowboy hats in the air and shoot at them with our many handguns).

Everybody Loves Soccer

2010-06-17T21:05:00.000-06:00

With roughly four billion fans, soccer is unquestionably the world's most popular sport, which is great if you're soccer but really disappointing if you're the world. I don't like soccer... probably because I like not being bored out of my mind. I decided to give soccer another try last week, and I seriously made it 31 seconds into the game before I had to start skipping ahead. After a couple of hours that I could have spent napping, the game ended in a tie... a stupid, unsatisfying tie! No sport, field event, race, or board game should ever end in a tie. (Are you hearing this, NFL?!) So with its upward-counting clock and low-scoring lameness, soccer will just have to go on without me... unless they find a way to score 20 to 30 goals a game... then I'm back on board.

Who's the New Guy?

2010-06-05T20:55:00.002-06:00

Twelve days ago, we reached a high temperature of only 52 degrees. Today we got up to 81. I don't mean to alarm you, but that's an increase of nearly 2.5 degrees a day. If these warming trends continue... and buckle up for this... it's going to be an unseasonably warm 572 degrees by Christmas. And if it's that hot here, you can bet that our polar bear friends to the north are going to find themselves in the same miserable situation that has been facing European beverages for years: no ice. At that point, it's fair to assume that the world's remaining polar bear population will have no other choice but to migrate south. And on that day, people will finally stop telling me that "polar bears and penguins live on opposite sides of the planet, so this drawing doesn't make sense." Finally... a reason to support global warming.

Ducks in a Row

2010-05-28T11:15:00.004-06:00

I recently spent several months working long hours while we were finishing the Toy Story 3 video game. I'll say more about that and hopefully post a few storyboards after the game's been released. For now I just want to announce that it's done, and I'm officially back to blogging! I've got my ducks in a row, and that's where they'll stay. And to prove I'm serious, I'm going to shoot the first duck who steps out of line. Or better yet, I'm just going to shoot them either way. Then I can line them up however I want. Or maybe I'll stack them. Then I can start using the phrase, "I've got all my ducks in a stack."

Bayou Jug Band

2010-04-16T15:10:00.004-06:00

I have a fun game, but we're not going to play it. Instead we're going to play this dumb one... which of these animals would you guess has the most teeth? Here's a hint: it's not the alligator. Don't feel bad if you were wrong... unless you guessed "the guitar-playing dragon," because then you should feel kind of bad. It is actually the opossum that has the most teeth... more than any other land animal. Hopefully this information will help you win Jeopardy someday (if that's even a show still), because that's the only chance that it's ever going to come in handy. See what I mean? I told you this was a dumb game. Unfortunately I was lying about the "fun" game. There never was one.

Speaking of opossums, can you think of a single, non-spelling-based difference between opossums and possums? From what I've gathered, which is very little, it seems that possums are native to the Eastern hemisphere whereas opossums are native to the Western hemisphere. So why do so many people in the Western hemisphere call our opossums "possums?" It's the same reason we have calculators and Dancing with the Stars... because we're lazy and stupid.

Mythological Jug Band

2010-03-05T09:35:00.003-07:00

According to Wikipedia, the internet's leading source of mythological information, gryphons (which some people spell "griffins" and dumb people spell "grifunz") mate for life. What? I can think of one major ingredient that's missing from the theory that gryphons mate for life: "life." Don't you have to exist before you can enter into a lifelong relationship? Why are we assigning behavioral ettiquette to animals we've pretended into existence? I don't have an answer to this, but here's what I do know: if a gryphon finds your gym bag, he'll return it to you at his own expense, unicorns sneeze cake frosting, and flying pigs are offended by the mere thought of under-salted french fries. And when a gryphon gets together with a unicorn and a flying pig, you can count on three things: jug band music, rainbows, and a dessert buffet. (You may want to steer clear of the cake).

Winter Olympics

2010-02-23T15:40:00.004-07:00

As a fan of watching cold people fall down, I've really enjoyed this year's Winter Olympics. I came to a shocking realization last night, though... I've never participated in or even attempted a single winter sport in my life. I've lived in Utah for most of my life, a state that uses my car's license plate to advertise itself as the home of "the greatest snow on earth," yet I've never been skiing or snowboarding even once, and the closest I've come to ice skating was when I slipped on an icy patch coming out of Arby's several years ago. The fact that unexpectedly slipping on ice and nearly cracking my tailbone reminds me of a winter sport is a clear indication that winter sports are far too dangerous. In fact, until the Winter Olympics expand their list of sporting events to include driveway shoveling, snowman building, downhill sledding, figure slipping, freestyle parking-lot-donut-making, or using an old broom to brush snow off of a satellite dish (which is kind of like curling)... well, I don't want to completely count it out, but it's possible that I will never become a Winter Olympian.

Too Much Love

2010-02-10T12:55:00.005-07:00

Have you noticed how much we've cheapened the meaning of the word "love" by overusing it? I use that word to describe everything from my affection for my wife to how much I enjoy taking naps, not mowing the lawn, and involving myself in other inactivity-based activities. Considering the lengthy list of things I claim to love, it is clear that I am doing my part to additionally minimize the word's already tattered meaning.

Because "love" hardly means anything on its own at this point, people frequently include additional phrasing to emphasize the difference between the things they truly adore and the things they merely enjoy, such as, "I love it to death," or, "I love it more than words can say." Well, I propose we all start trampling the meaning of these phrases too... mostly because I want to find out how people will say that they really love something when even these expressions have become meaningless. I offer the following suggestions... please use these phrases and others like them as frequently as possible:

"I love my new TV with all of my heart."
"I love sleeping in to death."
"I love barbecue chicken pizza like it's my brother."

Where will they go from here? I can't wait to find out. I love where this is going like my life depends on it! Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

Ocean Jug Band

2010-01-12T11:14:00.011-07:00

For someone who grew up on a planet whose surface is two-thirds water, it's surprising how much I hate the ocean. Don't get me wrong. I love marine animals, and I enjoy the sunshine and the cool breezes at the beach as much as I enjoy frolicking in the ocean's gentle tide. I guess what I don't like about the ocean is that my favorite things about it seem to want me dead. Most of the animals in the ocean could easily kill me without even trying or meaning to, the pleasant ocean breeze only masks the inevitable heat stroke and skin cancer that the sun is constantly dishing out, and the "gentle" tide tends to treat me like a washing machine treats a kitten that hasn't figured out the difference between its bed and the laundry basket. I could possibly forgive all of this if the ocean was as delicious as the sea food that resides there, but the miserable ocean even tastes gross. For such a beautiful, incredible thing, the ocean certainly is a scary, nasty place.

The ocean even scares me when I'm not in it... like when I'm in airplanes. For me, the worst thing about a plane crash at sea would be the off chance that I might survive it. I would choose death over drifting alive in the open sea. Perhaps I could talk the stewardess into beating me to death with the fire extinguisher at the first sign of turbulence. But I guess she'll probably be busy helping everyone prepare for the imminent water landing, so I better just ask her to do it as I board the plane... even if it's not an overseas flight... just to be safe.

We are within a few days of my blog's fourth anniversary. Thank you all for coming here, and an even bigger, specialer thanks to those of you who have come back over and over again. I never thought anyone would like this kind of stuff, but I guess I hadn't counted on there being you. Happy 4th Anniversary, Blog! After four years, 325,000 visitors, and eight animal jug bands... we've only just begun!

Polar Bears

2009-12-15T14:40:00.005-07:00

According to Wikipedia, "the U.S. Geological Survey predicts two-thirds of the world's polar bears will disappear by 2050." Are you kidding me? Buy yourselves some heat-sensing goggles, everybody! Those things will be our only hope of surviving in a world where invisible polar bears roam free.

Drawing a Lion

2009-11-24T17:33:00.004-07:00

I finally got around to making another drawing video... a lion, this time, doing nothing on a stage, but looking pretty proud of himself for it. The video had music once, but now it doesn't, which is frustrating because that means I hired a full orchestra for nothing. I thought maybe they could just play the music live every time someone watches this video, but do you have any idea how much that would cost? The estimate was shocking... especially considering how few people will actually watch it. So enjoy it in silence for now, and I'll try to get a new one uploaded sometime. It's going to be a couple of weeks before I get around to that, though, because, man... I'm lazy.

Update: Hey, the sound's back! Unfortunately, the lion's still not doing anything but sitting on a stage. Sorry about that, but it's still an improvement.

Jug Band of the Apes

2009-11-16T22:05:00.004-07:00

Do you know what the difference is between monkeys and apes? There are actually several differences, the most noticeable of which is that monkeys have tails and apes don't... unless the ape has ripped a tail off of another animal (but let's hope apes don't have tails under those circumstances, because we have to draw the line somewhere). Another difference is that monkeys walk on all fours while most apes can walk on some twos. Also, apes have rotary shoulder joints that enable them to hang and swing from branches. Monkeys have useless, non-rotary shoulder joints which confine them to simply running across tree branches like crazy acrobatic stunt dogs. Do they have crazy acrobatic stunt dogs? Is that a thing yet? Come on, evolution! You're slacking lately... and you missed a lot of apes that were certainly hoping to be humanized years ago.

If the apes have a whole planet of themselves, I figure they must at least have a few jug bands there, right?

Some Dogs

2009-10-26T22:45:00.002-06:00

You may have noticed that my blog's been pretty slow for a while. I blame that on the fact that I don't like to post anything unless I have a finished drawing to go with it. But, hey - how about this?! A few of you suggested that I should start a fan page on Facebook. I didn't know what you were talking about, but I looked into it, and now such a thing exists. I'm going to post unfinished sketches there, and maybe I'll have a contest and give something away sometime (such as an authentic spatula that I personally used and broke... or some sketches, I guess). But most of all it's going to be a place where I can waste your time with my thoughtless ramblings without feeling like I need to draw stuff to go along with it. I currently have 32 fans, but with your help, I believe we can double that number by 2023. Here's hoping!

Pirates of Niagara

2009-10-07T13:43:00.005-06:00

I never cared much for history classes in school with their outdated information and their heavy text books full of boring names and boringer dates. But then a week ago I learned about something that happened in 1827 at Niagara Falls, and since then I’ve been obsessed with history... or at least with one very specific event that took place during the course of it.

The publicity stunt to which I refer was orchestrated by the owner of the Pavilion Hotel in Ontario, Canada… a gentleman by the name of William Forsyth. Together with a couple of his hotel-owning friends, Forsyth staged a wonderfully awful tourist attraction in the hope of increasing tourism at Niagara Falls. After buying a condemned lake schooner called the “Michigan,” Forsyth printed a bunch of advertisements and had them posted throughout New York and eastern Canada. They read as follows:

"The pirate Michigan with a cargo of ferocious wild animals will pass the great rapids and falls of Niagara - 8th September 1827 at 6 o'clock. The Michigan has long braved the bellows of Erie, with success as a merchant vessel but having been condemned by her owners unfit to sail long proudly "above"; her present proprietors, together with several public spirited friends, have appointed her to carry a cargo of Living Animals of the Forest, which surround the upper lakes, through the white tossing and deep rolling rapids of Niagara and down its great precipice, into the basin "below". The greatest exertions are being made to procure animals of the most ferocious kind, such as Panthers, Wild Cats and Wolves; but in lieu of these , which it may be impossible to obtain , a few vicious or worthless dogs, such as may possess strength and activity, and perhaps a few of the toughest of the lesser animals will be added to, and compose the cargo...

"Should the vessel take her course through the deepest of the rapids, it is confidently believed that she will reach the Horse Shoe unbroken; if so she will perform her voyage to the water of the Gulf beneath which is of great depth and buoyancy, entire, but what her fate will be the trial will decide. Should the animals be young and hardy and possessed of great muscular power and joining their fate with that of the vessel, remain on board until she reaches the water below, there is a great possibility that many of them will have performed the terrible jaunt, unhurt!"

As they had feared, the panthers and wolves proved difficult to procure, so a buffalo, two raccoons, two small bears, a domestic dog, and a goose were used in their lieu. I guess even a goose can seem “ferocious” when you’re tying it to the deck of a hell-bound schooner. Did you notice that the advertisement referred to the schooner as “the pirate Michigan?” That’s because, for some reason that escapes logic at least as much as the entire event itself does, the schooner had been decorated to look like a pirate ship. And to make the worst idea ever just a little bit worse, human shaped dummies were tied to the deck alongside the bewildered wildlife.

Noah’s miniature pirate ark set sail, as advertised, at 6:00 that evening before a crowd of roughly 10,000 soulless spectators. When it reached the rapids, its hull was torn open, and the schooner began taking on water. The two bears escaped and swam to safety on Goat Island, but because the other animals were all tied down or in cages, they stayed with the boat for its tumble over Horseshoe Falls. The goose somehow managed to survive and was found floating at the base of the falls, but the less buoyant buffalo, raccoons, and dog didn’t fare so well. Apparently they weren’t as “young and hardy” as they needed to be.

It’s hard to believe that this whole event took place, and that a group of people planned it, advertised it, and actually went through with it. You’d think just one person during the course of the planning would have said something like, “You’re going to do what with my dog?” Such was not the case, though, and history became slightly more interesting.

In closing, I offer this one request: please visit Niagara Falls. There’s no telling what those people will do the next time tourism lags.

Country Music

2009-09-23T15:45:00.000-06:00

Country music is an acquired taste. I've never met anyone who said they loved it the first time they tried it, but after they get caught up in it, it takes control of their lives to the point where they can't survive without it. Like addictive drugs, country music has a dulling effect on the human mind, and after a while, people confuse their state of disorientation and dizziness for an actual fondness toward the thing that originally caused them to gag.

I've been offered country music on many occasions by people who I thought were my friends. Even family members have tried to lure me into the inescapable, brain-cell-killing trap of country music. They've said things like, "Here, let me just play this one song for you... I think you'll like it." One song? Is that all you want me to try? Yeah, I bet... and the next thing I know, you're changing the radio presets in my car and buying me country CD's for my birthday. Then a year from now I've given up the will to fight, and my life sounds like a never ending hoedown. I've seen so many lives ruined by this kind of dependency on country music... so, no - I won't listen to "just one song." I don't need country music to be happy.

If my feelings on country music have outraged you so much that you don't even want to visit my blog anymore... please, before you leave, take a moment to consider what's causing this passionate response. Haven't I said terrible things about puppies, bears, sharks, killer whales, and everything else? And the most you've ever done is thought, "I feel sorry for his wife." Your intense devotion to country music over everything else should be an indication to you that you do, in fact, have a problem. If country music was taken from you, how much would you pay to get it back? You would steal country music from your family, wouldn't you? Look what you've become!

That being said, there are actually a few country songs that I've accidentally heard and kind of liked, but that doesn't mean I have a problem, so stop worrying about me... I can quit anytime.

Happy Anniversary, Animal Cruelty!

2009-09-01T07:05:00.005-06:00

It seems to me that the better you get at doing one thing, the worse you get at doing everything else. All the time you spend practicing and refining one skill robs you of the time you could have spent pursuing other interests. Consider the example of Bette Midler. She sings, she dances, she acts… but there is a 100-percent chance that Bette Midler is not your favorite actress and dancer AND recording artist, because to excel at one thing, she has had to accept an unavoidable level of mediocrity at everything else. With that in mind, don’t you wonder what Bette Midler excels at? It’s certainly not anything I’ve seen her do... unless wrecking a figurative train is a notable skill.

I mention this talent based give-and-take because it’s so clearly evident in the comparison of these two drawings that I did 25 years apart. As you can see, my ability to draw consistently-sized tires has improved dramatically, but while mastering that skill, my attention to hubcap detail has suffered. I’ve also found that the effort I’ve put into improving my drawing skill over the years has had an adverse effect on some of my other talents, such as my ability to read, to resist sugary snacks, or to care about what other people are saying. I don’t miss those things, though. Life goes on without them.

My first thought when I found this old drawing was, “What’s in the box?” The unfortunate answer: Dalmatian puppies. This is precisely why you’ll never hear of anyone giving an entire box of free puppies to a rabbit. Happy 25th Anniversary to my unique understanding of "animal cruelty."

The Rogue Shark

2009-08-11T22:42:00.009-06:00

As you probably already know, we recently celebrated another Shark Week, and in so doing, renewed my intense fear of being mangled at sea by a me-eating fish. This year's nightmare-inducing week of sharky programming was kicked off with a show called "Blood in the Water," a misleadingly cute title for a show that ended up being surprisingly horrific. It was about a rogue shark who went on a killing spree in 1916, attacking five people in the space of twelve days and inspiring the Jaws films that are responsible for many of my least favorite recurring dreams. Before that summer, people didn't even believe that a shark would attack a human. That one shark proved the opposite, over and over again. The series of attacks incited a massive retaliatory response from the frightened folks in New Jersey who took to the seas with rifles, harpoons, and dynamite to find and kill the man-eating shark. They killed hundreds of sharks (and probably vaporized some other unsuspecting sea creatures in the process) before a fishing boat stumbled across the right shark and a fisherman beat it to death over the head with a broken oar.

Consider, for a moment, all of the damage that this one, messed up shark did to its entire species. A few stupid acts of violence over a twelve-day period kicked off a feud with humans that is still in effect nearly a hundred years later. I imagine most sharks were embarrassed and ashamed by the actions of that one rogue shark when they learned what he had done. Not much they could do about it, though. The damage to the good name of "shark" was already done.

Adolf Hitler was kind of like a rogue shark. He pretty much ruined the name "Hitler" for everyone else. Walt Disney, on the other hand, made his name awesome. If there were two kids in your second grade class named Jeff Hitler and Jeff Disney, which one would you be more likely to befriend? See what I mean? What you don't know is that Jeff Hitler has a swimming pool and is actually a really nice kid. One bad Hitler does spoil the whole bunch, girl.

There are rogue sharks on the roads too... like when I'm driving in some other state, and I see an idiot with Utah plates going ten miles an hour under the speed limit, blocking traffic in the passing lane. I think, "Now these people are going to think we're all dumb!" Stay right except to pass, you idiots, or you're no better than the shark who terrorized the New Jersey coast in 1916... or Hitler.

Just a Sketch

2009-07-28T19:15:00.000-06:00

It's been so long since I posted anything on here that I decided to post this, even though it's rough and unfinished. Mostly I just wanted to let you all know that I'm still around. More stuff will be on the way soon, I hope. Thanks for coming to my blog... sorry it's a little dead lately.

The Patriotter

2009-07-04T00:10:00.005-06:00

I wanted to draw something patriotic to celebrate the 4th of July, and somehow I ended up with this American-hat-wearing river otter... or as I will stupidly refer to it, the Patriotter. If it weren't for the founders of this nation I call home, I probably would have just been taxed by our British overlords for calling this animal something as stupid as that. I'm going to celebrate this freedom to be lame by discharging small scale explosives late into the evening at high risk of injury or death to myself and others. You like that, Brits? I thought so.

I find it puzzling that an animal that lives in rivers, lakes, marshes, swamps, and estuaries (whatever those are) would be known as just a "river" otter. They couldn't have given it a more all-encompassing name? What about "water otter?" That seems a better fit, even though it's a bit of a tongue twister. And speaking of tongue twisters, do you know what they call it when you murder a bunch of otters? A water otter slaughter. And when the murders are based on the relative attractiveness of the otters? That's a hotter water otter slaughter. The unsavory fellow who plans these murders is known as the hotter water otter slaughter plotter, and the guy who later identifies him in a police lineup is the hotter water otter slaughter plotter spotter. Man, this is dumb.

Happy 4th of July, my fellow Americans, from me and the many-water Patriotter! And to those of you who aren't Americans and won't be celebrating anything today... I'm sorry you wasted part of your day reading this. Actually, that probably goes for the Americans too. Apologies all around.

Australian Jug Band

2009-06-18T10:45:00.003-06:00

I've already shared all the fake information my brain can hold concerning koalas, kangaroos, and jug bands, and I have nothing to say about dingoes, Australia, or Uluru (which is more commonly known as "Ayers Rock" to those of us with no hope of correctly pronouncing "Uluru"), so I don't have anything to say about this picture. Instead, let's just look at more Google searches that have brought people to my blog. These are all actual Google searches written by actual morons:

"Where did kangaroos come from T-rex." Unfortunately, T-Rex is too dead to answer your question, so I will in his stead. The answer is either "Australia" or "kangaroo mommies."

"Why do people say when pigs fly." Oh, no - this is awkward. She just doesn't want to go out with you, man... probably not ever.

"How to look like the headless horseman." Have no head and ride a horse.

"Are killer whales vegetarians?" Yeah, because killer whales were named by plants.

"Bears attack hope." Well it appears to be working, because reading that just filled me with more despair than I've ever known.

"Why tiger shark afraid of the Human Killer Whale." The Human Killer Whale? Oh, dear. Now I'm afraid of that too. I guess I can see where tiger shark is coming from.

"I think sharks are scary." Yeah, me too... but have you heard of the Human Killer Whale? Not even bears kill hope as quickly as that thing.

Those Sleepy Bears

2009-06-02T14:55:00.001-06:00

During winter months when food is scarce, bears take really long naps. This extended period of sleep is known to the scientific community and to other people who think they’re better than me as “hibernation,” and it generally lasts between 100 and 200 days, during which time the bear does not eat, drink, brush its teeth, exercise, or use the restroom. As lazy as that sounds, bears actually lose up to 40-percent of their body weight during this annual celebration of inactivity. And I ate better and exercised more to lose weight? What was I thinking? I hate exercise almost as much as I hate salads, and I totally LOVE sleep! Imagine how much money I could have saved and how much weight I would have lost if I had just slept for the six months. Bears are geniuses… lazy, wonderful geniuses.

Did you know that, for every person killed by a black bear in North America, 60 are killed by domesticated dogs, 180 by bees, and 350 by lightning? Maybe bears aren’t as dangerous as we all thought they were. Wrong! Bears are exactly as dangerous as we all thought they were. What I'm saying is watch out for dogs, bees, and lightning. Those things like you kicking them even less than bears do.

Farm Jug Band

2009-05-15T21:15:00.003-06:00

I bet farm animals sound great when they perform in jug bands, but do you know when they sound even better? Breakfast. I love breakfast! What, to me, is the best meal of the day, to farm animals is nothing more than an all-too-common "cause of death." It's too bad anyone has to die just so I can enjoy eggs, bacon, and sausage at Denny's in the middle of the night, but if farm animals had any idea how delicious breakfast is, they'd probably be lining up at the slaughterhouse to be made into breakfast. What? They do line up at the slaughterhouse? Wonderful! Thank you for being so willingly tasty, farm animals. I'll see you first thing in the morning.

(My wife just pointed out that eggs were never alive, and cows don't die to give us milk. I guess that's true. Cows die for lunch.)

Manatees Win!

2009-04-24T09:25:00.004-06:00

I am proud to announce that The Handsome Manatees are this season's fantasy basketball champions for the first year in a row! It is an honor for me to have coached one of only thousands of fantasy basketball teams that can call themselves "champions" this year. I'd like to thank LeBron James, Tony Parker, Rajon Rondo, and Chauncey Billups for helping the Manatees claim this not-so-prestigious honor. And let's get a round of applause for all of you who also managed teams in our league this season. Without your mediocre performances there for a comparison, how could I have proven to anyone (or especially to you) that my team rocked? There will be a special seat set aside for each of you on the front row of the Manatees' victory parade... and if you arrive at the parade and find that there are no seats, please still throw money.

Now that the fantasy basketball season is over, the non-fantasy NBA Playoffs (also known as "the NBA Playoffs") have begun. And this year they're better than ever, because as of a few days ago, we are now able to view them in high-definition. Going from regular, low-def TV to glorious HDTV is the best upgrade since "black and white" gave way to "color." Or as I said on Twitter: "What if you ate plain hot dogs for 33 years because you didn't know about mustard? We got HDTV today... which is like mustard for the eyes." It is truly incredible, and I highly recommend it (speaking of HDTV... not of putting mustard in your eyes).

Wolverines

2009-04-20T12:02:00.004-06:00

Wolverines are extremely dangerous. For their size, they are quite possibly the strongest animal on the planet. They have been known to drive wolves, cougars, and bears away from their kills, and in some cases, they have even gone after moose, meaning they are willing to attack animals that are more than five times their own size. That would be like me kicking a grizzly bear to retrieve my bacon burger.

Before you defend the honor of wolverines by calling me names, let me explain something. Just because wolverines are dangerous doesn't mean they belong in prison. In most cases (and I'm not talking about the dog who you love like your own child), animals aren't mean or nice. They're just animals... looking for food while trying to avoid becoming food themselves. They don't attack humans because they dislike us or because they think it's funny when we cry. Their occasionally aggressive actions are fueled by self-preservation, because sometimes the best way to get something to leave you alone is to bite it, and the best way to alleviate hunger is to eat whoever's around. The desire to stay alive isn't mean or nice. It's just selfish. And it's okay to be selfish when you're an animal. (Again, I'm not talking about your dog who you dress in sweaters... he's totally nice).

If you think I'm wrong and that wolverines aren't dangerous but are as kind-hearted as sweater-wearing dogs, go find some wolverines and throw pine cones at them while you're wearing a suit made of deli-sliced ham. I was going to say "a home-made suit of deli-sliced ham," but if you can buy one in a store, do that. No sense wasting your last few hours of life making a death suit out of deli meat.

Easter Bunny

2009-04-10T22:55:00.002-06:00

My wife: Why do you always draw such horrible things?
Me: What do you mean?
My wife: He's going to eat those poor little chicks.
Me: I don't think the Easter Bunny eats chicks.
My wife: That's an alligator.
Me: Alligators don't have fluffy tails. You're crazy.
My wife: I hate talking to you.

Happy Easter, everybody!

Desert Jug Band

2009-03-27T15:15:00.000-06:00

How would you describe the desert? I'd say it's a tie between four equally undesirable things: dry, hot, dirty, and boring. The animals and plants in the desert are also dry, hot, dirty, and boring... and ugly, and unapproachable, and a slew of many other unsavory adjectives. To sum up, the desert is a dreadful place that has traded in its shade and water in favor of prickly weeds, poisonous snakes, and scummy casinos. Of all the places on the earth, the desert is the only one I know of that seems to hate me and want me dead... well, and also the ocean, I guess. Wherever you can find moderate amounts of water... that's the place for me.

Mouse Problem

2009-03-12T11:40:00.001-06:00

The obvious solution for dealing with an infestation of mice in your home is to set up a bunch of mousetraps. But what if you don't want to burden your conscience with the knowledge that you are personally responsible for treating unsuspecting mice to sudden, neck-crunching death?

A second option for you "non-mouse-murdering" types is to buy a cat to do the killing for you. I guess that would be effective initially, but then all you’ve done is replace a tiny pest that poops in your house with a larger pest that poops in your house. And then what kind of animal are you going to have to buy to kill your cat? Where does the killing end?

Since you probably don’t want your home to become a stage where the circle of life plays out, your best bet for ridding your house of mice is to drive them out with a flood or a fire. It’s hard to justify those options when you consider that a fire or flood will also drive you from your home, but wouldn’t you rather be homeless than be a murderer or have a cat?

Ode to Celery

2009-02-24T07:29:00.001-07:00

Celery is a vile, inedible weed. People have rebutted this easily acceptable fact with ridiculous arguments like, “But I like celery with peanut butter.” If this is what you were thinking, what you actually like is peanut butter. If you don’t believe me, try dipping a twig or a popsicle stick into some peanut butter and take a bite. You’ll notice very little difference. If you try this and still contend that celery is a bit tastier than most varieties of sticks, first of all, celery thanks you for your generosity and non-discriminating taste. Secondly, would you please just admit to yourself that you’d eat a toilet brush if it was the only way to get peanut butter into your mouth? If you still insist that you actually like celery and you think I’m wrong about this, it doesn’t mean you have a problem. It means I have a problem… with you… liar.

Avoiding Bear Attacks

2009-02-17T11:25:00.004-07:00

What is the best way to avoid being attacked by a bear? Well, consider the statistics. Nearly every bear attack on record includes one very specific element: the outdoors. Though I suppose a bear may occasionally sneak up on someone in a post office or an elevator, the odds are in your favor that you can avoid bears, and therefore bear attacks, by simply staying inside. People who consider themselves "outdoorsy" are considered by bears to be "afternoon snacky." But just in case a situation ever arises that requires you to go outside, here are a few tips to help you avoid being attacked by a bear while you're out there.

If you meet a bear, your first option is to run for your life, or more precisely, to run to your death. I have heard that your best chance to outrun a bear is to run downhill, the theory being that a bear running down a hill might stumble because its hind legs are longer than its front legs. But leg length notwithstanding, an adult grizzly bear can run roughly 35 miles-an-hour. That is considerably faster than my top speed... a disappointing 35 miles-a-year-and-a-half. Even an incredibly fast person on a steep downward slope stands very little chance at outrunning a bear, leaving "running" an undesirable option if you hope to avoid a bear attack.

On the complete opposite end of the "surviving bears" spectrum from "running" is an option you've certainly heard before... Play dead. It is true that a bear probably won't kill you if you play dead. It is also true that it will bite you and claw you and throw you against trees and stuff until you not only seem but also wish you were dead. If you don't consider that an attack, then maybe playing dead is for you. But for those of us who were hoping to avoid organ damage and excessive bleeding altogether, playing dead is probably out.

No running and no playing dead? What else is there? It seems your best bet for avoiding a bear attack is to climb a tree... as long as you climb at least 30 feet. If you're lower than that, the bear will still probably get you. But since bears don't particularly like climbing trees, there's a better chance that, the higher you climb, the less interested the bear will be in pursuing you. After you've climbed high enough, just wait there until the bear loses interest and leaves the area. This shouldn't take more than two or three days. You may then fall to your death.

If all else fails, there is one way to avoid being killed by a bear that works every time. That's right... in the history of man and bear kind, it has never failed. The best way to avoid being killed by a bear is to die some other way.

Cupid

2009-02-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

The whole idea of "Cupid" is just absurd... a baby who shoots arrows at people so they'll fall in love? First of all, a baby would never shoot an arrow. If babies had arrows they would eat them the way they eat everything else. Secondly, babies don't fly, because that's creepy. Cupid is weird.

The more I considered what I thought I knew about Cupid, the more I doubted that my perceptions could be true. I decided to learn more about it, so I looked up "Cupid" in the dictionary, and I kid you not... the actual definition is just one word: "stupid." If you don't believe me, look it up yourself... but not in Webster's Dictionary. He gets a little wordy for my liking. I prefer Rhyming's Dictionary. He keeps his definitions brief.

Happy Valentine's Day to my beautiful wife!

Dalmatians

2009-02-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

It has been said (right now) that lions are dumb enough to believe that they can magically transform themselves into dalmatians by simply painting black spots all over themselves. Ridiculous, right? That's clearly not how you become a dalmatian. That's how you become a leopard. The only way to become a dalmatian is to eat a lot of dalmatians.

Whistlepig Day

2009-02-02T09:45:00.003-07:00

Happy Lily-Livered Whistlepig Day, y'all!

Barbershop Bear

2009-01-23T12:51:00.006-07:00

A few weeks ago, I came across a bunch of songs on iTunes by a group that I didn't even know existed before then: The Mellomen with Thurl Ravenscroft. Are you kidding me? How did I allow myself to waste so many years of my life not listening to or even knowing about these guys? If you think you don't like barbershop music, you're crazy and wrong. It's the coolest! Especially if it's 1942.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Thurl Ravenscroft, which is most likely all of you, he was the voice of Tony the Tiger who also sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in the Chuck Jones holiday classic. And if you've been on the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland or Disney World, you may recognize him as the face and voice of the broken bust that sings "Grim Grinning Ghosts."

I wanted to post a drawing on here of a whole quartet of barbershop-singing animals (which, from what I understand, would have to include exactly four different singers), but weeks have passed, and I still haven't drawn them. I'm posting this abandoned sketch in the hope that it will breathe a bit of life back into my dead blog, and hopefully I'll draw and post more stuff soon. For now I just thought you should know that there's one more person on the planet who listens to The Mellomen during his daily commute... bringing the total of that group to "one."

Winter Wonderland

2008-12-23T00:45:00.003-07:00

While stuck in traffic recently, the radio station I was listening to treated me to three different versions of Winter Wonderland. I like that song... or at least I did before I ended up stuck in traffic with nothing to think about but those lyrics.

You can tell the song is doomed from its very first line: "Sleigh bells ring... are you listening?" I’ll tell you what... if you can’t get more than three words into your narrative before losing the interest of your audience, that may be an indication that "story-telling" isn't your thing. "Sleigh bells ring... are you listening? In the lane... am I boring you?"

The socially dysfunctional narrator goes on to propose some possible activities we could fill our day with. "In the meadow we can build a snowman and pretend that he’s a circus clown. We’ll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman until the other kiddies knock him down." Apparently we're so confident in our miserable social standing that we're not only accepting that our snowman may be demolished by everyone we know... we're planning on it! I wonder if we'd be more popular if we stopped calling them "the other kiddies." It's worth a shot.

If the first snowman-building scheme wasn't lame enough, there's a second that somehow manages to be even less enticing. "In the meadow we can build a snowman and pretend that he is Parson Brown. He’ll say, ‘Are you married?’ We’ll say, ‘No, man... but you can do the job when you’re in town.'" Not a superhero or a gladiator, but Parson Brown? Who is this kid? Dear Parson Brown... when you meet the lad who built you so he could pretend you were a parson, don't waste your precious, miraculous first words asking about his obvious marital status. That kid is and will always be single. Not only is he not daing anyone, but he doesn't have any friends, his pets avoid him, and look out... you're about to get mangled by the other kiddies for talking to him.

Merry Christmas, y'all... and y'all a good night!

Circus Elephant

2008-12-16T15:55:00.001-07:00

Despite what you may have heard, very few circus elephants are alcoholics. The reason they perform those crazy stunts is because they enjoy it... or possibly because they don't like being beaten and whipped, which is what happens if they don't do crazy stunts.

I drew this for my daughter's birthday invitations... she had a "circus" party. You should have seen the crazy things we had those kids doing to avoid being whipped. The life of a circus performer seems most unpleasant, but the life of a ring-master is hilariously fun.

My Obituary

2008-11-17T21:00:00.009-07:00

Toon Club recently reached its 100th's topic: "You at 100." My drawing for the topic was inspired by a Google search that brought someone to my blog a while back... "What did Shane Lewis die from?" What? Is that information available online? I didn't dare search it myself because I didn't want to find something. I'd rather be surprised by my own demise. However, I thought I'd offer this obituary just in case future Googlers are similarly interested in predicting my death. Have you ever tried to write your own obituary? It's a fun little exercise to reduce your whole life to a single paragraph because it forces you to admit how little you've actually accomplished. I can't even play the harmonica... what a waste.

Here are some other Google searches I've enjoyed recently:

"Did they cancel the Chipmunks?" You know - I Googled this exact thing when I woke up from my twenty-year coma too, and believe me... you don't want to know. Just back away and save your tears for another day.

"I can not draw are there sketches of rabbits?" In a world this size, I imagine there must be at least a few sketches of rabbits I run slow.

"Who invented the battering ram?" I'm not sure they had patents at the time. It was probably a group of people with a log who reached a common understanding, and therefore it would be unfair to credit just one of them.

"American Gladiator medical student." Hey, look - you came up with something not even Google can find.

"What eats what?" Compiling a comprehensive list of what eats what would take far more time than I'm willing to dedicated to it... and would probably fill up the internet. One of the things I eat is blueberry muffins. There's a nice start.

"He don't have fear for sharks." Nor does he concern himself with grammar.

Yellowstone Jug Band

2008-11-07T12:40:00.004-07:00

I've always been a huge fan of Yellowstone and North American wildlife, which is why I couldn't help but add a fourth performer to my Yellowstone jug band. The washboard-playing bison almost didn't happen. I should have added a harmonica-playing deer and an antelope with a fiddle, but that seemed like a lot of work just to be able to make a not-very-funny "deer and the antelope play" joke. See? Not very funny at all. I'm glad I thought ahead.

I'm getting the feeling that my "animal jug band" series may be causing the death of my blog. It takes a while to draw, clean up, and color multiple characters for just a single blog post, and since animal jug bands require an accompanying landscape, I can't even resort to the time-saving "Photoshop gradient" background that I've perfected. Plus I've already said all I can think of to say about jug bands, so with nothing new to rant about... well, my blog's kind of dying. In the hope of posting more frequently in the coming weeks, I'm going to put a hold on my desert, ocean, farm, mythological, monster, insect, dinosaur, and Australian jug bands for now. We'll see if that revives this thing a little.

Many gloriously appreciative thanks to those of you who bought my book. You're part of a very select group of people who I know as "the coolest."

New Book... Old Stuff

2008-10-30T21:45:00.002-06:00

Hey, everybody... I made a book! It's available now on Blurb.com. I made it especially for those of you who enjoy my blog but wish that you could pay to read it instead of always reading it for free, which I know can get pretty old. I had to leave out the stuff about Star Wars, Batman, and other things that are copyrighted, so not only is it more expensive than my blog... it's also less complete. But on the bright side, this 74-page book is ideal for anyone who is taking off or landing in an airplane. While everyone else has to have their computers turned off, guess who's still reading my blog. Well, no one... because that's who bought this book.

If you enjoy books with lots of pictures and your reading comprehension is low, you'll love this book... or at least recognize it as one.

African Jug Band

2008-10-22T12:25:00.002-06:00

Hey, look! It's another jug band! Unfortunately I haven't come up with anything more to say about jug bands since the last time I drew one. I probably won't have anything new to say by the next time I draw one either... which will likely be soon. It turns out I'm kind of hooked on drawing animal jug bands lately. I like to think that animals gather together and play music when people and their documentary-filming cameras aren't around. Luckily for me, no one will ever be able to prove otherwise. So with that in mind, mountain, desert, ocean, and mythological jug bands should be coming to my blog soon... unless I get hooked on something else before then. One thing I know, though... lions play a mean banjo.

Handsome Manatees

2008-10-20T09:00:00.001-06:00

I just spent the last five minutes drawing this manatee on my new Cintiq tablet, which enables me to draw directly to the computer in sloppy, messy, digital style. This particular scribble is going to be the logo for my new fantasy basketball team: The Handsome Manatees.

A while ago, I mentioned that I had only ever used the team name "Flying Wounded Seals" in fantasy sports, but this year I'm trying something new after 11 of my 12 starters were injured by the end of last year's basketball season. Did I curse real NBA players last year with my fake team's injury-prone mascot? Would LeBron James have missed two weeks last season due to an injured pinky if he hadn't been a Flying Wounded Seal? I guess we'll never know... but I got the first pick of the draft again this year, so get ready to be handsome, overfed, and largely lifeless, LeBron... because this year you're a Handsome Manatee!

Batman and Robin

2008-10-10T22:00:00.003-06:00

As you may already know, The Dark Knight now has more money than the United States. That's partially because the caped crusader has robbed U.S. citizens of over 525 million dollars in the last three months. I guess that's okay, though, because he seems nice. I think one of the main reasons that movie's been so successful is due to its complete lack of Robin.

Was Robin left out because Batman's strength is diminished by the mere presence of a sidekick? Was Robin snubbed because a "dark knight" can't sneak up on criminals in dark alleys when his companion's wearing a Bolivian flag? Those are possible reasons, but I believe Robin was only slighted for being more annoying than he is useless? But whatever the case may be... holy thanks for leaving Robin out of your movies, Batman.

Health vs. Happiness

2008-09-15T12:15:00.003-06:00

If you're like me, sometimes after finishing a particularly large meal you think, "I should have stopped four burgers ago." I recently overate like that... every day... for seven years. "All You Can Eat" wasn't a buffet offer - it was my daily goal. I had decided that if I was alive enough to breathe, I was alive enough to keep eating.

Not long ago, I was understandably shocked to learn that a few elitist, medical know-it-alls consider that kind of lifestyle "unhealthy." So I gave up delicious, joy-inducing food in favor of boring salads and a longer life, and in six weeks I've lost about 30 pounds. Why did I have to make a decision between health and happiness? I guess that losing all that excess weight makes me reasonably happy... but sometimes it seems like a half-pound bacon cheeseburger would make me even happier.

Isn't there a weight-loss pie or brownie of some kind? If there is, please let me know. I could be healthy and happy in the next couple of hours at the rate I can eat those things.

Snow Monster

2008-09-03T20:30:00.008-06:00

I hope you don't misinterpret this drawing and erroneously assume that the snow monster is about to eat that poor bear. Snow monsters don't eat bears. They throw them... hundreds of miles in some cases. This relationship is mutually beneficial to bears and snow monsters. The bears get an exhilarating trip to a distant mountain range or parts of the sea they never would have visited otherwise, and the snow monsters get to vent some frustration. We call this kind of relationship “symbiotic.” The point I'm trying to make is that you'll never get these last two minutes of your life back. Sorry about that.

Beach vs. Ocean

2008-08-27T18:16:00.007-06:00

It baffles me that anyone would go all the way to the beach just to sit on the hot sand and bake in the sun. If that was what you wanted to do for your vacation, you should have just gone to Barstow. It's a shorter trip for most people, and Barstow has more than enough sun and sand to burn you and bore you until you're dead. When people say they like the beach, I think what they are trying to say is that they like the ocean... they were probably just confused because the beach and the ocean share the same parking lot.

That being said, here's a picture that will probably keep you from going into the ocean the next time you're at the beach. This picture shows what I see in my head every time I swim in the ocean. Fun, huh.

One time I was swimming off the coast of San Diego with some of my brothers-in-law, and we watched as a helicopter flew over us with a "News 8" logo on its side. The helicopter circled back and stopped directly above us. We commented that it must be a pretty slow news day if they were filming people swimming, and we waved at the cameras. Later that night while conveniently watching News 8, we saw footage they had taped earlier that day... a few stupid-looking guys waving to a news camera completely unaware that they were surrounded by about fifty 6-foot-long leopard sharks. The following morning we were still at the beach, but for as much as I swam that day, I might as well have been in Barstow.

Did you know Barstow is the home of the very first Del Taco? Are you kidding me? The first Del Taco AND shark-free "beaches" all in one place that is noticeably cooler than the surface of the sun for almost three months a year? Pack up your 3000 SPF sunscreen, my friends... we're going to Barstow!

Wow - that was weird. I was going to write something about Shark Week, and instead I just ended up making fun of Barstow. If you're expecting a postcard from me, they'll be on their way before too much longer. It seems I grossly underestimated how much time it takes to write on 100 postcards.

Free Postcards!

2008-08-18T15:13:00.001-06:00

Boring Backstory: Almost two years ago I was asked by BYU's Visual Arts Department to submit a few of my drawings for a book they were assembling that would highlight the work of some of their former students. I sent them a few things I'd recently drawn for my blog, and then I completely forgot about the whole thing for a very long time.

Incresingly Boring Continuation of Story: A couple of weeks ago, I got a package in the mail from BYU that contained a copy of the book they made along with 300 postcards... 100 for each of my drawings that was included in the book. My first thought was, "Where did they get these drawings?" Before I had time to remember that I had sent them a long time ago, my next thought replaced the first: "What do they expect me to do with 300 postcards?" I considerend sending them all back to BYU, one postcard a day for the next 10 months, but I wasn't able to convince myself to spend over $80 on a gag that only I would enjoy, so I've decided to go with "Plan B."

Plan B: Today I went to the less-than-efficiently run post office and bought 100 over-priced postcard stamps, and I am going to send postcards to the first hundred people who tell me they want one. This is quite possibly the most creative, time-consuming way I've ever come up with to waste $27, and YOU can be part of it!

Instructions for Receiving Your 100-of-a-Kind Postcard: 1) Leave a comment here on my blog saying you'd like one, mostly so I can see if I can get up to 100 comments on one blog post; 2) Click here to send me an email that includes your name, your address, and which postcard you want (shark, monkeys, or polar bear). It's as simple as that! I'm stopping at 100 postcards, though, so send me an email soon if you want one. And don't worry... this won't put you on some weird, junk-email list, and I won't be sending you any Christmas cards or anything else in the future. It's a one-time postcard... just because I have a bunch of them and "Plan A" fell through. Also, I'm sorry, but I'll only be sending postcards to addresses in the United States... not because I'm patriotic, but because I'm cheap.

Closing Remarks That Aren't Worth Reading: I'm sending these 100 postcards to thank those of you who come to my blog for for your continued support... even these last few months while my blog's been mostly dead. We're almost done with the Bolt video game, and then I'll get back to posting regularly again. Hopefully a personalized postcard will hold you over until then. My apologies to those of you in other countries... you deserve a postcard too. Maybe another day.

So Much Work

2008-07-29T22:28:00.001-06:00

There are only a few things that are keeping this picture from being a live video feed of the past few weeks of my life: I'm not this thin, I'm not a hastily sketched cartoon character, I haven't been this happy or energetic in a while, and since 1975 I've been presented in full color. Aside from those minor discrepancies, this is pretty much "me" for the last little while... and sadly it's going to continue to be me for a couple more weeks. Consider everything you've done this summer... maybe you traveled, went for a swim, mowed the lawn, read a book, or even took a short nap. Whatever you did... while you were doing it, I looked like this. It would probably be depressing if I had time to think about it.

When this project is done and "free time" is reintroduced into my life, I'm going to get back to regularly posting on my blog. Sorry it's been so boring around here lately. In case you hadn't noticed, this isn't the best post ever. I just wanted you all to know that I'm not dead yet, and I certainly haven't outgrown blogging. I will return... I just need to stare at this monitor a little while longer. Man, this is so much better than vacations or sleep! Happy Shark Week, everyone!

Big Al-Gator

2008-07-10T09:10:00.003-06:00

A couple of months ago I set out to draw a jug band, and this was the first thing I came up with. For a minute I kind of liked it, but then I realized the design was nothing more than a rip-off of a combination of characters I grew up with at Disneyland. (Yes, I grew up at Disneyland... I'm pretty sure I spent more time there than I did at school during my elementary years, which would not only explain my career choice but also my inability to sound out words of three or more syllables). Those of you who are familiar with America Sings and The Country Bear Jamboree have probably already figured out that this guy is a mix between Big Al and one of the Swamp Boys. Those of you who are not familiar with America Sings or the Country Bear Jamboree - I hope two things... one, that you enjoy this fabulously creative gator I thunk up, and two... that you only read this last sentence.

Babies Bite

2008-06-24T13:45:00.001-06:00

From what I've observed, our six-month-old daughter has a very limited number of hobbies, and at the core of each of those hobbies is one common element... they all hurt me. She grabs my nose, gauges my eyes, bites my fingers, kicks my shins... I'd never considered that raising a child would be so similar to getting tangled up in a bar fight. The only difference is that I would fight back if I was in a bar fight, but because it's my daughter who's unintentionally mauling me, I just smile... and gently apply pressure while I wait for the blood to clot. In the past I always objected to being abused in these ways, but recently somehow it's become kind of cute. Besides, there's more blood where that came from, and being assaulted by your kids isn't cute forever... best to enjoy it while you can.

The Puddler

2008-06-19T11:45:00.001-06:00

More than two years ago I created a really lame not-so-superhero whose only "power" was that he had transparent legs. Lame or not, I still expected a Mr. Invisiblegs movie to hit theaters sometime this summer, but I just checked the upcoming release schedule... nothing. Doesn't every superhero have a movie this summer? Then why doesn't Mr. Invisiblegs? Does he not appear to fly when he runs or to gently hover forward as he walks? Is he not considerably difficult to defend in a game of soccer? Does he not deliver surprise crotch kicks to evil-doers and people who cut in line at the bank? As subjective as "super" is, why doesn't Mr. Invisiblegs have a movie?

Well, I think I figured it out. Until now I've overlooked one of the most important elements in a superhero story... the super villain. As much as it will certainly plague Mr. Invisiblegs' existence, I have been forced to create his surly arch-nemesis... "The Puddler." When stepping in mud causes you to lose your only super power, you're almost as pathetic as the guy who has dedicated his life to creating puddles for you to step in. This movie writes itself! Take it and run, Hollywood!

Bored Frog

2008-06-12T09:25:00.001-06:00

This frog is all I've drawn in the last little while. You may recognize him as the hidden "Waldo" from my previous post. The fact that so many of you were able to pick him out of that crowd is proof to me that my drawings, my rants, and my offensively inaccurate killer-whale-based trivia are actually reaching an audience. Thanks for your visits and comments, everyone. I couldn't ask for a better group of blog friends. Well, I guess I could... but only you guys would read it, so there wouldn't be much point in it.

Greatest Hits

2008-05-28T14:30:00.003-06:00

I haven't drawn anything new for my blog in a while, so I made this collage instead. I'm consiering it my "Greatest Hits." Just like bands who have disappeared for a while but want everyone to remember they still exist, I'm repackaging some old material and hoping you're willing to pretend it's "new." And just like a "greatest hits" album has one new song thrown into the mix, I've added one new drawing to this that has never appeared on my blog before. Maybe finding it will be a fun way to keep everyone busy until I get around to posting something that's actually new. It's like "Where's Waldo" if you had no idea who Waldo was or what he looked like. Fun!

Thanks for coming to my blog... hopefully something new will be on the way soon. If not, I'll just move a few pigs around on this thing and post it again. "Greatest Hits: Volume 2." Sweet.

Arctic Jug Band

2008-05-13T22:35:00.003-06:00

As a young child I was introduced to the wonderful world of jug bandery by Disneyland's Country Bears and Emmet Otter. I've been a fan of household-object-and-appliance-made music ever since. (Before I continue, I'd like to welcome all of you who found your way here by googling the word "bandery," which, sadly, is not a word.)

I like lots of weird music. I used to just pretend to like weird music because I thought it was funny to annoy people who had to travel in the same car as me. Then somewhere along the way, my mockery of such music turned into a kind of misguided fondness. There are tons of songs on my iPod that you don't know by artists you've never heard of... like The Chad Mitchell Trio, Bread, The Sons of the Pioneers, Loggins and Messina, and, well... Emmet Otter. Where would I be if Emmet had never put that hole in the washtub? Not in the happy place I am where bears play corn jugs... which is the only place I care to be.

NBA Playoffs

2008-05-01T10:45:00.003-06:00

I haven't had time to draw anything lately because, much to my wife's dismay, I'm way too interested in the NBA Playoffs. I plan to get back to drawing again when we get into the later rounds and there aren't two televised games each night. Until then, visitors to my blog and my wife are going to find me very boring. Sadly there's no escaping that.

Why Did I Eat That?

2008-04-24T14:25:00.000-06:00

Have you noticed that April's almost over? Spring hasn't noticed... it's snowing right now. Because of the unseasonable, unconscionable weather, I didn't want to walk far to get lunch today, so I went to the restaurant that is closest to our office... McDonald's. Clearly convenience means more to me than survival, because when I eat a McDonald's burger, it spends the next week assaulting my insides and kicking the crap out of my colon. McDonald's and snow have joined forces to kill me, and I'm too lazy and cold to do anything about it.

I've always enjoyed how a cartoon character's stomach will take the shape of whatever it eats. I believe my own stomach shares this characteristic... and if that is the case, I must have recently eaten an oversized bowl of jiggly goo. I've recently begun a new diet... I'd like to drop about 20 pounds in the next few months. I realize that a McDonald's burger isn't exactly "diet" food, but come on! It's snowing... in April! I quickly resumed my diet right after lunch.

Freak of Nature

2008-04-16T21:20:00.002-06:00

The platypus is a goofy-looking freak. As true as that is, I say it with some reluctance, knowing that I've offended other animals in the past with commentary that was much less insulting. Did you know there is no universally accepted plural form of the word "platypus." No plural? What kind of thing can't be addressed unless it's alone? Only a platypus, which Wikipedia describes as an "egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal." That's right... not a duck... not a beaver. Just a venomous, egg-laying grab-bag of animal parts in one egg-laying mammal. You are a freak, platypus. And so are you, other platypus. Man, I wish you guys had a plural.

Our Pet Fish

2008-04-07T14:15:00.007-06:00

We went to our nephew's birthday party recently, and instead of taking home a party hat or some leftover cake, we were sent home with a goldfish. I'm not sure we really needed a pet, but as long as we were getting one as a party favor, I'm glad we got the easiest, most boring, least rewarding kind of pet. My wife and I had a conversation about our new fish that night:

Lovely wife: What should we name our fish?
Me: Steven Tyler.
Lovely wife: No - that's a dumb name.
Me: Try telling that to Steven Tyler.
Lovely wife: Well, I wouldn't tell him that, because it's not a dumb name for a person.
Me: I meant you should tell that to the fish.

For the next day or two, she tried calling the fish by other names, but I held fast to "Steven Tyler," and eventually the name stuck. She tried to justify it by saying that Steven Tyler (the person) has lips that are kind of like a fish's lips, but that's over thinking it. Everything doesn't always need to make sense. I know I don't.

The Killer Whale Strikes Back

2008-03-28T15:45:00.007-06:00

Several months ago I drew a killer whale. It seemed boring to post such a drawing without accompanying commentary, so I thought up some killer-whale-ish thoughts and put them on my blog. After that, I didn't think about killer whales for a long time. Then a couple of days ago, a killer whale, masquerading as a ten-year-old child, attacked me repeatedly with escalating hostility for the things I had written. The temperamental whale wrote:

"this is incorrect orcas dont eat and attack eneything they want they only attack when there hungary i know that and im only 10!."

Here we find further evidence to support the claim that killer whales are one of the sea's most intelligent creatures. Isn't it interesting that this orca knew he could never pass himself off as an adult human because of his inability to punctuate or spell, so he claimed to be a ten-year-old instead? Ingenious! I might have bought the ruse had he claimed to be a four-year-old, but even ten-year-olds can spell "anything."

"orcas dont attack great whites and there not the number 1 preditors of the sea great whites are i can point out so meny mistakes in this. you should go on are you smarter than a 10 year old to prove me wrong if your so smart and special to dis the name of the killer whale.YOU ARE THE BIGGEST IDIOT EVER!!!!."

"Dis" the name of the killer whale? Do killer whales really think this is how ten-year-olds speak? And what's with the obsessively repetitious insistence that these messages are coming from a ten-year-old? There's only one thing that would have been more suspicious for him to continuously repeat: "I am definitely not a killer whale."

"you are putting false images in the mind's of teenagers im 10 and know better than to believe you YOU HEAR THAT TEEN'S ,SHANES TERNING YOU INTO IDIOT."

I found the killer whale's specific concern for teens quite puzzling. It is possible that teens are the most delicious flavor of human. This would explain why the whale would object to me dissuading teens from swimming in the open sea.

"THEY DON'T ATTACK PEOPLE UNLESS THE PERSON PREVOKES THEM . YOU ARE THE MOST HORRIFIC URCHEN IN THE SEA GO SLITHER BACK TO THE ABASSLE PLAIN YOU INSULT TO HUMANATEY!!"

If killer whales really only attack people when they are provoked, it seems I gave this particular whale a pretty solid provoking (or "prevoking"). I need to be more careful when I write about animals that I assume have no internet access. Back to the abassle plain with me.

Disgruntled Bunny

2008-03-23T10:07:00.003-06:00

This week's Toon Club topic was Easter, and I had planned to draw something really cute and fluffy and bright... something sweet enough to make everyone a little nauseous. But last week I started car pooling to work with some guys I work with... Brandon and Joe. Joe suggested on Friday that we should each draw a maniacal bunny, and that's where this guy came from.

It's nice to be car pooling... not only because gasoline now costs more than the car you put it in, but also because I'm finally saving the rainforests and polar bears like I'd always hoped to, and my weekly road rage numbers are way down, which will probably add several years to my life. I'm not just saving the rainforests and polar bears... I'm saving me. And more important than any of those things... I'm saving money. Happy Easter, everyone!

Piggy-Back Ride

2008-03-17T21:45:00.005-06:00

It's been a while since I did a drawing video, so I put this one together to appease the more-than-twelve people who like them. I probably should have put some thought into what I should draw before my pencil hit the paper. Clearly I didn't, and I came up with this unexpected result... a cowboy bear, swinging a lasso, riding a small pig through the desert. My goal for my next drawing video is to not include any pigs or bears, but so far I've learned that pigs and bears are what I draw when I draw without thinking. I like not thinking... it's how I roll.

In a piggyback ride, is the "piggy" the carrier or the rider? Why are either of them the piggy? That style of carrying isn't pig-like at all. It should be called "gorilla-back riding" or "koala-back riding," because gorillas and koalas sometimes carry their young on their backs. That's not how pigs carry each other. In fact, pigs don't carry each other at all. They wallow lazily. "Piggy-back ride" should be the term for tripping over someone who's lying lifelessly on the ground or in a gutter.

Donkey

2008-03-09T18:00:00.002-06:00

This is a donkey... as are most of the people I share the road with during my daily commute. I should like to address these folks at this time. My not-so-bright friends... it is okay to be passed. If you only want to go 55 on the freeway, that's fine. Just get to the right lane, and go your 55. Don't go 55 in the left lane and jump to 90 when someone tries to pass you. Doing that makes you the kind of donkey whose first name is "Jack." Choose a speed and stay with it, and if you're not passing anyone, get to the right. Remember... if you're not stuck in traffic, you're causing it.

I drew this a few weeks ago for some local people who wanted to update the logo on their website. There's more to it than you see here, but the donkey was my favorite part... so that's all you get. You'll have to go to their website to see the whole thing.

More Storyboards

2008-02-26T08:51:00.004-07:00

A couple of months ago I posted some storyboards from something I was working on. Recently I've been trying to wrap that up, and I haven't drawn much of anything else... so in the interest of keeping my blog alive, here are some more out-of-sequence storyboards that don't make sense. I hope to get back to my normal, ranting ways very soon.

Robot Dog

2008-02-18T11:59:00.003-07:00

These birds are over-estimating what it takes to scare a cat. Why waste your time and resources acquiring a robotic dog when a flashlight or an old boot would be just as effective? If you want to cause a cat to flee in terror, the only thing you really need is a cat. This drawing is where the phrases "scaredy-cat" and "bird-brained" collide.

Valentine's Day Again

2008-02-11T12:50:00.001-07:00

Another Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and I still haven't gotten around to buying my wife a gift for last year's Valentine's Day. In fact, if you remember, all she got last year was a weird drawing of a bunny and a fox hugging next to some smiley hearts. I guess that's kind of like a Valentine's gift... and in that same way, I guess you could say I'm done Valentine's shopping for this year too. It looks like the thoughtfulness and care that should go into selecting a gift for my wife will once again be replaced by a weird drawing with hearts in it. I drew this the day after watching Disney's old, non-Oscar-winning film, The Ugly Dachshund. I guess I just had weenie dogs on my mind. And why not? After all, they are delicious.

The word "dachshund" is German for "badger dog." I wonder if that's why this "Weenie of Love" is so similar to the "Badgers of Love" I drew recently. Apparently I've convinced myself that any animal with "badger" in its title is to be armed with heart-shaped arrows.

Happy Valentine's Day to my wonderful wife... sorry I only got you one of my drawings again. I'm a weenie like that. Hey, look - a tie-in! Now the drawing kind of makes sense.

Groundhog Day

2008-02-01T23:15:00.000-07:00

You can tell my blog has been around a long time when I start repeating topics. Two years ago I exhausted all of my Groundhog-Day-themed material, so for this year's groundhog drawing, I'm just going to have to write about the groundhog itself. Here are a few things I just learned about groundhogs:

"The groundhog, also known as the woodchuck, land beaver, or whistlepig, is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots."

Okay, I'm familiar with the term "woodchuck," mainly because of all the times I've been invited to consider the amount of wood a woodchuck could chuck, considering it could in fact chuck wood. But since when are groundhogs also known as whistepigs? Who knows them as that, and what asylum do they call home? As for land beaver... don't we already have a land beaver? That's like calling an elephant a "land cow." We already have a land cow... it's called a cow. The paragraph goes on to say:

"Most marmots, such as yellow-bellied and hoary marmots, live in rocky and mountainous areas, but the woodchuck is a lowland creature."

"Yellow-bellied" and "hoary?" Who's naming the different kinds of marmots, and what resentment are they harboring? Isn't "yellow-bellied" the Old West term for someone who's cowardly or spineless? I think that's what the Sheriff of Nottingham called Marty McFly. My vote is for "lily-livered" marmot... it just sounds a little more insulting. And then there's the "whorey" marmot... I know that's not how it's spelled, but marmots can't read, so it all sounds the same to them. Yellow-bellied or whorey... the poor marmots can't win.

From now on, instead of calling it "Groundhog Day," I will know February 2nd as "Lily-Livered Whistlepig Day." Just when you thought this holiday couldn't make any less sense...

Those Lazy Koalas

2008-01-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

Koalas sleep between 18 and 20 hours a day. If that statistic surprises you (and if you're not very good with math and don't have a calculator handy) you'll also be surprised to learn that koalas are only awake between 4 and 6 hours a day. A koala would have to live 108 years to spend as much time awake as I've experienced in my 32 years. If he wanted to catch up on the first three seasons of Lost before season four premiers on Thursday night, politically incorrectly assuming the koala was in fact a "he," a koala would have had to spend every waking minute in front of a TV for the last two weeks... three weeks if he was interested in bonus features. Of course, he would have needed to start in late October if he found himself needing to rewind every time something bizzarely confusing happened. But perhaps the most staggering statistic of all in relation to the laziness and over-sleeping habits of koalas... it would take a koala nearly a week to do the math that went into the writing of this paragraph, considering the koala's math skills are on par with my own... it took me less than two days.

This is the 200th post on my blog. How about that? Many thanks to those of you who come here all the time... the responsibility I feel to keep you just a little bit entertained is one of the things that keeps me drawing, so thanks for the pressure you provide. I never would have made it to 200 without you looming over me like that.

Home on the Range

2008-01-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

Oh, give you a home where the buffalo roam? That's a strange request. I suppose if given the choice, I'd take roaming buffalo as roommates over temperamental grizzlies or bitey bald eagles, but for now I'll just stick with my wildlife-free living arrangements, I think.

Little Davy Crockett

2008-01-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

"Born on a mountain top in Tennessee... greenest state in the land of the free. Raised in the woods so he knew every tree. Killed him a bear when he was only three. Davy... Davy Crockett - king of the wild frontier."

How does a three-year-old kill a bear? Was the bear elderly? Did it not have legs? Did Davy accidentally run it over with a tractor? Because this could not have been a full-strength, full-sized, full-brained bear. I couldn't tie my shoes when I was three... in fact, I considered it a victory when I got them on the right feet. And I'm supposed to believe that Davy Crockett killed a fully functional bear at that age? I guess that's why there's a song and a TV show about him and not even so much as a jingle about me and my wrong-footed shoes.

Davy Crockett probably would have gone down in history as the man in the bear-skin cap if wearing a bear's carcass on your head was at all comfortable or possible. But since animals of that size are impractical as headwear, he simply killed and wore the first hat-sized critter to pass unluckily by. Let's forget about the bear for a second... how does a three-year-old even kill a raccoon? Not just physically, but morally. I feel bad when I accidentally step on a grasshopper. Little Davy was beyond feeling.

Some Storyboards

2008-01-01T20:30:00.003-07:00

Here are some storyboards I did a few weeks ago for a project I'd like to see made into a film someday... inspired by character designs that my good bud Seth Hippen did when we were in college. These boards aren't in order, and about ninety percent of the sequence is missing, so don't feel too bad if the story doesn't make any sense to you. That certainly doesn't mean you're dumb... though you still might be.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog, and even more thanks to those of you who leave comments. Happy New Year, everyone!

Christmas '82

2007-12-24T13:33:00.001-07:00

I haven't had time to draw recently for a reason that's sleeping better the last couple of nights, but I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and I needed a picture to post with such a greeting. So I went back to the archives and found this one from 1982... the same year as the Thanksgiving one I posted last month. I wish I had drawn more of the Nativity scene than I did here, because if my Indian at the first Thanksgiving feast was that flamboyant, I'd be very interested in knowing what a wise man looked like.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Gwen

2007-12-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't drawn anything in the last few days, and it's going to be a few more days before I draw again. Last Thursday night we went to the hospital and traded in my wife's mobility for a cute, little girl we named Gwen. Actually my wife and many of the nurses would probably object to my use of the word "little" as she weighed 9 pounds 12 ounces. After only a few days of life, her hobbies are limited to eating, sleeping, pooping, staring at the Christmas tree, and hosting 4AM scream-a-thons. We love her, but we're tired. I'll draw again soon, but until then, here's our new daugther. So far she looks like me but still manages to be cute. It's a Christmas miracle!

Frosty the Snowman

2007-12-13T01:00:00.001-07:00

"Frosty the Snowman made the children laugh and play..."

Badgers of Love

2007-12-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

I drew these a few weeks ago for a character design exercise we did at work. My first attempt looked like everything I draw, so they told me to branch out and do something new. I have the hardest time breaking away from my own drawing style... mostly because I rarely feel like I have any reason to. But in this case I gave it my best shot, and after a few attempts, I ended up with a final version that looked something like this:
Actually it looked a lot like this because this is it. The goal was to design a squirrel, a badger, or a muskrat that would fit into a video game in a "helper" role. I figured this badger would follow you around and shoot enemies with his love arrows... then instead of wanting to kill you, they would just find you attractive. If their attraction became too aggressive, I suppose you'd have a new set of problems to deal with, but it's not really a game, so I'm not too concerned.

Mocking Santa

2007-12-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

Shouldn't elves know better than to make fun of someone who sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake? It would be hard to work for a boss like that, because let's be honest... Santa's going to get mocked. He's thousands of years old, grossly overweight, and has been wearing the same, goofy-looking suit for longer than I've been alive. I wouldn't wear that thing in the privacy of my own closet... Santa wears it to the mall.

All right... based on the reflection in my monitor, I'm pretty sure he's standing behind me right now. This may be my last post.

I've Been Tagged

2007-11-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Well... I've been tagged. You'd think I would have noticed it in the mirror the morning after it happened, but no. I first learned of it while reading my sister's blog. What does it mean to be "tagged?" Well, it doesn't mean I've been marked for observation by the forest service like I originally assumed. It's actually something that kind of resembles a chain letter, or a virus, or a plague. If you get tagged, you're supposed to write six interesting things about yourself on your blog, and then pass the assignment on to a handful of your friends. Good news for my friends, though... the tagging stops here. I'm breaking the chain. But even though I'm not paying the plague forward, I thought I'd write six things about myself and hope that at least one of them is mildly interesting.

1 - I've never seen so much as a minute from any episode of the Star Trek franchise... not the original series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or The College Years. I've also never seen a Star Trek film. I don't have anything against Star Trek, but I don't really have anything for it either.

2 - It bothers me when people tell me to "turn off the TV and pick up a book." I think reading's great... if you're stranded alone on an island or if you hate everyone you know and don't wish to speak to them or enjoy their company. A few years back, I tried to read all of the Harry Potter books. I've never felt so anti-social. The books were fine, but I might as well have been in a coma considering how much human interaction I experienced that summer. Think of someone you know who absolutely loves reading... that's all you know about them, isn't it.

3 - I don't run for fun... because running for fun is impossible. I'll run as hard as I can if I'm playing basketball or crossing a freeway, but running for fun? Hitting myself in the head with a hammer sounds more fun than running. One of my old roommates used to invite me to go running with him. From what? Are there wolves in the apartment? Because if there are, I'll run without question or invitation. But if our apartment is as wolf-free as it appears to be, I'll save my running for sports and moments of extreme cowardice.

4 - I can fly... if you count airplanes and let a pilot help me. I can also fly if you're willing to consider "free falling" a form of flight. But since that would require me to fall from something, I prefer to fly the "airplane" way, thank you.

5 - Nothing makes me more angry than people who talk during movies, bad referees, and drivers who don't understand the "stay right except to pass" part of freeway driving. Actually lots of other things make me that angry. My list of things that don't make me angry would be much shorter... maybe I should go that route.

6 - The sixth thing that is interesting about me is that there are only five things that are interesting about me. That blows my mind.

Adopt a Rabbit

2007-11-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know... this is kind of sad. But don't judge me. You were thinking the same thing.

Thanksgiving '82

2007-11-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

I found this Thanksgiving-themed masterpiece in one of my old boxes, and I was surprised to learn that I'm still using the same basic drawing technique now that I was using as a 7-year-old. And what technique is that? Masking my inabilities through shortcuts and trickery, of course. Consider my more recent drawings... the gradient backgrounds, the Photoshop-selection-tool shadows, and the way my characters frequently conceal their poorly-drawn hands behind their backs or in their pockets. Yes, the art of using shortcuts to hide shortcomings remains the essence of my drawing "style."

Look at this drawing... I used that exact technique. Obviously I wasn't sure how to draw a turkey's head. No matter... that's why a page has borders. Clever staging seamlessly covered up that potential hang-up. I wasn't the best at drawing trees either, so I labeled the tree, thus wiping away any possible confusion there. And if you're having trouble finding the fox, that's because I cut back on drawing time by hiding his body behind the labeled tree. If you still can't find him, just read the labels.

But the best part of this drawing is its clear depiction of the first Thanksgiving... when the pilgrims and the feathered-beret-wearing pimps gathered together in the tall dead, grass of autumn beneath hovering trees to feast, to give thanks, and to make fun of people who wore purple jumpsuits... which is still what Thanksgiving means to me.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Thanksgiving

2007-11-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving is just one week away, making the coming week the most dangerous week of the year for turkeys... unless you're a Canadian turkey, in which case the most dangerous week of the year has already passed, and this is your sixth week of mourning. But if you're an American turkey, look out. Most of you are doomed.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't eat turkey if turkeys were cute or if they tasted bad, but ugly and delicious? There's nothing safe about that combination. There's lots of stuff to be thankful for on Thanksgiving... family, health, paid vacation days, football, Christmas, etc. But mostly I'm thankful I'm not a turkey.

Mountain Lion

2007-11-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

Question: What is the difference between a mountain lion and a cougar?
Answer: Most sources will tell you they are the same thing, but in actuality, there is one major difference... mountain lions carry canteens.

Question: What is the difference between a mountain lion and a mountain man?
Answer: The tail.

The Mad Tea Party

2007-11-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

I was always confused as a kid by the way the tea party in Alice in Wonderland was referred to as "mad." Mad? Those guys didn't seem mad at all. They tipped the scales on "crazy," but I never saw them as being mad. Later in life I learned that "mad" can also mean "crazy." Synonyms... yet another way language has managed to vex me.

When languages were originally developed, couldn't we have just made up an entirely new word for each new thing? Theodor Geisel got his doctorate in making up words, so I know there's potential for lots more of them than we're using. We needn't be giving multiple meanings to the few we have. I still giggle when Gene Autry insists that I be "merry and gay" each Christmas. Synonymns make me mad... by which I mean both "angry" and "nutty."

Scapegoat

2007-11-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

Lately I haven't been posting things on my blog as regularly as I like to, which makes me nervous that the twelve people who come here might be losing interest. Sorry that I've been so boring recently, but I'm hoping to get back on track this week. I should have a bit more time for blogging in the near future now that work's settling down a little, I'm not sick anymore, Halloween's done, and the mischievous scapegoat has finally been imprisoned.

Check back soon... more stuff's on the way.

Thriller

2007-10-28T21:20:00.000-06:00

I remember the night that Michael Jackson's Thriller video premiered... my whole family gathered together to watch it on TV. And right next to that in my memory are all of the times I ran through our upstairs hallway from the zombies and werewolves I figured were lurking in the closets up there. Now that I have a job in story-telling, an imagination is a valuable thing to have. But that same imagination is a curse to a kid, as evidenced by a childhood full of nightmares. Sharks, snakes, Michael Jackson... I missed out on so much sleep as a kid because of terrifying monsters like these. I learned years later that Michael Jackson was actually supposed to have been more scary as a werewolf... I totally missed that.

Happy Halloween, everybody!