Flooding the House

As a kid I had glorious visions of filling up our entire house with water and swimming from room to room. It never bothered me that most of my possessions would be destroyed in the flood or that my family would immediately die from electrocution if someone were to turn on the TV. Even knowing that the lack of breathing would only allow me to enjoy my aquatic wonder-home for about a minute before I drowned didn't stand in my way. All imaginable impossibilities aside, there was only one reason I never actually turned on all of the faucets and flooded the house. You guessed it... sharks.

Heaven knows, as soon as your house if full of water, it's only a matter of two or three minutes before sharks show up. And despite what shark experts keep telling me, sharks ARE mindless, eating machines.

Now that I think about it, though, it's not just incoming sharks that sour me on this idea. I've just realized that a small portion of my house-pool would inevitably be made up of at least some percentage of toilet water. So if it weren't for sharks and toilet water, this would be an excellent idea. But as reality stands, I don't think I'll flood my house on purpose... probably.

S.T. Lewis Arch

Unlike the boastfully extravagant St. Louis Arch, which is 630 feet tall and a predictably boring 630 feet wide, the S.T. Lewis Arch stands a reasonable eight-feet tall and is roughly three manatees wide. No one likes a "show-off" arch, and I'm guessing that's why so many people Google "St. Lewis Arch" instead of Googling the more popular, similarly named "St. Louis Arch." It was those Google-using, spelling bee champions who inspired me to create my very own arch. But unlike the one in Missouri with its cold, stainless steel, my arch is made out of the animals I most like to draw... and a cardinal. You like that, St. Louis? Bring it.

If you're familiar with my blog, you know that I make fun of Google searches from time to time. Here are some recent Googlings I've enjoyed:

• How did cheetahs get endangered?
• How to bread chipmunks
• Sharks or pigs which tastes better when flying
• What does a boxing kangaroo stand for?
• Show me the ocean sharks and things

I love that last one. Google's a magic mirror now? I guess you could just search for "shark" and then click on "images," but where's the feeling of a royal decree in that? And you just want to see the ocean sharks? So no "non-ocean-going" sharks, then. I guess that's pretty specific. "Things," on the other hand... maybe a little vague. As for the rest of the list... cheetahs got endangered when lots of them died. To bread a chipmunk, dip it in milk and then roll it in flour and bread crumbs. Flying pigs don't exist, so based purely on that fundamental logic, I would guess that a flying shark is going to taste better. However, managing to get a taste of a shark while it's flying may prove to be difficult. Good luck with all that. And lastly, a boxing kangaroo stands for truth and justice... maybe some other stuff. It's hard to say because they don't speak, but I like to think they're not just boxing without a purpose.

King Kong

Giant gorillas make really good pets if you live on an island where dinosaurs are trying to eat you. If you live anywhere else, a giant gorilla is about the worst pet there is... unless you count cats. No pet is worse than a cat.

The 13th Ladybug

If you're familiar with Sesame Street's classic "Ladybug Picnic" segment, you already know that twelve ladybugs attended the picnic for an afternoon of sack-racing, rope-jumping, and the inevitable whine-a-thon concerning the over-pricing of furniture and rugs. The ladybugs seemed like a fairly likeable bunch, but then it occurred to me... unless fate is repeatedly crossing my path with the paths of the exact same ladybugs, there are quite possibly hundreds of ladybugs out there... or at least more than twelve. So what about all the ladybugs who didn't get invited to the exclusionary, elitist picnic? Still waiting by the phone... crying... thinking of "knock-knock" jokes they might have told. What about them? I'm beginning to think that that fire wasn't an accident. (The fact that they had marshmallows kind of tipped me off).

Sesame Street is the best show ever for kids, or at least it was before Elmo moved in and ran Grover out of the neighborhood. I know some of you disagree because your kids like Barney or the Wiggles. Yeah, well - they'd probably like rum if you gave it to them too. That doesn't make it right.

Juggling Rabbit

Once again I've drawn something that caused my wife to say, "I think you need therapy." She's serious too. But you see, drawing is the therapy. Now that I've drawn this semi-violent scene, I don't have to try it in real life with real chicks or real bunnies. The violent tendencies are relieved, and nobody's hurt. Therapy complete. Thanks heavens I have art as an outlet... I shudder at the thought of how innocent chicks may have suffered otherwise.

I think it was the chicks on the ground that really bothered her, but I've tried juggling, and it's hard. I'm impressed the rabbit still has more than half of the little guys in the mix. Instead of being critical of what he's doing wrong, let's just celebrate what he's doing right, because that's some fine juggling... especially for a rabbit.

Batman & Bullwinkle

I've given up using food for inspiration... now I'm just combining TV shows I liked as a kid. It's still not creative, but at least it doesn't make sense.

I drew this for this week's Toon Club topic: Rocky and Bullwinkle. I hope next week's topic is "Batman and Robin," or I'll have to draw something completely new. I think I speak for me when I say, "Enough with all this drawing!" Check out my niece's drawing of Rocky on Toon Club Jr. It's the coolest!

The Battle Gator

As you may already be aware, Battle Gators do not exist. What troubles me most about this fact is that all the supplies you would need to build a Battle Gator DO exist. Assuming you don't have a history of violence or terrorism, it would only take four or five days to gather the necessary weapons. And then, what... maybe ten minutes to strap everything to an alligator? In less than a week of very minimal work, I could possess the ultimate weapon. But alas, I'm lazy, and I haven't a single alligator to my name. Oh well... a man can dream (which is exactly why I take so many naps).

You should have seen the macaroni and cheese I traced to come up with this thing.

Meet the Robinsons

Today Disney released their 46th animated feature: Meet the Robinsons. Wait... this is going to sound way cooler: Today we released our 46th animated feature! Sweet. Okay, so I didn't have anything to do with the movie, but I did work on the video game. Here are a few of the storyboards I did for one of the game's cinematics. I tried to find a sequence that wouldn't give away anything about the movie or the game... just wanted to advertise them both a little here on my blog. If you haven't seen the movie yet, what are you waiting for? It's pretty nice, and the Bowler Hat Guy's great. So go support animation, Disney, and ME by seeing the one and playing the other.

Don't expect to see the characters I've drawn in either of them, though... storyboard artists don't draw on model... or at least I don't.

Pretzelephant

I'm tired of making up stuff to draw from my own head. From now on I'm just going to trace food and maybe add a tail or some eyes if I need them to complete the image. This will likely leave me with very awkward-looking, disproportioned crimes of nature, but my brain demands a rest. Plus I'm eating anyway, so there's one less thing I have to do. So long, creativity. Hello, misshapen elephant.

The Frog Prince

Sometimes I see a beautiful, attractive girl with some creepy, weird-looking guy, and my first thought is, "How did that guy get a girl like her? Is he really funny? Is she really blind? What's going on there?" Then I think, "I hope everyone isn't that critical of this photo, because I was really sick that day."

The point is, as ugly or unlikeable as you probably are, there could very well be someone out there who's willing to settle for you. That's right... there's someone for everyone! And if it turns out there's no one for you, then that phrase is inaccurate.

I've heard it said that "you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince." Call me crazy, but if I was looking for a prince (and I'm not... because I'm married... to a girl... in case you didn't get that from the first paragraph), first I'd try knocking on the drawbridge at the castle. If that failed, maybe I'd ask the Queen if she'd seen him. There's also wanted posters, private investigators, pictures on milk cartons... countless methods at your disposal. Initiating intimate encounters with frogs would be way down the list for me if it even made the list at all. It seems fairly obvious that the frogs themselves developed that phrase, and I'm not buying it.

Drawing a Flying Pig

Did my blog really need another flying pig? Probably not, but this one kind of happened on its own. On Saturday I decided to make a video showing the transition from "blank piece of paper" to "finished, colored, character sketch" and put it on YouTube for the world to yawn about. After setting up our video camera on the kitchen table and pressing the "record" button, I realized I still didn't know what I intended to draw. Turns out the "flying pig" is my default sketch... so here he is.

And no - those aren't special effects. This is actually how I hold a pencil. You'd think they would spend a day in pre-school or Kindergarten teaching kids how to hold a pencil. By the time my third grade teacher tried to correct me, it was too late. I was already hooked on my self-taught, semi-retarded, freak way. I like it, though... mostly because my thumb doesn't have to work at all. It can just hang out while the rest of the hand does the work.

Duck Hunt

I never had a gun for my Nintendo... too dangerous. But whenever I visited a friend who had one, you could be certain I was shooting poorly animated, heavily pixelated ducks well into the evening on "Duck Hunt." Unless you sat inches from the TV and scraped the gun against the screen to ensure your aim, you were bound to miss an occasional duck. And the moment you did... enter the mocking dog. You think that's funny, dog? Well, laugh it up, because I just decided what I'm doing with this last bullet.

I've never been hunting, but if I did I imagine that the first time my dog laughed at me for misfiring at a duck would come just seconds before the first time I shot my dog.

I recently learned that Duck Hunt has a game mode where you just fire a machine gun at an endless parade of passing dogs. Now, shooting your insensitive dog occasionally is one thing. Mowing down his entire family... a little extreme. I did it anyway. He knows he deserves it.

Modern Mallard

I drew this for our "Chicken Little: Ace in Action" game. In one of the cinematics, Abby references Modern Mallard magazine and waves a copy of it around. We probably should have handed my rough sketch off to one of our incredibly talented Avalanche painters, but for some reason we didn't, so now my rough, little magazine cover has an appearance in the game. This duck is pretty much a direct rip off of Mulan... at least as far as her attire goes. It's nice working for Disney because you can totally rip off Disney and no one cares.

I decided to post this because I haven't drawn much lately. I went to Disneyland for a few days last week. My brother and I ran into Tony Robbins in the elevator at our motel. In an elevator with Tony Robbins? Hey, isn't this an exact scene from "Shallow Hal." I even shook his giant hand.

More stuff on the way soon.

My Chipalobuffamunk & Me

When I saw that this week's Toon Club topic was "Imaginary Friends," I didn't know what I would draw. I never had any imaginary friends... unless all my friends were imaginary. I guess that would explain the low turnout for my birthday party.

I decided to turn my childhood self into a character from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends... a fine show on Cartoon Network. Seeing my t-shirt, you may assume that this drawing is set in 1981. But if you watch our home movies (and don't) you'll see that I was wearing that same "81" shirt on four consecutive Christmas mornings. So all the numbered t-shirt indicates is that it was not before 1981.

Sadly, the head-to-body size comparison here is not a caricature... which is probably why I never changed shirts. Squeezing my giant noggin through tiny neck holes has nearly ripped off my ears on several occasions. I'd probably still be wearing that t-shirt if I hadn't torn through the thing like an angry Incredible Hulk in late '85.

Got the Lakers shorts and high-tops going there too... I was quite a Lakers fan in the 80's. Magic, Kareem, Worthy, Scott, Cooper... hey! The 80's Lakers were my imaginary friends! I'm so glad I finally put this together. Thanks for missing my birthday party... stupid Lakers.

Battling Ram

A battering ram is a siege engine... something like a large log, which, when propelled with significant force, is able to crush through walls or break open locked doors and gates. A battling ram is what dumb people call a battering ram.

As long as I'm on the topic of sounding stupid... it's not "I could care less." If you ever tell someone you could care less, please follow that statement up with a list of some of the things you could possibly care less about: CD jewel cases, Jamaican law, discarded staples, etc. If you don't care at all, the phrase is, "I couldn't care less." That means anything is a more compelling topic to you, such as, "I couldn't care less than I do about this lesson in grammar."

I drew this so people who think it's called a battling ram would feel a little less stupid, and then I wrote this to counteract what I drew. This week's Toon Club topic was "Gladiators." I once met a man in Germany who said he was a gladiator in his previous life. As it turns out, the gladiator who killed him in that life is his mom in this life. Small world.

More Sketches

Just cleaning the desk... found these sketches. Why is the big, superhero fox squeezing the neck of an unarmed rabbit? Doesn't really seem like a "superhero" thing to do. Superheroes don't strangle rabbits... they kick them.

I like the duck all right. He's making the face I do when I accidentally find myself conversing with someone intelligent. I don't mean to insult those of you who have talked to me and haven't seen me make that face, but come on... admit it... we're just not that smart.

Widescreen vs Full Screen

Maleficent is a reasonably pretty lady with stunning cheek bones, but she manages to mask that beauty and elegance beneath a giant cloak of "crazy." Where do you have to be mentally to vow to kill a baby because you weren't invited to a party? With Mr. Blackbird on her shoulder, she keeps company with semi-retarded demons, and she not only has the ability to turn into a dragon, but she actually found the need for it at least once in her life. I would gladly try my hand at defending her in a court of law, because it's clear that "evil" takes a backseat to "insanity" with that one. She's definitely one of my favorite villains ever.

Disney's Sleeping Beauty is a pretty good movie... unless you see it in widescreen, in which case it's about the best movie ever! I'm amazed that anyone is buying full screen movies. I've heard people say, "I don't like the black bars?" So don't look at them. I'd rather have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen than unviewable characters and actions taking place beyond the borders of my TV. Look at this shot from Sleeping Beauty... the full screen version cuts out two of the goons. How will they prove to their friends that they were even in this movie?

Most of the new TV's that are being made are in widescreen format. As soon as widescreen TV's are your only option, you full-sreen DVD-buyers will have black bars on the sides of the picture instead of the top and bottom. But whatever kind of TV you have, you'll always be missing part of the picture. It's like wearing horse blinders to the Grand Canyon (which I would only recommend for pack mules, because those trails are dangerous, and you pack mules need to be focused on the path ahead). But if you ever go to the Grand Canyon, see the whole thing without horse blinders... in widescreen... the way it was divinely intended.

Google Searches

I drew this for Toon Club's Favorite Cartoon Villains topic, but then I changed my mind because it looked too much like the screen cap I used for reference. I figured I'd post it on here anyway for the unfortunate people who Google "Headless Horse Man" and end up at my circus freak.

Through my site meter I'm able to track how people arrive at my blog. I'm amazed at what people are searching for... and amazed that it brings them here. These are some of my recent favorites:

• Are soft couches good?
• Zombie Cruise
• Where to buy Cheetos in Hamburg
• Chipmunks, how it eats
• When you are afraid of sharks, how you called that phobia
• What do cheetahs do?

I like how some people apparently ask Google questions instead of just searching key words. "Dear Google... what do cheetah's do?" A poorly worded search such as that can yield poor results full of inaccurate information. Next time try something simple like "cheetah behavior." But since you're already here: cheetahs sleep, sit, run, stand, walk, eat, lie down, breed, hunt, blink, yawn, and die.

And as long as I'm responding to Google searches... a couch is only as wonderful as it is soft. Zombie cruises are currently unavailable because zombies are more interested in inflicting property damage than they are in playing shuffleboard at sea. Twelve years ago you could get peanut butter and root beer at Karstadt in Hamburg... they might have Cheetos. "Chipmunks" is the plural form of "chipmunk." Therefore, it's impossible to answer how "it" eats because chipmunks are "they." Nice riddle, though. And Selachophobia is how I called when I am afraid of sharks.

Tortoise vs Hare

A while ago I downloaded "Texas Hold 'Em" to my cell phone. I use my phone more for that game than I do for talking to people. So far I've won 1240 tournaments and 42 world championships. I would calculate how much time I've wasted, but the results would be depressing... and my only calculator is on my phone, and I'm not about to waste valuable battery time on a boring calculator.

I've learned a lot from playing cell phone poker:
1 - There is no money in cell phone poker, but you don't lose any either.
2 - Don't ever go "all in" on a "7-high."
3 - It's very difficult but not impossible to bluff a cell phone.

This is my version of The Tortoise and the Hare. I'm not sure why I put a casino spin on it. I lived in Las Vegas when I was a kid, so maybe gambling is still in my blood, or at least in my blue Col-erase pencil.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day... the one day of the year that Michael Bolton's music doesn't drive me crazy. That's a lie. But it is the one day of the year that I don't find the color pink nauseating. Another lie. But, honestly... Valentine's Day is the one day of the year that I'm not allowed to watch "Lost" because it's not romantic enough. Why a Wednesday, Valentine's Day?

My poor wife... she puts up with a lot. And I hope she puts up with this drawing being her Valentine's gift, because there's no "Plan B." I drew this Valentine for my wife, but I'm giving it to each of you in the spirit of the elementary school rule that, if you bring a Valentine for one person, you have to bring one for everyone. That rule was the only reason I ever got a Valentine... and the reason I was certain that all the hot girls in my 4th grade class were totally into me.

Disgustingly Cute

For the Avalanche Art Blog, the topic was both "love" and "too cute for comfort." I combined the two and threw in some good old "forced emotion." What do people think is cute? Puppies and babies, right? Add several spoonfuls of sap, and the cuteness casserole is ready to serve. Don't eat it, though... it's designed to make you gag.

This is the same way that country songs are written. First you think of stuff that makes you cry, then you make all the stuff rhyme, and then you sing it while wearing a big hat. Wonderful, forced emotion.

The Not-So-Little Mermaid

A while back I drew a mermaid and wrote something about manatees being the possible source of the mermaid myth. Manatees? Really? Perhaps its time our historians of mythology consider other possibilities. Not even sailors get that drunk.

The Walrus & the Carpenter

This week's Toon Club topic is "The Walrus and the Carpenter" from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. I love Disney's version in Alice in Wonderland... one of my favorite animated segments from anything ever.

Based on the weird things Lewis Carroll wrote, I would not doubt that he had plenty of conversations with walruses, but the rest of us would likely find that quite impossible due to the common belief that walruses do not speak... not of shoes, nor of ships, nor of sealing wax. So for this story to be at all believable, we are to logically assume that the carpenter is completely insane. I picture him a Robinson Crusoe-like character who forces the local marine life to wear clothes he makes out of driftwood and then has conversations "with" them about cabbages and kings.

Tom Hanks befriended a volleyball. The carpenter? A dignified walrus chap.

The Western Black Bear

I did this last night for the Avalanche Art Blog... the topic was "Villains," so I went with the obvious choice: the Western Black Bear. It would be hard to find a more feared villain in the folklore of my mind. Although I'd rather write something stupid about the bear, the old west, or how I'd benefit from looking at visual reference of a gun before I try to draw one, instead I'm going to explain the process I use to arrive at a final image like this one. I've never been much of a painter, so here's how I've managed to get around that with the help of Photoshop.

Step 1 - First I try to decide on a rough character design to base my drawing on. Sometimes I skip this step for time reasons, and that becomes pretty obvious... at least to me. I start out with a bunch of heads and faces, then as soon as I find one I kind of like, I add a body to it.
Step 2 - Now that I do a lot of storyboards, I've abandoned the skill of drawing on model. So the "design" of the character becomes a loose version of what the final drawing might kind of look like. But I at least have something to base my final drawing on, so I continue with a rough sketch of the character in the pose I want him in. Step 3 - After using very basic shapes to get the gesture I want, I add all my details in what I consider a rough sketch, but probably not as "rough" as a lot of people draw. I sharpen my pencil a lot too. I hate drawing with a dull pencil. That's the main reason my rough sketches stay somewhat clean. Step 4 - With the drawing mostly nailed down, I trace it using an ink pen, sometimes making minor changes to shapes and smaller details like fingers that weren't quite right. I've done a fair amount of animation clean-up, and that's pretty much what this step is. It mostly takes patience and a steady hand. I also generally use a thicker line for the outermost lines and taper them into the form where necessary. Step 5 - I scan the drawing into the computer, then in Photoshop I desaturate the image and adjust the brightness and contrast to make the clean-up line solid and clear. Then in the layers window, I duplicate the image twice and throw away the background. With the selection tool's tolerance set at 32 (which I believe is the default setting), I select everything behind the bear and delete it from the lower layer. Then I un-check the "contiguous" box from the selection tool's settings and click anywhere on the image that's white, which selects all the white area in one click. I delete that area from the top layer. Man, this sounds more confusing than it is. Then I lock the two layers. Now, finally, I can drop colors into the lower layer without losing any of my line drawing, which sits above it on the top layer. This paragraph makes less sense than most of the of crap I write on my blog. Step 6 - Next I color the outline (the top layer) using colors that are darker and a bit more saturated than the color of the object I'm outlining. Sometimes I skip this step and leave the outline black. Coloring the outline makes it seem rounded instead of flat, so when I have time, I prefer coloring the outline.Step 7 - Using the selection lasso, I select various areas of the character and "feather" the selections. I feather more for round shapes and less for hard shadows. Then I adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness to add shadows, highlights, and reflective lighting. Step 8 - By the time I get to the background, I've usually worn myself out on the drawing, so I drop a quick shadow under the character, mess with the opacity of the shadow layer, and call it done. But sometimes I want more of a mood than the white background offers. Enter the gradient tool. I choose some colors I think I'll like then use them to make a sky and a ground. Then I mess with the hue and saturation until I'm satisfied with my cheap, stupid background. Step 9 - Then to finish it up, I add some clouds or something. In this drawing I airbrushed in some haze in the background to fade out the ground line, and I added some foreground dust. Then I flattened the whole image and did a little more adjusting of the hue, saturation, and contrast of the image as a whole... trying to unify the colors a little more. And that's my final drawing. Here it is again so you don't have to scroll all the way back up to the top.Hopefully some of that made sense. I apologize to my family and friends who came here for weirdness and got a lesson in not painting. Back to the senseless ramblings next time. I hate trying to make sense for this long.

Princess Leia

This week's Toon Club topic was Star Wars... an overwhelming topic... so many great characters. I drew a handfull of Yoda sketches, but they all looked terrible compared to Genndy Tartokovsky's Clone Wars designs. So I went with the obvious next choice... Princess Leia and the metal bikini. The legs are a little messed up... oh well.

I'd like to thank Princess Leia, Womder Woman, and Sandy (from Grease) for introducing me to my heterosexuality. And I also want to thank Jabba the Hutt and George Lucas for providing the princess with her prison attire.

Super Gorilla

In Christopher Reeve’s Superman II, Clark reveals to Lois that he is actually Superman by removing his glasses. She never saw through his intricate disguise before that moment? Way to go, Lois... you're being bumped up to detective. As long as the Daily Planet staff was dumb as dirt, Clark Kent might as well have been a gorilla. Why is Clark never around when Super Gorilla shows up? I wonder if they're the same... wait - Clark's a gorilla who wears glasses.

One other thing that's different about Super Gorilla is that he can't fly. He's just really strong, unless you compare him to other gorillas, in which case he's just average, kind of like how I'd be considered incredibly intelligent if I lived and worked among gorillas... or how I'd at least be considered one of the smartest... well, certainly not the dumbest... almost certainly.

The Ugly Duckling

Why did the other ducks target one as the "ugly duckling?" Aren't ALL ducks ugly? Never in my life have I seen even one attractive duck. Fortunately I don't really look at them that way. If I ever see a duck that strikes me as "really hot," then I've got problems.

If you're familiar with the story, you already know that (spoiler warning) the "duckling" is actually a swan. I didn't draw him that way here... mine is more of a (spoiler warning) mallard. So apparently ducks aren't only ugly, they're also a little bit dumb and species-recognition-challeged. And that's the ugliest ugly there is.

The ugliest duck is an actual duck... unless he's a duckling, because baby everythings are at least a little bit cute, even if admitting that takes me one step closer to a problem area I noted previously.

Ventura Highway

Yesterday I wanted to draw something, but I didn't know what. While I was considering my options, my iPod played "Ventura Highway" by America (the band, not the country). I like that song, but the last verse is quite puzzling:

"Cause the free wind is blowing through your hair,
And the days surround your daylight there.
Seasons crying no despair,
Alligator lizards in the air... in the air."

Alligator lizards? Is that just a normal alligator in the same way that I'm a human person? And if these are just typical alligators, what are they doing in the air... in the air? If Ventura's vast alligator population has evolved to the point that they've mastered flight, I'm not "gonna go"... I know.

Man's Best Friend?

Man's best friend... is that what dogs are? Then explain what happens to my so-called "best friend" when he stops in front of the TV on a big 4th-and-inches play. Let's be honest... man's best friend is food, then TV, then football, then football on TV, followed by cars, naps, video games, airplanes, model trains, and so on. Based on my findings, dogs are wedged way down the list somewhere between "chopping down trees" and "buying a new belt."

I'm just kidding - I like dogs. In many ways a dog is just a football with a tongue. They share the same blank stare, I've tripped over both in the dark, and loads of frustration can be instantly relieved by punting one over the neighbor's fence. Relax, everyone... if the dog didn't want to be kicked, he wouldn't have looked so much like a kicking tee. Relax again... I didn't kick any dogs, and I don't endorse it in any way outside of its obvious "blogging shock value" purposes. After all - dogs are my 185th best friend.

More NFL Playoffs this weekend... go Chargers! Every time I say "go" about anyone, they immediately lose. Call your bookie.

So Many Journals

I haven't done much blogging lately, which I feel bad about. I've spent most of my free-time in the last week trying to rebuild my iTunes library. Rating more than 10,000 songs from one to five stars takes about thirty hours more than I expected it to... I only expected it to take about 140. Glad that's done.

Another thing I do that takes up a lot of my life is journal writing, which I've done each of the last 4,844 days... filling up over 25 different journals no one will ever even want to read, much less try to. I started writing on October 4, 1993, and I haven't missed a day since. I love it, but it takes a lot of time. Life passes me by as I write about it.

Time to get back into blogging... more to come later this week.

Happy New Year!

2006 is down to its last few hours. Starting tomorrow morning, I'll be writing the wrong year on checks and things for the following four to seven months. Really looking forward to that. It's been a good year... new job, new blog, new house, fun trips, lovely wife...

Happy New Year, everyone!

Back to Sketches

A fox with a stretched out body... a snail with a beard... a cash-carrying fellow in a terrified sprint... a lady stirring a mixing bowl with her foot. If this page of sketches only had some vampires and assorted birds, it would be a showcase of everything that Christmas means to me. Oh, hey - there they are!

May your next few days be as festive and fun as a long-bodied fox is crafty. What?

Merry Christmas to All

This is my Christmas card to all of you who still come to this place I call "blog." I don't know a lot of you personally, but it's nice knowing that you stop by occasionally to see what I've drawn and to partake of my mental wanderings. I'm glad there's you, or I probably wouldn't have a blog. So thank you all, and happy holidays!

Merry Christmas from me to you. And you other religions - some greetings too.

Conan & the Manatee

As part of a joke on his show last week, Conan O'Brien mentioned a fake website. He found out later that NBC has to buy any website he mentions if it doesn't already exist, so for $159, NBC became the owner of HornyManatee.com. Conan didn't want the site to go to waste, so they started adding stuff to it, including fan art. I sent in this one that I spent about a half hour on. Conan and his show are the coolest.

I bet some of you sailors would like to have a mermaid like this one over for spaghetti. Am I right?

Two Turtle Doves

The Twelve Days of Christmas is a ridiculous song. If you sing at a fast tempo and skip five or six verses, you can sing the whole thing in just under 40 minutes. Yet sadly, the song's length is the most sane thing about it. I love Christmas carols... but I do not like The Twelve Days of Christmas.

In the first seven days of the song (which, as far as I can tell, is sung in real time), a total of 59 birds are presented as gifts. Fifty-nine birds? Did I give you the wrong impression concerning my feelings for birds? I mean, I have nothing against them, but let's leave some of them outside. Maybe one of these days of Christmas I could get a truck full of bird seed, because tuppence doesn't grow on trees.

And ten lords a leaping? I don't even know what I'd do with one lord a leaping. I'm going to have to rent a bus just to take them all down to the pier. Now, nine ladies dancing... there's a gift! That's something I've wanted for a long time. See - if you personalize a gift like that, good things happen. But the lords and the drummers and the sanctuary's worth of birds... ridiculous.

Perhaps the most upsetting thing of all about The Twelve Days of Christmas... there's only ONE day of Christmas. December 25th. Maybe for next year's one day of Christmas I'll get my true love a calendar.

(When my wife saw this drawing, she said, "You know - turtle doves aren't half turtle." I know that. I'm not an idiot. They're half dove.)

You Better Watch Out!

I drew this for our Christmas card last year, based on the song "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Some of my friends said they had to hide or destroy the card because it was scaring their kids. That song always made me a little uncomfortable, so I was glad to relay that terror to a new generation of children.

"He sees you when you're sleeping.

He knows when you're awake.

He knows when you get home from school,

And he knows what bus you take."

That's not exactly how the song goes, but I think the lines I added are implied. If he sees me when I'm sleeping AND when I'm awake... what else is there? He sees everything I do! It's a Christmas stalking. Normally I avoid puns, but in this case I'm not ashamed. It had to be said.

A Little Mermaid

It has been widely suggested that manatees (or "menatee") could be behind the myth of the mermaid. Sailors who were unfamiliar with manatees may have seen them and mistook them for the mythical, human-like species. A manatee surfacing in a patch of seaweed could have appeared to be a mermaid with long, flowing hair.

How much ocean water do you have to drink before manatees begin to look like attractive, young maidens? And if ocean madness isn't to blame here, how ugly were the women these mermaid-discovering sailors left at port if "woman" was a logical title for the first sea cow they ever saw draped in seaweed?

I should have drawn what the sailors were actually seeing, but I wanted to draw a pretty mermaid instead. Maybe another day.

Curse of the Tiki

The Brady Bunch taught me long ago that tikis are cursed. A giant tarantula on Peter's chest... Greg can't surf perfectly... obviously a tiki is to blame. Spiders and surfing wipe outs don't just happen on their own. And so I have to side with the Bradys on this one... tikis are cursed.

The greatest curse of the tiki is its inability to move its arms for swatting or wiping, combined with the frequent company it shares with tropical birds. And even more of a curse to the tikis - the birds sing the exact same songs all day long on a 21-minute loop.

Birds are a curse to tikis. Tikis are a curse to humans. Humans eat birds, flip birds, and carve tikis. It's a complicated cycle, but a cycle indeed.

Hey... this is my 100th post! Thanks to all of you who have kept me going with your visits and comments. I'm having a good time with the blog... a hundred more posts are on the way shortly. Well, not too shortly.

Save the Turkeys!

Turkey goes great with bacon and avocados on sourdough, but as attractive as turkeys are, the meat that hangs from their bones just isn't my favorite. So this year we've decided to do the humane thing and not eat the traditional Thanksgiving turkey. On a less humane note, this Thursday's dinner will feature my very first Thanksgiving Ham. Sorry, pigs... there's simply no getting around the fact that you're delicious. Don't get too comfortable, though, turkeys... as long as there's bacon, avocados, and sourdough bread to be enjoyed, every day you're on deck as a possible sandwich.