Life at the Bottom of the Internet Birdcage

I wonder what’s the online equivalent of the bottom of a bird cage.   Page 63 of a Google search?  Zero links?  No comments?  Reddit blocking you from self-promoting your own blog because only they can decide what constitutes a “legitimate” recommendation?

If a blog post is written and no one reads it, does it exist?

Probably not.

On the other hand, no one can shit on it either.

Thumbless Freaks of Nature

I think good comedy is pretty much all about reaction.  If you watch a good half hour comedy like The Office or Parks and Recreation, you’ll see that almost all the really funny  parts are reaction shots.  Dwight’s, “Uh-oh.” reaction to DeAngelo’s cake mauling last night was priceless.

And RJ and Hammy’s reaction to real world versions of themselves is perfect (IMHO).  Again, I write these and immediately forget about them until I see them a few weeks later.  So, they’re almost as fresh (and occasionally funny) as they are for you.

Today’s cartoon made me laugh out loud.

Please Put Some Pants On

Top Five Strange Things People Wear to Read Over the Hedge*

5.  Scuba Suit

4.  Burka

3.  Buckingham Palace Guard Bearskin Hat

2.  Spock Ears

1.  Smile

*Send me a picture wearing at least two of these while reading Over the Hedge and I’ll post it here.  The best one will get a free Hammy T-shirt of their choice.

Squirrely Reality

Over on comics.com there’s some grumbling about the characters being self-aware.  I posted the following comment:

The fact that they’re aware they’re comic characters (they’ve been aware for quite a while) does not mean their comic reality is any less real to them then our “real” reality is to us. It feels real to me. For 20 seconds a day it feels real enough to our readers to escape their reality to hang out in RJ, Verne and Hammy’s.

Or at least that’s what Verne told me.

Angry Birds Turn Mean

The Memo Verne missed:

4/15/11

To:  All Over the Hedge Characters

Re:  Angry Bird Week

Reminder that next week we will be riffing on Angry Birds, the popular smart phone mobile app.   Be alert for bird and pig gags that may or may not include scata0logical humor such as falling poo, flying poo and poo that may adhere to any or all laws of cartoon physics including but not limited to:  levitation, spontaneous combustion, invisibility and being disguised as turtle chow.

That is all.

The Management

cc:  RJ, Hammy, The Tree That Knows Stuff, Izzy, Sid, Phil, Nate and Noreen, Clara, Howard the Angry Bunny, the Bad Bunnies, all animal extras.

Bill Watterson Lives!

Bill Watterson, creator of “Calvin & Hobbes,” came out of retirement recently to paint the above portrait of Petey from the Richard Thompson’s great comic strip, “Cul de Sac.”   The portrait is a donation to the Team Cul de Sac Project to raise money in the fight against Parkinson’s Disease.   Team Cul de Sac is soliciting original cartoon art that will be featured in a book published by Andrews & McMeel.   For more info check out the Team Cul de Sac Website.

Bill certainly nailed Petey.   A portrait of a boy on the verge of a lifetime in therapy.

Why Angry Birds Are Angry?

Top 5 Reasons Angry Birds* are Angry?

5.  Pigs stole their eggs.

4. Pigs think President Obama wasn’t born in the US.

3. Pigs won’t let birds play in any pig games.

2.  Suicide bombing is stressful.**

1.  Pigs is nasty.

* Smash Hit Mobile Game for Smart Phones where Angry Bird Bombs are sling-shoted at egg stealing pigs.

Hammyshine

Hammy’s light switch reminds me of when our daughters were little and my wife and I would always struggle to find their cute switch.  We knew there was one, because it seemed to be off a lot of the time.

But we never could find it.

Lady Za Za

El Rancho Camelot is the place to be.
Suburban livin’ is the life for me.
Minivans spreadin’ out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that TV Guide.

New York is where I’d thought I’d stay.
But I’m allergic to the Great White Way.
I just adore a tract house view.
Dah-ling I love this you can have Park Avenue.

…Walmart!
…Golf carts!
…Twinkies!
…No extended pinkies!

Hello, mild-life!
Good bye, city life.
Suburbia we are here!

For She’s a Jolly Good Fire Ant Drag Queen…

I’ve actually been to Bentonville and met with WalMart excutives about RingTales back when we were first getting started.  We were trying to get our animations on their in store TV network.  We didn’t succeed, but it was worth going for the experience of seeing one of the largest corporations in the world up close.   My take away was that they were trying awfully hard to pretend they weren’t one of the largest corporations in the world.  The culture had,  “an authoritative lack of pretentiousness.”  As though each executive was wired with a device that shocked them if they spent more than $15 on a haircut or wore anything other than a suit from Men’s Warehouse (even Walmart doesn’t expect its execs to shop at WalMart).

But that was five years ago.  I suspect things have changed.  WalMart is sporting quite a green facade these days.   They build more energy efficient stores.  They recently mandated a significant reduction in packaging materials from their suppliers.   And they’ve dropped the hyphen in their name.  That single hyphen in all WalMart advertisment and promotional materials saves 76,000 trees each year.

Not really.  I just made that tree saving thing up.   But it probably saves a few trees.  And that’s a good thing.  I guess.

WalMart isn’t the worst thing in the world.  It saves a lot of people a lot of money on stuff they need and they think they need.  I just wish they’d open more checkout stands and keep the Over the Hedge DVD out of the bargain bin.

Yeah, that’s me at the Buda, TX store that keeps swapping price tags between the Hedge DVD and the Cars DVD.   I don’t make any more royalties, I just really didn’t like Cars.