Archive for February, 2008
Newt… Where Are You Now?
Friday, February 29th, 2008
I doubt I’m alone in thinking that the portrayal of Newt in Aliens (played by Carrie Henn, her only role ever according to IMDB) was about the most awesomely awful acting job in movie history. For years a friend and I would deadpan her wooden deliveries to each other, and were delighted when her “….mostly they come at night. Mostly.” line was parodied by Cartman on South Park. One of our other favorites was the line I used at the end of the Feb 26 strip. I’m not sure what percentage of the readers got the reference, but I did hear from a few delighted fellow Newt aficionados.
Italian Greyhounds
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Someone sent me a note recently, which I subsequently misplaced (whenever that sort of thing happens I blame it on being a cartoonist; it’s sort of my catch-all excuse for all transgressions large and small). The writer of the note said he really liked the Pooch series where a group of Italian Greyhounds showed up and got all up in the faces of the café regulars and — as the owner of a pair of Greyhounds himself — wondered if the Soprano-esque mob were going to be causing any further trouble. I’ve been pondering ways to bring them back, but until then here’s the previous run:
On a note relating to the earlier posts about bad language, I originally had one of the greyhounds saying “Stugots!” (the name of Tony Soprano’s boat). Fortunately my ever-vigilant editor John Glynn filled me in on the word’s meaning before a flurry of outraged letters-to-the-editor got my strip whacked.
Introducing Yourselves….
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008One of our regulars here, NinaGeeka, has wondered if any fellow Pooch fans who forage around this site might want to join her in sharing a little about themselves. Her post is here.
Top 5 Smells
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Years ago I came up with my top 5 smells list: coffee, cinnamon, roasting nuts, fresh cut wood, and bacon. Recently at the end of an interview I was asked to come up with a question for the next interviewee, so I asked if they had their own top 5 smells list. Scent is always provocative and so others have chimed in. Below are some responses all jumbled together. Feel free to add your lists.
Spring
A puppy’s paws
Chocolate
Vanilla
Gunpowder
A fresh board game right out of the box
New puppy smell
New baby smell
Fresh cut grass
Onions and celery sautéing in butter
Roasting red peppers
Dogs about a week after they’ve been groomed
Fresh sage
Outdoors immediately after it rains in April
Baby powder
Popcorn
French toast
Tail Wagging
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Here’s an interesting little article the New York Times ran about how detailed a tail-wagging is to a dog:
-
Every dog lover knows how a pooch expresses its feelings.
Ears close to the head, tense posture, and tail straight out from the body means “don’t mess with me.” Ears perked up, wriggly body and vigorously wagging tail means “I am sooo happy to see you!”
But there is another, newly discovered, feature of dog body language that may surprise attentive pet owners and experts in canine behavior. When dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left.
-
They did tests:
-
In each instance the test dog saw a person or animal for one minute, rested for 90 seconds and saw another view. Testing lasted 25 days with 10 sessions per day. When the dogs saw their owners, their tails all wagged vigorously with a bias to the right side of their bodies. Their tails wagged moderately, again more to the right, when faced with an unfamiliar human. Looking at the cat, a four-year-old male whose owners volunteered him for the experiment, the dogs’ tails again wagged more to the right but in a lower amplitude.
When the dogs looked at an aggressive, unfamiliar dog — a large Belgian shepherd Malinois — their tails all wagged with a bias to the left side of their bodies.
Thus when dogs were attracted to something, including a benign, approachable cat, their tails wagged right, and when they were fearful, their tails went left. It suggests that the muscles in the right side of the tail reflect positive emotions while the muscles in the left side express negative ones.
Makes you wonder if dogs are having complicated discussions about relationships and the meaning of life with just their tails.
The Sean Hayes Experience
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
A few years back Hazy Mills, the production company of Sean Hayes of Will And Grace fame, optioned Pooch Café for television, and I got my first taste of Hollywood. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter trumpeted our union, and NBC flew me down to L.A. to meet Sean and his production partner and have a meeting with some writers. Let me tell you, arriving at an airport and seeing a chauffer holding a sign with your name on it is a total buzz. They put me up at a hip Beverly Hills boutique hotel designed by Gregory Peck (“not THE Gregory Peck”) and we had dinner with Sean and his production partner Todd Milner while people pointed towards our table and whispered. The following day we met with Futurama writer Eric Horsted, who was to be on board as head writer. He had some suggestions for the show, such as adding a female poodle who belonged to a puppy breeder and was therefore always pregnant, and a Mexican Hairless named Perro to appeal to the Latino market (a little transparent, I thought). He also said it was important for Boomer to have a pupil in the spiral of his eye for greater expressiveness, a suggestion I adopted in the strip.
Everyone I met was fantastic and quite enthusiastic about the project, and we hashed out some very interesting ideas. Alas, none of the networks ended up getting on board, and a year later the option agreement expired. But I was able to get a celebrity introduction from Sean for the second Pooch collection. And now Boomer has a pupil.
Above are the early designs for Brandy and Perro.
Mad Kids
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
It was Mad Magazine that first sparked my dream to become a cartoonist (that and Bazooka Joe comics… those little comics stunk so bad I figured they were dying for new talent). It’s a thrill to have my work in the Mad pages now. This is one I did for the latest Mad Kids.
Book Blues
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
An unfortunate development in the Pooch Cafe book department: Both the first two books have quite suddenly gone out of stock for complicated publishing reasons I don’t quite understand. My publishing editor explains it thusly:
“Well, here’s the deal–we don’t have books in stock, but the sell through
hasn’t warranted a reprint because over half of the books shipped out have
been returned (and there is no way of telling what condition they returned
in, if they could be resold they would be added to the number avail in the
warehouse.) SO those numbers are hurting us.
This has been really frustrating for me as an editor, because I feel that if
we have a book on our backlist, it needs to be in stock. ESPECIALLY with a
tv/movie deal in work!
So I am pressuring the powers that be to consider a small print run just to
have books available. Unfortunately, I can’t give a date or promises as to
if this will go through…so I’m still working with my cartoon boss to find
out HOW we should handle making the books available again, one way or
another. “
So looks like there might be some other options available in the future, but for the moment the books are only available through third party sources on Amazon. Of course the new Lulu book remains available, in both print and download form.
Interview
Monday, February 11th, 2008 
I did an e-mail interview with Gringo on “Listen To Me.” Click here to see.
Dog Applause
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
Pooch Café was mentioned fondly in the online comic strip Frog Applause today. I e-mailed the strip’s creator, Teresa Dowlatshahi, to tell her how flattered I was. And spelled her name wrong (not the surname, either). Boy, does that kid look pissed! Thanks for the shout out, TD.
Additional Comic Strip “Smut”
Friday, February 8th, 2008
For those as interested in “blue” language as I myself seem to me (guess I was a sailor in a former life), here are a few more items for the list. This coming Sunday I wanted to have Poncho say that something “blows.” I suppose the term does have a root not quite in keeping with the goings-on of the average comics page character, although I thought since the word has been used for so many years on movie posters and prime time TV and pretty much everywhere other than on Barney (do they still have Barney?) that the meaning had become understood as merely something bad. Ditto “sucks.” The above strip ran with “stinks” in first panel instead of Poncho’s original pejorative.
There was another strip a few years ago where Poo Poo was making an excuse about why he didn’t show up to help Poncho paint his doghouse. His excuse was that he went to get a “boob job.” That one didn’t fly either.
But I’ll keep trying. Lynn Johnson broke the homosexual barrier in her strip. One day Pooch Café will be remembered as the strip that broke the smut barrier.
Voice Votes
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
Here are all the suggestions that came in so far for Pooch character voices*:
Poncho:
Chris Elliot (2), Dustin Hoffman, Jack Black, Edward Norton, Charles Adler, Eric McCormack, Harry Anderson
Chazz:
Albert Brooks (2), Brad Pitt, Harry Anderson, Kelsey Grammar
Boomer:
Zack Braff, Nathan Lane
Carmen:
Patricia Heaton (2), Angelina Jolie, Joely Fischer, Ellen DeGeneres
Poo Poo:
Adam Sandler, Jay Leno, Sean Hayes, Nathan Lane
Beaumont:
James Earl Jones, George Wendt, Ted Danson
Droolia:
Kathleen Turner, Rosie O’Donnell
Gus: Craig Ferguson
* Only suggestions of live actors were tallied (MIST-er. Glynn).
Some thoughts: I think of Poncho as a fairly serious-sounding guy who’s voice gets more laughable the louder he gets. Chris Elliot might work for this, and Jack Black might if he could pull back the confidence (I don’t think of Poncho as particularly confident).
Chazz and Carmen I think need to sound fairly “normal”, since they’re essentially straight men, so I think the voices of Kelsey or Ellen are too inherently funny for the parts. Albert Brooks and Patricia Heaton might work, though.
For Poo Poo, he’s not really effeminate, he’s had effeminism thrust upon him by nature of his breed and the pink bow he’s sometimes saddled with. So I don’t hear him actually talking like Sean or Nathan. And he’s a bit of sad sack. I see him talking pretty quickly though.
I do hear Boomer nice and loud like Nathan. And for some reason I hear him with a slight lisp (?)
We shan’t be affording any real McCoys for the Ringtales shorts, but these are good starting points. Any more?
Chazz’s Hair
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
I responded to the question about Chazz’s hair on the message board, but thought I’d put up a very early strip (actually the second Pooch strip ever) showing rad Chazz with his ponytail. Below is the message and response from the message board.
In the past two days I noticed on the dailies shown on this site that Chazz is shown with reddish hair. I always thought Chazz was “hair challenged”. My paper doesn’t carry the Sunday strip, and while the daily strip is color, Chazz is always portrayed with a flesh colored head.
- Mountain Fresh Scent
Actually when I first started the strip I conceived Chazz as a more rad type into extreme sports like climbing and mountain biking, etc, that he would force Poncho to participate in. I even thought he might be the host of an extreme-sports show and Poncho would be his pet/mascot. In the first year he had an orange-haired pony tail, but that got smaller and disappeared as I abandoned that idea and gave Chazz a more regular job. The remains of his “pulled back” hair ended up looking sort of like a receding hairline to me, so I started having Poncho make cracks about him going bald (the little stinker would never let something like that go without comment), but the remains of Chazz’s hair still have that orangey glow from his almost rad past.
- Paul
Additional note: While the Sundays are colored by myself, the dailies are colored very skillfully by Brian Whitmer at my syndicate, who has chosen to relax the orange-ness on the back of Chazz’s hair remains.
Mobile Wallpapers
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
A girl I know ran up to me on the street the other day aglow with excitement – while I wish I could say this was a common occurrence between myself and the fairer sex, alas, I was puzzled as to her state of elation, until she showed me her cell phone, the screen of which displayed our dear Poncho in a state of protracted merriment. I had heard Poncho wallpapers were available for cell phone downloads, in fact I had prepared art for such purposes some time ago, but as my cell phone provider was not one of the companies compatible for the service I had never seen the results in action. I imagine the level of joy my friend felt at having a Poncho on her phone was linked to the fact that she was my friend, but still, if anyone else wants to test the joy levels themselves they may investigate how to do so here. Whether you download something for your phone or not, feel free to bound up to me on the street aglow with excitement.
New Straight Poop
Friday, February 1st, 2008
Poncho answers another question in The Straight Poop.
Dog Music
Friday, February 1st, 2008Dear Poncho;
What sort of music do you like? Our “dog people” are always playing
Pearl Jam, which is good tail-waggin’ music, but we’d like to hear
more Clash.
– Remy and Charley
Poncho:
Makes sense that you’d want to hear more Clash, since it’s every dog’s fantasy to be “Lost In The Supermarket”. But of course like every dog my favorite band ever is the one that did that version of Jingle Bells set entirely to barking. Why didn’t those guys put out any more albums? I love the way humans eyes roll and their jaws go slack when they hear that song. Try putting it on in mid June and watch them really wig out. Of course when it comes to “Who Let The Dogs Out” I’m on their side. I promised myself if I hear that song one more time I’m gonna slit my paws. Even WE’RE sick of that song.