Winding up? or winding down?
A blog to supplement my other blog (and did you know that I used 'blog' as a noun in 1982? Yes, I have proof)
“There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.” – Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes.
So here I am, or here we are… out of the ‘face time’ world and into the latest incarnation of social media. Substack seems nice, quiet, and fun.
It’s been one month since I officially retired from Sheridan College in Canada and I’m not sure from what in the USA. I had to do this simultaneously since I need the combined income of pension and Social Security to, as Erroll Flynn said, “reconcile my net income with my gross habits.”
(the Tasmanian Devil was a very witty man.)
Being a dual national is interesting, because one country doesn’t officially recognize my citizenship in the other one, but has no problem with it at tax time.
And I got off the mark quickly, publishing HOW I FINALLY GOT TO LIVE A CAT’S LIFE on the very day I officially retired, and debuting my new website at the same time. My first royalty check came in from the British office yesterday. One British Pound. Let’s just say I’m not expecting to make a fortune from this book. I had to get it out of my system. It wanted to be, and it would not let me be until I let IT be (insert Paul McCartney lyric here). My Dad used to say, when referring to musicians, that “an amateur does it for love, a professional does it for money!”
I maintain that a true artist does it because we HAVE to. It’s not a hobby, it’s an obsession, or a compulsion, or both. Most of us would probably be unemployable anywhere else.
I did my first podcast in three years and will do another on Dave Bossert’s Skull Rock Disney podcast on November 8, as a followup to the one I kibitzed Dean Yeagle on last September.
(Okay, enough already with the puffery.)
I’m really here for the great articles written by my friend Steven Brodner, and a bunch of other people. And why would I want to publish a second blog when I’m supposed to have one any day now on the Animation World Network? (it’s called ANIMATED CHARACTERS…I’ll let you know when it’s up.)
Well, that blog will be just about animation anecdotes and stories, all guaranteed true, mostly illustrated by me since the craziest stuff was not photographed. This page is for the stuff that is left over. Jokes, crazy stuff, ideas for new projects, that sort of thing.
I’m still debating about animating a very short film that I actually dreamed about a year ago, about a chicken and a man at the beach. It’s just ridiculous enough to possibly do better at film festivals than my other films. Unlike all the other jokes I dreamed, this was still funny after I woke up.
There’s also the possibility of another book, where the cats rewrite all the other cat books. The others are just BAAAD. In deference to Louie Bear’s, Sam-E’s, and Gizmo’s superior intellects, I would write their text in plain English rather than the lolcat speak that features in the Cat’s Life book. It’s not as if they will be ‘talking’, although I might add cartoons where they speak lolcat, just to confuse everyone.
Speaking of cartoons, I submitted ten of them to the New Yorker and then to Reader’s Digest and was rejected by both. Here’s one. My future efforts will appear here because I get to look like the New Yorker without putting up with their editors (or receiving their checks, but what the hell). I like this one. Too bad they didn’t. Those are Greek Hoplites and that is the city of Troy in the distance (Greece, not New York)
Then again, as my mother used to say, I might just go bang my head against the wall. But that only happens when I read the daily news.
If you are interested in any of this stuff, take a poll. I know there are only a few of you. So tell your friends.