Debbie's Thoughtful Spot

Here’s a cartoon short from the Yogi Bear show, “Touch and Go, Go, Go”. This one plays with the old story about King Midas by having Yogi’s fairy godmother give him the ability to turn anything he touches into a “pic-a-nic basket”. As if you couldn’t guess, that turns out to be a big mistake. If you listen closely to the soundtrack, there’s a lot of the underscore from “The Flintstones”, beginning when Yogi turns a can into a picnic basket.

I have been rather quiet on this blog lately, and a lot of it is because I’ve been trying my darnedest to keep a steady schedule updating “Fluffy and Mervin” three times a week.  This is the best I’ve done so far in keeping it on a schedule. I plugged in a repeat Tuesday, mostly because I was having lunch with my friend Lola for the first time in a while.   I enjoyed visit and the tacos at Arriba’s, but I’ll admit that I felt guilty for missing a day.  Sometimes I wonder to myself, “What’s the point of keeping a schedule on a webcomic that doesn’t make me any money?”  The answer is that drawing cartoons is something that I enjoy doing.   Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to draw my own cartoons.  I like how they can make people smile or laugh.  Drawing them makes me happy, and if reading them makes someone else happy, even if it’s just for the few minutes in which they are reading them, that makes it even better.  Or as Kermit the Frog said in The Muppet Movie, “Yeah, well, I have a dream too, but it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. That’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with.”  (Kermit is definitely a frog worth listening to.) Putting Fluffy and Mervin on the “interwebs” gives me a place to share my dream with others and hopefully to make people happy.  (Which is not to say that I wouldn’t appreciate finding a way to make some money doing this…). 

(This Zippy comic is where I got my post’s title from.)

Since there isn’t a cartoon called “Sherry’s Birthday”, today I continue my tradition of posting the 1980 Filmation Tom and Jerry cartoon “Spike’s Birthday”! Enjoy!

What would we do without traditions?

^_^

Starting this coming week, my aim is to start and maintain a regular weekly schedule of updates to Fluffy and Mervin’s web page.  Most likely, the standard Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule used by most webcomic artists (or as close to that as my schedule will accommodate).  I really want to get Fluffy and Mervin out there to the public.   You can help, too.  If you like Fluffy and Mervin, spread the word by sending a link to http://www.fluffyandmervin.com to your friends and family.  Let’s see if we can make a success out of this cat and mouse duo (and their creator).  

Here’s another great silent cartoon with Felix the Cat, perhaps the most memorable character from the early days of animation.

In the interest of  presenting opposing viewpoints, here is the one person in FAVOR of polluting the Earth.

Uh…okay.  Very well put.  Thank you, Oscar…(or not…)

Today before church started, a little girl there saw me sketching Mickey Mouse and she asked me if I could draw Minnie Mouse painting her fingernails.  This of course presented a logic problem, as Minnie always wears gloves.  So I simply had to draw her with them off (and assume that Minnie HAS fingernails in the first place).  The result was this cute sketch.The little girl (and everyone else I showed it to, including Sherry and her folks) really liked it, and so when I got home I decided to do a more “finished” version of “Minnie Doing Her Nails”…and here it is.A few of the details of the pencil sketch are changed  (I needed more space to make Minnie’s dresser less cluttered-looking, I didn’t want to draw the mirror attached to the dresser, and unfortunately, I had no room for Mickey’s portrait), but I am happy with how this came out.

And lastly, we end off with a drawing of Top Cat, which is here just because I thought it looks pretty darn good. ( I also re-drew an old Closetspace/Fluffy and Mervin drawing, which is on Fluffy and Mervin’s page, http://www.fluffyandmervin.com ).

I really don’t draw in an anime style very much, mostly because it’s a hard style to imitate (especially for someone whose main influences are Peanuts, Hanna-Barbera and Donald Duck comic books).  This picture of Kyoko came about when I was having trouble sleeping one night, and I had a still from Maison Ikkoku on my desktop (the scene was at an odd angle, which is why my picture is at an angle here, too).  Maison Ikkoku was the first manga/anime  series that I ever got hooked on.  It is the story of Yusaku Godai, a struggling college student living in a boarding house (the Maison Ikkoku of the title) and how he feel in love with the new building manager, Kyoko Otonashi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_Ikkoku  The stories could be funny, melancholy, frustrating and sweet (often all in the same episode!)  I don’t have the books or DVDs anymore (and sadly, both the manga and anime are out of print now), but Maison Ikkoku still has a soft spot in my heart.

Here are some opening and closing songs from the series:

This clip’s song was by Gilbert O’ Sullivan and only ran as the opening on one episode, although the song was featured as BGM in another episode, but both were omitted from Viz Video’s US DVD release. (The ep with the song as part of a scene was released intact on an earlier VHS release, though.)

Does knowing how to speak Smurf count a as second language?  Smurf this clip to smurf it out for yourself:

From “The Smurfs and the Magic Flute”, which needs to be on DVD.