There are tons of cartoon and comics blogs by comics and cartoon professionals. Here's one by an electronic technician for the USPS.

Saturday, December 31, 2005

ask a silly question...



A coworker asked why my giant had only one eyeball. I replied, "Because he's a cyclops!"

I shouldn't complain because the guy also digs Allis Chalmers (even owns a D-17 Diesel!) and gave me a Model T frame.

Now just to add an old school Hemi with three deuces and a three-quarter cam, and a four speed, and a narrowed Ford nine inch with posi and big slicks, and....

Just raiding my sketch book for a possible Flash animated parody of an overly familiar kiddie show teaser.

Hint: "Don't touch that dial!"

Friday, December 30, 2005

cool beans



After a meeting at Java & Ice, I may have an agent again. Easier than pitching to most comics people. "A profit is not without honor...." Details as they develop. Hopefully this will go better than the knot-head that I had in '91 or Barry F. and Fun Rockets. Ironically, this happened later in life after I'm golden handcuffed to the USPS instead of earlier in life when I was under or unemployed.

If I had to collage my art down to one jpeg, what would I include? What I'm thinking about: The Victorian inventor, the A9 launch, The Captain Saucer poster, The latest InterStellar OverDrive cover, Dumpy, revised Holverson Designs kit-card, and maybe a Phat Grrl.

Almost too much talent for just one jpeg! ;)

Here's a home movie frame grab of a bean buggy from the '76 Moorhead Community days parade. It could almost fit in with the "Dream Machines" in the November Archives.

Thursday, December 29, 2005

"dynamite" prom



Back in Omaha again and getting psyched up to start the monthly on DB#11.

Sue and Mom really enjoyed the DVDs a compiled from old home movies from the late '70s and very early '80s.

Here's a frame grab from Prom Night '79. All that is missing is a bad orange perm....

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

some clown in administration...



Digitalized a lot of home movies yesterday and while the Mac was crunching them, I spent the time getting a surprisingly lot of comic panels inked. Got enough stuff to burn two DVDs. Will go up to Soldier to see the nieces and the Studebaker right after my hard drive backup finishes.

Here's a frame grab of my old school superintendent at the 1976 Moorhead Community Days. About the only time in his career where he would admit to it.

Let's say that my old school was in the early stages of choking on its own lameness and later went through dissolution.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

take my kodachrome away....



Trying to convert some old 8mm home movies from the '70s into DVD using my Mighty Mac. My, that eats up that Gigs on the old hard drive! A bit bittersweet because you also feel that you could drive to town and see some of those people but they are no longer around.

It's dreary on my days off so I'm going to see how many Captain Saucer pages that I can finish up.

Last night, I had a dream with the opposite theme, somebody from the coast was on a raid and wanted me to work in their post office.

Monday, December 26, 2005

kickin' tailless, cont.



Today, is my one year anniversary for working for the USPS.

Yesterday, I gave my nieces a Casio synth and a Mac Mini to interface with it. I partially feel a little guilty for not spending more time with them, especially back when I was in Soldier and getting together was easier. I'm also reacting to the fact I feel that my creative tendencies weren't properly encouraged. From mere toleration to subtle dissuasion from the family, "you really don't want to do 'Star Truck' for the school paper, do you?" to too many educators and the regional fan scene being down right cruel and nasty about it.

I gave an abandoned 1.2 meter flying wing model to John Carroll because I didn't like my craftsmanship on it. He felt that the craftsmanship wasn't that bad and months later he finally got around to getting it finished up. He did several successful hand launches yesterday and is readying it for a cradle launch.

Had a restless night last night about screw-ups at work. Will try extra hard to be good in the waking world.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

kick some tailless....



Just bought a copy of the Horten Brother's Nurflugel book on eBay. I am minutes away from going up to Soldier and spending Christmas with Mom, my Sister's family, Neko and Jasper, Step-dad and whoever from his family wanders through. Here's more of my "Seasonal Art"....

Saturday, December 24, 2005

july in christmas



Since it's Christmas here's some timely seasonal art from my sketchbook.

Of course, it owes a little to Von Dutch, Mouse, Roth, Griffith, and a boy's book of bicycle repair.... May whip up a finished version of the bottom one for a decal.

It's raining on Christmas eve. I am working tonight. Trying to figure out whether to drive up to the family late tonight after work or early tomorrow morning.

Here's some "July in Christmas" music.

Friday, December 23, 2005

somewhere in dreamland....



Here's a couple of attempted rough sketches of the three-eyed aliens in a dream that I had a few nights ago. They were much more sublimely creepy in the dream. Also charred crimson in color.

Had a dream last night set in an amalgam of the present and the '80s. I was working away, cranking out several pages for several projects including a couple for key-lined two color xeroxes (it wasn't called "Corrigan-color" when Doug Holverson invented it!). Matt Feazell comes over with a couple of his comics friends and shows them what I was working on. He even points out a sight gag in one page width panel and boasts "only Doug Holverson could do that!"

The infamous "Buxom Hairball" thread over at Animation Nation dot com has been locked. One defender had said, "i haven't met talent yet that was eager to trash another man's work. that always came across like insecurity to me". Which may go a long way in explaining a certain person's rumor-mongering and smear page and my lack of reciprocation.

Got a general succinct Christmas email from Gary Panter today. Overcame the momentum on the Captain Saucer and am chugging away on three pages from a scene.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

too many memories



Still scanning in old odds and ends. These things are so contradictory. You have highly inspired stuff being tripped up by untrained and untutored roughness. You have soaring aspirations that turned into broken dreams.

Scanned in some bad xeroxes (think treated paper) of an early version of "Galactic Gazongas" yesterday. My, that thing was half-baked and ill-conceived! Then again, it was an early product of a personal transitional period where I was picking up the pieces after a trauma and they didn't quite fit. It was the last ever of my comics that was written ad-lib and I developed some techniques that were used for the later Rip Off Press InterStellar OverDrive. Even though the protagonist, was too much of a beach-ball chested fetishized caricature, she is one of the two and three quarters of the female characters that I closely identify with.

The others are the Dumpy Little Princess, and lesser degree Winifred Feird, and a slight bit with the freak of nature Leonina R. Bast.

Here's a picture of the cover of the 1988 InterStellar OverDrive F*U*N Book with ol' Flexia.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

you ripped off my rip off!



Here's a scanned relic from the past, a page the '88 InterStellar OverDrive F*U*N Book to be precise. The episode title was cribbed from the Velvet Underground years before William Gibson cribbed it. It's annoying, but how can you really complain? Besides InterStellar OverDrive itself is lifted from a certain Camper Van Beethoven cover of Pink Floyd.

You can also see of me doing bits of that Brad Bird retro-Googie thing years before there was that Brad Bird retro-Googie thing.

Also a lot of flat and faked perspective. Shame on me!

These scannings bring back too many memories. Wrapped up Christmas shopping yesterday and wrapped up wrapping the presents up. Finally overcame the momentum and penciled in a couple of Captain Saucer panels and redrew the splash page.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

bryon unoriginals



Scanned in more old obscure stuff. This time it was the swiped art from Timber Ridge Magazine that was used in Bryon Godberson's Air Expo '91 flyer. There's a story behind that. My Mom and Dad ran up to Ida Grove to pitch some of my invention ideas and the like to Mr. Godberson, only to be blown off and given the run around by underlings. Or is every single secretary in the place too profanely stupid to know where his is? Then a few months later, there's my art used without permission, acknowledgment, or payment in his flyer. Grrr!

BTW, the cartoon pilot is named "Al T. Tude". He was jointly created between Timber Ridge publisher, Gary Hinrichson, and me. It's a shame that magazine didn't do better.

Next on deck for scanning is the nearly forgotten "InterStellar OverDrive F*U*N Book", compiled for the '88 Chicago Comic Con. It includes the early versions of of the Leonine Press ISOD#1 and #2.

Finished the first draft of the Little Red Hen, but there's still a lot of things to alter. For instance, I was remind that they're making bread, not pie. Will get booking on pencilling Captain Saucer after this is posted.

Monday, December 19, 2005

say it with nixies



One of my side projects is "Tube Punk", which would omnibus compilation of Captain Saucer, InterStellar OverDrive, Fanboy, and related on CD or DVD. "Tube Punk" is a reference to that I have been doing that Googie flavored retro-future thing since 1982. Sort of a really long term thing because there's a lot of pages to scan. Fortunately I have an A3 sized scanner.

I'm in the early stages of writing a Fractured Fairytale homage on The Little Red Hen. It's sort of a reply to a late '70s spoof of the story were the punch line is "A man from the government came and accused the Hen of unfair profits and made her share the pie with the other animals. Everyone was happy ever after, although they wondered why the Hen didn't bake very many pies anymore." Which was probably pretty funny on the eve of Proposition 13. My spoof is also a response to a real life experience where the Hen (who is a surrogate for Carly Fiorina) gets the Cat, Duck, and Pig to work really hard for the promise of pie, which she finally hoards all for herself and closes the plant.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

computer caper



Had a marathon phone call from a friend in Florida who was having trouble installing digital camera software. Making this even more fun and interesting is that he doesn't understand concepts like directories and exe's.

Had some very non-human three-eyed alines in a dream last night. Made a sketch of it today. They seemed scarier in the dream.

This sketch obviously isn't it. It's also rough for even being the rough sketch it is.

Hope to sneak in a few minutes of penciling Wingding and friend before work.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

8mm dreams



Today my Mom called and imposed on me to drive halfway across town to pick up my own Christmas presents at Borders. So much for doing anything creative before work.

Otherwise, my birth grandfather has had a severe heart attack and I am wishing him well.

Met another former Hewlett-Compaqard employee yesterday. He was working at Radio Shack.

Here's art for my planned first ever Flash animation for when I ever figure out Flash. It mimics my first ever animation done in 8mm back in '76. Which is why the art retains sort of a done by a 15 year old look. I suppose if I really wanted to be true to my style at the time, I would render it in felt tip pen and color it with Magic Markers or dime-store tempera paint. Unfortunately the original film is long last.

Friday, December 16, 2005

happy holidays



So can somebody tell me how "Happy Holidays" went from a synonym for Christmas back when I was a kid in the '60s and '70s to being an attack on Christmas in the past few weeks?

Went on a grocery run today.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

here, snowball


Getting pelted with snow again. Over at Animation Nation there's a controversy about it nekomimi are cute & sexy or weird and perverted.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

little macs and farmer's cadillacs


Paid off the Farmer's Cadillac and turned around and bought a returned iBook. Had a slight hassle as the store originally forgot to include the battery, install disks, etc, and I had to go back to pick that up. Now I have a little Mac to go with the big Mac. Got back to Omaha in time for some dreary weather.

I was also thinking about how my recent proposals didn't mention things like "busty", "buxom" and "retro", while my '90s comic book proposals flogged those.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

two weeks later....


Over at the Animation Nation site, somebody noticed that these proposals are front heavy with "large women". Oddly enough, I didn't notice that when I was putting them together.

Somebody else asked if I worked for Film Roman. I feel a little better knowing that I could be mistaken for an anonymous animation professional.

Talking about your large ladies, here's a couple of sketches that I did for my 45th birthday a couple of weeks ago. One is sort of my birthday as a "Bicentennial, Jr." thingie with fireworks, bottle rockets and model rockets. The other is Wingding jumping out of a cake putting the big in "Big 45".

Monday, December 12, 2005

we are the hampions


If I had to write the "Cyclopses" proposal again, maybe I'd describe it better like "Monty Python and SNL meet Warner Brothers and Jay Ward". Maybe I would differentiate it from Animaniacs, Raw Toonage, Bullwinkle, etc, by saying that unlike those animated variety shows, this one doesn't have the ridged structure like the first main characters segment then a filler segment or two and final main characters segment, this show just flows where it flows. That it's something more like the Heavy Metal the Movie or Liquid Television of animated comedy except that it will be created by a tight team instead of being sloppy and indulgent and it won't cop a hip attitude.

Here's the weakest complied page from the InterStellar OverDrive proposal, some Hampions and Sahlf the Oem and Qwertyuiop art from a 1993 ISOD comic book proposal (all would have less off-kilter figure construction if rendered now), a graph paper sketch of the Guardbot from the Sahlf story, and even the back cover of the 1984 Captain Saucer #8 for the Inols illustration.

Tomorrow is my day off. Maybe I'll do some Christmas shopping, return a certain hard drive, do that errand run up to Soldier, and wash the Farmer's Cadillac. And sneak in a lot of drawing on Captain saucer, too.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

a boy and his goat



Here's the 'Boy and 'Goat illos of the rest of the cast. This is compiled from some new art plus old comics panels from the late '80s and early '90s. There's about three and a half conflicting cartoony styles here. Which is pretty good for somebody with a reputation for not having much stylistic variation. You can see a lot of my scattered influences: Ed Benedict and Iwao Takamoto at Hanna-Barbera, Don Martin, Anime and Manga, John Kricfalusi and Ralph Bakshi during the "New Adventures of Mighty Mouse" days. The Muse was redesigned to be less weird and fetishistical than the "Assyrian Myoo" version to just plain weird. Yet her personality stays the same. If I had better intuition when I drew her, I'd give her bat wings because she plays off the psycho bat teacher archetype. And why do those people gravitate to the whole spelling, grammar, English, and lit groove? I realized that I forgot to scan in Prof. Daysun when it was a little too late to get it in this proposal.

Fanboy & Scapegoat
WELCOME TO THE WORK FARCE
Episode synopsis by Doug Holverson

The currently unemployed Scapegoat meets Fanboy when the 'Boy puts up a room mate wanted sign to help pay rent. Fanboy and Scapegoat then go job hunting to make the rent. They both go through the humiliation of endless interviews with junior Yuppies, who then hire some-body else, usually an old college friend or some shallow image person just like them. Or there are the interviews with good ol' boys that just want to hire somebody who isn't too talented, so that they wouldn't be shown up at work, plus be a beer-drinking buddy for after work. Scapegoat runs his chances by acing aptitude tests and running into "ignorant white trash ain't supposed to be that bright" bigotry. Fanboy flunks several aptitude tests, not being talented enough to flip burgers, but he’s too oblivious to be fazed. Fanboy and Scapegoat apply at Klosed Kliche Komics at different times. Scapegoat gets into an argument with B.B. Boomer over the 'Goat's Mensa membership. B.B. can't believe that the letters In Mensa aren't initials for something despite Scapegoat insisting that it's the Latin word of table. Fanboy then spies a Messing-house Nuclear Mop-up Division recruiting poster and applies. He gets employment after go-ing through rigorous psy-chological evaluation (MMPI parody), physicals, and banana-suited job train-ing. Scape-goat sees a “Help Wanted” sign in the window at Mom & Pop’s T.V. Sales & Service, which prompts him to beg “Pop” for a job. Pop acknowledges that the Goat has a lot of repair talent, but he’d already de-cided to hire his Brother-in-law, who just made probation, “Well, he had a lot of experience with car ra-dios and VCRs.…” Scapegoat ends up unemployed, spend-ing his spare time fixing VCRs of his idiot relatives and friends, who rarely show gratitude, and when they do it’s in ways like paying with homemade cookies. Fanboy, Ray Gamma, and Joanie Miro end up doing radioactive shtick mopping up at the Polyphemus Point Nu-clear Plant.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

fanboy & friends



Finally, last but also least is the Fanboy and Scapegoat proposal. This was an afterthought straggler proposal that got squeezed in. This is a reworking of a proposal that was entered a Heritage Cablevision contest for new TV series ideas back in 1991. That original proposal was written on an aging Mac Plus. I have no idea if anybody actually won that contest. At least this proposal has new art, including some that was done during coffee breaks.

Otherwise, I'm a little annoyed that I drove all the way over to the mid-town Best Buy in dinner time traffic on slushy sloppy roads to get a 250Gb hard drive that was on sale, only to come home and discover that it's a IDE instead of a SATA. Good thing I never opened the box and have the receipt and bag.

Fanboy & Scapegoat
A series proposal by Doug Holverson

Fanboy and Scapegoat is similar to a black humored Bullwinkle, with two buddies sharing a mobile home, who really don't like each other. Fan-boy and Friends is about the adventures of that funny appliance, Fanboy, his roommate, Scape-goat, and the people that they bump into. Whereas Moose & Squirrel can jet set to adventure, Fanboy and Scapegoat are stuck in the post-industrial and post- prosperity town of Dieselburg, Iowa. Fanboy and Scapegoat split the rent of a trailer house, get on each other nerves, and get into often sur-real slap-stick. Fanboy and Scape-goat live in the Twister Valley Trailer Park on the edge of Dieselburg, a cartoonishly de-picted run-down in-dustrial park, which in-cludes the Dieselburg Community College, Mom & Pop’s T.V. Sales and Ser-vice, Harry X. Hippie’s Comic Book Shop, the Messinghouse Nuclear Mop-up Division, Klosed Klique Komics Publishing, and the Polyphemus Point Nuclear Plant. Dieselburg’s ethnic mix includes cartoon humans, funny animals, Fanboys, and Cyclopes. Dieselburg is also a stopping point for Martian space pirates looking for moth-balls, dusty old New Wave cutouts, and other stuff that’s over-priced contraband on other planets.

Here are some of the colorful characters of this community.

Fanboy is the main character and often compulsively dumb funny appliance. He’s out-going and a bit self-centered for somebody with no par-ticular talent, and he lives for comic books. Fanboy is a poor to middling amateur cartoonist, and is cliquish and hangs around with a clique of fanboys just like himself. Fanboy has a job with the Messinghouse Nuclear Mop-up Division, doing stuff for minimum wage that you can’t pay most people enough to do. The ‘Boy sometimes takes classes at the Dieselburg Community College.

Scapegoat is Fanboy’s full-time housemate and funny animal. He is a social leper with a heart of gold, although it’s starting to get a bit tarnished through too much of others’ mistreatment. He has a high IQ, but low self-esteem. He is a mostly-unemployed electronic repairman and can repair anything and is a journeyman car-toonist, but mainly gets treated as having no talent. The ‘Goat takes classes at the Diesel-burg Com-munity College and would die to be a professional cartoonist. He will let himself be used and abused by others in the vain hope that he’ll be liked.

The Fanboys are the clique of fanboys that Fanboy hangs out with. They are funny appli-ances just like himself, but distin-guished from each other by being different heights. Their big collec-tive shtick is comic books, patting themselves on their collective back for being rugged individuals for being comic and Skiffy fans and then deciding by consensus to like or hate ex-actly all the same things.

Ray Gamma Is Fanboy’s overbearing boss at the Messinghouse Nuclear Mop-up Divi-sion. His favorite quote is, “Remember, kid, I’m forever sending you in there to do things that I wouldn’t do myself.”

Joan Miro is a pretty brunette co-worker of Fanboy’s and one of the few people who looks good even in a rad suit (if Fanboy would ever notice). She is semi-friendly and is about the only good worker on the Mop-up team. Joan lives in the same trailer court as Fan-boy and Scapegoat.

Prof. E. Lou Sid Dayson Ph. D. Is a Professor at the Dieselburg Community College and teaches some of Fanboy’s and Scapegoat's classes. He’s somewhat pompous and stuffy but is the only one that no-tices that the ‘Goat is intelligent and talented.

Alice Chalmers is an exotic tomboy student at Dieselburg Community College. The local males' secret crush, she’s too perfect to be touched. She can whip any other character on the show if she has to.

Fran Chelf is another co-ed at the Community College and resident at the trailer court. Has big poodle cut, receding chin, and prominent curves. Scapegoat has a crush on her, though she’s ranges from indiffer-ent to hostile towards him, unless she wants something fixed then she makes false promises of friendliness. Fran would rather go steady with the abusive Gunter and complain that there are no good men around.

Gunter is a big jock with letter on-campus and big dumb bully off-campus and Fran Chelf’s steady date.

The Muse is a matron goddess of cartoonists with an overbearing personality and is more than a bit bat guano bonkers. She usually in-tim-idates Scape-goat into drawing highly inspired cartoons that get met with hos-tility from ev-erybody except somewhat pompous and stuffy college professors with Ph. Ds.

B.B. Boomer is he ex-hippie-cum-greedy-businessman head of the local Klosed Klique Komics. He often wears a tailored suit over a tie-die T-shirt and his hairline has receded halfway back to his ponytail. B.B. openly believes that his generation is god’s gift to the universe and the rest of the world should bow down into worshipful, grateful servitude.

Harry X. Hippie (a.k.a.: ‘‘Mean Ol’ Fascist Hippie’’) is the mean old sixties hold-out that runs the comic book shop next to Mom & Pop’s TV. Panders his store’s selection to the Fanboys, although he can barely hide his contempt for them. He will kick Fanboy or Scapegoat out of his store on any provo-cation, real or imagined. Actually, Harry is not derivative of a certain Simpsons character, but is loosely based on a real shop owner in Iowa, who is too dense to be cuttingly sarcastic.

Maxi Nekeaux is the ‘Boy & ‘Goats next-door neighbor. She is kind of easy. She as no real ambitions in life, although she has slid into the unofficial one of seeing how much TV she can which and eat as much food stamp bought junk food as possible.

Note on the nuclear work angle: I use to be a Bowl Jumper for Westinghouse doing nuclear work in what seemed like a previous life. I always would have liked to have bagged the early Simpsons on doing nuclear humor that is based on real life instead of made up by politically correct ex-hippies. Even to the point of going to the power plants and getting all the juicy horror stories from the HP's ("Health Physics" people).

Friday, December 09, 2005

sketchy details....



I prepped a bunch of Captain Saucer jpegs for Workhorse Comics while washing my clothes. Will finished up a couple of CS ads tomorrow.

Here's one of the weaker illo pages for the Fox and Film Roman contest: three pin-ups of varying quality, plus dipping into my rough sKetch collection. It was stuck in the middle to minimize damage. I had a nice pin-up of Pursia that I would have liked to use, but absolutely couldn't find.

INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE “Butterflies Fanning the Storms, Part #2: Don’t let the Gammies and Zoomies Bite!”,
Synopsis of Part Two of Two Part Pilot
By Doug Holverson

Wayne brings the pizzas to the backstage of the Atomic Ballroom for the Psubatomic Byrdbath to eat. Wayne strikes up a casual conversation that leads to Flexia showing Wayne how to single handedly flip someone, of any size.
That night at the Psubatomic Byrdbath show, Wayne is off in a corner bragging to a comely female that he knows a Leian Martial Arts move.

Next morning, Wayne wakes up hung over and has an Ulviox breaking in through an air vent. The Dragonman is really in the nuclear area and has everyone there captive, including Wilfred, Winnie, and Didi who were down checking up on things. Worse yet is that the security guards won’t believe him after the prank yesterday. Wayne has the temerity and impulsiveness to try to take out the Dragonman to win Didi back. The two head down to the nuclear area.
Meanwhile V.U. sends Flexia down to the technical levels to find a replacement for a blown tube in a guitar amp, “start at the Nuclear Level and work your way up.”

Wayne and Elvis get dressed in banana suits and are ready for the fight. The Dragonman is in the running reactor and is about to pull the control rods out. Wayne goes in and is severely over-matched and takes a beating. Bruised and weak-kneed he goes back in to fight some more because the alternative is certain death for everybody. Wayne grabs a fire extinguisher and sneaks up on the Dragonman from behind. Fear solidifies into anger as he beats down the Dragonman with the fire extinguisher. The Dragon throws a mighty blow, which Wayne blocks with the extinguisher, denting it. Wayne shoots the Dragonman in the eyes with frigid cold CO2. The Dragonman runs in pain from the reactor containment down the hall towards the elevators. Right then Flexia tries to exit but the Dragon crashes in to her. She decks him hard enough to knocksome teeth out and sends him back running towards Wayne. Wayne is stopped dead in his tracks with the Dragonman wobbling back towards him when Fang yells about using the move. Wayne flips the punch-drunk Dragonman over and he lands flat on his back and is out cold. Flexia comments to a trembling Wayne, who trying to catch his breath, that’s pretty good for a human, “he’s even bigger than my Papa!”

Ulviox frees Big Bill, Didi, Winnie, and others from being locked in nuclear storage. Didi and Winnie smooch up with Wayne who is still trying to shake off trembling from his ordeal. Big Bill orders Winnie to manipulate Flexia out of the picture to play Wayne’s heroism for a PR advantage.

Finally, the prank call has finally been traced to Delat’s cell phone found in a litter can getting Ulviox off the hook.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

hacking and kludging


I'm over the worse of this cold, but still a little achy and have a hacking cough. Ran some errands in 8° weather.

One of the ironies of this proposal is that InterStellar OverDrive has been in the works since 1987 but I didn't have any decent art for this package. I would have liked to have time to work up some group pin-ups. One would be a Wayne, Winnie, Didi, Wilfred, and Ulviox group. The next would be of the Basts: Flexia (gone "semi native" in a banker's suit and vest, with nothing underneath), Montue, Leonina, and Pursia. Finally a group pin-up of several of the alien races.

I kludged something together with comic book panels and other random drawings and added handwritten notes like "V.U. Meter and Flexia R. Bast" and "Wayne and Winnie".

Also the synopsis wasn't quite what they requested, being a two-parter instead of a single stand alone episode.

INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE “Butterflies Fanning the Storms, Part #1: Bugs Between the Cogs”,
Synopsis of Part One of Two Part Pilot
By Doug Holverson

In a classroom with Flexia, as an eccentric looking student, is reading a report that about a big windfall of alien technology was given Studebaker in1957. At class dismissal, V.U. Meter, deadpan man wearing Government Issue black sunglasses and suit, intercepts Flexia. He tells her that their band, “The Psybatomic Byrdbath” has a New Wave oldies gig at Big Bill’s Studebaker dealership for the New ’06 models.

A tail-finned vehicle “Studebaker” is revealed to be a flying saucer cruising to the L4 Space Station.
Inside the space station, Wayne is printing out info on Delat, an alien who lied on his forms. Winnie tags along and they discuss how the Dragonmen are too crude to pull off their abuses of psychotherapy to cure their criminals. Outside of Bill’s office Wayne snags a smooch with his steady, Didi. Inside of Bill’s office, Big Bill orders a jittery Wayne to fire the offending alien.

Wayne tamps down the butterflies in his stomach and goes to the office of Ulviox, who is another alien and one that runs the nuclear department, is clowning around with Delat. Delat is proud of his spot on imitation of Ulviox. Wayne kills the fun by firing Delat. Ulviox is upset, is soon sidetracked to fix problems that require shutting down two out of three of the stations reactors.

Lighyears away, an abused patient of Dragonman psychotheray on a “’roid rage” makes an lethal escape and comes to Earth looking for trouble.

Next day, V.U.’s and Flexia’s band comes up to L4 to put on an old school Alternative Noise Band show. Winnie takes care of the band Wayne gets stuck with watching the crew that sets up the band’s equipment. Didi is annoyed the Wayne has been looking over Flexia.

At another docking port, the Dragonman departs from a passenger saucer. Delat who is about to leave, mimics Ulviox’s voice out of spite and makes a false report that the Dragon man is threatening the Reactors. He then drops the phone in a litter bin before boarding the saucer. This gets Ulviox in deep trouble with Security.

While supervising the set up in the Atomic Ballroom, Wayne gets conscripted to get pizzas for the band. Wayne runs down to Fermi’s Pizzeria and places an order. The Dragonman is sitting at table writing his grievances against Earthlings and mammals. Flexia pops in to get some beer. Wayne admires that her biceps are so big that he can put both hands around one and his finger tips don’t even touch and then makes a failed pass at her. Didi has watched this from a distance and confronts Wayne and then breaks up with him. After Didi storms out, Wayne vents his spleen about Didi and also the Psubatomic Byrdbath, “If somebody melted down one of the L4 nukes, it'll probably sound like their so-called ‘music’!”.

The Dragonman overhears this and grins evilly as he now knows how to wreak his vengeance against the Earthlings and mammals.

To be continued….

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

more cold



It's still cold outside (was a round zero degrees this morning) and I'm still sopped with the virus. Hoping to be a little healed up by work tomorrow.

The gem of my ideas and unfortunately the roughest of my Fox & Film Roman proposals was the InterStellar OverDrive one. I wish that I had a more time to do better art. Like this cover with the basis color down but painfully lacking in modeling.

InterStellar OverDrive Proposal
by Doug Holverson

InterStellar OverDrive takes place in either an alternate universe or a hyper-real dream where they still make Studebakers and Studebaker makes a damn fine flying saucer. The series will give viewers a lot to empathize with an ensemble cast and many characters trying to do well, often despite themselves and nearly all of them trying to get a head in this galaxy.

While some promising (and influential) space series have space yuppies spreading political correctness, nearly everybody in the InterStellar OverDrive Universe is out to make a buck or their planetary equivalent. This opens up a lot of comedic and dramatic possibilities as various people work at self-serving or cross-purposes. Nobody gets preached to or set right and only occasionally learn lessons when things go seriously wrong.

Earth and Leiania, a similar world in the Tau Ceti system, are considered to be a bit backwards, out in the Milky Way’s boondocks, not being in either fashionable, cosmopolitan arm. The Tau Cetians are considered to be more promising and the Earthlings being a collective weaker stepsister.

The main characters have been in development for a while and they can pretty much write their own dialog.

Flexia Bast is a full-blooded unmastered warrior from Leiania. She is taking business courses in Omaha, Nebraska. She is a tall, very powerfully built, strong, silent type but can be naturally friendly when approached. Her estranged mother is the most successful entrepreneur on the home world and her father is reputed to be most formidable warrior of his generation. She is probably the break out character of this series.

Wayne Kolbe is still a very athletic ex-jock who is uncomfortable at being a planet-hopping corporate suit for Big Bill, but he works hard to excel to make up for not cracking the pros. He will impulsively do heroic acts and then realize that he’s in deep later. Note on his pompadour: this character design predates Johnny Bravo by nearly a decade and a half.

Wilfred “Big Bill” P. Feird is a billionaire based in Omaha since he got his start there as a mere Studebaker dealer. He’s still a pushy, hard sell, fly by the set of his pants businessman. Think of a George Babbit archetype on a caffeine buzz.

Winifred “Winnie” Feird is the oldest Big Bill’s two daughters, both adults. Winnie is a bit tomboyish, fairly zaftig, and a little too extraverted. She feels that the universe is but a stage, so why not chew the scenery, steal scenes, and be a wsieguy. She’s one corner of the triangle with Wayne and Didi.

Didi Feird is Wilfred’s other daughter, a pretty crew-cut sweater girl. She’s otherwise a bit quiet and shy and deferential. Sometimes, she will come up with the odd insight. Other times, she can too readily be a spear-carrier or victim for Winnie’s antics.

Ulviox “Elvis” 10G-Q5 is a little green techno-geek with a playfully obnoxious personality. He has an IQ over a 1000 but can be puerile enough that it takes a while to intuit that. He apparently knows about all the technological and pop-culture trivia in the Galaxy. He is sometimes paired with Wayne on romps.

V.U. Meter is the angry deadpan leader of the Psubatomic Byrdbath, a critical darling of a forgotten Noise Band from the ‘80s that never was commercially successful or even popular in his hometown. He is a friend with Flexia and she sings and plays bass in the latest incarnation of his band.

Montue Bast is Flexia’s loving, grand old man of a father. He is reputable to the most formidable Leian warriors of his generation, and continues to be the Emperor’s favorite and a kindly family man and naturally very friendly.

Leonina Bast is Flexia’s estranged mother and the most successful and least liked entrepreneur on the Tau Ceti home world. She is an analytical strategy wonk and has never forgiven the universe, and wants a serious chunk out of its hide, for giving her four extra toes and fingers, and over double the normal IQ than normal.

Pursia Bast is Flexia’s much younger grown sister and mommie’s little sycophant. She can do calculus in her head, parrot many facts and still know not what any of it means.

Of course, the series sprawls across the galaxy with a lot of races of aliens. Here’s a starter set.

The Leians are almost like a parallel Earth, with the main gimmick is that their “humans” evolved from Pantherus instead of Pan. Their society is a bit more orderly, cleaner, and intuitive than ours. Internal combustion never took hold there, they still hold on to a lot of legacy steam power, and are years ahead of us in communications, computers, fabrication, and fuel-cells.

The Inols are very non-human aliens that dominate the Western Arm of the Milky Way. They have business plans for Earth, almost always with us getting the short end. They came in four corporate “races”: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black. The Cyan, Yellow, and Black groups are the bumbling, CYA, Peter-principled corporate bureaucrats of the universe. The Magenta group can catch one unaware by their slick competency and effectiveness.

The Hampions are an over-bearing empire that dominates the overly industrialized Eastern Arm of the Milky Way with their “State Capitalism.” They like pollution and boat-anchor-engineered big things with a lot of gears and chips. They think they’re wonderful to deal with, but everyone else in the galaxy thinks differently.

The Claireans are the Hampions closest allies, despite being a little smarter and fastidious and a lot more orientated towards precision. They can also be maddeningly anal retentive, and a few other quirks, having been descended from a slave class that killed off a decadent and slovenly ruling cast.

The Cses a political satellite of the Hampion Empire that is closest to Earth. Two moons in the system, Cseworld and Junkworld are populated by what looks like cyclopean elfmimi.

Elgium are a race of little green geeks. They have some of the galaxy’s most advanced technology and most backwards social skills.

The 1101 are a race of non-aligned robots inhabiting their worlds 000E through 01BD in the star systems 0000 through 000A. These beings never lie nor do anything deliberately wrong or self-serving and are always cooperative. This makes them hard and awkward to figure out and deal with.

Just send the various characters and races bouncing off each other like Brownian motion and you have an endlessly entertaining series.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

coooooold!


It's cold both externally and internally. Temperatures averaging around zero in the great outdoors. Got the sore throat and head ache virus inside of me. Will try to do some rough pencils on Captain Saucer anyway.

Here's the synopsis part of my Captain Saucer entry. That picture was colored in like 15 minutes when I was busking these things out on my days off.

THE NEW AND IMPROVED ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN SAUCER
EPISODE #1: "BLOWED UP REAL GOOD!" SYNOPSIS
By Doug Holverson

At the Captain Saucer franchise in the sprawling spaceport of Soldier, Iowa, Nevil Maskelyn, the current Captain Saucer ponders if Wingding use to be on the high school soft ball them, while Harrison sends her and SM-10 on an errand to the Post Office and commends a short cut through the City Park.

There’s a big honkin’ space ship in its natural habitat, outer space. Inside, half-awake and half-smart teenage evil space emperor, Laminar, is bummed because his concubine is not arousing him. He will give Earth an ultimatum to feel as mopey as he does or else it’s going to get “blowed up real good!”

Nevil, Harrison, and Bertha try to stream Emperor Laminar’s ultimatum over flakey dial-up. He will blow up the world at six o’clock if his demands aren’t met, and will crater the Soldier, Iowa City Park to give the world a taste of his destructive power.
In the Soldier City Park, Wingding and SM-10 stop to look up at the big flying saucer and how pretty the zap-gun is lighting up like a Christmas tree. And then there’s an Earth shattering Ka-Boom!

Harrison is aghast! He has to find a new maid. Then a charred Wingding squeezes and stumbles through the door. SM-10 isn’t so lucky or indestructible as she gives the beeping ashes to Jeff Jeff. Harrison sends Nevil and Bertha (and Wingding in case they need to be backed up with some muscle, er, maid service) up in the Nucle-O-Matic 190-XT flying saucer to Laminar’s ship to stop him.

The trio takes flies up and boards Laminar’s saucer. Wingding quickly falls through a trapdoor and gets stuck. Nevil uses a fire extinguisher to beat her the rest of the way through. All the commotion causes Nevil and Bertha to be captured by Laminar’s armed Minions. Bertha and Nevil are brought to the thrown room at ray-gun point. Laminar flirts with Bertha and is turned down. He sends Bertha and Nevil to the brig. A Fat Concubine and her Slender Friend feel jilted and conspire to save Nevil. Frustrated, Laminar decides to blow up Earth and sulks into the control room and presses the button.
Wingding stumbles out of another trapdoor in into outer space, fretting on how exposure to hard vacuum is lethal to her after over eight or nine hours. She’s standing in front of huge zap gun pointed at Earth, and it’s lighting up like a Christmas tree. Wingding sticks one chunky finger into the barrel and another chunky finger into her tiny ear. There is a big Miro-inpired Kablooie. Wingding unclenches her eyes in disbelief at the burst gun barrel curled up like a banana peel around her fingertip.

Fat Concubine is fakes a come-on with a Brig Guard, while Slender Concubine clubs him from behind. Fats snares the keys and unlocks cell door for Nevil. She throws the keys over her shoulder, and they fly through the bars of Bertha’s cell door and clonks her unconscious. When Nevil learns that it may be too late to save Earth, he makes the best of it by partying in the cell with the Two Concubines.

Emperor Laminar ponders that there is “No Earth Shattering Ka-Boom. I was expecting an Earth Shattering Kaboom!’ His Minion informs him that the zap gun had an accident. Laminar mopes about what other cruel prank fate would play on him. A seriously angry Wingding comes ripping through the doors and bulkheads. Laminar realizes that he likes girls if they’re man enough and asks her for a date. She shyly agrees, feeling that it’s probably a mercy thing for both of them.
Back on Earth, Jeff Jeff has salvaged and a lock nut and zener diode from SM-10’s ashes and merely replaced the other 471973067 parts and fixed him as good as new!

Bertha comes to, unlocks herself, and finds Nevil under the covers with a Fat and Slender Concubine, punches all three out and drags Nevil home by his collar.

The next day, Harrison video tapes a press release giving Nevil all the credit for saving the Earth from getting blowed up real good. When the camcorder is off, Bertha starts to throttle Nevil. Wingding storms outside, rips an engine out of a company car and lobs it over the horizon. Jeff Jeff comments, “Jus’ great. I just rebuilt the carburetor on that thing two days ago.”
Miles away, at the edge of a cornfield, the car engine thuds down next to a big stack of scrap iron with car engines, with a couple of boilers, an anvil, a boat anchor, a stationary engine, a steam engine, a dynamo, an oversized bull gear, a giant split pulley, and even an aeolipile. A grizzled old farmer deadpans, “Ya think that Captain Saucer place woulda fixed their bad office politics by now…”

Monday, December 05, 2005

we're going to have a wingding!



Got the networking to work on the old G3 again. Reran the 10.2.8 Updater on a whim and it fixed everything. I'm guessing the old Mac didn't like my A4Tech USB keyboard and read it as some sort of Ethernet device. My Wintel isn't overly fond of this keyboard either. Will try to pick up an used Apple USB keyboard at a thriftshop, Computer Renaissance, or eBay.

Here's the Captain Saucer proposal for the Fox & Film Roman contest. Pat Moriarity has a good feeling about this, so who knows? My step-dad, the Yale drop-out, had a good feeling about Fun Rockets...

If you're familiar with the '80s Small Press version of Captain Saucer, this revival is almost like "CS:TNG". Also wears it's '70s Saturday morning influences more on its sleeve.

Captain Saucer Proposal
By Doug Holverson

Captain Saucer plays like ‘70s Hanna-Barbera big chin style space hero corrupted by Russ Meyer. A back handed mock-heroic homage to those old Saturday Morning cartoons. The main appeal of the show is that it mainly aims for snort milk out of your nose humor. No episodes will deadened by promoting any real morals. The viewer will have perverse empathy with most characters being lovably ineffectual in their self-centeredness and self-servingness. With the exception of Wingding, a potential breakout character that the viewers will sympathize with her being naturally nice and kind and suffering the consequences for that. Captain Saucer is a science fiction parody that requires no deeper understanding of science fiction beyond the overly familiar gimmes of flying saucers, aliens, monsters, and zap guns.

The Captain Saucer franchise is set in the sprawling, prosperous, and cosmopolitan space port of Soldier, Iowa (“the hard water capital of the world!”) in some undefined cartoon future the looks a lot like the Jetsons. (How else could a proper cartoon future look like?) When alien baddies come to Earth inflict the badness that they do so badly, they usually seek out Soldier, Iowa (“the golden buckle on the Corn Belt!”).

Nevil Maskelyn was a Phys Ed instructor who was recruited as the current Captain Saucer. His reasons for taking the job are that he wants to fly through space, punch out people, and boink space girls. Even the blue and green ones! He’s just smart enough to know he’s a muscle-head and slides through life on a maximum of luck and minimum of effort.

Bertha Athena Cassiopeia Iris Calypso Lumina Venus Nova Delta Estes is Captain Saucer’s assistant who thinks she’s a lot more intelligent and competent than she really is. She can also insult people in two languages. She also hates being the center of attention just because she is, in her words, “a scorching hot babe!” She also really hates not being the center of attention when other females are.

Wingding is the shy, bookish maid of the Captain Saucer agency. She will often pull Nevil’s and Bertha’s cookies out of the fire. At eight foot two, 970 pounds, and nearly indestructible, she’s considered to be puny and frail for a Snood from the planet Snoo.

John Harrison is the officious dweeb that runs the Captain Saucer franchise. He was once the original Captain Saucer. Now he polishes the Captain Saucer public image, by working up baked press releases.

John “Jeff Jeff” Jefferies is the franchise’s obnoxious brat techno-geek that keeps the equipment running and invents gismos of his own.

SM-10 is the agency’s mainly useless robot. It randomly beeps, plays 45s, and gets destroyed in every episode. Jeff Jeff salvages the only two remaining usable parts and fixes SM-10 by merely replacing the other 47596387 parts.

Twinkles is a semi-friendly parody of a certain movie alien. He’s been Jeff Jeff’s “bestest little pet since he ate his way out of my best friend!”

Of course the Captain Saucer universe has some amusing and interesting villains. Here is the roster so far:

Emperor Laminar is the barely half awake and barely half bright teenage evil emperor of the Lamia Empire. He has millions of conscripted minions who look like Roman Legionnaires with aviator goggles, jodhpurs, and boots.

Sophia Hagia and the Boyoids are the self-proclaimed “Kids from Nix Olympia, whoooa ooooh!” A out going and bouncy Sophia and her Devo-oid Martian spear-carriers come here to pilfer Earth’s greatest and highest culture achievement: New Wave oldies.

Pretty Princess Purri and the Neko Meanis (their I’s are all dotted with “kitty hearts”)are a cute ribbons and bows cliché of cat-girls in a rip on Girl Anime. They are also a ruthless yakuza from space. Purri is the ringleader, Sweeti is her sycophant, and Calli is just kind of there. Dainti is the muscle of the group, being able to shred boxy mobsters or pound Wingding through a brick wall without trying.

The Puzziez are a more thuggish and punkish rival mob to the Neko Meanis.

Emperor Turbulent is a male drama queen needy for all the approval in the universe. He has a burly police state in bowlers and many minions to sacrifice to get it.

Captain Signal and Noise are homage to Captain Skyhook and Static with the design reference shifted from Ed Bennedict over to Iwao Takamoto. Signal is a reluctant space villain while Noise, his pushy “minion”, manipulates him into about any sort of trouble. Noise also answers the question: “It’s an extra severe duty synthetic lubricant specially formulated with unique solvents that neither breakdown nor boil off in the extreme temperatures and hard vacuum of outer space.”

Hyperbot: Uranium Cumulus Flyflyboy 404++ is technically a space hero, albeit one imported from Japan. Unfortunately Flyflyboy became a space hero because he likes to blow up things and he’s totally whacked out with the power of piloting the big ugly Uranium Cumulus 404++ Hyperbot which has the firepower to blow up most anything.

Captain Saucer is differentiates itself from all the self-aware and self-referential Skiffy parodies is that it is a bit old schoolish in not being isn’t self-aware and self-referential. The romps are played totally straight faced with whatever is happening to the characters solidly being their “reality”. All in-jokes, meta-jokes, and pop culture references will be matter of fact played as throw away gags without any self-awareness or self-congratulation. Without the self-aware irony, this makes the dissonance even more comedic, to give the effect of watching an actual “lost” cartoon gone wrong. The series has no real nudity, any sex is implied and off screen, and all the vocabulary is TV-Y13/G-rated (the worst word used is “boobs”) so when things are often pushed off-color or the G-rated words are arranged to imply non-G-rated things it’s all the more strikingly funny. Cartoon slapstick can and will happen in the Captain Saucer universe, it has an edge because the characters can get hurt and, potentially killed, and they are dumb enough to bring it upon themselves.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

the fur flies!


The snow stopped and it's sunny but cold out there. I did get one reply on the G3-266 OS 10.2.8 network issues at the Apple forum, but it didn't fix the problem. I am sneaker netting files with an USB floppy drive right now. Grrr....

Here's another Film Roman and Fox contest entry. I may or may not have tainted my chances by letting this run longer than the requested single page, but the story gets as out of hand as these big pussies.

Pugnacious Pussies Synopsis
By Doug Holverson

An homage on an early ‘50s Warners and MGM cartoons featuring two overweight cat-girls fighting over a donut. This straddles the line between pastiche and parody, and is presented with a straight face, with no self-aware or self-referential posing, which makes the veering into off-color territory all that more “they’re not suppose to do that” funny. If music rights permit, this cartoon could be underscored Carl Stalling style arrangements of Leroy Anderson songs. I feel the Leroy and cartoon music would be an over-looked natural fit. This is an installment of the hypothetical “Cyclopses” show.

In an office in a cartoon world inhabited by anthropomorphic cats, the gals, Puffikins, Fuzzer, Foot Foot, Midnight, and Pouncer, all get up from the cubicles for coffee break. Due to an error by the bakery, a table is over flowing and piled to the ceiling with donuts. However, they’re all plain sugar donuts, save for one frosted glazed sprinkle that plump Puffikins grabs for herself. Her fat friend Fuzzer is a little tired at Puffy grabbing the best donut and starts insulting and poking her. Puffy insults and pushes back. Pushes turn to slapping and slapping turns into flying fists. Foot Foot, Midnight and Pouncer make a few greek chorus comments, until Pouncer notices that with “those two sows preoccupied, we got all the donuts for ourselves” and starts two fistedly shoveling them in. Midnight and Foot Foot pick up their own handfuls and join in.

Puffikins’ and Fuzzer’s fight wanders into the next room and they are bashing each other against a copy machine. This leads to a sight gag of looking down at the output tray with the machine spitting a page a second with a different cartoon expression of pain as each cat-girl’s head is banged against the glass.

Puffy shoves Fuzzer against an empty cubicle with a PC in it. Fuzzer starts choking Puffikins with the mouse cord until she turns purple and her eyes bulge out like grapefruits. The fight halts for a second as Puffy answers her cell phone (which was stuffed down her blouse and had an obnoxious tinny mechanical “Blue Tango” ring tone). She hands it to Fuzzer, “It’s for you.” Fuzzer tells the caller, “later, I’m all tied up with this clown!” and resumes choking Puffikins. Puffy then grabs a PC keyboard and pounds until most of the keys pop out and it finally breaks in tow it over Fuzzer’s head. Puffikins breaks free and holds the offending mouse up by the cord and looks at it disdainfully, “I hate meeces to pieces!” She then grabs an elbow lamp and goes after Fuzzer.

In the next joke, in an in-joke on the famous fake security camera download, Tyge is getting annoyed at his PC blue screening during particularly enthralling game of Solitaire and is pounding his fist on the keyboard as Popper pops his head up out of the cubical to watch. Tyge is about to whack the monitor with the keyboard when him and Popper stop to enjoy the view of two fat cat-girls fighting and alternately whacking each other with a lamp. Puffikins and Fuzzer are below the frame but their raised arms holding the increasingly battered lamp are in frame. When the lamp is brought down you do hear a Treg Brown percussive effect. Then one female female lunges at another leaving the lamp lonelily twirling in the air.

The two cat-girls have grabbed each other buy the necklines and cycling through thrown punches as they waddle down the hallway. That is until they run into a freshly waxed floor. In a bit of Friz Freling type stylized animation, their upper bodies are still as they embrace each other and the feet are slipping all over the place, perhaps to the tune of the “Waltzing Cat”. Licks just stands there and listlessly watches as the cat-girls slide by and then down the staircase.

An external view of the building as the silhouettes of the cat-girls and briefly glimpsed as they tumble by the windows on each of many flights. All sorts of hilariously incongruous Treg Brown style sound effects are played as they tumble and bounce all the way down.

Puffikins and Fuzzer roll out of the bottom of the staircase and into the men’s room. Snuggle, who is exiting the same room, shrugs and shakes off the toilet paper that has been dragging on his heal. Inside Fuzzer slams Puffy against the sinks and jam a soap dispenser nozzle in Puffy’s mouth. Fuzzer then pumps soap until Puffy’s cheeks bulge and bubbles come out her ears. Puffikins uses her free hand to pull a quarter out of her blouse. She sticks it into the vending machine on the wall. She accidentally sticks in it the coin slot for the “Spanish Fly”. She then has to flail it out and stick it in the “French Tickler” slot and turn the knob.

Puffikins grabs the French Tickler and jams it down Fuzzer’s throat. While Fuzzer is choking Puffy knocks her over. With Fuzzer flat on her back, Puffy bounces up and down on her belly with the pumping action causing the French Tickler to blow up like a giant balloon out of Fuzzer’s mouth. When the balloon is inflated until its tassel touches the ceiling, Puffikins tickles Fuzzer causing her to inhale all that air and inflate like a giant balloon herself. Puffy yanks the deflated tickler out of Fuzzer’s mouth causing her to fly about the room deflating until she’s a Lilliputian version of herself.

Fuzzer sticks her thumb in her and blows until she inflates herself to her normal height, but looks herself over to discover that she’s a beanpole version of herself. She blows on thumb again and is delighted that she’s a slender and busty version of herself. She blows on her thumb again and is now a really busty version of herself. Really delighted again she gives a really big blow on her thumb only to be annoyed and disappointed when she pops back to her old fat self. She then lunges at Puffikins knocking her into a stall. Fuzzer repeatedly dunks Puffikins’ head in the toilet and then flips the handle sending Puffy whirling down the toilet and out of sight.

Fuzzer walks away from the stall, alone to eat her donut. That is until she sees a bloated, waterlogged, and vengeful Puffikins sloshing and squeezing the doorway. Fuzzer holds the donut high out of harm’s way as Puffy spits a few hundred gallons of water on her. An annoyed Fuzzer shakes off some water off her head just in time for Puffy to spit out a roll of toilet paper at her. The roll bonks Fuzzer in the forehead and knocks her out.

Puffikins takes the donut, turns around and is triumphantly about to eat it when Fuzzers wakes up, walks up and backhands Puffy across the back of her head. The two fat cat-girls recoil and embrace in horror as the donut slow motion spins and lands in the urinal. Puffy smiles, “it hasn’t been there ten seconds!” Fuzzy cringes, “Yew! It don’t work like that!” The two cat-girls decide to be friends again and enjoy the mound of donuts left.

Meanwhile, Foot Foot, Midnight, and Pouncer are cartoonishly stuffed and bloated from eating nearly all but one of the donuts. Foot Foot and Midnight groan that they are so overly full that they could not eat another donut. Which is fine with Pouncer, who declares that she will eat the last donut. Foot Foot and Midnight decide that maybe they could eat that donut after all. Then Foot, Midnight, and Pouncer all start grabbing and pushing and fighting for that last donut.

Just in time for Puffinkins and Fuzzer to show up, look over the trio, look at each other, and shrug. “Here we go again!”

Saturday, December 03, 2005

ol' beige on a gray and white day



It's snowing and the Networking in my old Beige G3 is seriously corrupted. I asked for advice on an Apple forum and a Macintosh group, and, of course, nobody lifts a finger to give me an answer. Another little reason why some of us feel a little Dumpy.

To get technical: It's an old 266MHz G3 running OS 10.2.8. Network settings in Preferences stalls the first time, shows a lot of blank tabs the second time, and frequently crashes. Network Utility is also flakey and crashy. It does show a phantom PCI Ethernet card in Slot A1 Port 2 which this machine doesn't have. This phantom card does not show up System Profiler. I've zapped the Prams, reset the mobo and ran Disk Utility, none of which fixed anything.

Anyway, forgot to post the "Car Script". The picture is a bit of a rerun.

The Car that Cried Alarm
A Jay Ward and Bill Scott pastiche by Doug Holverson

(Titles):
Pastiche Parable
“The Car that Cried Alarm”

SCENE#1: (A Motorist is dressed like a fifties sports car enthusist.)

Narrator Once upon a time there was a Motorist.

(Motorist waves.)

Narrator And what’s a motorist without a motor?

(A motor falls out of the sky and lands in the outstretched hand of the Motorist.)

Motorist Yeah! Without it I’d be just an ist! (pause) Or worse yet, just a lowly pedestrian!

Narrator And what’s a motor without a car wrapped around it?

(The Motorist tosses the motor over his shoulder, bounces it with his heel, where it lands in the motor compartment a fancy Car! Pan over to a view of the fancy Car, possibly a cartoonified convertible that looks like the love child of the Dodge Viper and the Chrysler 300.)

Narrator Now this wasn’t just any car. It was the extra sporty model!

(Close up of the chrome fender script “190XT Turbo”.)

Narrator And to prove it, this car had chrome letters and numbers arranged in a fast sounding combination and even a buzzword appended.

(Fender shot of a “dub” wheel with a “spinner”.)

Narrator With the shortest tires on the tallest rims with that twirly pinwheel thingy inside.

(View of the Car and arrows pointing to the front and rear spoilers.)

Narrator It had spoilers on its rump and chinny chin chin.

(Side view of the Car with the Motorist in the seat making car sounds.)

Narrator It was adorned with boy racer stripes.

Motorist Vroom! Vroom! Brrruuuuum! Brrrrrraaaaaaaawwwwwppp!

(A radio with Sputnik antennas sticking out of it orbiting over the Car.)

Narrator It had satellite radio.

Radio Beep beep!

(View of five-gallon exhaust tips.)

Narrator It had five-gallon exhaust tips.

(Parody under hood shot with an insane number of parts rotating, half comedically in the wrong direction,and reciprocating.)

Narrator It was over its head in cams. It was all torqued off with horsepower. And had cubic inches by the liter.

(Close up of gaudy chromey taillights with multiple lenses.)

Narrator It had what were called “Eurostyle” taillights, although they seemed uniquely American in their gaudiness.

(Arrows pointing to random parts of the Car.)

Narrator And a lot of other trendy stuff that will make this cartoon’s writer feel hip, but will embarrass this cartoon in a few years when it is all passé.

(The Motorist is brushing the teeth of the grill of the Car while his lonely S.O. pokes her head out.)

Narrator The Motorist truly loved his car as he always washed and waxed and polished and detailed it.

S.O. Hun, you ever gonna spend some time with me?

Motorist In a while, Dear!

S.O. By the way, have you seen my toothbrush?

(The Motorist holds up the toothbrush that he is using, looks at it, and blushes.)

SCENE#2: (The Motorist is flipping a switch on the dash of his Car.)

Narrator Our Motorist had an alarm installed to insure that his true love stayed out of harm’s way.

(The Motorist is giving instructions to his Car.)

Motorist Now you know what to do. Just make lots of obnoxious noises if you would ever find yourself being burglarized.

(The Motorist walks away from the Car.)

Narrator Wouldn’t you know it, just as out Motorist was out of sight of his beloved.

(A dumb drooling Dog walks directly into a fireplug. The Dog walks into it again. The Dog then walks around the fireplug and then up to the Car and sniffs a tire.)

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

(Dog runs away as alarm in the Car goes off.)

Dog Yipe!

(The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car.)

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

(The Car quietly snickers as the Motorist gives an embarrassed shrug as the Constable gives him a stern look.)

Car Hee hee!

(The motorist and the Constable walk away from the Car.)

Narrator Just as his back is turned.

(The Car is sitting by itself. A leaf flutters in the direction of the Car. The leaf lands on the Car and the alarm goes off.)

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

(The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car.)

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

(The Car quietly snickers as the blushing Motorist gives an embarrassed shrug as the Constable gives him a stern look.)

Car Hee hee!

(The Motorist and the Constable walk away from the Car. When they are out of sight, a sullen Teen sulks by the Car and gives it a sideways glance.)

Narrator A sullen teen just happens to sulk by and gave our car a sideways glance.

(Sullen Teen runs away as alarm in the Car goes off.)

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

Sullen Teen Yipe!

(The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car.)

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

(The Car is quietly sinckering as the blushing Motorist gives an embarrassed shrug gesturing with his palm held up as the Constable gives him a stern look.)

Car Hee hee!

(The annoyed Motorist waves his finger at the Car as the Constable walks away.)

Motorist I am getting so sick and tired of your false alarms! The next one better be for goodness real!

(The Motorist walks away from the Car. The Car is sitting alone.)

Narrator Just after the Motorist stormed off to savor a decaffeinated double espresso…. (pause)… And for no apparent reason.

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

(The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car.)

Car BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

(The angry Constable points his billy-club at the sweating and forced grinning Motorist.)

Constable Just a friendly warning, citizen, this here town does have a noise ordinance!

Motorist Yes, sir! Absolutely, sir!

Car Hee hee!

(The annoyed Motorist waves his finger at the Car as the Constable walks away.)

Motorist I’ve had it up to here with your false alarms! It’s enough to drive me to seek the companionship of actual human-type people!

(The Motorist storms away from the Car. The Car is now sitting alone.)

Narrator Just as luck, or the polar opposite, would have it….

(Stereotypical unshaven and masked cartoon Burglar with crowbar shows up to threaten the Car.)

Narrator Who would show up but a genuine to badness Burglar on his nefarious rounds!

Car *Gulp!*

(The Burglar raises the crowbar over his head. The Burglar is swinging the crowbar down. Cut to a view of the city’s sky line.)

Sound Effects SMASH! BWEEEEEEE!!!! BWEEEEEEEEEBLE!

SCENE#3: (The Constable in a dinner with a cup on coffee on the counter and he is about to bite into a donut as the alarm wails in the background.)

Narrator But after just so many false alarms.

(Constable pauses to glance in the direction of the noise Then the blasé Constable bites into his donut.)

SCENE#4: (The Motorist is sitting on his couch with his S.O., trying to hold hands and snuggle cheek to cheek, but the alarm wails in the background. The Motorist and S.O. make annoyed glances to the direction of the noise. The Motorist reaches over and pulls down the window shade. The Motorist and his S.O. position a shared set of earmuffs over their ears. With their earmuffs on and the noise blocked out, the Motorist and his S.O. go back in warmly holding hands and snuggling cheek to cheek.)

SCENE#5: (The shocked Motorist comes out to see that his Car has been battered and stripped.)

Narrator Next morning after the dirty deed was done.

Motorist Oh my goodness! What a disaster!

(With quivering lower lip, the Motorist talks on this cell phone.)

Motorist Hello? Insurance? My car’s been vandalized and stripped of all of its goodies! Totaled? Listen up! This was my special unique car! I can’t just get another one just like it! Look at how Detroit messed around with the newer models! They’re all lower and faster and more powerful!

(The Motorist has an epiphany. Then the Motorist walks off scene, away from this Car, while talking on this cell phone.)

Motorist Be right down to fill out your form to get me one of them new models! And this time I won’t repeat the mistake of not ordering those goose down stuffed, 27 way power Corinthian leather seats!

(The sad stripped Car is just sitting there.)

Narrator So the moral of this story is: To the victim belong the spoilers!

(The close up of the sad stripped Car is just sitting there with a Noise Ordinance ticket pressed on its shattered windshield.)

Friday, December 02, 2005

you gonna love me yet?



The next proposal that was sent into to Film Roman and Fox contest was a reworking of that lovable psycho, The Dumpy Little Princess. This is the first one that Pat Moriarity suggested that I send in. Unfortunately, a lot of really funny details were lost in trying to whittle this down to a capsule for a synopsis.

Again, same ol' picture, new color.

“The Dumpy Little Princess” Synopsis
By Doug Holverson

A mock fairy tale of puppy love slowly going rabid, adhering to the tradition of the classic Jay Ward Fractured Fairy Tales. This is a segment for the proposed “Cyclopses” show.

Once upon a time there was a Dumpy Little Princess. She thought that she had found a kindred soul in a Prince, who was also dumpy and little. But he had the bread to attract the Pretty Princess.

Dumpy promised to do an escalating amount of favors in exchange for the Prince promising to be her friend. He had his fingers crossed behind his back each and every time. She did his homework, mowed the his 50,000 acre lawn, cleaned out the litter box for Puff Puff (who was the Prince’s royal pet and fully grown dragon), and even cleaned the green and fuzzy stagnant and alligator infested moat.

At the other corner of this love triangle, the Pretty Princess threatens to leave the Prince for his association with the Dumpy. As always he could always bribe her to stay with material presents.

The Prince then cons Dumpy into paying for a big party to announce their friendship. He then stands up Dumpy who is waiting in the park in the rain and actually throws the party for the Pretty Princess. An angry Dumpy crashes the party but is ejected by the Prince’s guard. The Pretty Princess has to be diverted with a present to keep from leaving the Prince after the party has been dampened.

The Dumpy Little Princess spends the rainy night sleeping in the Prince’s front yard. Next morning the Prince finds Dumpy in his yard and they get into an argument, in which he tells her to “eat cat-food and die”. Dumpy storms home and writes a 79 page note and then attempts a failed suicide by eating cat-food.

Next Day the Prince opens his locker and out pops Dumpy screeching and throwing cat-food at him, “It didn’t work! Are you happy? Are you happy?” The Dumpy Little Princess’s parents drag her home and ground her to the dungeon for this.

Deep in the dungeon the Dumpy Little Princess writes many a love letter, “Dear Beloved Prince, This is the ninth message that I sent to you castle in the past hour! You start being home and answering these or else I’m coming over there and keying your royal carriage soooo bad!!! XoxOX”

When the guard was asleep, Dumpy escaped and keys the Prince’s carriage. Then she pounds away with a sledgehammer. The Prince argues with the Dumpy Little Princess, before he has the Royal constabulary haul her off to jail.

Believing they are free from Dumpy, the Prince and Pretty Princess go to the Royal Garden to hold hands. Only to find that the black and white striped Dumpy has dug her way out of the penitentiary. After Dumpy drops her ball and chain on the Pretty Princess’s foot, the Pretty Princess could not be bribed to stay with the Prince no matter how big an offer he amkes.

After the Pretty Princess leaves for good, the Prince yells at Dumpy. She points out that the Pretty Princess was a fair weather friend will not even broken promises, lies, and jail time deters her. The prince realizes without his material girl, a clingy psycho freak of nature is all he has left.

And they…. Uh…. Lived…. um…. After.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

one year at the postal service



I did have the shrimp last night at Ute and was snowed in up in Soldier. Got down here to Omaha today in single digital temperatures.

Today is my one year anniversary of being hired by the Postal Service.

Here's the synopsis of "The Car That Cried Alarm". Same old picture but with new and improved color.

“The Car that Cried Alarm” Synopsis
by Doug Holverson

This is an update on the fairy tale, closely adhering to the tradition of the classic Jay Ward Fractured Fairy Tales.

Once upon a time there was a Motorist. And what’s a motorist without a car? Now this wasn’t just any car. It was his very own unique extra sporty model! It had spoilers on its rump and chinny chin chin. It had five gallon exhaust tips. It had cubic inches by the liter. The Motorist truly loved his car as he always washed and waxed and polished and detailed it. He had an alarm installed to insure his true love stayed out of harm’s way.

Wouldn’t you know it, just as out Motorist was out of sight of his beloved, a dumb drooling dog walks up and sniffs a tire. The dog runs away as alarm goes off. The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car. The Car quietly snickers as the Motorist gives an embarrassed shrug at the Constable. They both walk away from the Car.

A leaf lands on the Car and the alarm goes off. The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car. The Car quietly snickers as the blushing Motorist gives an embarrassed shrug as the Constable gives him a stern look. They both walk away from the Car.

A Sullen Teen sulks by the Car and gives it a sideways glance. The alarm goes off as the Teen runs away. The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car. The Car is quietly snickering as the blushing Motorist gives an embarrassed shrug, gesturing with his palms held up as the Constable gives him a dirty look.

Just after the Motorist storms off to savor a decaffeinated double espresso, and for no apparent reason, the alarm goes off! The Motorist and a Constable run towards the Car. The Car snickers. The angry Constable rubs his billy-club under the chin of the Motorist who is sweating and forcing a grin, “Just a friendly warning, citizen, this here town does have a noise ordinance!” “Yes, sir! Absolutely, sir!”

The Motorist storms away and the Car is now sitting alone. Just as luck, or its polar opposite, would have it, who would show up but a genuine to badness Burglar on his nefarious rounds! The Burglar applies his crowbar to the Car. The alarm goes off.

The Constable decides to ignore the car alarm and investigate his coffee and donut.

The Motorist is sitting on his couch with his neglected S.O. and they both decide to ignore the car and share earmuffs and intimacy.

Next morning after the dirty deed was done, the shocked Motorist comes out to see that his Car has been battered and stripped. With a quivering lower lip, the Motorist calls the insurance company on this cell phone. The company states that his car is totaled. The motorist complains that it was his special unique car and he can’t get another one just like it “because Detroit messed up the newer models being all lower and faster and more powerful!” The Motorist has an epiphany and decides to fill out the form to get me one of them there new models.

The sad stripped Car is just sitting there with a Noise Ordinance ticket pressed on its shattered windshield. The moral of this story is: To the victim belong the spoilers!