Much of how I learned art… and the drawing of cartoons, I learned by copying the masters. (Apologies to the late Charles Schultz. I promise I am not making any money off this bit of plagiarism.) I learned oil painting by copying the work of Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell. I learned to draw cartoons from drawing Al Capp’s Lil’ Abner, Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and Charles Schultz’s Peanuts.
You can easily see that I am not trying to make counterfeit Charlie Browns and Lucy Van Pelts. My arthritis won’t allow that. Proof of that is in Charlie’s head wounds, unintentionally made in ink. But I did learn to draw in Schultz’s easily identifiable style. And so many things you learn by copying that you can’t even put them into words. Of course, it would be wrong to not mention that it is a copy of a copyrighted thing I don’t own. So, I can’t make money off of this picture. I would have to use what I learned only in my own original work.
Tim is a character created in 1974. He began not as a character in a story, but a drawing of a boy wtith no pants or underpants on, but wearing a striped t-shirt, white with wavy blue horizontal stripes that were three fourths the size of the white stripes. It was an almost-portrait of a boy named Dewey ( or possibly something that began with the letter “T” because I make it a rule to never use real names in true stories about my actual past) that I had been watching from three tables away in the library during study hall. If you are thinking like a psychologist, you are probably thinking this sounds like a homosexual thing, but I promise I am not now nor have I ever been gay. I only have sexual fantasies about brown-eyed girls. It was the willowy and vulnerable shape of him, the quiet mystery of his quiet behavior and even quieter patterns of speech. I saw something of myself in him. A nerdy something about him that connected him to the thing that happened to me at the age of ten, and at that time was hidden from me by my traumatic amnesia. He represented the part of me that had been lost when the Big Bad Wolf in the forest caught me and ate my innocence completely.
I was never a friend or acquaintance of Dewey. He was a freshman when I was watching him as a senior in high school. We did not have PE class together, so I never saw him naked. The no-pants thing was not about him when I drew him. I never showed that picture to anyone. It was private, a thing completely about me in my own mind. I didn’t know anything about Dewey as a person, and his only personality in my estimation is what I imagined into him. So, he began fictional life as only a picture. In 1995 my oldest son was born. In a few years, the empty vessel that was Tim became more of my son than he was about me. My son inherited some… or most of my abilities as a liar, storyteller, imaginer, and devious thinker. Tim Kellogg, son of an English teacher, and grandson of a wise handyman who could do a little bit of everything, became full of fifty-percent son and fifty-percent father. He was both a portrait of my son and a self portrait.
The child I was… the Green Meanie
So, what’s the purpose of writing about where this character came from and who I modeled him after? As you get older and closer to death, you have to come to terms with a few hard truths. I will probably never be read widely as an author during my lifetime, and probably promptly forgotten as soon as I am gone. But, as a writer, I know in my very bones that it is in my DNA to need to tell a story. I have to make meaning in coherent sentences and paragraphs about the greater reveals of WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN AND MOSTLY… WHY? Life is not to be lived in a trance, unable to burble about anything but your own pleasure and pain. Life is tragedy… comedy… romance… and reverance. And the story has to be told… and rewritten and retold. We are not real people until we allow ourselves to believe our own lies.
A pretty girl with a marble background. Made with a photo, AI Mirror, and Picsart Photo Editor
Gabby, daughter of the Amazon Superhero The Amazing Aztec, at her family pool, helped to take care of the pool with her parrot sidekick and the colorful fishing bird who eats the piranhas. Created the same way as the previous picture.
The castle stands at the seashell end of the town square in its central position on the fireplace mantel.
I increasingly believe that I will not live longer than a year or two more. At most. My health has never been robust and hale. But the heart problem that gave me a pacemaker is only one of numerous health concerns that are beginning to overwhelm me. I have had arthritis for fifty years. I have had diabetes for twenty-five years. My glaucoma is getting worse. I will soon have to permanently give up driving. And I am either soon going to have a stroke, or Parkinson’s Disease is taking over my motor control.
There are a large number of varied residents in old Toonerville Town, from palace musicians to tactical interplanetary strike teams, to tiny little sisters on balconies, all ruled over by the good Princess Aurora (in the pink dress, of course, which is sometimes blue.)
If I am soon to die, I cannot feel bad about it. I have had a good life. And now that I am within spitting distance of seventy, I can also say I had a long life. I am not afraid to die. Though I am in no rush.
Princess Aurora is making her daily trip to Al’s Hobby Shop, where she buys her quilting and watercolor painting supplies.’
The Princess will try to get some serious artwork done before I pass away, and that’s a good thing too.
McSpooky and his ghost girlfriend Poil (rhymes with oil.) Yes, ghosts are nudists (except for hats.)
Well, the end of everything draws nearer. President Pumpkinhead has passed the Big BugUgly Bill, which takes away some of Medicare and Obamacare to give billionaires and some lowly millionaires an even bigger bug-ugly tax break. People are going to die. He has also dismantled the clean energy programs that were supposed to help save the world, so good luck with learning to breathe CO2 in 900-degree heat (as is the condition on Venus.) Some experts are predicting the fall of the American Empire in 3 years or less. Soon, you will meet some of the Mad Max apocalypse characters in real life. I hope Trumpalump meets one who is a cannibal who likes his meat poorly bronzed.
I have been feeling like I was going to die soon anyway. But it is nice to know it is coming soon to end my suffering. It is not a comfort, though, that most of the rest of you will be dying with me. Bummer, that.
Anyway, enjoy the fireworks. And I mean on the 4th, not World War Three. It is possible I will enjoy being a ghost. I already have a list of who I want to haunt.
This is a repost. She has been gone for a year now.
Dogs can’t live forever. Not even as long as a people can. And believe me, she believed with all her might that she was a people. She ate enough people food, mostly stolen, that she convinced herself she was turning into a human girl. But one people year is seven years of dog-year aging. And she was 98 by that measure. And she had doggy breast cancer, complete with a big nasty tumor.
Yesterday, in the veterinarian’s office, she laid down and went to sleep, leaving me and my daughter and my two sons and my wife behind. My fur baby passed away as I stroked her precious head for the last time ever.
She will be writing no more blog posts for me when I am not feeling well. She will no longer be thinking about running over neighborhood cats as she is driving the car. The local rats will fear her no more. And I will never be able to prove to anyone now that she was a talking dog.
We picked her up off the street as a lost puppy fourteen years ago. She apparently escaped from the local pet store and was written off on an insurance claim before the vet could even suggest that that is where she came from. A free Cardigan corgi puppy. She was a priceless part of our lives. She loved us as only a dog can, with ferocity, throwing tantrums and tearing up the trash can when we left her alone in the house.
I shall miss her until the day I die. Sleep well, Jade. You have earned your rest.
Catch a Falling Star 