Tag Archives: goofiness
Goofy Me from Long Ago
While still in college I was trying to create a number of children’s book type stories. I was young and stupid then, not knowing that you had to have experience of the world to be a writer, even a writer of children’s stories. So, not knowing any better, I created the character you see in today’s Paffooney, Horatio T. Dogg, super-sleuth. He was a dog, but he could talk and smoke a pipe and he had the mind and observational powers of Sherlock Holmes. Problem was, though, you had to create a mystery for that sort of character to solve. I have never been any good at that. My stories were unable to shock or surprise, since I always telegraph my every move about three different ways. Anyway, this is a pen and ink drawing with watercolor wash of Horatio T. Dogg.
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Toonerville, the Current City Overview
Mm-hmm, Toonerville is a town I founded and built. I know that sounds strange, but I can explain. It used to be my HO model train layout. It used to be, when I owned a house in Cotulla, Texas, I had room for a four by twelve sheet of plywood on which to lay track, wire it up, build scenery, and run my model trains (and two different versions of the Toonerville Trolley).
Toonerville is named after Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Folks comic strip that appeared in newspapers from 1915 until the 1950’s. A book of Fox’s collected Toonerville cartoons became my most prized possession during my college days, the second half of the 1970’s. More than just a favorite book, it became my religion, my Bible, influencing not only my art style and my cartoon stories, but my very perception of small town life, the only life I knew from 1956 to 1975.
When we moved from South Texas to the Dallas area in 2004, my city of Toonerville had to be torn down, boxed up, and transported. Sadly, it never got set up as an HO train layout again. Now it is relegated to the tops of three bookcases. In addition to train engines that mostly still run (though I am guessing, not basing that on experiment), it includes model houses and city buildings that I put together myself and painted, plaster buildings that I have painted, and other nick-knack-shelf buildings of approximately the right size that I have re-painted (including re-painted Christmas, Easter, and Halloween ornaments, plus one house-shaped candle that my sister-in-law gave me). Oh, yes, you can plainly see the portions of my Pez dispenser collection that sit grumpily amid the streets of Toonerville.
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Mr. B Gets Weepy
They were going to make me cry sooner or later. I told you that. Today was the day. In the midst of trying to get everything done without actually teaching, they surprised me with a multi-level “We Will Miss You… And We Love You” poster. Current students and former students all signed it and lied to me in prose about how wonderful a teacher I have been. Drat their evil plots! Getting through the week without tears is now a lost cause. We took a lot of pictures, but teachers can’t post pictures of students on the web without violating FERPA guidelines and federal privacy laws. So I cut them out of this Photo Paffooney. Besides, the gentleman in blue to my right flipped the bird in one of the photos. I photo-shopped that finger off his hand. Ha-hah! If only teachers could do that in real life! Oh, and I avoided photos of me crying.
June 4, 2014 · 2:08 am
Post No Ads Here! No, really! This is NOT an Advertisement… this is ART.
I’m trying to self promote without really appearing to self promote. Honestly, they tell me that blogging to promote my books is something you should just do and have fun doing. So that’s what I’m doing. Just to be funny I am making fun of myself for advertising my self. Isn’t that a gas? Isn’t it?
May 31, 2014 · 10:46 pm
Who Fans
Back in about 1979 I discovered Dr. Who from the BBC on PBS. It soon became my all-time favorite Sci-Fi series, ahead of Battlestar Galactica, the Twilight Zone, Land of the Giants, Lost in Space, and Land of the Lost. I started watching with Jon Pertwee, the Third Doctor. I didn’t even realize that doctors came before, or that regeneration was even possible. I watched the good Doctor, aided by U.N.I.T. battle Cybermen, Silurians, Daleks, Sontarans, and Ice Warriors from Mars. I saw London attacked by Daleks. I saw the Doctor driving about saving the world in his goofy yellow car. I loved it with all my heart.
Naturally I chose to Paffooney the Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton. Makes a lot of sense, huh? I watched all the episodes I could manage with the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Doctors before I even knew about the First and Second. Then I got a chance to see the very first episode with William Hartnell as the Doctor. I was thoroughly enchanted. I’m not like today’s kids who can’t be bothered to watch anything in Black and White. I watched every episode PBS could air. At that time many of the first episodes were lost or seriously misplaced. But I grew a special fondness for Doctor number Two because that character is so much like me; bubbling over with useless facts, bumbling good intentions, and thinking by playing his recorder (though my thought-instrument is actually a harmonica).
I still crave more Doctor Who adventures. I loved Doctor Seven, Sylvester McCoy, too. Even more because he’s also now a part of The Hobbit movies. And I really appreciate the new Doctors, especially David Tennant. Doctor Who lives again! And maybe we will even learn his actual name! He’s Doctor Who?
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Player #3
Over the years as a teacher, you run into a large number of students that you will absolutely fall in love with. And sometimes… they will fall in love with you also. Oh, my! What a potentially dangerous situation! But it doesn’t have to end in hurt feelings or criminal charges. Sometimes you find the perfect balance. The little girl that sits in the front row can be the apple of your eye… and you never actually take a bite… and neither does she. It becomes a silent dance of swirling smiles, and laughter. The occasional tear… the valentine card… Making her parents feel good with your testimony about what a wonderful scholar she is. Nothing ever has to be wrong… and if it isn’t, the picture stays with you for a lifetime. One day you will have to paint it. Sweet, sentimental perfection.
March 20, 2014 · 12:26 am
Paffoonies By The Numbers
So, here is one secret recipe for baking a Paffooney with some humor in the process.
Step 1 : First you have to get a stupid idea and draw a witless drawing of it on a nice fresh piece of paper. Here the Princess is holding step one, a portrait of what I believe Valerie Clarke, the main character of Snow Babies might look like. She is supposed to be the most beautiful little girl who ever lived in Norwall, a small Iowa farm town.
Step 2 : Then you must get a good digital picture of it. Here I used the Princess as a makeshift picture stand and took the picture in sunlight muted by clouds.
Step 3 : I must then remove all clutter and background from the image using the big old eraser thingy on the Microsoft computer paint program. sometimes I need to erase pixel by pixel until I am thoroughly pixelated.
Step 4 : This gets me ready to use my handy-dandy cheap-o photo program (I always wanted to use both handy-dandy and cheap-o photo in the same sentence! Item 128 on my bucket list.) I can layer the image over any of a number of stolen and parolin’ background photos.
And so, I thus become a pretend world-renowned unknown clown artist with a penchant for multiple uses of internal rhymes as well as multiple uses of the same boring, wretched sketches.
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Cartooney Paffooney
A particularly pulse-pounding part of a post-able Paffooney is the Looney-Tooney side of cartoonies.
A good Paffooney, a wise Paffooney, a particularly Buffooney Paffooney…
Requires a certain something… an attention to detail
Scraggles here demonstrably demonsters, er demonstrates, the detail in the devil, er, devil in the details…
With inexplicable and despicable gloves on hands we never see…
And Looney eyes that at once appear wise and simultaneously devise the kind of satirical reprise that can surprise and infinitely infantilize…
He’s sorta creepy with eyes that aren’t sleepy and expressions not so deepy…
And his smile will spread a mile and is also infantile…
And the rat that he has caught has a shape that’s overwrought and full of little thought,
But never will he kill it and fill it full of millet,
Cause a mouse can be a friend to the bitter better end.
And so this poem don’t rhyme… or does it? And it has no theme or prime… or was it?
Just silly nonsense words on a canvas all unfurled in Paffooney Looney Language with each sentence stitched and curled.
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Catch a Falling Star 