Large Small Dog

Boy with Appropriately Sized Small Dog:
(Could it be "Small Dog Syndrome"?)

My younger son desperately wants a dog. I might have mentioned this a few dozen times before. I do feel myself weakening on this issue, but his slightly dog-allergic father is firm.

But our son and I discuss the hypothetical dog that we might have if Dad relents....well...pretty much every time we pass a dog on the street.

And since we live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where there might be at least two dogs for every human, that means dog discussion is a constant.

My catchphrase for dog criteria is basically "small, quiet and washable." My son is not very convinced that smallness and washability are desirable characteristics. Mostly what he wants is something big and furry...Or a Pug.

Every time we pass a dog, he asks me to assess that particular dog's viability...Is it too large? Too hairy? Too poorly behaved?

The fact that I might have just told him that a beagle we recently passed was too large will not stop him from asking me about a much larger, furrier Husky one block later.
I'll admit that I often feel myself running out of patience for this hypothetical dog conversation, particularly as he is always lobbying for more size and more fur on this animal that we can't have anyway.

I suppose I should be grateful that the tone of the conversation is mostly civil. He and his brother have been fighting loudly and bitterly about a hypothetical PlayStation for months. Who will get to play what game and when on this device that we don't own...

And Dad might prove to be allergic to the PlayStation also....

(The dog on the napkin is a "Chug" a combination of a Pug and a Chihuahua...a dog that might be small enough...but still be a pug, sort of.)

Mini Conference Room at Instagram's Office

My younger son and I stopped by Instagram/Facebook's headquarters last week to pick up a tote bag from the #EatDrawGram event at the Natural History Museum back in May.

Christine Banawa very kindly showed us around and let us pose in the mini conference room, which I guess is what one does while visiting Instagram.  I am uncertain what the diminutive room might be saying about social media, Instagram, or corporate office culture... Perhaps it is just referencing the fact that there are over 1000 Facebook employees in the office and a mere 30 something people working at Instagram, a difference of scale that might not be immediately apparent to the casual user.

I just spent 45 seconds on Google and have determined that the mini conference room is also ascribed to the larger entity of Facebook... and apparently they have a sideways room in the London office.

So I guess I am trying to read too much into it.
 
Despite exuding a bored attitude at the time, my son was quite impressed with the visit. He got to wear his own name tag (which indicated that he had not signed a non-disclosure agreement) and to have soft serve ice cream from the corporate cafeteria. While I usually avoid posting actual photos of the kids on the napkin blog, I am pretty sure he would feel denied if I did not include this one.

I think there is some probably merit for a kid whose parents work at home to see what a corporate office looks like...even if it is an atypical one with both chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream and a bar of ice cream toppings...

Thanks again to Christine Banawa and Kristen Joy Watts from Instagram and The American Museum of Natural History!

The Fruit Viking is Grateful

No child was made sticky during the drawing of this napkin.

It's that time again....
The end of the school year has arrived and there are people to whom we cannot possibly express enough appreciation....
The solution once again is a clumsy portrait of the kid on a napkin and some pretentious chocolate bars.

Astoundingly, my son was not offended by this drawing. He usually objects to any drawing that I do of him because there is always something wrong with the likeness. But not this time. I am perplexed.

He himself requested the watermelon helmet. His school mascot is supposedly a Viking, although I was unable to find any associated imagery associated online. While aimlessly Googling for Viking pictures, we came across the fruit helmet as a display if not an actual wearable. (But there are plenty of people actually wearing them...)

While we did purchase a large, and rather mediocre, watermelon at Cosco over the weekend, no rind helmets were actually worn during the production of this napkin.

What the kids really wanted to do with the melon was smash it with a sledgehammer, or make it  explode using rubber bands.

Thank you, YouTube.  
 

Hardcore Attack on Titan

What's better than a combination of two super violent things that you're too young to see?

After stumbling across the trailer for "Hardcore Henry," our younger son was utterly convinced that he has to see the movie. He is nine and the movie is rated R, so I afraid that I will unable to help him satisfy this need in the near future.

The preview definitely looks like a frenetic first person shooter style video game brought to life. And brought to video with significant difficulty, apparently, as the camera had to be mounted on actors' faces while they performed a remarkable number of extreme stunts.

R rated movies are a touchy area for us lately as the younger brother was furious when he found out that his brother had seen the R rated "Deadpool" movie courtesy of a friend's parents. While my husband and I immediately regretted authorizing this outing when we saw the movie ourselves, the 13 year old has at least been mature enough to restrain himself from quoting choice bits of dialogue from the movie at the dinner table.

I am not optimistic that the 9 year old would be so reserved. In principle, he does not accept the idea that the four year age difference between him and his brother should matter when it comes to such things.  And in practice, unfortunately, it often does not: If the 13 year old is playing a video game in the living room, then his 9 year old brother might as well be playing it also.

But this does not mean that I am taking a 3rd grader to see "Deadpool."

There is more than one "Attack on Titan" movie out there, and those movies may be age-inappropriate as well. As these films are still difficult to see in the United States, it is unlikely that our kids will have an opportunity to see them in the near future even if they are not rated PG..

Age-inappropriate violence aside, I am afraid that the main problem with a first-person-shooter-style portrayal of the Survey Corps fighting in "Attack on Titan" would be the intense motion sickness brought on by all the physics-defying flying around with "3-d maneuver gear."

At least that would be the case for me. Maybe I am just too old to watch that sort of thing.

Teacup Animals in Teacup

Size does matter, at least when it comes to pets....

Our younger, sadly pet-deprived younger son suddenly acquired a  deep yearning for a "teacup pig" over the last few days.  Continuing in my maternal role as killjoy and the voice of failed gratification, I pointed out that, like "teacup dogs," pigs that fit in cups are not a real thing. People adopt underfed baby pigs, and in the best case scenario, soon end up living with a 120 lb potbellied pig....or maybe even a 400 lb pig. (Link to Nat'l Geographic article on this topic)

After a lot of arguing and viewing of websites with titles like "6 Reasons Why Teacup Pigs are not Pets" I think my son is still a bit suspicious that I am just spoiling his fun and that micro mini pigs really do exist somewhere.

I will readily admit that I am not interested in having a pet pig, even if it were to stay relatively small and cute. I had some memorable exposure to a pet potbellied pig long ago in Chicago. This unhappy and belligerent pig was living in an office that I visited frequently for meetings and to deliver sculpture projects. The pig's owner was fond of pointing out that pigs are smarter than dogs and cats. I don't disagree, but intelligence is not an appealing characteristic in a pet if the bored animal uses its smarts for malicious retaliation against its boring environment and humans.

But while we were talking about micro animals that don't really exist, I thought we should add some others to the mix. While my sons have expressed interest in baby tigers, bears and dogs, the rhino and elephant were my additions in a attempt to make the situation more cute...or more ridiculous.

Puppy Bouquet

A very belated happy Valentine's Day image for my younger son:

Valentine's Day went mostly unacknowledged at our house over the weekend. Our younger son exchanged cards in the classroom and indulged in a school-condoned sugar orgy way back on Thursday the 11th. By the time we got to Sunday the 14th, both kids had terrible colds, and we were all fairly unmotivated.

I had started this drawing before the weekend, but was too busy doling out hot tea, Kleenex, sympathy and Tylenol to finish it until today.

Puppies are pretty much the thing our younger loves the most. Due to his father's allergies and his mother's caregiving fatigue, his love is still unrequited so far.

And I had to add insult to injury by telling him that if we ever do manage to get a dog, it is unlikely to be a puppy. Having only marginally survived the infancy of two humans in our house, I don't think I could sign on to superintend to babyhood of a dog.

But, as he pointed out in his 9 year old wisdom, "Puppies are basically just small dogs!"
So here we have a great many very small dogs.

(This image was based on the Thinkgeek "Plush Puppy Bouquet")

Baby Sloth Not Holding a Double Light Saber

 

Couldn't we all improve our appearance with a double bladed laser sword?

Our younger son has been writing a paper on Sloths this week. 

He has not shared much Sloth information with me beyond the observation that baby Sloths are really cute.

He looked at this napkin today and said, "I thought for a moment that he was holding a double lightsaber. That would have been much better."

Yes, a lightsaber would have improved the image immeasurably, I don't know how I possibly could have missed such an obvious improvement last night. I considered trying to change the boring blue pole to a glowing weapon this morning, but while I probably could have pulled off the saber itself, the effect of the light on the Sloth fur would have been pretty much impossible to manage.

And... you know...I didn't want to compromise my "artistic integrity."

Ha. 

Maybe I will draw a baby sloth with a double light saber tomorrow.... if I am not too busy drawing something artistically important like a Pug puppy in a Deadpool costume.

(I originally thought the Sloth should be upside down, but inversion seemed to compromise cuteness...maybe.)

Han Solo and Palpatine's Boots

"....And I thought they smelled bad on the outside"

The recent Star Wars movie prompted the kids to get out the bin full of their old Star Wars toys.  We somehow acquired a great many action figures, way back, seven, eight, or even nine years ago, when we had the first intense infection of enthusiasm for the Expanded Universe.

In those former days of parental optimism, we were withholding the movies because they were too violent, (swords and guns!) This all makes me laugh now. We waited until the older kid was 5 1/2 before we let them see the original movie. Of course, the younger kid was 1 1/2 at the time, and was not excluded from the viewing, so you can see how patently ridiculous the situation was.

But looking at the large collection of Star Wars toys now, I can only conjecture that they were purchased in compensation for the absence of the movies. I am guessing, however, as I don't actually remember buying any of them. I'm afraid that I was not getting enough sleep back then to form permanent memories. They can't all have been delivered as gifts.

But we seem to have an astonishing amount of action figures and a good many are headless, legless, or naked. (Poor Leila and Luke)

And some are in bizarre configurations. Like the 5" Han Solo stuffed into one of the 12" Palpatine boots. I discovered later that Han is missing his head and forearms- thus his uncanny ability to fit inside footwear.

I'm not sure why this seemed like a good idea for a napkin. My younger son tells me that it would be funnier if Palpatine were  yelling, "Get out of my boot!"

Our collection of Star Wars debris

Jedi Ewok and Mandalorian Jawa

No, we have not seen the movie yet (opening today, for those reading this in the distant future)....and will not for a while.... but this images was my younger son's request for the occasion of the opening of "The Force Awakens."

He specified that the Ewok should be dressed as a Jedi, and the Jawa as a Mandalorian Bounty Hunter like Boba Fett.  The Fetts are perhaps best recognized by their storm trooper-like helmets.  But when I asked my son if the Jawa should be wearing such a helmet, he regarded me sadly and said, "No, of course not, how can you tell that he's a Jawa if he's wearing a helmet?"

I am pretty sure that he had something more active and slapsticky in mind for these two, but I was only able to pull off something stolid and static.

You'd think I would be better at drawing Ewoks and Jawas by now, wouldn't you?

Ewok and Jawa on Swagways

A lower center of gravity might help when it comes to a Swagway....

This image was definitely not one of my better efforts. I cannot really explain why rudimentary drawing skills, including basic perspective, seemed to elude me here.

Our younger son has been coveting a "hover board" recently.  While we will not be able to provide one of these rather pricey items for the coming holiday, I did my best to draw them on a napkin at least.

Usually, there is nothing that cannot be improved with the addition of a Jawa or an Ewok, but even short aliens who say things like "Ootini" and "Yub yub" was not enough to redeem this image.

My younger son's reaction to this drawing was, "What is wrong with the Jawa?" Obviously, my hilarious concept of the Star Wars characters having trouble balancing on the boards was not convincing.

My old son told me that the Jawa should be taking apart the board instead of riding on it.

Cast of Characters Who Could be in "Goosebumps" Movie

...take one of those abominable group selfies...

My younger son and I finally saw the "Goosebumps" movie over last weekend. His brother was going to a fun birthday party, so he was feeling terribly under-served and required some compensation. As far as I was concerned the movie was pleasant, but not particularly memorable.  My son thought it was great and immediately wanted me to pledge to take him to the sequel, whenever it might be made and released.

While we own several "Goosebumps" books, and I have tried to convince my horror-loving children to read them on many occasions, the series has just not been very popular in the past at our house.  I must confess that I was unaware what a publishing juggernaut the series has been...350 million copies have sold worldwide, and it is the second most popular children's series of all time, according to Wikipedia.

The movie's specific and rather dopey plot aside, "Goosebumps" the movie's charm is that it is a compendium of funny horror characters and therefore transcends the possible failings of each tale of scary zombies, creepy clowns, malicious lawn gnomes, deadly werewolves, etc., etc.

Being an 8 year old, my son was willing to attribute the original creation of many of these sorts of characters to R.L. Stine and the Goosebumps franchise. I reminded him that certainly the idea of werewolves, zombies, the abominable snowmen and ventriloquist dummies among many others predate Scholastic Publishing, some by tens if not hundreds of years.

And, on a more personal note, several of these characters appeared in my recent sculpture show "Popular Monsters," so perhaps I am particularly not willing to cede all credit to Mr. Stine.

Today's napkin is a reunion of sorts of characters who could appear in a best selling children's book series, in a major motion picture, or in my small, unsaleable sculptures.

Powerful Pumpkins

 

What did one Jack O Lantern say to the other?

"Cut it out."

Maybe not.  Maybe he said, "Watch out, or I am going to zap you with my lightning force powers!"

There's been a weird post-Halloween trend at our house in which the boys pretend to be pumpkins...not inert gourds, but fighting pumpkins with super powers.  

It defies explanation mostly. I think it has something to do with the "pumpkin armor" and "pumpkin costume" available in the Terraria game. 

I was going to draw said costume or armor, but the boys had made some pictures of their characters, and wanted me to work from their sketches. They explained that both pumpkin guys could generate force lightning and that one was wearing a wizards hat, and the other, a red fez.  

My favorite moment of their pumpkin game was an instance during a sword fight where the older brother had just skewered the younger with a Nerf weapon.  The elder pronounced him dead or at least injured, but the younger replied, "No, you just stuck your sword into my cut-out eye hole. You didn't hurt me at all."

They told me that in my drawing the pumpkins were too human and not cute enough.

Yep.

Pumpkin Head

Jack O Lantern pumpkin head. He is a fearful sight:

We did finally get around to carving a pumpkin last night.  I did all of the messy excavation and removal of pumpkin guts, and left the design to my younger son. I think his concept might have some debt to Minecraft Creepers.

After roughing out the face, it quickly became clear that the whole point of this activity was the repeated and....can I say ironically, pointless, stabbing of the pumpkin with various sharp implements.
The cutting of the Jack O Lantern design in no way fulfilled this urge. The joy of inflicting additional meaningless damage seemed inexhaustible. As usual, impulsive destruction was so much more compelling than thoughtful creation.  Eventually, the pumpkin stabber had to be pulled away and made to go to bed.

 Since we've been doing a series of photos of people posing with the sculpted heads from my "Popular Monsters" show, it seemed like a there ought to be a head substitution.  I was aiming for a Headless Horseman sort of backdrop.  I considered putting my son on a rearing horse, but just didn't have time to tangle with equine anatomy.

Most of the damage was on the back side of the pumpkin, and cannot really be appreciated in the photo below. 

Sewer Clown

Why so serious?

This  character was designed by our younger son for our still only hypothetical family webcomic. He recognized that we had a shortage of bad guys in the cast of characters. With a name like "Sewer Clown" and six arms, tentacles for legs and two multi-pronged tails, how could this guy not be creepy?

My son says that he had not heard of or seen the sewer occupying clown Pennywise from Stephen King's 1986 novel and subsequent TV miniseries "It."  I'm not entirely convinced that he wasn't exposed to a stray reference or image of King's sewer clown by his older brother who avidly and repeatedly watches YouTube videos like "The 100 best horror movie characters of all time." But maybe it's just that sewers and clowns go together so perfectly.

As you can see below, my son's original drawing is much better than mine. I was instructed to make the clown look realistic, because as my son told me, "That's your talent Mom, making things look more realistic."

I suspect realism isn't really the point with this guy.

Land Shark Vs. Space Pig

How to make a big mess over a long weekend:

One of the many joys of having two kids in two schools is that their time off does not always line up.  The younger one was at home today, both are off on Monday, and the older one is home on Tuesday.
Foolishly, I thought this would be a good time to start a project we've been talking about- making some cardboard and plaster sculptures of the characters for that web comic which we still haven't written yet. I thought maybe I could work with each child alone, as joint time in my studio tends to devolve into a play-fighting brawl. Each kid picked his favorite- Space Pig for the younger and the Land Shark for the older.

I tried to put the two characters together in a nondescript space on this napkin without much success.  My younger son told me that I had made the pig look scary and weird. The older son pointed out that I neglected to include the flaming chainsaws that the shark requires.

We did manage a little work on the sculpture today... It quickly became clear that my son was mostly interested in weapon design...and maybe this weapon he's building will be so cool that he cannot bear to see it plastered onto a pig sculpture and will have to keep it for himself... 

In the bottom picture, you can see that I made very little progress on Space Pig.  We spent a lot of time debating which way his joints should bend- whether they should be porcine-accurate or humanoid.

Space Pig

...not to be confused with "Pigs in Space"

This guy is another character for our hypothetical web comic.  I don't think my son has seen any of the Muppet classic "Piiiiigs.... iiin .....Spaaaaace" that was a staple of my childhood. Remember when The Muppets were one of only a very few offerings for prime time kids' programming?  My sons surely cannot imagine life without 24 hour access to video entertainment. Not that they are watching television in the middle of the night, or even very much during prime time. But I do remember being pleasantly surprised ten years ago to discover that "Dora the Explorer" was on at three in the morning to distract our then toddler son who was suffering with what he believed to be intolerable strep throat pain. Now we can assume everything is available all the time.

Speaking of 24 hour access, I would not be surprised if a bit of "pigs in space" exposure crept in via YouTube. This astronaut swine of course bears more resemblance to Halo than to that show.  My son insisted that he needed a complicated full head helmet....and to be wearing cool sunglasses when the helmet is off.

This was not one of my better efforts as far as spacesuit-design and limb-arrangement are concerned.  Here is the moment when I bring up the overused excuse that the drawing is on a napkin and looks pretty good considering....

Blobhead Guy

Don't let your head get so big that you can't stand up...

Our kids have an extensive collection of little plasticine characters that they have made for various stop-motion video projects.  These guys are in a pile in our living room, ready at any moment to make oil stains on that lovely bookcase that their father built.  Frequently, our younger son repurposes some of the clay for a new creation, and this pink blobheaded LEGO guy was last night's effort.

I am always pleased to have the opportunity to draw something that actually exists in our apartment and does not require extensive use of Google image search. Looking at the snapshot of the thing below, however, I still feel like I did not do it justice.  I prefer the proportion of giant head to body, the feeling of imbalance (even though it is really standing up) and the fact that you can see the whole "unicorn horn."

And I cannot explain why I thought it was a good idea to put him on a small island. I liked the idea of a big blob of pink oil clay, endangered in a pretty environment, sweating in the sun....but that doesn't really justify the situation.

Our son explained to me last night that this guy is, of course, yet another character for the web comic.  But he doesn't really do or say anything. He just appears in the background frequently.  And then, after the web comic has been running for a long time, we can ask readers to count all of his appearances and give a prize to those who get the right number. 

I am glad that the kid is planning so far ahead with his social media campaign. I guess we had better get started on this comic....

Suicide Owl

Cool Birds Don't Look at Explosions:

Suicide Owl is another character for our hypothetical family web comic that my younger son hatched during our long morning subway ride to school. I was not able to extract many details about this owl, besides the fact that he is a Barn Owl and wears bandoliers filled with bullets.

My older son has been very taken with the trailers for the upcoming movie "Suicide Squad," and has insisted that we watch it with him. I asked his younger brother whether perhaps this owl has some relationship to the Suicide Squad. He said no and seemed annoyed by my suggestion that the character might be derivative.

Lacking any other details or character information, I decided to put an explosion behind the owl, because, you know, everyone looks much cooler when backlit by an explosion. While idly googling for an appropriate explosion image, I tripped over the "Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions" meme.  Think about the many scenes in  movies and TV where the badass guy (almost always a guy) walks calmly away from a fireball without looking back, flinching, or apparently, getting any shrapnel in the back. ( Buzzfeed has a compilation.)

And, like so many other things, I missed the point of origin for the title of the trope. The  "Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions" song was performed by Andy Samberg(as Bruce Springstein), Will Ferrell (as Neil Diamond) and J.J. Abrams (as himself wearing a weird shirt) at the 2009 MTV movie awards and features many clips of of cool guys ignoring conflagrations if one is willing to sit through the video.

The Suicide Owl should be at least as cool as Wolverine, the Joker or Jason Bourne..... so his feathers probably won't catch on fire.

(We've had a few background explosions here on the napkins... although not as many as I thought. Perhaps I have missed a few.)

Scooby and Shaggy chat up Mordecai and Rigby

The meeting of two sets of unfortunate TV role-models for my sons:  

My kids have an inexplicable and disturbingly persistent affection for all the iterations of "Scooby Doo"  The Regular Show is a more recent pleasure which make me appreciate the simplicity of the former.  

Trying to imagine a meeting between the dated pseudo beatniks and the snarky contemporary slackers, I could only conjecture that Mordecai and Rigby are not buying whatever their predecessors are selling.

Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show with Blue Jay and Raccoon

 

My attempt to mix school curriculum with snarky animated characters: The more realistic counterparts of Mordecai and Rigby from the "Regular Show" fantasize about cartoon fame.