Liō and Stitch

Intergalactic troublemakers separated by only one letter:

There can never be enough of the Liō comic as far as my kids are concerned.  Our Liō books are constantly off the shelf and in backpacks, in beds or generally underfoot. Mark Tatulli's strip is mostly wordless (I see that the official term is "pantomime") and follows the adventures of a little boy as he hangs out with pet monsters, zombies and aliens.  Punchlines are often macabre and sometimes involve mass destruction. 

It seemed like he would have plenty in common with Stitch, another one of my kids' favorite creators of mayhem.  I briefly considered drawing them blowing up the moon together, but decided to put them in space with a less disturbing explosion.

Just in case you are not the parent of Disney-saturated kids and are wondering about the "separated by one letter" statement above: "Lilo and Stitch" was both the title of the first Stitch movie and the ensuing TV series.

....And yes, of course the idea for this image was generated by my sleep deprived brain being unable to distinguish between the words Lilo and Liō. 

Stitch and Paddington Bear

Insipidly cute, yet quite destructive:
Movie "pets" my son would really like to have live at our house.

I am ashamed to say that  despite my constant children's literature promoting enthusiasm, I somehow managed to neglect "A Bear Called Paddington" and all of its over 150 subsequently published sequels and spin-offs.

Despite not having read any of the books, Ansel is quite enthusiastic about the impending release of the Paddington Bear movie. The trailer seems to foreground the bear's capacity for inadvertent yet humorous mayhem.

After watching "Lilo and Stitch," we've spent the last few weeks discussing how nice it would be to have a pet like Stitch. I guess this means one that is vaguely dog-like, cute, funny...and a sentient alien that can talk.

I suspect after "Paddington" opens later this month, we will be debating the merits of pet bears.

Stitch, Leroy and Angel Drop the New Year's Ball

Happy New Year from some moderately obscure Disney characters:

We had a pretty low-key New Years eve around here. We acknowledged midnight in Katmandu (10 hours and 45 minutes ahead of New York) because that's where the father of the napkin recipients happened to be at the time. We tried calling him while buying lunch in a convenience store in midtown Manhattan. Unfortunately, he was already asleep, so he missed the opportunity to participate in the kids' lengthy debate of whether 7up or Sprite was superior.

Of course the boys were not awake at midnight New York time either. I unilaterally decided that we would have our official midnight celebration on Ittorqqortoormiit Greenland time. That was the only major city offered up by the iPhone world clock that was a convenient 4 hours ahead. The kids were not entirely convinced by my time logic, but at 8 pm we sipped some Champagne (ok, I admit it was really cheap sparkling wine and not authentic champagne) and wished each other happy new year.

Our younger son spent the rest of the evening arranging his newly acquired Stitch plush with various assortments of toy weapons. He insisted that I post a photo of every arrangement here on the blog. As there were something in excess of ten, I am hoping that I will get away with just the highlights pictured below. 

Due to this burgeoning Stitch obsession, I've become more informed about the franchise than I could ever have dreamed.  Yes, I was previously aware of the first movie, "Lilo and Stitch" from 2002, and had even seen snippets of "Lilo and Stitch: the TV series."  But I was blissfully unaware that there were three additional movies, over 65 episodes of the American TV show, and 86 further episodes of a Japanese version of the show that ran until 2012.  From my perspective, the most memorable thing about the franchise is that Ving Rhames voices a character that looks pretty much exactly like Ving Rhames, but is a social worker named "Cobra Bubbles."  Unfortunately, I do not know if he appears in the anime version.

Despite all my recent Stitch related research, I have not seen the spin off characters pictured on today's napkin in action.  (Leroy is the evil doppelganger, and Angel is, well, the "girlfriend.")

And while I was awake at the time, I also did not watch the Times Square ball drop last night. 
Thus, my apologies for the inaccuracies in both my rendition of the Disney aliens and the crystal ball colors.

Stitch and Donald on Disney Infinity

Characters with poor impulse control mix it up in a video game:

Through yet another marvel of internal marketing, our kids have become convinced that Stitch and Donald are the funniest, most wonderful characters that can be played on Disney Infinity.  We would have to purchase them, of course, because we do not own them yet.  I do wonder what exciting new character will be suddenly shown to be desirable when the system senses that we have bought these two?

When I put Stitch and Donald together, the results were a bit darker than I intended... and a bit negative for Quaker second grade lunch....

I was thinking that I wanted to make their heads large, and wouldn't it be nice to stack them instead of placing them side by side? and wouldn't it be clean formally to surround Donald's head with the blue both of his clothes and of Stitch's fur?

Somehow my half-conscious/ half-baked compositional planning resulted in strangulation.