IS IT JUST ME?

THIS BOY'S LIFE

Confession: I never was a Boy Scout (though I do have a vague memory of being a Cub Scout - or maybe that's confused with tagging along with my sisters' Brownie Troop to go to the Wonder Bread factory that made your whole soul smell like hot, sweet dough!) I am thrilled to announce I have been asked by BOY'S LIFE magazine to write a short story for them.

The significance is two-fold: A) They asked me out of the blue (which is way better than sending hundreds of SASE submissions and keeping your fingers crossed) and B) it gives me a great mid-winter push to jump into the creative water with a "small" idea, something I can have a blast writing without the heavy baggage of hundreds of pages and plot details*!

(*this is not to diminish the difficulties of writing short fiction - which I know is no picnic and I have nothing but praise for anyone who can master telling a great story in mere pages)

So now I get to let my mind wander into strange and funny territory and then pitch a few ideas to the editor...I'm thinking something with Giant Bugs.....

I'll keep ya posted.

And in a totally unrelated burp: I just LOVE this animated video of the They Might Be Giants song "The Mesopotamians" - ya gotta love these guys!!! And a major shout-out to DRAWN for giving me the link to the animated genius of David Cowles.

KILLER TOFU

The thing about being a writer - and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone here - we want to create something meaningful; something that "says something"; something that leaves a low carbon footprint on the world that conveniently has our name on it!

Thanks to my pal Sulli (who once shared an office with me when we were but lads) I have been reminded of my lingering immortality through the above tee-shirt design that was linked to me this morning.

See, one of my early writing jobs in TV was working on the Nickelodeon cartoon DOUG. I knew the show's creator (Jim Jinkins) from when I interned my very first job - and after I found out he'd created this quirky toon I immediately got back in touch and was lucky to get hired to write a bunch of scripts.

Handed the task of writing the script that introduced Doug's favorite band, THE BEETS - I knew there should be a song in the episode and because the band was strange came up with a song called KILLER TOFU. Little did I know that this ode to junk food by way of alien bean curd would become one of the signature hits for the fictional band.

Thanks to Sulli's t-shirt link I did a quick search and found countless music videos by kids lip syncing, a few rock bands doing actual covers, a music video with a huge cardboard "killer tofu" and believe it or not - some kids have customized Guitar Hero with the song!

So here's the thing - yeah, thanks to POND SCUM I got my name in the Library of Congress. But it's Killer Tofu that's got me rockin' on forever!

Ah-Ee-Ooo....Killer Tofu!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR