"Butt in Your Face” is #11 on the Cat Billboard Hot 100. Here are the lyrics:
(First verse)
It’s 4:52 and you’re sleeping in bed
I’ve been meowing at you. I need to be fed.
I could scratch the mattress or knock over that cup.
I could bat the doorstop. That might wake you up.
But I don’t have the patience. I want you up now.
You won’t respond to a scratch or meow.
Being ignored when I’m hungry is such a disgrace.
It’s time to go big and stick my butt in your face.
(Chorus)
Butt in your face!
Butt in your face!
What’s that stinky smell?
It’s my butt in your face!
(Second verse)
You can shove me away but I’ll keep coming back.
There’s no way to stop this cat butt attack.
Don’t care if you hate this. Don’t care if it’s rude.
All decorum disappears when I want my food.
My "A" game is ugly but I know it will work.
I know you’re awake. You just called me a jerk.
You gonna roll over? I’ll stay on your case.
Here comes Round 2 of my butt in your face.
(Chorus)
Butt in your face!
Butt in your face!
What’s that stinky smell?
It’s my butt in your face!
(Bridge)
You roll out of bed--you’re admitting defeat!
There’s no sound sweeter than your shuffling feet.
I know it was mean; I know it was crude.
But my butt in your face was my ticket to food.
(Chorus)
Butt in your face!
Butt in your face!
What’s that stinky smell?
It’s my butt in your face!
(Repeat, fade out)
Ever since my daughter was 2, she has been talking about "Sally,” her imaginary sister. She's mentioned other imaginary friends, but they've come and gone. Sally has been a constant--she's talked about her “sister” pretty much every day for the past three years.
Sometimes Kate would talk about her multiple times a day: “My sister and I are gonna play a game," “Sally taught me the song,” “My sister thinks this tastes gross.” There have been times when either Katrina or I would get fed up and say, “That’s enough about your sister.”
A few days ago, I was about to give Kate a bath and she said, “Daddy, I want to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
“My sister left,” she said. “She’s gone.”
“Okay,” I said. I was half paying attention to this. When I hear her say “sister,” I sometimes start to zone out.
“She LEFT, Daddy. I said goodbye to her. She’s not coming back.”
She seemed like she wanted to talk about it, so I asked, “Why did she leave?”
“She doesn’t need to be here anymore because I’m going to have a brother soon.” (We're expecting a baby boy in about three weeks.)
“Oh,” I said.
“My sister left to go be with another girl who doesn’t have a sister. That’s her job.”
Apparently Katrina had overheard this, so the next night, maybe as a test, Katrina asked Kate about her sister.
“She’s gone, Mommy. She left.”
“She’s gone? Do you miss her?”
“No,” Kate said. “I said goodbye to her and she’s gonna help another little girl. She took a bus to get there. It’s a long trip.”
Just like that, the sister who’s been around for the past three years is gone, because Kate will soon become a sister. And somewhere in Kate’s imagination, a girl named Sally is taking a bus to help another little girl who needs her.
Every now and then, kids really surprise you with what they say. This was one of those times.
Here's a greeting card I made with my friend Bob, owner of Two Neat. Happy Cinco de Mayo (a.k.a. Excuse to drink Corona and Tequila Day)
In honor of Arbor Day, I thought I’d share some samples of a comic strip I used to do, called “Tree.” When I first I started working on this strip in 2005, a friend of mine suggested I join his writers group to help me hone the writing and the characters. I took him on his offer and went to their next meeting. I was a member of the group for nearly a year and a half and the feedback I got from everyone was invaluable. It was a lot of fun. I also learned that I am very bad at critiquing poetry.
I submitted “Tree” to syndicates in 2007 and they all passed on it. I really enjoyed drawing this strip. Hope you enjoy the samples.
Since it’s Arbor Day, go out there and hug a tree. Or give one a high five. Some trees don’t like to be hugged.
It's time to share another bad cartoon idea. This is a joke I really wanted to work but it just doesn't. To me, there's something about it that's slightly funny but overall it's too wordy and mean-spirited.
After I drew this cartoon a couple weeks ago, I was surprised to find out that many people had never heard of Bobby Biddle. If you’ve never heard of him, you probably don’t listen to country music or you just don’t pay much attention to the news. He’s been in the news a bunch of times.
A few years ago, one of Biddle's songs caused a major backlash. Some people love him, some people hate him. I did a screen grab of his Wikipedia page so you can read about him and his career (click for a larger image). Warning: some content may be offensive.
Every now and then I’ll sketch a cartoon idea and immediately think, “This must’ve been done before.” That happened with the above cartoon. The phrase “nothin' but treble” struck me as funny, but also as something that another cartoonist must’ve already used. Before coloring this cartoon, I Googled “nothing but treble” and braced myself for the worst, fully expecting dozens of cartoons with this phrase. The search results included Cornell University’s all-female a cappella group (founded in 1976), Oberlin College's all-female a cappella group founded in 1985 (copycats!), and Villanova University's all-female cappella group founded in 2005 (you're a little late to the party, Villanova). To my surprise, I could only find one cartoon that used “Nothing but treble.” It’s by Dan Reynolds. I was kind of relieved to see that Dan used the line in a completely different way. Sure, Dan’s cartoon may have a triple joke (“You’re nothing but treble,” “All you do is bring us down,” and the tag line, “The Staff Meeting”) but does it have a surly, cigar-smoking treble clef standing next to a jukebox? I don't think so. Seriously, I admire Dan’s work and his cartoon is great. A bit of trivia about my cartoon: the guy walking out of the restroom is a know-it-all windbag who annoys everyone in the bar. His name is....Clef Clavin. I think I hear you groaning.
This cartoon has been making the rounds online, thanks to Cartoon Stock, The Cat House On The Kings and a couple other cat-themed Facebook pages. If you'd like this cartoon on a mug, T-shirt, or greeting card, click here. Useless inside information: the cat who drank "Extreme Energy" is Clyde, and he's based on my 22-pound cat, Simon.
Yesterday I was having a bad day. It was one of those crappy days at work that we all have sometimes, where everything goes wrong. Nothing was going my way.
After a meeting in which I presented myself like a sloth on Vicodin, I shuffled back to my desk, feeling like an idiot. A few minutes later, I checked my email and saw about 10 messages from people who tagged me on their posts and comments on Facebook. That's the kind of thing that happens on your birthday but it wasn't my birthday. Turns out George Takei shared one of my cartoons Facebook. For those who may not know, George Takei is best known for having played Lieutenant Sulu on Star Trek. He's also known for his good sense of humor. He occasionally sits in on the Howard Stern show, cracking jokes and laughing at himself. Bottom line, George is cool -- and he has 3.1 million followers on Facebook, so I was stoked that he shared my cartoon.
I want to thank George Takei and my Facebook friends for turning a bad day into a good one. If you like this Santa on Facebook cartoon and want it as a greeting card, you can buy some here.
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy Festivus!
I love Peet’s coffee. I’ve been a fan ever since my sister introduced me to it years ago.
Back in early 1995, I had just moved to San Francisco and had only become a daily coffee drinker a few months earlier. My sister Carolyn, who was studying to get her teaching credential, was working at this coffee shop called Peet’s. One day, she came to visit me in my apartment on Hayes Street. She saw me making coffee and said, “You need to stop drinking that crap.”
“What’s wrong with Yuban?”
“I brought this for you.” She handed me a half pound of Peet’s coffee. “Trust me, this stuff is superior to Yuban.”
“Isn’t all coffee pretty much the same?” I was 23 and clearly pretty clueless.
Carolyn kind of smiled and said, “Just brew this and be enlightened.”
I opened the bag of coffee and immediately noticed that it looked a lot different than Yuban. It was much darker. And the smell was amazing.
“This smells great.”
“This is real coffee,” Carolyn said. “The blend is called Major Dickason’s and it's super strong.”
When I took a sip, I heard angels singing, harps playing, and saw the gloomy fog outside my kitchen window immediately disappear. (I’m exaggerating – the fog never went away in my neighborhood.)
Since that day, I’ve been a big fan of Peet’s. And their Holiday Blend is delicious. I think it’s because of the ground up reindeer antlers.
If any higher-ups at Peet’s happen to read this, please know this cartoon is meant as an homage to coffee excellence. If you feel compelled to send me a free pound of coffee because of this endorsement, shoot me an email. (Or you can use that same email address for your "cease and desist" letter.)
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