After eight great years, it seems my ride with the big F is over. Well… that's such a final way to phrase it. Hopefully the ride isn't over, just halted temporarily.

There's still been no official word if our show has been canceled before an 8th season, but at this point… well, who knows. Also recently, the big F put their planned remake of a certain 1960's prehistoric animated sitcom on hold. No word on what may get produced in the brand new fifth floor studio that was all set up for that, and thus absolutely no word on what (if any) position yours truly may occupy in said fifth floor studio one of these days. (I loved working for the big F and I'll gladly return once other productions eventually get going and I'm hopefully asked back.)

In the meantime, I just got the official 'you're hired' call today from:

That's right! The Big M! *woot!*

As usual for this blog, no mentions by name or images of anything I'm working on both for strict NDA reasons (extremely strict in this case), and also for Google search reasons. But suffice it to say, I'm psyched to be working for The Big M on a fun show with a team of awesome people including my buddy Ed that I used to work with at the Big F. 

So as Stan the Man Lee himself likes to say… Excelsior!

And… 'nuff said.

Cleaning out the house and garage recently, I've unearthed quite a stash of original artwork.

Many years ago, my friend Mike Milo and I got the opportunity to write and draw Itchy and Scratchy for Matt Groening's line of comic books based on the Simpsons.

I & S is the cartoon that Bart Simpson watches- a bizarre ultra-violent parody of Tom and Jerry and the whole genre of cat vs. mouse chase cartoons. It was way too much fun dreaming of funny ways for Itchy (the mouse) to carve up hapless Scratchy, and we had a blast writing and drawing the series until parents actually started closely examining the 'funny book' they bought their little ones at the local 7-Eleven:

A flood of protest letters followed, and Fox pulled the plug. (Not to mention, how much can you really do with this concept?)

Weirder still: while I & S was still on the comic racks, not to be outdone, WB (now owners of Tom and Jerry) approached us to write and draw a slightly more violent version of the original cat and mouse team! Basically, the original was copycatting the parody.

Here's a couple of pages from the first issue. I believe the comic book was actually released in Asia, but not the states. Some editor at WB's comic division probably realized that it was a dreadful idea to begin with- and I & S got canned anyway.  But hey, it's what they asked for.

My co-workers made a really nice card for me and Leila, welcoming our new addition.  Of course lots of jokes about how babies aren't quite like computers! I'm blessed to work with so many cool and really nice people!  

(Thus far, all the no sleep predictions haven't come true. Knock wood.)

Also, the production gave us a really generous donation to the ongoing 'feed/clothe/raise Leo fund', which we appreciate sooooooo ridiculously much.  :)

Renewed for a 7th Season

Putting the show on at 7:30 was a true bonehead move (AD is not a kid's show or even a family-friendly show!) but after the dreadful Bob's Burgers dies an uncelebrated death, hopefully we'll be back in the later time slot where we belong.  

I look forward to jokes written on our show about the fading obscurity of Bob's Burgers, as with 'Sons of Tucson'. "What's that?" you say? "Sons of whaa…?"  Exactly. 

It's not official news yet, but the other day at work we had cause for celebration. Champagne, some spirits, and cake. The reason is on display in the following video: 

This was captured with my Droid X of course. Currently, our ratings are up- another blessing!

At my work, we recently celebrated completion of our 100th episode. The occasion was marked by a lavish star-studded throw down at The Parlor in Hollywood last night- (unfortunately, Leila and I couldn't make it). Also, a recent issue of Variety was dedicated entirely to congrats on our 100th. 

The current cover of Variety celebrating our production's achievement.

I'm one of the few people with the distinction of having worked on every single episode (and of course all the episodes currently in production).  Our executive producer and the show's co-creator gave a special shout out to me and others in that category first thing, before personally thanking everyone on the crew. Too bad I wasn't there for it it, but I heard about it at work today while locking the screener of the current episode. 

So it's looking pretty good: our ratings are great, our back catalog has recently graduated to syndication, studios and networks are rolling in it from these shows (some perspective: my show and our two sister shows are for The Big F a five Billion dollar juggernaut ) and so I'm fairly confident my job will stick around for another few hundred episodes.

…or not. This industry is fickle, so you never can tell.

On Monday evening, I left my office on Wilshire Blvd at around 6:30pm Monday- I was headed for the first of my tri-weekly bike rides along the beach in Playa Del Rey, and I figured I was in for a roughly twenty minute commute there. ( I keep my bike in the back of my car).  Flash forward to 9:30pm- and there I sat, not even a mile from my office, trapped on 9th Street among thousands of other motorists, in total gridlock. Wilshire Blvd. was shut down, as was Olympic and Pico- just these streets alone are guaranteed to grind west LA to a complete standstill!

Out my windshield, I snapped this photo with my cell phone of the parking lot that was 8th street and Hauser Blvd. Many of these people had been sitting here- and thousands more on streets all over west LA- for three hours. As luck would have it, the north side of 8th street was passable- since it only led back a completely blocked Fairfax Avenue so I used it and neighboring alleys to sneak back to my office.

I've lived in LA since 1994 and seen visits by the three Presidents in that time span, but nothing like the gridlock caused by Obama's fundraiser visit. Usually, a Prez in town causes a delay of maybe thirty minutes. But I've never seen anything like Monday's debacle.

From where I sat, kicked back in my car listening to the radio, some enterprising kids set up a lemonade stand and sold cups of it to a clientele held captive mere feet from the Miracle Mile. Ingenious. 

My bike ride was out of the question, but I figured I could at least salvage dinner. As soon as a chance opened up, I spun my car around, cut through some allies between office towers, and made it back to my office building where I could park my car in the underground parking and then walk across Wilshire to a strip of eateries. They were all curiously empty as no one could reach them for all the traffic. (Somewhat ironic). I had some dinner at Baja Fresh and watched the traffic snarl on Wilshire until it cleared up enough to sneak home. (I heard reports today that some people were trapped in traffic for 5 hours, and then another smaller snarl got started Tuesday morning when Air Force 1 departed!)

And in the end, all of this commotion for a lousy million bucks of funding raised. Really? You have to fly to LA and block the entire city at rush hour just to pry a measly twenty million nickels out of a mansion full of Hollywood bigshots and political hacks? I would think the Prez could do better than that by sitting in the White House and asking these cheapskates just to phone it in.

This is the office building where I work. 

Recently I did some graphics work for the above show, on the above network. Check out my credit! Gee, I’m up there with Corbis, AP, and Getty! If you get the chance, check out the show.