Tom The Dancing Bug Blog

THIS WEEK'S COMIC on boingboing

This week's comic:  HOW TO DRAW GOD-MAN!

I'd ordinarily resist using God-Man two weeks in a row, but you'll see why I couldn't resist.

Lots O' Huggin' Bear

Ah, remember those commercials for the Lots O' Huggin' Bear from the '80s?

You don't?  Ah, then it must be a fake commercial connected to Pixar's upcoming Toy Story III.  There's even magnetic video static inserted to give it that VCR feel.  Well done.

Spoiler alert:  The comment below the youtube video reads:  "MrCrazycommercials — April 19, 2010 — I totally had one of these growing up. I don't even know what happened to it. My mom probably put it in the attic. I don't like going in there, so it's as good as gone."

They did a similar thing with Wall-E:  months before the movie opened, a mysterious website, buynlarge.com (now apparently defunct) appeared.  With painstaking accuracy, it looked exactly like an actual cheesy corporate website, except that is was ostensibly selling various models of robots.

(via that famed Ivy League elitist John Blankenshore Glynn, III)

One view on the depiction of Muhammad

Fascinating Comment on the Facebook page:

Please draw Muhammad. If not openly, then somewhere in private (and be prepared to bring him out when the time is ripe). I'm a Muslim, but the stupid death threats that non-muslim artists and teachers are getting are unacceptable, and must be stamped out by sheer numbers. I can't think of a reference except a beard.

Mind you, I'm naïve enough to hope that in answer to my request, people will actually try to draw a male human being, rather than something offensive. But extremism begets only itself. People wouldn't be pushed to make images that were offensive (to any decent person) if there weren't such extremism on the part of fundamentalists. Cultures are being polarized apart, and as a human being, I hate that. OK, rant over.

Bolling on Boing

Friends, Fans, and Fellow Citizens,

To expand on the previous entry, today Tom the Dancing Bug embarks on a new partnership with the website Boing Boing (http://boingboing.net/). 

When my relationship with Salon.com ended last month, I instantly contacted Boing Boing, a site I've admired and followed for years, to see if they'd be interested in carrying the strip.  And even though publishing a comic strip would not seem to be something Boing Boing, in its essence a blog, would consider, they instantly and enthusiastically agreed.

It took some time to work logistics out, but today we start on this venture, and I couldn't be happier to have partners as creative, innovative and successful as the folks at Boing Boing.   Please join me, and follow the weekly exploits of Tom the Dancing Bug on this fascinating site.

- Ruben Bolling, Team Boing Boing

tomthedancingbug.com "Why Isn't There a Dancing Bug?"

boingboing.net "A Directory of Wonderful Things"

Bo(ll)ing Bo(ll)ing

Attention all sentient entities:

Starting today, the weekly comic strip "Tom the Dancing Bug" by Ruben Bolling will appear on the popular website Boing Boing, on your internet dial at http://boingboing.net/.

Act accordingly.

Love,

Ruben Bolling

www.tomthedancingbug.com      www.boingboing.net

Tom the Dancing Bug news coming...

Some big Tom the Dancing Bug news (as Tom the Dancing Bug news goes) breaks tomorrow.  I found the Facebook speculation on what the news could be very amusing.

I incurred the twitter-wrath of actor and comedian Paul F. Tompkins

Moments ago, I had a very strange an unexpected exchange on twitter with the actor and comedian, Paul F. Tompkins, whose work I've seen and enjoyed (which is why I was following his account in the first place.)  Given the way twitter works, I think this incident couldn't be fully observed by anyone except for myself, Mr. Tompkins and the strange and impossibly small intersection of people who happen to follow both of our twitter accounts.

I was trying to write a comic when I inexcusably went to check on twitter to see if there was anything that could distract me for a few seconds or hours.  I saw the following tweet by Mr. Tompkins:

PFTompkins THERE ARE! // RT @kevinpollak: Hey, are there tickets available for your show Saturday night in the Largo at the Coronet, Los Angeles, CA?

For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, this means that actor and comedian Kevin Pollack asked if there were tickets available, and Mr. Tompkins responded by reprinting the question and answering "THERE ARE!"

This sounded like humorous banter to me, with Mr. Pollack asking an improbably helpful and public question in order to help with the show, and Mr. Tompkins gamely playing along.  I've only really been on twitter for about a week and a half, but I know that if you want to say something, you have to act on impulse, or the moment is gone, the tweets have descended into the past, and no one will know what you're talking about.  So, I tweeted another improbably solicitous question to which Mr. Tompkins could possibly answer in the affirmative, furthering the mildly amusing joke.  Much more likely, I thought he'd never even see this:

RUBENBOLLING @PFTompkins Are the tickets that are still available for your Saturday night show a great value for one's entertainment dollar?

I was very surprised when a few minutes later, I saw:

PFTompkins @RUBENBOLLING Probably not for you. Don't come.

Wow.  Actor and comedian Paul F. Tompkins misinterpreted my fewer-than-141-character message, and thought that I was somehow being sarcastic or facetious.  Or perhaps he thought I actually spoke like that, and genuinely believed I would be too fastidious to enjoy his humor.  

I tried to quickly write a reply that would explain my intent, but ended up writing too quickly, sending:

RUBENBOLLING @PFTompkins that was a set-upB

See, what happened was that I wanted to send a two-sentence reply.  But after typing "set-up," I hit shift-B instead of alt-B, so my intended exclamation point became a capital B. I must have been flummoxed at having upset Mr. Tompkins, because when I tried to hit the delete button, I instead hit the return button right below it, thus transmitting my unfinished message.

Years of stand-up experience have not left Mr. Tompkins unskilled in handling perceived hecklers.  Within a minute, he sent back:

PFTompkins @RUBENBOLLING Nice workB

Ouch. I then typed the intended second sentence of explanation:

RUBENBOLLING @PFTompkins you were supposed to publicly reply "why, yes it is!".

Actually, the correct reply to my original message would have been, "Why, yes they are!"

Finally, ten minutes later:

PFTompkins @RUBENBOLLING Oops.

To which I replied:

RUBENBOLLING @PFTompkins whew

Order restored to the Twitterverse.

What a very strange tool Twitter is -- that I can go from sitting alone writing a comic strip to, just a few seconds later, arousing and then assuaging the anger of actor and comedian Paul F. Tompkins.

THIS WEEK'S COMIC

Another thrilling adventure of "Sam Roland:  The Detective Who Dies"  Can he survive this week's adventure, "The Secret of Hillbilly Island"?

SPOILER ALERT!

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

No.

Here it is...

The very first episode of "Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveller From 1909"

Tom the Dancing Bug Quiz Quorner

Nice blog post about Tom the Dancing Bug, but can you spot the error?  (Don't look at the answer below until you've spent three months cross-referencing every detail).

Time's up!  How was your 4th of July?  And you're right:  That was NOT the first Percival Dunwoody!