Silly Business 3-D

Once in a while you see something that is initially acceptable/great/hilarious/comforting, but upon further investigation is indicative of something more dark and deceptive. An example of this is an ongoing project pursued by my stepbrother Carlos and myself for the last eleven or so years.

Garfield is a fat and furry feline created by Jim Davis in 1978, and is not funny. We took the initiative to modify this cartoon, inserting homosexual innuendo (which evolved to explicit acts) and absurdist humor. Allow me to begin with a sample:






Noticable characteristics include Jon's repeated changes of physical state, inexplicabe bowtie and drinking problem, and Garfield's homonid morphology and speech capability. It may lead to hilarious consequences, but you have to consider the source for a moment. No ganja went into the production here, just hours and hours in a stuffy United Methodist church.

The church in question was primarily attended by old people, which is fine. Statistics show that old folks' church attendance, spirituality, and the like all contribute to a longer life span which makes complete sense to me. Go for it, old dudes. The problem arises when a church where these are the only members envelopes different demographics that do not fit in. Enter Hank and Carlos. We sat in Sunday school and in church every week and I'm proud to say we kept our personalities intact. We made light of every boring thing we could and were damn good at it. There was enough nervous laughter, strange potluck food, forced conversation, and awkward silence to make one lose hope. Garfield cartoons were the result of our oh-so-necessary coping.

Actually, they didn't begin there. The first one ever was a picture made at home of Garfield looking dissatisfied (as usual, that old scamp! Ha!) looking at the reader saying "My dick and balls fell off, must be a Monday."I showed it to Carlos, who laughed, and returned with a picture of Garfield with his dick going over his head and going back up his ass. Not to be outdone by each other, we wound up making a booklet called Garfield's Funniest Outtakes. It was pretty fucked up. The real extension, though, did come on Sundays at church. Our preachers were usually bad and not interesting so we drew, naturally. When things got settled in we would grab a stack of paper and just churn those babies out. If something odd or funny happened, it was integrated into the Garfield universe. We'd give them to each other at the end or when no one was looking and giggle and sweat as quietly as we could manage. Itchy hot church clothes, visiting families with hot daughters, lame guest preachers/groups all added to the tension and requirement for obscurity.

Here is an oddly poetic example Carlos made from a template in the children's church bulletin:





About the pastors for a moment: The preacher when we first got there was a fat lesbian named Jan. Her coming there made a lot of people leave and there were few remaining members. She was replaced by Jim, who was pretty decent but had frequent guests come in instead of doing sermons. This meant a lot of drifting weirdos preached to us, like Clown Communion. This was two people, truckers, who went from church to church dressing up as clowns and doing a mime act. The husband did most of it, where he first did motions of regaling and happiness like saying "Yow! Wow! Yay, yippee!" with his face and arm motions. He picked up a piece of bread and cradled it like a baby. You know, like Jesus. Duh. Then he got really sad and broke the bread in two. He pretended to cry. People in the congregation cried too, but they weren't miming. After Jim, there was Fay. She is a nice woman, but has her limits of tolerability. Once she decided that all the kids in the church (me, Carlos, and three other kids about 5 years younger than us) should bring their musical instruments in and play music for the whole church. She called us up early in the morning before church and we were told to bring our musical instruments, which were a trombone for me and a saxophone for Carlos. The choir director was put in charge of this and she didn't want to do it anymore than we did. To get back at Fay, we played all non-Christian songs: My Dreidel, She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes, and Skip to my Lou. We practiced for about 20 minutes until Carlos said that we "should stop now because I don't want it to be any better than this." During the performance we couldn't stop laughing and would purposefully place little blurts and squeaks in with the music to make it seem "cute" for the old folks. Everybody was pissed off we didn't play Christian music but we didn't give a fuck. The monkeys did their little dance for their entertainment, so they could just screw off. Also, if Fay saw you look at your watch during her sermon, she would extend it for another fifteen minutes. Not cool.

So this is the kind of shit we put up with via Garfield cartoons, and it worked really really well. Garfield would fuck somebody and say something stupid, problem solved. Odie would eat someone's balls, therapy finished. It was great. And you can really see it looking through them.
In this one, we can tell Carlos had a book report on William Faulkner:





(I've chosen not to display the homosexuality-riddled cartoons because the picture server would kick it off, so poo on them. )

We just weren't satisfied with such few characters to use in our cartoons despite having plenty from real life to choose from. Here's some of the ones we made up, among many.

Marfield-Garfield with bigger manboobs and long, blonde hair. Garfield killed him.
Jarfield-Garfield trapped and suffocating in a large jar
Numberfield-surrounded by numbers of various fonts
Nigfield-black
Farfield-Garfield who is just really far away and waving
Futurefield-several variations, pretty much Garfield in a cool future space suit
Garfieldoux-Cajun Garfield
Grarfield-the name we came up with for the whole project to avoid copyright infringment
Benny-a filthy, raving lunatic bum who befriends Garfield and the gang


Cartoons were fine and good, but why stop there? Why not make movies of your very own? Well we sure as shit did just that. We started out with a number called "Silly Business" where Garfield eats some lasagna, Jon yells, "GARFIELD" and they all dance. "Silly Business 2" featured Garfield drinking Drano, throwing it up, Odie eating the vomit, and Odie's brain shooting out of his skull (awesome, I know). Life evolves, and should Garfield, so then came "Silly Business 3-D", featuring an all clay cast of characters. The plot was mainly the characters standing, yelling, and falling apart on the table. A piece of paper that said "the end" on it surrounded by rainbows signaled the end while folk music played in the background. The Garfield Silly Business series will be on DVD in stores across America soon!

Garfield is now primarily generated by computer now, but the point stays the same.





Tradition holds true, and Garfield abides.

Amen.