The Continuing Adventures of Single Ted Forth (Now Featuring Sally’s Maiden Name)

As you may know, this week marks the “Alternate Universe” timeline of Sally Forth, in which Sally and Ted never met, never married and never prevented Ted from having the kind of personal, professional and financial problems we all assumed he would have if left alone to his own devices for more than 15 minutes…

Of course, even the above looks good compared to the admittedly more accurate depiction of Ted’s world in the following strip created by Something Awful Forum member ChuckDHead…

Stay tuned for the continuing adventures of single Ted and single Sally. And yes, that is the very first appearance of Sally’s maiden name. Took me a little while to create one that felt right but hopefully I did a good job because “Jansen” is canon now and nothing can be done to fix it.

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The Adventures of Single Ted Forth

Some of you who still read newspapers comics because you haven’t received the memo that people don’t do that anymore may be familiar with the new story line in Sally Forth, in which we learn what would have happened if Sally and Ted had never met, married or had Hilary…

This upcoming look at an alternative Forth universe over the next several months and years (by which I mean next few weeks) has been already greatly improved upon by the creative folks over at Something Awful Forums, all of whom believe an unmarried Ted would have been pronounced clinically insane long ago, as evidenced by this great strip from SAF member ChuckDHead:

Care to share your thoughts/reworked comics about what an alternate version of Sally and Ted Forth would be like? Please send them my way! And please make sure to read the new Sally Forth story arc if only so you can eventually say, “Meh. Needed more robot monkeys.”

UPDATE: More Alterna-Sally Forth comic strips have arrived! The first is from Blueberryudhs…

The next one is from Flababo:

Thank you for the great work!

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The Gilded Hand Has Its Fingers in Many Pies

Enjoy this rewrite (by Something Awful member “Mad Doctor Cthulhu”) of today’s Sally Forth strip (taking a cue from the strip’s abandoned international espionage story). I especially like the use of the phrase “super duper.”

Other Links:
Ted Forth’s Psychotic Break and the Three-Month International Espionage Story Line that Never Was
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent

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Sally Forth as Written by a Japanese School Girl

Humor is international, in that sometimes it takes someone several continents away with a preliminary grasp of English to make something truly brilliant.

To wit, I received the following email from one of the contributors at Something Awful Forums:

“I’m Sarah…I’d been posting newspaper comic strips from the states as rewritten by my junior high school students. I teach English in Japan. I’d been considering sending a few of them off to the original writers and artists but never got around to it. Your appreciation for robot monkey-inserts made me regret it, so I wanted to at least get Sally Forth’s re-imagination to you, as it was coincidentally one of the better ones. For the project I took about a week of strips from various comics, erased the dialogue and handed them out to my class of 20 15-year-olds to do as they wished. Sally Forth was selected and rewritten by a happy girl named Makoto. I hope you find it as amusing as I certainly did.”

And so, with that in mind, here’s Japan’s better answer to Sally Forth, which would be no doubt called Ted Forth: Heartless Bastard.

Other Links:
Pet Reflections
Why Cats Are Not Doctors
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
More Upcoming Coffee Table Books
Greeting Cards Best Left Unsent

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Supporting Cast: Nona of “Sally Forth”

UPDATE!: You CAN indeed read Secondary Cast over at DailyINK without signing up! Read all the great posts there now by Tea Fougner!

King Features comic website DailyINK has started a new column called Supporting Characters in which they ask cartoonists to talk about a favorite secondary or tertiary cast member of their comic strip. Today that column turns its attention to Sally Forth character Nona, Hilary and Faye’s somewhat whimsical-minded friend and the member of the still unsigned New Delhi Monkey Gang to know how to play an instrument.

I happily ask that you go read article right here. Please head on over and check all the posts in the Supporting Cast section. I think you’ll have a blast learning about other cartoonists’ creative process. Mine involves copious sobbing.

In preparing the article, King Features sent me a list of questions about our dear Nona. Questions that I did indeed answer. Answers that in turn almost certainly left the good people of the site mumbling “The f**k?” as they valiantly edited down my morass of words into a coherent presentation.

So for those who do not currently have access to the site (join today!) or prefer to get their information in a raw mental feed manner, here is the clearly unedited version of The Nona Chronicles. Enjoy.

Q. To start off, tell us a little bit about who Nona is and what her role in the strip is.

A. Nona started as an answer to my own question, “What if Luna Lovegood lived in the suburbs…and wasn’t a wizard…and didn’t have an English accent even though, let’s face it, English accents make everything sound brilliant or diabolical…except maybe the poor English characters in Mike Leigh films…Seriously, just watching those doomed characters try to scrape enough shillings to purchase a pen to sign over their house to creditors is absolute torture…Who am I talking to?” (You see, cartoonists often ask themselves questions, usually out loud, in public, and usually directed at an inanimate object due to social skills that can best be described as “Raised by neglectful wolves.”) I wanted a character who was confident in her worldview without arrogance, an outsider who never cared to define herself as such. Whereas Hilary is a mix of her dad’s dreaming and her mom’s take-charge attitude, and Faye is the voice of skepticism, Nona speaks her mind without fear or agenda, even when she says something like “If toasters were to achieve awareness would they clean their own crumb tray?”

Q. What do you like best about writing for Nona?

A. Having been a painfully shy child I know how awful it is to always be hesitant. Of course, now after years of hard work I’ve matured into a self-doubting adult, which is a kind way of saying that sometimes I have my head so far up my ass I’m looking out my own mouth. Need proof of that? Just read the first few sentences in this paragraph again.. But the great thing about writing for Nona is that there is no such hesitancy, no such self-doubt. She observes the world and says what is precisely on her mind. Of course, Nona is also a good person so she never openly criticizes someone for the sake of diminishing their self-esteem. She’ll just take note of Hilary’s controlling nature and comment, “One day you’re going to plunge a tiny island nation into chaos.” Then Nona will look at a field of daisies and openly wonder if all their individual names are gender neutral.

Q. Nona is part of a trio along with Hilary and Faye– what part does she play in the trio dynamics? How does Nona feel about her friends?

A. While Faye was initially brought in to comment on the strip (basically so I could co-opt Internet criticism of the comic), Nona was introduced to comment on Faye and Hilary. In other words, my plan is to make the comic one meta-observation on top of another until it’s the MC Escher equivalent of Russian nesting dolls, so that every time you open one doll you find a larger on inside, again and again, greater and greater in size, until the readers find themselves are enclosed within…okay, I really should eat a good breakfast before I answer these questions. Anyway, it’s more fun to bounce off dialogue between three characters instead of two, since you get to play with different personalities. Plus, it let’s me focus on a small group of social outsiders in a strip where, quite honestly, the popular clique is never seen or may not even exist. That way I can avoid such tired story lines as “I’m wearing the wrong clothes,” “What if I don’t get invited to the big dance?” and “Isn’t the captain of our school’s land-based Quidditch team dreamy?”

Q. Can you tell us something about Nona’s personal background and family life?

A. Hilary comes from a traditional comic strip middle-class family and Faye and her mom have more pronounced financial concerns. So I wanted a character who hailed from a wealthier household, which allows her simply to wonder about the world without thinking about the money problems most of us have. The problem with rich characters in comic strips, though, is that they always seem to be obscenely wealthy, like all it will take is one phone call and a phalanx of jet-packed butlers will arrive with trays of unicorn sushi. It’s never “Their parents have good careers and invested wisely” but rather “Guess who just bought Canada!” So to avoid that I’ve downplayed Nona’s financial background, which I think in the long run helps define her by her actions rather than by any broad stroke characterizations. Though, now that I think of it, such wealth could make Ted Forth’s dream of an all cyborg monkey version of Mr. Belvedere a reality.

Q. What does Nona like to do when she’s not at school or with her friends? What are some of her hobbies?

A. Nona’s main hobby is probably quietly pursuing a line of thought until it’s nine hours later and she wishes she had jotted down her ideas in a notebook instead of ruining a perfectly good kitchen wall and two light sconces. She’s exceedingly musically gifted, which makes her band rehearsals with the less talented Hilary and Faye a bit of a personal ordeal. She is a very avid reader. She may even be reading this very article, shaking her head and thinking, “He really doesn’t know me at all. And besides, Mike Leigh doesn’t just do working class movies. What about ‘Topsy Turvy’?” She may also be cloning something. I’m not sure. I try to give my characters some space in the strip’s off hours.

Q. What is Nona’s favorite subject in school? What’s her least favorite subject?

A. For a seemingly flighty individual Nona is very adept at almost every academic pursuit. That’s because she really isn’t so much easily distracted as fascinated by everything all the time. (Which is why one day she’ll graduate college with five degrees and two MacArthur Fellowships.) As for what’s her least favorite class I guess the cliché answer would be that she doesn’t like gym class. But while she may not be particularly athletic I would think she’d still be fascinated by the whole gym process of ropes to nowhere, balls hurled at fellow students with the primitive ferocity of a William Golding character and a middle-aged teacher screaming non-stop for 40 minutes until they have a mini-stroke or finally pass their real estate agent exam.

Q. Is Nona really psychic?

A. If you notice at the start of this Q&A about the inspiration for Nona I never said, “What if Luna Lovegood lived in the suburbs…and couldn’t read minds…”

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Sitcom Theme Music: Mr. Belvedere

What if a posh British butler showed up at the doorstep of a two-career family in suburban Pittsburgh and they decided to welcome him as one of their own? What if a drunk Russian cosmonaut showed up at the doorstep of a down-on-its-luck sorority in southern California and they decided to welcome him as one of their own? What if amnesiac Harlem Globetrotters Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal showed up at the doorstep of unsupervised geriatric patients in–what the hell?–Jupiter, Florida and they decided to welcome them as one of their own?

No doubt the creators of Mr. Belvedere arrived at ABC Studios with an armful of such high-concept pitches, only to ultimately settle on the one they lifted wholesale from a 1948 Clifton Webb movie (since nothing connects with the average American viewer like an effete, studio system-era comedy of manners). The resulting series was initially conceived as a star vehicle for Bob Uecker, a one-time godawful baseball player who had found latter-day success as a spokesman for a series of funny 1980’s Miller Lite commercials (back when beer commercials made you laugh with them, not make you want to hurl something at them). The theme song was performed by Leon Redbone, a jazz and blues musician who also had found renewed fame in a 1980’s Budweiser commercial. In fact, so prevalent were beer commercials in the minds of programmers and viewers alike back in the eighties that one can only imagine what prevented the world from ever witnessing Spuds McKenzie, MD, a sitcom about the new doctor at the veterinarian hospital who–wait for it–is also a former patient.

The basic plot–stranger is taken aback by real or makeshift family only to eventually become a member of said family–is a standard sitcom device, used to great effect in Cheers, Mary Tyler Moore and–most regrettably–Hogan’s Heroes. Mr. Belvedere also employed the standard sitcom device of having the main character reflect on what he or she has learned from each episode’s events in the form of a diary or confessional. It was a move first popularized by Mork in his reports to Orson, then later revisted when Doogie Howser shared his thoughts on a 12K Commodore computer. But undoubtedly the best use of the “confessional” device came in the final episode of St. Elsewhere, when we learned that not only was the entire series the product of a mentally-handicapped child’s imagination, but that the mentally-handicapped child was, in actuality, a character in the alternate-universe diary Roseanne was writing in the final episode of her series, only for Bob Newhart to wake up from that dream next to Suzanne Pleshette…who was, in truth, time traveller Sam Beckett, who sadly just had found out that not only was he never going to leap back into his own body but that he was, in fact, Number One.

In short, Mr. Belvedere was very much a standard sitcom. This is in no way meant to be a slight at the series or those involved. I remember catching an episode or two during my college summers and finding the show humorous enough. I also remember thinking that the actor playing youngest son Wesley could portray the stock wisecracking, conniving child character without me ever wishing any real harm on the character or actor. But Mr. Belvedere was clearly one of those sitcoms that people remember being on the air but don’t necessarily remember sitting down to watch, much like Charles in Charge. Sure, whenever you see the name Charles in Charge you involuntarily launch into its theme song (“Charles in Charge of our days and our nights/Charles in Charge of our wrongs and our rights”). But do you ever remember hanging out with your friends only to exclaim, “Holy shit! It’s time for Charles in Charge!” (“Charles in Charge of our days and our nights/Charles in Charge of our wrongs and our rights”) Do you ever remember saying after your best friend/goofball sidekick did something stupid, “Oh man, you are so like Buddy…from Charles in Charge.” (“Charles in Charge of our days and our nights/Charles in Charge of our wrongs and our rights”) Do you ever wonder how a person who says he can’t recall ever watching Charles in Charge (“Charles in Charge of our days and our nights/Charles in Charge of our wrongs and our rights”) not only remembers the name of Willie Aames’ character but actually remembers that the character was played by Willie Aaames–without the benefit of Google? Sure, you can understand him fondly recalling fellow cast member Nicole Eggert, but Willie Aaaames?! Perhaps all this is my mind’s roundabout way of telling me that this episode of Sitcom Theme Music instead should have been about Charles in Charge (“Charles in Charge of our days and our nights/Charles in Charge of our wrongs and our rights”).

But it’s about Mr. Belvedere, a pleasant sitcom so standard we wound up discussing everything but Mr. Belvedere…which may be the truest summary of this mid-to-late 8o’s show we can give. So sit back and enjoy the opening credits and theme song. Then later ask yourself, “I wonder whatever happened to the actors who portrayed the mom and kids on Mr. Belvedere.” Then ask yourself, “I wonder whatever happened to the actress who played the teenage daughter on ALF.” Then ask yourself, “I wonder whatever happened to the entire cast of Mama’s Family.” Keep doing this. Eventually you’ll go mad with concern.

Other Links:
The Original Cats Quote Charlie Sheen
Excerpts from “I Could Pee on This” and Other Poems by Cats
The Worst-Selling Books of the Year (So Far)
Cats Quote Charlie Sheen: The 20/20 Interview
Quotes from Lesser Transformers

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