We just keep trying to beat every show with the funny stick until it's funny
I had horrible moment at the end of a very successful day, where I realized I just felt nothing about it and I didn't care. And I had that fear that I would, because I was successful at it, that I would be there 20, 30 years down the road, doing this job and just not caring about what I did.
If you want a lot of visual humor, the way to do it is have visual people do it.
Our rule is: If it makes the parent laugh, and the kid asks why, that can't be an uncomfortable conversation.
Any job ends up with stress, and certainly there's always a deadline looming when you work in TV. It's sort of constant.
I drew when I was very, very young. My mom kept stuff I drew when I was 2 and a half years old, because it looked like, you know, like a jaguar as opposed to a cheetah.
I started drawing in first grade. Because the kid next to me was drawing, and I remember thinking: I want to be able to do that!
So I just always drew. But never took that as a career path. I ended up in the computer business, and found myself as the vice president of sales and marketing for a computer accessories company.
I was drawing professionally by the time I was 12. I used to do very detailed sort of photorealistic pen-and-ink work, and I burned out on it around, like, high school. And cartooning really got me back into drawing.
I answered an ad, for a campus cartoonist at the university I was in, my freshman year. I was like, Oh, I can draw, and I'm sort of a funny guy. I should try this. Then they paid me to do a comic strip for the paper.
Swampy [ Marsh] and I live as far away from each other as we possibly can and still work together. But we just always felt like we were funnier when we were in the room together than we are when we're separate.
