#ExplainACartoonBadly

How many terrible kids shows have you sat through in your life as a parent? How many times have you had to suspend disbelief in order to keep from pulling out your hair at the asinine stunts pulled off by animated animals? How often have you had to remind yourself that cartoons have their own laws of physics, and do not subscribe to Newton's big three? How many times have you wanted to reach through the screen to strangle some insufferable pest of a protagonist?

Now, have you ever had to describe the experience to someone who has never seen the show? I decided to give it a shot over on Twitter. You should too, I'm sure you'll find it cathartic. If not, please don't hate me for finding it so. I just can't take any more of that bad acting or that incredibly grating voice!

Brightly costumed teens in choreographed battles where the missed punches are more obvious than the terrible dialogue #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

My kids have a few favorites that got the treatment. Can you guess what they are?

Nerdy kid has "adventures" in books trying to solve simple problems and his friends are all from fairy tales. #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

Culturally diverse city folk don't notice their hairy neighbor's are puppets, sing and learn abc's with celebrities #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

STEM cat doesn't spend the day plotting your death #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

I also took submissions. Many of these we've watched, they all fit the theme.

Extraterrestrial mechanical sentient beings work with human overlords and forced to preform dangerous tasks #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

Tween and her dog are smarter than secret agents and super villains. #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

Talking shape shifting truck teaches physics with bad rock music #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

The best one naturally pairs to possibly the worst cartoon of all time...

Young boy who is always learning. He is so keen to learn from mistakes---a real parent's dream. He has no hair... #explainacartoonbadly

— Dad [W]ith a Blog (@DadWithaBlog) January 10, 2017

Did you get them all? Have more to add? Leave a comment, or head over to Twitter and don't forget to hashtag it!

Breakfast and Cartoons

I like drawing.

My kids like to eat.

So, it wasn't a huge leap for me to connect the two.

The genius of this project however, is that beyond drawing, I like to sleep.

Once the kids were old enough that I could trust them to eat unsupervised, I started sketching some of their favorite cartoon characters on post-it notes. I picked ones which each of them individually liked more than the other, so there would be no confusion. I then stuck them to Correlle lids and filled two bowls with some of their favorite cereal. Place a cup of milk for each of them in the fridge, and I found myself an extra half hour of sleep.

The early ones were simple pencil sketches with a single highlight color.

I branched out a bit in the next ones, adding more color, perhaps refining the lines with ink, but the trick was to really leave the process organic, as the original idea was to give myself a little bit of a break.