Unlike the subject of today's post, this blog is, amazingly, not dead! Or, perhaps like today's post, it did die, but came back in a different form and all the spiritual woowoo therein. At the very least, there is tangible proof of this post's existence. You're reading it, aren't you?
I may or may not kick up this blog again. We'll see. It's another plate to add to my spinning plate circus act with dubious success, but I could use a more candid space to spew the thoughts billowing and swirling within--a place that is free and relatively unburdened from social media.
I have a lot of eccentric thoughts and feelings and experiences, and would like to voice them a bit more, forgoing the risk of being seen as an utter loon. Even if this blog just ends up being a journal during a certain period of time within my life that makes me go "ooooh... yeah...", as re-reading the preceding post has done for me currently.
So I decided to dip my toe back in the waters by relaying a very deep and meaningful experience I had a few years ago. It's gonna sound woowoo and utterly nutty, so I'm getting my tongue-in-cheek disclaimers of "this might be weird" out now. Perhaps it's a compulsive mask for vulnerability. Really, there's a purveying feeling of "what right do I have to be talking about this? This is a real person you're talking about, you've invented new means of parasociality that'll be in the next DSM-5". But that impulse too is the compulsive mask in response to vulnerability, now disguised as snark. So: here's your woowoo warning.
Anyhow, a few years ago I had a very profound experience with a beloved figure of inspiration in my life, and have continually had profound experiences since then. They could be nothing. I could be looking for things to find meaning in. But they're neat experiences and mean a lot to me and I've been wanting to formally express them, so here's my shot.
It's April 2023. I'm in Burbank for our annual season wrap parties on the Sponge shows; this time, it was for the wrap of Kamp Koral's Season One.
I flew out with my then-girlfriend at the time, since she expressed interest in wanting to go. It was only my second time traveling out to LA and second time traveling "by myself", but any wracked nerves soon melted into a wonderful week of beloved memories, meeting coworkers and friends, delicious food, and selfies with Tom Kenny. My annual work trips out to LA are always the highlight of my year.
Thinking up things to do, I decided I wanted to visit Forest Lawn Cemetery--specifically with the mission to visit Bob Clampett's grave and pay my respects. A few years before this, I suddenly resolved that if I were ever to fly out to LA, I'd like to visit his grave.
As is no secret to most, Bob Clampett is my biggest artistic inspiration. I try to avoid the trend of mindlessly licking his boots and repeating the same parrotted talking points or indulging in the same 7 or so pre-determined Clampett classics and nothing but, hoping to avoid stereotypes as an avid Clampett fanatic... but I can't fight that the same fanaticism exists within me too, and that Clampett is a deeply motivating and personal and inspiring figure to me. I don't like to sound parasocial or engaging in the greivous sin of idoltry, shock! But I feel how I feel. And what I feel is immense respect for the man who is generously responsible for my own career in animation (and on many levels; Patrick's parents on The Patrick Star Show are named after Clampett's own Beany and Cecil.)
If I recall, the decision to visit the cemetery was on a bit of a whim. I think I felt bad about how esoteric my desire was, asking my girlfriend to come with me to some random cemetery we've never been to before so I can stand over some rando's grave for a few minutes. But she graciously accepted, and that's what we did.
I had enough time to think on it to even write Clampett a note of appreciation and all that he meant to me. It wasn't new; I had drafted the note virtually about a year before this, as a "I have so much love and respect in me that it hurts and I need to get it out right now" kind of catharsis. So I transcribed my own note on some shoddy notebook paper, sourced from a notebook I swiped (well, was given) from the Nickelodeon studio as my girlfriend and I wait for our Uber. I was torn on whether or not I should draw a picture or write a note; I ultimately decided a note was more meaningful and that I could dedicate a drawing in my own time. It might be harder for the ghost of Clampett to garner the profound appreciation I have of him through a random Daffy Duck drawing with no caption. Then again, maybe not.
I split the difference by writing the note, but drawing a little Cecil on the top margin of the page, since I knew Cecil was a character that meant a lot to Clampett and also felt the most "representative".
We get into our Uber and head over to the cemetery. Our driver was very kind and good humored, enjoying hearing that we traveled so far to be here. He made a comment about his misfortune at bringing us to a cemetery--which I also realized through the throngs of people there that there was a funeral being held that day--to which I cheerfully replied "Oh no, it's okay! We're just here to look." ...which, I'm sure is an acceptable response, especially considering how many beloved stars are buried at the cemetery, but the discrepancy in tone was amusing.
This is where the easiness of the trip ends. We arrived late in the afternoon, and a little less than an hour before closing. Our Uber driver also followed the pack and drove us up to the church that the funeral was being held at, which is on a long stretch of road very far from the gate. The gate that has the maps for this ginormous cemetery. That we have less than an hour to explore. With no map.
We wandered around a bit fruitlessly. Shadows stretching on the eponymous Forest Lawn, the sky tinted with the early evening orange. I had my nose haplessly buried in my phone, frantically juggling the Forest Lawn Cemetery website and trying to find out where Clampett's grave is and where we were in relationship. Most of that hour before closing was spent walking aimlessly. Me getting increasingly frazzled, my girlfriend doing her best to reassure me that it was okay.
It was getting to the point where I was about to give up entirely. We were flying out the next day, and early, because we had a layover to catch, so I couldn't come back the next day. It'd have to be another year from now, at least. At this point I was aching, sweaty, frazzled and angry and frantic and grieving. I'd rather have been locked out of the cemetery entirely, because then I'd have a proper excuse as to why I'd come all this way and wasn't able to find what I was looking for.
As a last ditch effort, my girlfriend suggested we split up and do a quick search of the area we were in before calling it quits. So we did. I was halfhearted and my expectations were low. She traveled up, whereas I traveled east. Trudging along the sprawling road, I'm barely registering the plaques littering the ground, struggling to catch any whiffs of some B's and C's. All I'd been looking at for the past hour were hundreds of bronze plaques.
Just as I was about to yell out that I was ready to call it quits, I hear a chorus of quacking. A flock of ducks fly overhead, from the north and over a hill. I take a moment to stand and observe. It's something to look at other than headstones, and the sign of life--that is not from my girlfriend nor myself--is reassuring. Likewise with my personal attachment to ducks, who have quickly adhered themselves as one of my favorite animals and one with a lot of personal identity and meaning. Duck Twacy does that to you.
And just as I begin to entertain the idea of trudging forward again, I hear my girlfriend's voice in the distance: "I found him."
I look for where she was. I see her standing on the hill, right where the ducks had flown away from a moment before. The significance of the Clampett-duck association--that is, through Daffy, whose daffiness was perhaps most articulately embodied and sewn by Clampett himself, who essentially adopted Daffy from Tex Avery and made him his own personal vessel for indulgent screwballisms, his manic, passionate, driven, emotive Daffy who I have so come to revere and identify with, the significance of Duck Twacy or any other Clampett Daffy opus--was not at all lost on me.
I sprinted up the road winding up the hill to meet my girlfriend, standing at his plaque. It was facing towards the road spreading along the top of the hill, meaning I had to reorient myself and turn around to read the formerly upside down plaque. But I finally made it to the destination I swore I would go to three years before.
Frazzled with excitement and emotion and overwhelm, I sheepishly babbled to my girlfriend if she wouldn't mind waiting as I thought a few words to myself. It was as if I was meeting a celebrity in person. I suppose I was.
I had also made specifically sure to wear my own "Clampett Jacket". For those unfamiliar, Clampett had a jacket he wore in the '70s with a ton of Looney Tunes character patches on them. It is beautifully garish and gauche.
My last trip out to LA, in December 2022, my director at the time was giving me a tour of the studio. We raided the mailroom together, where we found a ton of Nickelodeon stationary. Not only that, but we found some promotional patches for Kamp Koral--which I was wrapping up work on--and he gave them to me. I held onto the patches for a few months, unsure of what to do with them, until about a month later I had the brilliant idea to make my own Clampett jacket. I had a denim jacket I never really wore, and these patches would fit right on.
So I hastily made my Clampett Jacket 2.0 a reality the day before flying out for this trip, and made a very poignant point to wear it when I met my fashion inspiration in person. I'd like to think that helped contribute to some of the profundity of my experience.
Profundity such as, as soon as I ended my mental dialogue and took a moment to keep my head bowed and eyes closed, a breeze blew through. It was quite a big one--short, but noticeable, the kind to make the willow trees around us carry on a dialogue. It was especially noticeable considering there hadn't been much of a breeze throughout the preceding hour.
It sounds like a movie. Maybe I've seen enough movies to assign such a meaning to it. But between the big breeze after I paid my respects and the symbolism of the ducks flying right where his grave was, it's a bit difficult for me not to interpret it profoundly. I'd like to think that it taking an hour to even find his grave was his way of pranking us. I might be speaking on someone I don't know, but I don't think it'd be out of character.
Amazingly, the story doesn't end here. This was "the big one", but I've had a few more scattered incidences since then. Perhaps more vague in their purpose and significance, but still enough for me to think about it:
On the flight home the next day, I had a sudden whim to throw on the short Polar Pals, directed by Clampett himself. It's a short I've always enjoyed well enough, but never went out of my way to actually watch it. I certainly never felt a craving to watch it.
But I did then, and watched the short on my phone to fill up 7 minutes of a 4.5 hour flight--one of two for the day. As I was watching it, I was inexplicably overwhelmed with warmth and emotion that I could not shake. It was almost like an out of body experience. The best way I can describe it, at the risk of sounding vain, is that I felt an overwhelming love and appreciation that someone was taking the time to watch this seemingly "insignificant" black and white Porky Pig cartoon from 1939 and not any of the heavy hitters. I could have chosen to watch The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, or Baby Bottleneck, or Kitty Kornered, or Tortoise Wins By a Hare, or Falling Hare, or any other well known Clampett cartoon to show my appreciation, and I instead am seeking out this "nothing" of a cartoon. It was to the point where I was fighting back tears, which never has happened to me with this short.
The experience was profound enough that I immortalized it in my notes the day after. This is what I wrote:
Yesterday, on the plane ride home, I switched on a copy of “Polar Pals” to drown out the din of screaming toddlers and ambient shuffling of old men. I had been watching a series of cartoons before this—both Clampett-directed and otherwise—yet, as soon as I got situated into the depths of the short, I was overwhelmed.
Not with fear or disdain. Those are two emotions I barely feel when viewing a Bob Clampett cartoon. Instead, it was an exceedingly powerful wallop of overwhelming love.
I do enjoy the cartoon quite a bit; I wouldn’t have selected it to play otherwise. Yet, for some reason, I had never felt that way about that particular cartoon in my life. Considering how I had visited the master himself a day before, I felt as though it was the influence of Bob himself.
It’s a feeling I recognize and reciprocate as a cartoonist myself. A sensation of pride and appreciation. Not necessarily in the quality of the cartoon itself, but genuine gratefulness that someone was taking the time to watch a “lesser known” entry of his expansive filmography. Everyone knows “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery”, “Baby Bottleneck”, “Tortoise Wins by a Hare”, “Porky in Wackyland”, and so on—all for very good reasons. Yet, that someone took the time to watch this innocuous little fixture, a mere footnote, was a sign of faithfulness and devotion.
I could be missing the mark entirely. Maybe it was just my exhausted, stressed, stewed, overwhelmed brain attempting languishing in the joy of animated, musical relief. Yet, after that visit, I do have a feeling it was his blessing. I write this now to remind me of the sensation.
And, more importantly, to never forget it.
As my emotional but wise self wrote then, my connection of the instances could very well have been bias from the day's events before. It's easy to look into those things. But it's still such a powerful sensation I can feel even right now 3 years later, and very different from my other passion-driven cartoon sensations I'm so privy to receive.
That same day, still buzzing and obsessing over my visit, I was looking at my photos of the grave. I was bothered at the lone pine needle strewn on the grave--I had considered wiping it off, but the superstition in me overwhelmed and figured it best to leave things the way they are. I was already tampering enough by leaving my note.
Still, I, for whatever reason, felt very guilty at leaving one (1) pine needle left on the grave and hoped that it wouldn't have been a disservice. I was fearful that tampering with the grave would be a greater disservice. (And years down the line, I shall be showing this entry to my psychiatrist during my inevitable OCD diagnosis).
Because of this, I half jokingly thought to myself "Hey, give me a sign so I know it’s okay to clean the headstone off next time."
And as soon as I thought that to myself, through more not-movie movie magic, the light in the bathroom went out and I got a cold chill. One of those chills that vibrates in your bones and makes you laugh, it catches you off guard. I also felt my chest smart like it had yesterday, a brief flicker of that same euphoria and overwhelming gratitude.
It was all for a moment--the light flickered back on, the chill passed, the euphoria gave way to coy shock and sentiments of "Well hey, thanks!". It's impossible to write this in a way that doesn't sound incredibly fake, so you'll just have to take my word for it. That's why I was so reticent to talk about it more publicly for so long. It's impossible to believe.
Even more instances like this have happened, though all of those incidents together are really the big one.
I did have a reprise of my Polar Pals incident and pine needle incident, both at the same time, about a year later. I had drawn a piece to celebrate the 78th anniversary of Baby Bottleneck, which is a cartoon with monumental personal significance and importance to me. And it's of course a natural reaction, but all throughout, I couldn't stop thinking about whether or not Clampett would like it. This may have been influenced by a very sweet comment his daughter, Ruth, left on a tribute piece I did for The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, saying that he would have loved to have seen the cartoon live on. How do you get a better blessing than that?
So perhaps that was on the mind with this one, too. I had done my big Piggy Bank tribute. Now's time for the Bottleneck tribute. I just could not get the thought of Clampett's approval out of my mind, which is silly--the man's been dead for 40 years anyway, so what does it matter? How's he gonna see it? Isn't the fact that I'm drawing it enough? But I kept thinking to myself that I really hoped that he'd like it. It was the source of some honest frustration and anguish on my behalf.
The piece took a long time to make, and over the span of a few days. That day, as I was finishing it up, I took a break to make a snack run at the local corner store. I was in the bathroom getting ready, and no matter what I did, my thoughts keep steering towards that juvenile quest for validation.
Hoping to forget about the ruminating for awhile, I plugged my headphones in and prepared to listen to some music as I walked to the score. I hit shuffle on my playlist, filled with hundreds of songs.
And what's the first song to come up out of those hundreds but "Buzz Buzz Buzz", otherwise known as the title music for Baby Bottleneck?
That too to me felt like a poignant sign. Poignant enough that I felt the same chill-laugh desire that I had a year ago, in the very same bathroom--maybe there's a completely unrelated ghost in my bathroom, but the feeling was strong enough and the synchronicity significant enough that it immediately made me think back to my asking for permission to give his grave a dusting the next time.
Likewise, working on the painting after that, my stressful and agonizing tenseness questing for validation was replaced with passion and overwhelm and gratitude. It was the same out of body-esque experience I felt when watching Polar Pals on the plane, to the point that tears were welling in my eyes. Gratitude that I was able to express my appreciation through my art. Gratitude that I had the appreciation to express for this short. It's, again, not typically a reaction I evoke when drawing. But all of my doubts and fears from before seemed absent thereafter.
It's also not the end-all-be-all, nor is it really indicative of anything (of course this would happen if I'm drawing fanart of the short that Clampett worked on), but Ruth Clampett ended up liking the piece, so that again felt like some form of tangible mark of approval.
Our last incident is more nonsensical, could mean nothing, but still profound enough for me to remember months later. The TL;DR is that I had a dream I met Bob Clampett. This in itself isn't very notable, only because this is the third dream I've had where that's happened--the two preceding these being one-on-one conversations. But this one, in addition to being utterly bizarre, was again so profound that it keeps me thinking. Even if that thinking is simply "what a strange thing to dream about".
Copy and pasting my recollection from whence it happened:
I had a dream that I was in LA, when I got recognized by friends and we went to eat some Thai food. Next thing I know, we’re all on this large, grassy meadow with clear blue skies and a breeze, and practically nothing except for this big old house with a giant wraparound porch. Bob Clampett was there on the porch giving a seminar. I don’t know what about, because, evidently, I was being chased by bees the entire time.
But I eventually got some one-on-one time with Clampett inside the house. I got to tell him about how I especially loved his black and white shorts and that I referenced them in my own professional work (and I remember bringing up Porky’s Naughty Nephew as an example, which is true--I did use that as a jumping off point for something once). He seemed really flattered and was happy I knew these cartoons, and we got to talking about his kids. I said I ”knew” his daughter Ruth since she had commented on my Instagram before and follows me/likes my art. That also made him happy.
There was one moment where he looked at a calendar, that was somehow from both 1960 and 2025(?). I distinctly remember him saying "8 days a week... that's an awful long time when you have nowhere to go". Even in my dream, I was like "uh... are you good?" and woke up shortly thereafter.
As I said: nonsense, but the profundities are there, or perhaps I'm just more attuned to them. I'm sad that I can't remember the details of my prior dreams with him as well, other than discussing our respective animation careers and him encouraging me. That was in the first dream I had, which may have been before I even started my career in animation. It's been too long. But considering the rest of this post's content, you can see why this has so stuck out with me.
And that's that. Woowoo session over. It could mean nothing. It could mean everything. There's no answer. I'm also not necessarily trying to profess that I have a supernatural connection with Bob Clampett, so I'm his #1 fan and I am the chosen one and I am so great and I am the greatest Clampett fan and you're not and I love cartoons so much more than you. Regardless, these experiences have had a lot of personal meaning for me, even if it turns out there is no meaning. There's meaning to me. Even if it turns out it's all been sewn by myself. But I still think back to these incidents often and they mean a lot to me--they really are out there, it has to be seen to be believed, but it all happened and every experience is still incredibly vivid and personal to me.
What do I do with this information? I'm not sure. But I just had to write it down all in one place to get it out and express my gratitude and amazement with said experiences, at the risk of sounding utterly crazy. I hope you get some enjoyment out of them too and are able to share the profundity with me, or at least are conservative with your name-calling of my insanity. (End more comedic snarky masking in lieu of vulnerability.)
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