{"id":657,"date":"2007-04-03T09:51:16","date_gmt":"2007-04-03T13:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=657"},"modified":"2007-04-03T09:51:16","modified_gmt":"2007-04-03T13:51:16","slug":"happy-birthday-earl-from-mutts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=657","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Earl (from &#8220;Mutts&#8221;)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thebark.com\/\">Bark Magazine<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/muttscomics.com\/\">Mutts<\/a> cartoonist Patrick McDonnell&#8217;s real-life dog, &#8220;Earl,&#8221; (shown below) will be turning 18 this spring.\u00a0 In case you&#8217;re not a dog person, in &#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.onlineconversion.com\/dogyears.htm\">people years<\/a>,&#8221; that means that Earl, inspiration for the comic strip version who shares the name, is roughly 85.<\/p>\n<p>2008 will see the release of McDonnell&#8217;s newest book, <em>Shelter Stories<\/em>, which will include not just <em>Mutts<\/em> strips, but also real-life &#8220;shelter stories&#8221; drawn from reader submissions.\u00a0 The call for entries went up in early March and is still open.\u00a0 See <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/muttscomics.com\/news\/index.asp?newsCat=news\">the <em>Mutts<\/em> site<\/a> for details.<\/p>\n<p>In other <em>Mutts<\/em> news, McDonnell was recently interviewed on Animal Radio in conjunction with national &#8220;Spay Day&#8221; USA.\u00a0 He&#8217;s at the very end of the show, which you can download in MP3 format <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/animalradio.com\/022407.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Sunday <em>Mutts<\/em> strip is a ray of sunshine in the otherwise pretty dismal world of modern newspaper cartooning.\u00a0 The strip&#8217;s level of craft and artistry is far, far beyond pretty much anything else you&#8217;ll find being done today, but what makes the Sunday <em>Mutts<\/em> such a joy in my opinion is really the strip&#8217;s pacing&#8230; or lack thereof.\u00a0 Whereas most modern newspaper strips operate in the well-worn mode of &#8220;narrative setup\/gag,&#8221;\u00a0 the Sunday <em>Mutts<\/em> strips operate more as little objects of beauty in which to immerse oneself briefly each week&#8211;more in the mold of <em>Little Nemo<\/em>, or <em>Gasoline Alley<\/em> Sundays from the early twentieth century than the ubiquitous modern gag and\/or pratfall strip.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"earl.jpg\" id=\"image656\" src=\"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/uploads\/2007\/04\/earl.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Bark Magazine, Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnell&#8217;s real-life dog, &#8220;Earl,&#8221; (shown below) will be turning 18 this spring.\u00a0 In case you&#8217;re not a dog person, in &#8220;people years,&#8221; that means that Earl, inspiration for the comic strip version who shares the name, is roughly 85. 2008 will see the release of McDonnell&#8217;s newest book, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=657\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[45],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-aB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}