Life

Ms. Potts and Miss Lane

  • by Drew

It was hard saying goodbye to Maggie. She was a good cat with a hell of a lot of personality. At least when she got sick, the end came quick and she left us peacefully. And now it looks like she’ll be the subject of my next comic project, in line with Skateboard Heroes style, but a bit more off the wall.

But I’m not here to talk about my old friend. I’m here to talk about the new friends that will be joining our family soon. Actually, it’s the naming of these little critters that really is my subject. The kids all fell in love with these little sisters at the adoption agency, so there really was no choice in the matter. Of course, the adoption process is pretty wackadoo, but it involves getting the kitties spayed, which is an absolute requirement on all sides.

But naming the two balls of fluff is hard. And when the names have to be approved by three kids and two adults, all with strong creative opinions… it’s tough.

We tried brainstorming and word association. You start out okay with names like Tallalulah and Butch, but pretty soon you’ve got kids shouting out muffin fluffy cheddar custom swing sets richmond va honey cookie…

We discussed “Real” names (my personal preference). The problem, though, after naming three kids, you’ve exhausted a large proportion of the good “people” names that two adults can agree on… let alone three kids.

And then there is the consideration that the two cat names have to sound reasonable together. You can’t have Charles and Lickety Split or something. It sounds like a jockey and a race horse. Or like you really respect one of them and think the other is a damaged dink.

But we have managed to settle on two names that everyone likes and even the three year old can pronounce. (My new German Cinema directors concept was shot down on this basis… as well as the fact that we’d really need 4 cats to properly represent the movement.)

Maybe I’ll let you know what we picked somday…

Noise

Boss Levels

  • by Drew

I was recently watching a documentary on Indie Video Game development. they covered 3 different games and their creators. It was entertaining and pretty well made, I thought. But it got me thinking about the upcoming holidays and my kids. Yes, we have a console and they have handheld devices. But as we approach the time for salivation over gifts, none have brought up video games.

Instead they are asking for clay and legos and in one case, Dr. Who paraphernalia. I can totally live with that.

Last year, the then-9 year old’s big gift was a trumpet. Replacing the school rental. Super awesome, right? How cool is it that while still in single digits, my kid went for an instrument over… anything else?

And next year it will be the same with my middle guy. He’ll be in the music program and we’ll be shopping for… who knows what? Pearl flutes? Student violins? Trombones?

Ah, the holidays. Marvelous and musical!

Life

Snap! Water

  • by Drew

It’s a rhyming thing, mostly driven by that last post and something I wanted to add. I mention that people have been giving me more and more grief over the years as bottled water became such an important thing to so many people – specifically about the fact that I prefer – or at least, have no problem with tap water. Clearly there is a reason that people are so against tap water. I think it’s pretty clear that the bottled beverage industry is telling us that our tap water is crap water. And that’s just not right.

In fact, about 12 years ago when I was working in advertising, I had a client that is one of the largest manufacturers of toothpaste, mouthwash, and related oral care products in the world. At that time they were sitting on multiple studies that showed tooth decay and oral health issues were on a steep rise in the US after decades of decline. The culprit named by all those studies?

Bottled water.

Yup. Most municipal water systems add, among other things, flouride into the water. Not in bottled water,  my friends. So… make sure you brush. A lot. And visit the dentist. A lot.

Life

Tap Water

  • by Drew

My new exercise watch today was a documentary on the bottled water industry called Tapped. While I have been known to choose bottled water over certain other beverage options, I have frequently been mocked and maligned by friends, acquaintances and strangers for being a tap water drinker first.

Watch this documentary and see who the real imbecile is. I actually have known for many years that nearly half of all bottled water in this country comes from municipal water systems. In other words, Coke and Pepsi run tap water through a glorified Brita filter and call it pure.

They even do it when the surrounding communities are experiencing droughts. Gotta love that. Take a walk through those lovely richmond doors in greater Raleigh or suburban Atlanta and you’ll fall in love with the dusty, scorched earth, while nasty old city folk are sucking down your life giving H20 at their overpriced health clubs.

PURE?!? Purified is not pure. If I bleach my toilet, it may be purified of germs, but I wouldn’t refer to it as a pure source of anything. Then again, I have an excellent well, so it might just be that my toilet water trumps Dasani and Aquafina in the race.

Somehow we’ve taken the most important building block of life and ruined it. We’ve made pure something artificial. It’s purificial.

I should trademark that. It’ll be the brand for my toilet water. I’ll put a mountain on the label. It’ll be so sweet.

Life

New Skateboard Heroes

  • by Drew

Get ’em while they’re hot!

(The free comic pages, I mean. That would be… and hot from your own printer if you decide you want hard copy. Unless maybe you have some sort of steampunk-esque tube-driven computer monitor that gets pretty warm. So the onscreen pdf pages would be noticeably hot, as in hot off the press. Even though there’s no press. But we covered that already in this no somewhat unwieldy parenthetical aside. right?)

www.SkateboardHeroes.com

 

Life

Hero Up

  • by Drew

Have you read the newest Skateboard Heroes pages? You had better hurry up because even more new pages will be posted in the next couple days. In the post-Sandy northeast, what’s better than free comics, right?

And who knows what Dr. Inferno will be toting in these upcoming pages. We’ve already seen a crossbox. What could be next? Flamethrower? Machine gun? Feather razors? Butterfly knives? Pizza cutter? You never really know. Dr. Inferno is a total maniac after all.

Can you dig it?

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.