A Christmas song by Marshall, the Tiny Stuffed Cow

Bully and Shelly wish you a Happy New Year 2016!

Bully and Shelly wish you a Happy Taco Day!

photo by Shelly T. Otter

In which Bully spots mistakes about otters in comic books

If you've ever read any DC Silver Age comics, you may remember, especially in the books of science-based heroes like The Flash and The Atom, one-page "fun facts of science" features that purport to edutain you even before that word was invented. F'r instance:


"It's a Small World" from The Atom (1962 series) #17 (February-March 1965), script by Julius Schwartz, pencils by Morris Waldinger, inks by Tom Nicolosi
Aside from the embarrassing misspelling of the word "beetle," can you spot another error on this page? Well, I certainly did.


Yep! If I know a thing or two about a thing or two, I know about otters, and that ain't a sea otter. That there is a river otter. I'm pretty sure the artist use photo references of the wrong otter for this strip. Here's some river otters:




And here are proper sea otters.



Sea otters are much cuter and fuzzier (they have a thick layer of fur to keep them warm in the water). You often see them hanging out together or in groups:



And they are famous for sleeping while holding hands so they don't float away alone. Sea otters are smart.


And why do I know so much about otters? because one of my best pals is Shelly the Little (Sea) Otter Puppet! She does not hang around in the sea much, though, preferring more esoteric places like the donut shop at Harrods.


Like most otters, though, Shelly is very fond of fish, which makes shopping for her birthday pretty easy!



We like hanging out together a lot, which is why I could immediately tell that wasn't a sea otter in the comic book. You owe us a panel of a true sea otter when you reprint that comic, DC!



So: sea otters, won't you?!?

Eat a peach

Hi hi hi, all you good folks out there! If you're the sort of blog fan who sits out there frantically hitting command-R to refresh and re-refresh Google Reader Feedly, trying to see if the blogs you follow have been updated in the past sixty seconds, then you've no doubt noticed that I've been a little off-schedule with some of my posts recently (altho' I always strive to catch up with them at some point). In the interests of National Security Disclosure I'm now able to let you know what I've been up to when I haven't been instantly updating the blog exactly on schedule: I've been away at Peach Camp!

Yes, Peach Camp™, the exciting new summer camp for kids from 5 to 12, which is why my kid sister Marshall had to stay at home and eat cookies and watch TV all summer! Ha ha, Marshall! I got to go to Peach Camp and you had to...hey wait a minute! But I'm not complaining. Peach Camp, like comics, is a lot of fun! Please allow me to prove this to y'all and show my work through the medium of digital photography! (And I am specially grateful to Bully-Pal Heather for taking several of the photos. The really good ones.)


Off we go to Peach Camp! I am so excited I even forgot to ask if we could go to McDonald's so I could get a Eggamuffin for breakfast. That is really excited.



Here we are in the vast peach fields of Long Island! If you thought you had to go to Georgia for fresh delicious peaches, you are wrong! I only wish I had had a chance to tell that to my good friend Miss Gladys Knight* before she got on that train in the middle of the night.



Here are yummy peaches! You get to pick them yourselves at Peach Camp. This could prove to be a bit of a challenge for a Stuffed Bull of Very Small Stature.



Luckily, at Peach Camp you are encouraged to pick peaches, in the words of comic book zealot Magneto, by any means possible. I'm assuming this means by destroying all the humans and setting up a rule of mutants over the remaining pathetic non-powered persons, or, conversely, I could just climb the tree.



Ah ha! With a bit of stretching, you can jussssssst about grab a peach. Don't stretch so far you fall out of the tree, folks! Also, I have discovered, Velcro™ gloves would be useful at this point.



Just a little bit more...



My pal Shelly the Little Otter Puppet came along to Peach Camp with me and she very much enjoyed picking lots of peaches, too! It is nice when I can introduce her to new horizons and delicious new foods, especially ones that are not just fish.



Here I am, outstanding in my field.



Aieeeeeeee! I'm being chased through the peach fields by a wild dinosaur!



Naw, i'm jus' foolin' ya! That dinosaur is actually one of my new friends that I met at Peach Camp, Shep. He's cool. He's a herbivore. Or, especially today, a peachavore.



I did get chased through the fields by a plane looking for Cary Grant, however.



How exciting is Peach Camp? So exciting! I even got to drive a tractor!



However, my legs too short to box with God push the tractor's pedals.



Everybody picked and picked and picked and picked peaches from morning until dusk, and nobody even ever brought up the subject of child labor laws, so we all had a peachy-good time!



Oh! I also got to hang out and tell some other fun new friends some of my stories, jokes and riddles. They were good listeners. In fact, they were all ears.



Next month I think I shall attend Apple Camp™! In which, I dunno, I guess I get to learn how to use my Macintosh and OSX more effectively.



On the way home I got to sit with Shep, and we all sang songs about peaches. I really love them, and I wanna shake your tree. Apparently.



So, there you are. In summary, Peach Camp, won't you? Peach Camp.

*And her Pips.

Free Comic Book Day!

I sure you hope had an amazing Free Comic Book Day! Me 'n' Shelly the Little Otter Puppet certainly did, altho' I think at first we got the wrong idea and we were protesting to free the captive comic books.


We were at our fav'rite comic book shop in the universe, Bergen Street Comics in beautiful Brooklyn!


Our protest drew quite a little crowd! Thanks for coming out to support freeing the comics, folks!


Of course once we got inside and Tom and Tucker gave us some comics for free we got the point immediately. Oh, free comics!


Then, we had milkshakes!


And draft beer.



Later on, everyone agreed it had been the best Free Comic Book Day ever.

An Olympic mystery, solved

Congratulations to all our 2012 Olympic Medal Winners!