Tag Archives: Mehitabel

If A Cuppycake Falls in the Forest…

…and there is no one there to hear it, who gets to eat the cuppycake?

Well, this may be a first for the Panda Chronicles, a cartoon with no pandas! However, this panda-less tale comes to us from none other than panda chronicler par excellence`, Henry Nicholls, Author of The Way of the Panda. Henry was kind enough to alert me to the story of a bear in Alaska, who followed his nose to a cuppycake birthday party.

I am not making (some of) this up.

Cuppycakes are to bears as toast is to otters.

And although there are no pandas in this particular episode, Mr B. Bear has agreed to appear on the Mehitabel Tonite! Show next week, to talk about his traumatic ordeal. Won’t that be fun?

And while you are thinking about cuppycakes, I think you should hop (or galumph, depending on how many cuppycakes you have eaten today) on over to V Something Speaks and read the first recipe of The Panda Chronicles Cuppycake Cookbook! It celebrates Princess Pinky, who as everyone knows, is having her first birthday next month.

And, um…Mr Wu has his birthday next week. We haven’t forgotten you, Mr Wu. You will always be number one with me!

Woe is Wu…upstaged by a bunch of gurls!

You might want to watch the San Diego Zoo pandacam on Tuesday morning, for Mr Wu’s birthday party. Last year his girlfriends at the zoo made him an absolutely spectacular cake for his first birthday, and I’m sure they will attempt to out-do themselves this year.

I hope you are off to a panda-ful week!

Be the Bear (any kind of bear, really!)
Bob T. Panda

A Friday so Fabulous and Furry…

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…that we can hardly contain our excitement! We are in the run-up to one of the most exciting days of the year!

Yes, I am referring to Mr Wu’s SECOND BIRTHDAY!!!!!! Will he take a bath to celebrate the occasion? Don’t count on it. But it’s not a problem, since we are on the interweb, and Mr Wu is happily, if fragrantly, in Pandiego!

Here are a few of my favorite cartoons about Mr Wu. If you want more Wu, more of the time, I suggest you acquire a copy of the fourth Panda Chronicles collection: The Panda Chronicles Book 4: The Book of Wu!

Yo ho ho and a bottle of BooBeer!

“Wu calls his dance, ‘Ode to a Weaf’ “

Mr Wu speaks out! Huzzah for our now year old twins in Zoo Atlanta!

Fanmail from some Flounder?

Hope you are getting lots of cuppycakes ready to celebrate with Mr Wu on his actual birthday on Tuesday July 29th! And BTW this week is National Zookeepers week, so let’s put our paws together for all of Mr Wu’s girlfriends, and the nannykeepers that keep Pinky and the Meihems in line. A special mention should go out to the panda house folks at Zoo Atlanta, for their totally awesome animal care that they accomplished when Lun Lun surprised them (and apparently herself) with twins!

And a further bit of news from the Panda Publishing front, get a first look (not to mention first taste,) of what we have up our sleeves…er…paws with The Panda Chronicles Cuppycake Cookbook, coming to you…um…eventually from the paws of panda aficionado and chef du cuppycake, Vicky Vladic over at her blog, V Something Speaks. She shares the first recipe from the book, celebrating our very own birthday girl-to-be, Princess Pinky.

If you want to know when this book will be a reality, subscribe to this blog (and/or V Something Speaks too!) and you will know before anyone else! You could really help us out if you test recipes as she shares them, and let us know how they worked for you. You can also follow me on twitter @pandachronicle where I’m sure I will be telling all I know!

Huzzah!

Be the Bear and have a fabulous cuppycake filled weekend!
Bob T. Panda

They are watching you!

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Once again, news from the real world inspires me with tales of pandas doing stuff that they shouldn’t be doing. Thanks to Panda-spondant Charlene J. for alerting me to the story on unmanned drones being used to track wild pandas. We are still working on the story about the bear that fell through a skylight in Alaska, (NOT a panda, I might point out) in a brazen attempt to gobble up cuppycakes at a birthday party. Dude! Just ring the bell! I’m sure they would ask you in if you would just ask politely!

Every move you make, we’ll be watching you!

This is an excellent learning opportunity for the panda kindergarten! I mean learning about science and wild pandas. What did you think I meant?

Be the bear!
Bob T Panda

And be sure to tune in next time when Inspector Panda returns!

Fabulous Furry Friday returns!

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Friday already? Where does the week go? There has been lots going on and much of it has been stories from the real world, that make us wonder how the human race has survived for this long. (And you thought pandas were endangered!)

Not only have people been taking selfies in perilous situations, apparently some people have torched their homes in their attempts to kill spiders or get rid of snakes. One fire official commented, “Fire is not the method to use to kill spiders.” You can be sure that the investigative team here at The Institute for Contemporary Panda Satire will be looking into this.

For now, let’s revisit some of the …um..questionable situations the panda kindergarten has gotten into.

the year of the dragon, panda kindergarten

Huzzah! it’s the year of the Dragon!

What do you mean by “was?”

Always read the directions…

have a great weekend, and remember, be careful while taking selfies!

Be the Bear,
Bob T. Panda

Selfies at The Running of the Bulls

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Oh, this “selfies in perilous situations” craze is getting totally out of hand. First tiger selfies, then selfies at the Tour de France, and now, oh…i can barely bear to think about it.

Selfies at the running of the bulls. I am not making this up.

AAAAAAhhhHHHHHH!

Maybe it would be better to take a selfie at the running of the pandas.

What makes a panda run? Cuppycakes, of course!!!!

I smell frosting!

Meanwhile, I’ve made another guest post appearance, this time over at VSomethingSpeaks. Check it out for more insight into the Way of the Panda (Satire). (sorry, Henry!)

Hope you enjoyed the Meihem twins special birthday ‘toon yesterday! I suppose I will have to do something special for Princess Pinky now, huh?

Be the Bear,
Bob T Panda

It’s Fabulous Furry Fourth of July Friday

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I love watching movies where things blow up (OK, now you know my dirty little secret) but I really wish that fireworks displays were limited to professionals that (mostly) know what they are doing, and hardly ever burn down stuff (like my house) that isn’t supposed to burn down.

Did I mention it’s hardly rained in the last month? And Mehitabel doesn’t like them either. At least Guy Fawkes Night is in November when everything is nice and soggy. And now, The Panda Chronicles tribute to the Fourth of July!

Just saying.

uh. oh.

Huzzah for Rumpy Dog!

Thanks to Rumpy T. Drummond for making a guest appearance at The Panda Chronicles!

And lest I forget, the answers to the art history quiz! #1 is, of course, John Singer Sargent’s Madame ‘P’, #2 is Edgar Degas, That pesky number 3 is Mary Cassatt (and yes, in the Boston Museum’s version of A Cup of Tea, there are two women, but there was not another panda to model available to Ms. Cassatt .) #4 is Claude Monet’s Panda with a Parasol, and of course, everyone’s favorite in #5, James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Black, White, and Gray.

I will be contacting the winners forthwith.

Be the Bear,
Bob T. Panda

Reflections of My Kickstarter….

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Yes, it’s Fabulous Furry Friday, here at The Panda Chronicles, The offices of The Institute for Contemporary Panda Satire, here in our high rise office tower, are shutting down for the weekend, as we prepare for…

How about a nap? Wait, you say. Pandas do not hibernate. Yes, but what about a really, really, really long nap?

…if I were a panda, yadda dah dah da- da- da- AAARGH! I can’t stop!!!!!

I just finished packing and sending out all of my Kickstarter rewards, and now I am going to pause (or is that paws?) and pat myself on the back, and attempt to take most of the weekend off.

But besides all the work involved in putting together and executing a crowdfunding campaign, there is something very special about the process in addition to getting help funding your project.

That special something (Oh crikey! she’s going into schmoopy mode! get out your handkerchiefs!) is all of you, who donated to my campaign and cheered me on, and shared my project with your panda and art loving friends. As people have been posting pictures of Pandamorphosis and the prints of artwork from the book, not only do I think, hey! there’s my book, there’s my art, out in the world, I think, hey, I’ve made a connection…I have a friend. It may be a friend I will never meet IRL, but they are friends all the same.

All I really need are my friends…and maybe some cuppycakes!!!

Some of the connections that were made while bringing Pandamorphosis into the world will be fleeting ones, but some will result in projects still to come. Some, I hope will be lifetime friendships, and every once in a while we will meet in the company of pandas. Huzzah! Cuppycakes and bootinis all around!

Stay tuned to this station (National Panda Radio) to keep up with the latest panda nooz. Sign up for my newsletter (which I really plan to write another one one of these days) up in the upper right hand column of this very blog.

And of course, your panda satire library won’t be complete without a copy of Pandamorphosis (hint, hint) (Amazon, hint, hint)

Huzzah!

Thanks again to those kind folks who invited the pandas over for a visit. I hope we can come back again!

Kirby Larson’s Kirby’s Lane: Friday June 13, 2014
June 9th on Cordelia Calls it Quits, and
June 11th on Cordelia’s Mom, Still
Pandamorphosis was reviewed by Henry Nicholls, author of The Way of the Panda, on his Animal Magic blog at The Guardian.

BTW, Henry and I connected early on in The Panda Chronicles’ journey into panda satire. I think he even coined the phrase panda satire, if I remember correctly. I am grateful that he has been a supporter and cheerleader for The Panda Chronicles, and I am grateful for all my readers, and pandas…well now I’m just getting schmoopy again.

Have a great weekend, watch some panda videos, and have a (couple or three) cuppycakes! See ya next week.
Be the Bear
Bob T. Panda

The Panda Kindergarten Gets Some New Books.

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Well, if I am going to live in my imagination, why shouldn’t I imagine that Bill Watterson had read of the panda kindergarten’s dastardly kidnapping deed, and took the appropriate measures for revenge. Of course, I would expect no less than that the revenge would be perpetrated on the “grown-ups” (such as they are.)

He who laughs last, laughs…um…last.

Huzzah for the panda kindergarten. (What…surely you don’t think that I am a grown-up…get real.)

Keep being the bear!

Panda On
Bob T. Panda

Episode 3:The Case of the Picturesque Panda

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Yes, yes, I have been promising the next installment of The Inspector Panda mystery, The Case of the Picturesque Panda, and so here it is! Yes, yes.

This is, perhaps, the bones of a story I have been wanting to write, that has been canoodling around in my head for a while, that of a young panda that emigrates to France in the late 1800’s, and becomes a favorite model of the Impressionist painters. I’m hoping that her story will shape itself within the Inspector Panda story, so that I can write it, and illustrate it with paintings done in the style of various late 19th century painters.

Meanwhile, Inspector Panda has a mystery to solve…

…and so the story begins…

…of a young panda’s arrival in France, and all that followed…

And just to pique your curiosity, here is the painting that Babette is searching for:

Portait of the mysterious “Madame ‘P’ “

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter!

Meanwhile, pandas are playing around the interwebs, in celebration of Pandamorphosis!
Kirby’s Lane
Cordelia Calls it Quits
Cordelia’s Mom Still
and more to come (um…as soon as I write them!)

So keep being the Bear, and Panda ON!
Bob T. Panda

It All Falls Apart…

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…especially when you have three girls, and two of them are twin sisters. What? You thought they were all going to get along happily forever? You have obviously never been a pre-adolescent girl, if you thought that. Ah, the shifting loyalties, the tattling on each other…those were the days…

Oh dear, the Mei-hem twinkies have made Pinky mad. Uh oh.

Sigh…I suppose after the cookie incident, they were waiting to get even.

Meanwhile, pandas are appearing around the interweb in celebration of Pandamorphosis. They have recently made a appearance on Kirby Larson’s blog, Kirby’s Lane. Huzzah!

On Wednesday, Inspector Panda will return to continue his tale of mystery and intrigue. ( Well, we hope so, anyway.)

Be the bear!
Bob T. Panda