Dr. Karl – Australia's No.1 Geek? Permission: Creative Commons

Despite the distance, we are holding our own in Australia when it comes to fostering geek culture. So, here is an introduction to some high profile Australian Geeks you should get to know. Feel free, anyone who lives on this side of the equator, to make your own nominations in the comment box.

1. Dr Karl
Karl Kruszelnicki is a scientist best known for his work in science communication in the Australian media. He holds degrees in mathematics, biomedical engineering, medicine and surgery. He has also studied astrophysics, computer science and philosophy. He is best known for his work with Triple J, answering science conundrums from listeners and writing columns for Australia’s daily newspapers. And for events like the Sleek Geek Roadshow he ran with Adam Spencer. One of Kruszelnicki’s most famous undertakings was his part in a research project on belly button fluff, for which he received an Ig Nobel Prize.

2. Adam Spencer
Adam Spencer is Dr. Karl’s Sleek Geek buddy. He is a graduate of the University of Sydney, graduating with a first class honors degree in Pure Mathematics. While at university, he was one of the world’s top-ranked debaters, reaching the final round of the World Universities Debating Championship three times and winning Worlds Best Speaker (1996). He was noticed for his comedy and maths ability by youth radio station JJJ when he read out the weather as a guest on an outside broadcast using mathematical formulae and has been presenting in geeky fashion across Australian media ever since. He partners with Dr Karl on a range of Sleek Geek activities including a short lived TV series and was the host of science show Quantum for 3 years.

3 & 4. Rob Morrison and Deane Hutton
These two blokes were Australia’s first serious TV geeks. They hosted The Curiosity Show, an Australian educational children’s television show between 1972 to 1990. The Curiosity Show won the coveted Prix Jeunesse in 1982 voted by peers from around the world as the best factual program for children. But, when I was growing up Rob and Dean were my Mythbusters, performing experiments using liquid nitrogen, mouse traps and plenty of straws. So, the explosions were not as big, but they got me hooked.

Photo of Darwin by J. Cameron, 1869.

As you probably already know, Abraham Lincoln was born on this date in 1809. But that’s not all: also born on that day, in that same year, was the father of evolution himself, Charles Darwin.

In honor of that fact, February 12th is International Darwin Day: a day to celebrate the life and work of one of the most famous geek dads of all time. So take a moment today to reflect on the millions of years of natural selection that made you what you are today. To see if there are any Darwin Day events in your area check The International Darwin Day Foundation.

Last year and earlier this year, GeekDad spent some time making sure you were all aware of the best geeks to keep track of in 140 character form.

So, we are pleased to see that many Geek Tweeps and some good friends of GeekDad have made the final nominations for this years Shorty Awards. Over 250,000 nominations have been tweeted for The Shorty Awards to determine the six finalists in each of the 26 official categories. The winners will be announced on March 3, 2010 at the TheTimesCenter in The New York Times Building and we will be hoping a few of our geeky heroes will be among them!

Here is a run down of the Geek representation in the final nominations by category:

• Brand: Sesame Street @sesamestreet & Marvel Entertainment @Marvel
• Celebrity: Nathan Fillion @NathanFillion & Stephen Fry @stephenfry
• Customer Service: thinkgeek @thinkgeek
• Entertainment: MythBusters Official @MythBusters
• Government: NASA @NASA
• Humor: Mrs Stephen Fry @MrsStephenFry
• Literature: Neil Gaiman @neilhimself & Warren Ellis @warrenellis
• Science: Adam Savage @donttrythis

We wish these folks the best come awards night – and if you aren’t following these folks yet, get to it people.

If you’re a geeky guy looking to romance a geeky girl, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been with her forever or if she’s a new interest; realize that conventional romantic overtures won’t always work. Flowers can be construed as boring, since they’ll just die. Chocolates are tasty, but tend to add to our figures. Cards are nice, but unless you’ve written in a fair amount of your own content, they seem like a cop out. For geeky girls, think outside the box. Do something that will pique our interest, engage our minds. Here is a starter list of things to win (or keep) our hearts. Girls, add more ideas in the comments. Guys, list some things that have worked for you!

If you don’t already have your own geeky girl to love, then finding one to woo is the first step. The key is to spend time where geeky girls tend to hang out. Examples are bookstores, comic stores, craft stores, photography clubs or geeky gatherings like cons or Mensa gatherings. Not nearly as many will be hanging out at the local bar. If you look for a girl in a geeky place that you frequent as well, and then you’ll instantly have something in common.

Next, plan your strategy. Here are some ideas.

1. Plan a board game night. Consider the girl’s interests, and round up a few board games that are compatible. Then let her choose which ones to play. Make sure you find ones that work well with two players.

2. Be able to make situationally appropriate science jokes. It’s always especially fun when you and your girl are the only ones in the room who get the joke.

3. Plan a trip to somewhere new and stimulating. On a small budget, go to a museum or nature preserve. If the budget allows, think bigger or more unusual. Go somewhere that generates discussion (though not argument). You’re creating memories that you’ll always be able to share.

4. Design a treasure hunt. Forget the conventional or impersonal gifts. Designing a treasure hunt for your girl with a special note or gift at the end is one way of showing that you care enough to put in a lot of effort. You can make the hunt short or long, easy or hard. If you have known your geeky girl for long enough, use that history for some clue ideas. If the geeky girl is the type that likes to figure things out, she’ll love this idea.

5. Be able to have interesting conversations on any topic. This doesn’t mean that you have to be an expert in everything, but be willing to discuss unusual topics. Know nothing about fossils? Be willing to have her teach you what she knows, and ask relevant questions. If you try to learn something new each day, you’ll always have something new to talk about.

6. Learn to cook a variety of dishes. Some people are able to make one dish that is always a hit, but if you’re going to go on more than one date, or have a long term relationship, knowing how to cook a variety of dishes is important, even if your girl likes to cook also. Staples like spaghetti and meatballs or macaroni and cheese are great for later, but at this point, try for something a little more complicated. You get bonus points for pairing the meal with an appropriate wine or other fancy beverage (sparkling apple cider, sparkling white grape juice or gourmet root beer work very well for the non-drinkers).

7. Give unusual flowers. If your geeky girl loves flowers anyway, don’t go for the conventional roses. Choose something unusual or personal. Choose by color, by source or find something related to your history together.

8. Learn about what she enjoys. Consider her interests. You love shoot-em-up video games, she likes puzzle games. Give her games a try some of the time. She’ll give you points for the attempt. This also holds true for movies, books, restaurants and other activities. Chances are that she’ll reciprocate and try out some of your interests. You both may learn to like some new things.

9. Be able to honestly express how you feel. Showing how you feel is very important, but it is equally important to say the words. Geeky girls are often more introspective than average, and can often articulate how they feel or what they want. It is important to be able to reciprocate.

10. Leave a little mystery. While geeky girls love to learn all about your interesting personality, it always helps to leave a little bit of mystery to keep them wanting more. Just make sure it’s not suspicious mystery; that could backfire.

Throughout it all, remember this: Geeks like to think. They like to be with people who think, especially those that have plenty of thought provoking conversations. Appeal to her intellect by displaying yours, but respect and cultivate her intellect in the process. Your efforts will be rewarded.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Tip of the heart to my husband who helped with this post.

*Image: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

And, as if that weren’t enough cause for celebration, we at GeekDad are proud to announce that seven members of the GeekDad crew will host a panel at PAX East! The panel, titled “Bringing Up the Next Generation of Geeks,” will include Core Contributors Dave Banks, Natania Barron, John Booth, Doug Cornelius, Michael Harrison, and Corrina Lawson, and me, your friendly neighborhood Assistant Editor. We’re hoping to convince a few better-known geek dads and moms to join us there, but either way we’re hoping it’ll be a lot of fun.

Of course, we want the panel to be enjoyable, and hopefully informative, for audience members as well as us. So, if you’re planning to be there (and if you don’t have tickets yet, you should register soon, because they’re expecting a sellout), or if you just have some ideas of topics that would be fun to discuss in a panel about geek parenting, please leave a comment.

We’re looking forward to meeting a lot of our readers, both at the panel and elsewhere at PAX East. Hope to see you there!

DONATE TO HAITI RELIEF THROUGH THE GEEKDAD GIVING PAGE!

We all know what has happened, and how desperate the need for medical resources is right now in Haiti. There are plenty of good avenues for charitable donations out there, and by no means to we mean to replace any of them, but all of us at GeekDad want to do our part as well. To that end, we have set up a donation page at First Giving in support of the medical relief organization MerlinUSA.

Merlin specializes in health, saving lives in times of crisis and helping to rebuild shattered health services. Merlin works within existing health systems to realize everyone’s right to accessible, appropriate, affordable health care. We are committed to helping build lasting health services which are used and championed by everyone. We are specialists in rapid medical response and rebuilding health systems, effectively taking countries from emergency to recovery. We are undaunted by the challenges of providing health care to vulnerable people living in the most difficult, forgotten and remote corners of the world.

We are determined to make health a global priority; giving people caught up in conflict, disaster and health system collapse the chance to lead healthy lives. We care or people at risk, for the lives of the people we work to save, and for the safety of our staff. We are accountable to our patients, partners, supporters and donors. And we keep our promise: to stay on, beyond the crisis, for as long as we are needed.

They were on the ground in Haiti in hours to help:

Merlin’s eight strong Emergency Response Team left on the first available flight to Haiti. Their initial task is to assess the most urgent needs, which are likely to be water, sanitation, shelter, disease prevention and restoration of basic health services. Our team is likely to concentrate immediately on distributing essential shelter kits, as well as medical equipment such as hygiene kits and blankets, supporting local health staff and mobilizing communities to ensure disease outbreaks are prevented. We are mobilizing all necessary resources now.

Now is your chance to donate to the relief effort (or donate again). Through our First Giving page, we hope to raise $15,000 in support of the relief efforts on the ground in Haiti. And as an incentive (not that we need any more than the desire to help people in a time of great need), for every $15 you donate, you’ll earn one change to win a geeky giveaway item. We’re still compiling the prizes, but to start we have a batch of seriously cool stuff from John Kovalic, and some rather significant gift cards from our good friends at ThinkGeek. This means we just need a thousand GeekDad readers to donate $15 each (but you’re welcome to donate more if you can).

UPDATE: The amazing John Kovalic has pledged that for every donation of $100 or more, he will send the donor an autographed and specially-doodled copy of the first Dork Tower compendium. How cool is that?!?!

DONATE TO HAITI RELIEF THROUGH THE GEEKDAD GIVING PAGE!

Here, then, is a revised list. Known-fake accounts have been removed from the list, and, where possible the correct account has been listed. In addition, unintentional oversights have been corrected. The list below before the break is of accounts that are either new or fixed from the original list; the remainder of the original list is included after the break (though some folks have been reordered for the sake of readability.

The Twitter list @cerebus19/geekymedia has been updated accordingly. Thank you to everyone who commented with corrections/suggestions. Please keep making them!

Logo © Rod Roddenberry

Lots of people sell off stuff that used to belong to their parents after their parents pass away. Some of those people, surely, donate the money they raise to worthy charities. But it’s safe to say that you haven’t ever seen an estate auction quite like this before, mostly because most people’s parents didn’t create and act on Star Trek.

Rod Roddenberry, who was Gene and Majel Roddenberry’s only child (Gene had two daughters from an earlier marriage), has decided to auction off some of his parents’ things to raise money for Haiti relief. Only a few of the items are overtly Star Trek-related; most of them are fairly prosaic. But I think it’s safe to say, for most geeks, a set of golf clubs (for example) does gain a certain amount of interest if you can honestly say that they used to belong to Gene Roddenberry.

There’s a wide variety of items, from a script of Majel’s lines as the ship’s computer for an episode of The Next Generation to several collections of assorted books. The auction is being run via Facebook comments, so you will have to have a Facebook account to bid. 100% of the auction’s proceeds are promised to go to HaitianHero.com (a site run by Jimmy Jean-Louis, better known as “the Haitian” on Heroes, and who is actually Haitian).

The auction is scheduled to end at 11:59 PST on Friday, January 29. New items are being added to it every day, so check back between now and then in case something new strikes your fancy.

Team Umizoomi is a new kid’s show, geared toward the preschool set, premiering this week on Nickelodeon. Why are the GeekDads really excited about this? Well, for one thing, the show’s focus is on teaching preschoolers the basics of math. Yes, a math-based show, at last! I’ve watched the pilot of Team Umizoomi, and it’s just as engaging as Blue’s Clues and, absolutely a delight from a design perspective (not to mention utterly adorable).

How can I describe Team Umizoomi? First, it’s set in Umi City, a multi-textured world of shapes and colors populated with people, cars, buildings, and just about anything else you’d expect in a big city. Using 2D and 3D animation techniques, the designers have created a colorful, dazzling, math-based world kept safe by young super heroes Milli and Geo as well as their robot, Bot (voiced by Donovan Patton of Blue’s Clues fame), and of course, Umifriend: the viewer. It’s interactive, informative, and turns math into real-world application and adventure. It was a smash in our house, to say the least.

Says Brown Johnson, President, Animation, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group, “Math surrounds us everywhere we go, which is why we wanted to create a fun, adventure-filled, interactive series that engages preschoolers and encourages them to practice and refine their mathematical thinking skills. Team Umizoomi is an action-packed series with interactive math games and catchy pop songs that provide kids with takeaway tools to help them learn and use math in their daily lives.”

I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with Donovan Patton last week about the show. Donovan, for the uninitiated, became a household name when, in 2002, he replaced Steve Burns in Blue’s Clues, as Steve’s little brother Joe. We had a great conversation, and Donovan talked to me a bit about what working on the show is like, as well as shared some of his geeky tendencies (spoiler: he loves Tolkien!). An all-around sweet guy, our chat definitely was a blast, and I’ve excerpted it for you below. We certainly wish him, and the great team behind Team Umizoomi, all the best.

You can listen to the interview here: Donovan Patton Interview

Team Umizoomi premieres January 25th at 11:30am EST on Nickelodeon!

Handy Manny's School For Tools © Disney Channel

This Monday, January 25th, Playhouse Disney are rolling out a new series of shorts based around  the ever popular preschooler’s show, ‘Handy Manny’ called ‘Handy Manny’s School for Tools.’ The three-minute episodes feature 11 new tools, and to introduce us to the series, GeekDad was fortunate enough to get to talk to animation voiceover legend Tom Kenny about his role in the new shorts, his roles as Pat and Mr. Lopart in the main Handy Manny episodes, certain squeaky voiced sea sponge and his geeky tendencies.

GeekDad: So in these new shorts, you play Sneeze the Shop Vac.

Tom Kenny: Yes, I’m the always adenoidal and stuffed up Sneeze, the shop vac. He always has little bits of dust and other unmentionables that a shop vac might pick up off the floor of a construction site. The shorts are fun, it’s pretty much what the title implies – Handy Manny’s School for Tools. They’re two minute video lessons on how to be handy, which since I’m third generation un-handy, I really need. Mostly they’re lessons on how to be handy, how to be good with tools. Not only am I bad at that stuff, but my father and grandfather before me were also horrible at it, however hard they tried.

GD: I’m first generation unhandy. My father and his father were great at all that, but I’m considerably less so

TK: Oh, so you’re a trailblazer! My grandfather was pretty good, my father was… well, he tried. I call a guy to hang a picture. I should have Handy Manny on speed dial. You can’t fight your nature – I saw my dad drive himself to insanity trying to be as good as the guy across the street who could build a patio on his house in 48 hours. Singlehandedly. Do not try to keep up with these people. If you’re like Manny, and you have the shining for that kind of thing, go right ahead. Otherwise, I think Handy Manny’s in the phone book.

GD: And in the main show, you play my two favorites – Pat the Hammer and Mr. Lopart.

TK: Is that right? You said that to me earlier, and I thought you were just being facetious. Thank you. They’re fun characters and it’s a fun show. TO me the animated series that are the most fun to work on are the ones where everybody’s there at the same time and you record as an ensemble. I think a show that’s about camaraderie and combined efforts really benefits from the tools all being in the same recording studio at the same time.

GD: That’s something I find fascinating about ‘Handy Manny’ – the pedigree of voice talent is amazing.

TK: I guess in that little tide pool of acting – it’s kind of funny, the whole voice-acting world is its own subset, it’s own skill set. It’s what I always wanted to do ever since I was a little kid, so it’s kind of nice to finally be in that inner circle of ‘Navy SEALs’, that relatively small number of people that does the majority of voices on animated shows.

GD: Does it get at all competitive? Do you try and make each other laugh or put each other off in the studio?

The Cast of Handy Manny © Disney Channel

TK: I wouldn’t call it competitive – I think one of the perks of the job is that five days a week I get to work on various shows surrounded by interesting and funny people who don’t really have to try that hard to be amusing and entertaining because they just, y’know, are. Dee Bradley Baker and Kath Soucie and Carlos Alazraqui and Grey DeLisle and Fred Stoller and Nika Futterman, they’re all very amusing and entertaining people, and also great people in conversations where you’re not trying to be funny all the time as well.

GD: Who’s your favorite character?

TK: I enjoy Lopart. There are deeper waters to Mr. Lopart than have been plumbed on the show. He has his mother fixation, his big dreams that come to naught and he also has that thing of being a fairly unhandy person who has to contend with his friend Manny who has this incredible aptitude. Nothing would please Mr. Lopart more than to be able to do what Manny does. But he just falls short, so his solution is to swagger around, and be a know-it-all, and act like he doesn’t need any help and to not accept any help from anyone, until it’s at a crisis point. Lopart’s interesting. I look at him to be very multi-faceted. He’s more than one note, for sure. He’s very fun to do, and I would say of all the characters on the show he’s kind of allowed to adlib the most. His character lends himself to ad-libbing more than others. They’re all in a gaggle, cross talking to one another. There are usually not less than three or four tools in a scene so they have to divide up the dialogue, whereas Mr. Lopart is usually on his own making a mess of things. Luckily Rick Gitelson and the people on the show give me a pretty long leash to mess around with Lopart.

GD: What’s been your favorite episode to do?

TK: I like ['Handy Manny's Motorcycle Adventure']. Where Pat the Hammer is looking for his family. Looking for people like him, I should say. That was fun to do – we had a little bit of extra time and budget to do things like dancing tools, like a Broadway production number. Busby Berkeley meets Home Depot.

Tom Kenny in the Studio © Disney Channel

GD: There are a lot of similarities in some of the voices you do – Pat, Mr. Lopart, SpongeBob all have a similar base. What do you do to differentiate them?

TK: Well, Pat started out being a lot more like Lou Costello from Abbot and Costello – “Aw, gee, I gotta get in the toolbox Manny!” Over time he’s gotten a little deeper and a little richer and a little more rounded. SpongeBob is way up here in the helium, way up in the nose. Mr. Lopart is, well, he’s Lopart. He’s more in the back of the throat. Also with Mr. Lopart, with his false, unfounded sense of self-confidence, we’re also accessing Don Knotts from the old ‘Andy Griffith Show’, y’know, the Barney Fife character as the kind of swaggering, deputy sheriff who didn’t really know how to do anything. That attitude of Don Knotts from that old sitcom really comes into play with Mr. Lopart for sure, where he’s always just hiking up his shorts and trying to convince everyone that he’s completely in control, nothing to see here, move along. But really everything’s about to hit the fan.

(Author’s note: it kills me that my recorder doesn’t output high enough quality that I can reproduce Tom’s answer as an audio clip here. Tom switching between Pat’s, SpongeBob’s and Lopart’s voices is both amazing and hilarious and neither text nor my crackly recording can do it justice. Sorry to tease, but it had to be mentioned.)

GD: Is it a conscious decision to evolve a character’s voice, or does it just happen? Do you look back on old episodes and think “Man, that’s the voice I’ve been doing? I have to change that!”

TK: Well, other than ‘SpongeBob’, I think Handy Manny’s the longest show I’ve been on. I’ve never been a show that lasts where the voice is the same a few seasons in as it was at the beginning. Aspects of their personality come out. SpongeBob is markedly different from how it was at the beginning. But I see that as natural – Every character, be it Homer Simpson or Bugs Bunny develops incrementally and finds their sweet spot as the shows go on.

GD: Have you heard any of the foreign language versions of your characters? ‘SpongeBob’ in particular seems omnipresent.

TK: I haven’t heard every language, but that show I’ve heard in many languages. I haven’t heard ‘Handy Manny’ in any of the dubbed languages, but that is something that’s very interesting to me, because a lot of times they’re using your voice as a starting point. It’s kind of interesting to hear something that tonally sounds a bit like yourself speaking a language that tonally you have no way of knowing or speaking. I’ve done some of that for Japanese language shows and anime, where they dub them into English, and you’re listening to the tone of voice of the Japanese actor and trying to channel that into English language reads.

GD: How does recording a known character compare to an all-new one with an all-new voice?

TK: I suppose it depends on the actor’s aptitude. I know some guys who are great at what’s called voice matching – they do a dead-on Pooh or a dead-on Tigger and they’re often the guy who ends up inheriting the voice when the original guy passes on to the big animated show in the sky. That was never my forte – although there are some voices I do. For some of the old Hanna-Barbera characters; I’m the voice match for Boo-Boo from ‘Yogi and Boo-Boo’ and Top Cat  – and Elroy Jetson, I’m the voice for him. But I don’t consider that to be what I’m good at. If I have a skill it’s that I can look at a description or a picture of a character and process what I think the creator is hearing in his head. Often times talking to the creator is helpful. Rick Gitelson knew exactly what he wanted, as did Steven Hillenburg with SpongeBob. ‘Handy Manny’ is quite a character driven show, and it’s just about becoming the character and deciding what voice fits this picture, and how do you get the personality that’s described in the paragraph on the page for you across aurally. I like that part of the job, the kind of Rubik’s Cube, crossword puzzle of how to be the person that when they listen to you they go “yeah, that guy”, because obviously there are a lot of talented voice actors out there, and they’re all auditioning in the same way that you are. It’s fun, and a lot of it is challenging that personality. I just started doing Rabbit for the Winnie the Pooh movie, and that’s been a lot of fun. They told me to not even try to sound like the original guy – Rabbit’s personality was more important to them than a dead-on voice match. They listened to a lot of actors and [John] Lasseter picked mine. I guess if I’m good at anything, it’s that – figuring out how to marry those things in a way that the creators hear.

GD: Do you ever look at other characters and think ‘I want to play that!’?

TK: There are animated characters I really enjoy. I have a six year old and a twelve year old, so sometimes I’m watching the preschool stuff with the six year old, and with the twelve year old it’s more stuff of a Simpsons nature. And there’s so much great stuff out there. But I don’t think there’s any existing animated character that I look at and think, “Man, I wish I could be doing that.” I almost like my job a little too much. I’m really satisfied with what I do – Handy Manny’s a really satisfying way to spend your Thursdays.

GD: You got your start playing in rock bands, and then switched to comedy?

TK: It was kind of both – I started playing in garage bands and doing stand up comedy when I was a teenager. Y’know, playing in bands in nightclubs I was too young to get into and then doing stand up at open mike nights in Syracuse, New York, which is where I’m from. I sort of had a vague idea of what I wanted to do in a very general sense. I started young enough that I was able to blunder around and figure it out before I got too long in the tooth.  And all that comes in handy at some point – my songwriting partner and I do some songs for Handy Manny once in a while, when they allow us to, which is very nice of them. One gets to wear a different style of hat on one’s hammer head.

GD: Do you still do stand up and/or music shows?

TK: I haven’t done stand up in about 15 years – there are not enough hours in the day and the nocturnal aspect makes it kind of a drag when you have kids! You don’t want to go to the improv and hang around with comedians at two in the morning, because you want to hang around with your kids and get them ready for school in the morning and all that. It’s such a nocturnal and somewhat solitary lifestyle, and I don’t know that I was ever really cut out for it. I much more enjoy teamwork. Once in a while I do rock and roll. I was just part of a Ramones tribute out here in California this past Saturday evening as part of this big guitar trade show that happens right next to Disneyland in Anaheim. I got to be Joey Ramone for the night. And we did a ‘SpongeBob’ show at the Mall of America on New Year’s Eve – that was really enjoyable, despite about 35 degrees below zero wind chill. It was fun – we had a big 12-piece band. That was really great.

GD: Well, this blog is called GeekDad. We know you’re a Dad, but are you also a Geek?

TK: It’s funny, that show we appeared in on Saturday night was for the Guitar Geek Festival! I’m not a geek in the sense that I’m not a gadget head. There are different definitions of geek, right? Like one would be you’re into all the latest technology, and you’re online savvy and all that? That’s not me. But I am a geek in that I’m really into pop cultural ephemera. I collect records – 45s, 78s, rock and roll, blues, jazz, all that stuff. And comic books of course. 1920s and 1930s newspaper strip original art. I guess I’m geeky in a retro way than a techno way. I’m a retro geek. Give me time; I’m a late adapter. I don’t even have an iPhone or anything like that.

GD: I don’t think I’ll be allowed write here again if I don’t ask you what comics you read.

TK: I buy a lot more than I read, with time limitations and all that. But there’s so much great stuff. There’s one call Criminal that’s out right now, it’s kind of hard-boiled noir and it’s really well written. I still like all the classics, the stuff I grew up with – all that’s being reprinted now. It’s nice to have kids, because you can just buy all that stuff and force that down their throats – “Here, it’s Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko! You’ll like it, it’s the best! Worship Steve Ditko!” And all the ‘Popeye’ newspaper strips are being reprinted these days too – I’ve been dreaming about that since I was a kid: “Someday they’ll reprint the entire E.C. Segar ‘Popeye’ strips!” and they are! My kids are so down with that. I guess just by virtue of living in my house they’re as likely to watch a Laurel and Hardy movie as they are to see ‘Up’. But they see it all – they love it all. They don ‘t look down their noses at old stuff.

GD: When I mentioned on Facebook and Twitter that I’d be talking to you, I got sent a clip of the ‘SpongeBob’ cast redubbing old movies.

TK: (Laughs) Oh, that! I host the Annie Awards here in Los Angeles, this is actually the first year I won’t be doing it in like, five years, just because my schedule is too insane. That was just a little film piece we made to show at that, and it wound up online – much to the consternation of the copyright holders of those movies! If I’d been thinking I would have just used all Paramount movies, Paramount and SpongeBob both being owned by Viacom. That was one of those things where we just came in the studio and did it. It was kind of a one-time gag to show at this awards show – you talk about geeks, these were all animators and character designers and background designers, kind of the geekiest crowd in the world.This year is the first year that I’ve had to say no. It’s sponsored by ASIFA, the international animation society. But it’s so much work – if you’re the host you have to write the whole show yourself, you gotta write all your own jokes and produce all your own film pieces. It’s kind of a backbreaking undertaking. In order to save my family’s sanity I said yeah, I better take a year off from this.
But it’s hard for me to say no to anything, I like animation so much and anything to do with it and the people involved with it that the word no is usually not in my vocabulary.  I lay awake nights before I told them I couldn’t host this year.

GD: You sound like you’re kind of a workaholic.

TK: Only in the sense that I really like my work and I want to do as much as I can of it for as long as I can. It’s what I’d wanted to do since I was a child, and it’s so fun I guess it is kind of addictive. But the great thing about animation voiceover is that it happens pretty much during conventional business hours. So unlike a stand up comedian, or some of my other friends who are on-camera actors and find themselves say, on location in Budapest shooting a movie and are away from their families for six months, the voiceover thing is as close you can get to a ‘Honey, I’m Home’ conventional, nine-to-five job in show business. I know writers and producers in animation are keeping much more late night, redeye hours than I am, but the actual recordings happen nine to six. I get to drop the kids off at school and I’m home for dinner. It’s all the fun of being an actor, and none of the mess.

‘Handy Manny’s School for Tools’ premieres Monday January 25th on Disney Channel at 8.25am. UK viewers can cache them when they premiere on April 19th, on Playhouse Disney.