Understanding a Neanderthal

Developing the “Tronk & Bonka” cartoon was an interesting exercise. Watching a whiteboard explanation gave me my idea for Tronk’s communication method. If WWIII happens, Twitter won’t exist, except in Tronk’s mind. He’ll use his tablet to speak his mind WiFi signal or not. Being that he is a Neanderthal, he has a limited vocabulary, kind of like another orange haired caveman that I can think of. He uses a “pictionary” style method to express his anger and general civic disappointment. 

So each episode has a sequence. First, an opening where the bomb drops and civilization has been reduced to rubble. The meat of the story has Tronk sounding drawing his rage, followed by Bonka bonking him on his head with a stick for being such a goon. This is followed by his second thought which usually doesn’t fix the problem. He is a true caveman.

I went on a bike ride with the intent to figure out a Tronk language. A mixture of identification, understanding with a hint of emoji. One of my first thought for a gag was about his thoughts on global warming. Global was pretty easy, draw a globe. Warming a flame. I disagree, a picture of a bull taking a dump. Oh boy, this type of activity is why I got suspended from Catholic School. 

It took a nuclear bomb for Tronk to find out that words matter. Now words really don’t matter so cryptic cave drawings are right up Tronk’s alley. Some messages are deep some are basic. I will try to keep up with whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com 

The idea is to inform the public about “Cheeto’s” dealings from a Neanderthal point of view.

What do you do in a MancaveMancave?

If you put some thought into it, you can create a space to use for multiple purposes. It is an office, storage, a shop and a theater. For entertainment, physically, all the pieces are there… but how do you control two sets and two monitors? 

What do you play before the game? I have created a website that will interact with your MancaveMancave creation. My design incorporates  televisions and computer screens to create and view.  Using a combination  of cable TV and Google Chromecast you can watch a live game on one screen and Chromecast MancaveMancave “Excellent video” on the other. I am constantly adding to the collection. Content is based on popularity mainly covering sports, music and comedy. 

From a technical perspective, a converted garage can offer a number of different video combinations. How you control them is up to you. In my setup, the 55” on the beam is connected to a cable box and a Roku. The 40” UHD smart TV is connected via ethernet to the modem. Live TV is played through a Spectrum app. Watching the same game on both sets is tough, the smart TV lags about :20 seconds playing through the app. 

My HDMI choices are HDTV, Chromecast and Roku. Watching TV these days revolves around Trump and everything else. If you don’t want to hear politics and your team is not playing, MancavMancave.com is your destination for caveman style entertainment. 

On the home page are original Tronk & Bonka cartoons. In the “Excellent Videos” section is a collection of favorite movies collected from YouTube.

• boxing 

• basketball 

• Bugatti

• wingsuits 

• music 

• The Blue Man group 

• rap 

• Ray Bradbury

• home repair tricks 

• car hacks 

• dessert recipes 

• rap battles 

• football 

• baseball 

• comedy 

• animation 

• car racing and more. 

In the attached graphic you will see the layout for my two car garage turned cave. A manual door is used to allow for more inside storage shelf storage. Entry is through the sliding door, the garage door can be cracked for more circulation. 4 people can hang out comfortably, one at the desk, one on the couch, two in the chairs. 

The mini-fridge in the corner holds the cold stuff. Generally I play the same game on both sets. I am finding myself putting two games on, even three using my computer browser.  

Overall, after using this design for a few years, I still like it. No problems whatsoever. An electric door would be great, but I need the storage space. To keep smelly stuff out of the cave you need to build or buy a shed.  That is another discussion.

Ooog the caveman

Building my mancave was what inspired me to create the website MancaveMancave.com. I thought about developing a mascot and realized that my character Oooog the caveman was perfect. I originally drew him a long time ago. I was a character in a movie made for a bakery called, “Life without Bread”. I was Oooog the caveman, I ate sandwiches made of rocks because there were no rolls. 

Today we have a troglodyte in office, an orange-haired caveman that has no humility, empathy or insight anywhere past his own butt hole. Tronk has Trump-like hair and a very limited attention span. Any resemblance to the real character is completely coincidental. 

“Tronk” is what happens “after the nuke”. He is the landlord for his mountain of high-rise cave dwellings. Tronk has a female involved in his life. She is a combination of his ex-wife Ivana, daughter Ivanka and newest wife Melania. Together they make the mono-brow, club swinging bombshell named, Bonka. Electricity hasn’t been invented yet so Trunk sketches his tweets on a large screen slate then waits for Bonka’s approval. The way he is going, he will have many headaches before he gets a nod or a smile. 

I designed Tronk to be different from Ooog. They are cave neighbors but have nothing in common. 

Tronk wants to build a wall to keep out invaders from the south. Oooog wants more company. Tronk wants to drill for oil, Oooog hopes to invent solar panels. 

Does anyone care that the Chargers play in LA?

I have two TV’s in my mancave which will allow me to watch both the Rams and the Chargers at the same time. That’s assuming there isn’t a black out for some reason. It’s pretty weird having two teams after having no professional football for 20 years. I am a Ram fan going way back, I had a blue and white helmet as a kid. For the moment, that is the official Ram helmet now. We’ll see when the new stadium is built in 2 years. 

In the 80’s and 90’s we had the Rams and Raiders. Those were fun days. I’d have the guys over to watch football most every Sunday. Often I’d drive to Culver City to get a bunch of Tito’s Tacos, then Toluca Market for old-fashioned donuts. for dessert. Add an ice cold beer, soda or milk shake and you had your fill. Sounds kind of unbalanced food chain wise. We were kids, if I ate that now I’d blow a gasket. 

So now finally a deal has been made, the new stadium is under construction in my city of Inglewood. When it opens both the Rams and the Chargers will call it home. That will be a little weird, kind of like the Lakers and Clippers at Staples Center. Somehow when you go to a Clipper game, there is no purple and gold anywhere and vice versa. People generally don’t wear Clipper jerseys to Laker games either. The Giants and Jets do it, it should work here.The new stadium will have a giant scoreboard that encircles the whole field. My guess a lot of the branding will be digital. The rest will be field paint but he best branding will be winning. Los Angeles is loaded when it comes to sports teams. I’m wondering how the Chargers will attract new fans with so much allegiance competition in the city. There are the Rams, Chargers, Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Sparks, Galaxy plus USC and UCLA. That’s a lot of jerseys to keep in the closet. 

At the moment the Dodgers are playing some amazing baseball, I’m not quite ready to take on football as an interest. Heck, with all this Lonzo Ball talk, basketball is even in the news. Going back to football, I am hoping that the Rams will pick it up a little. Last year they sucked. Goff got nothing done and Gurley went nowhere…plus Fischer got canned. This added up to 4 wins, whooppee. 5 wins would be an improvement. I still can’t get over Goff not knowing that the sun sets in the west. Kind of Jethro Bodine-like.They actually have some good receivers, I worry about the defensive backfield as well as the lack of Aaron Donald. 

The Chargers will be interesting. For now they are playing in Carson on a soccer field. All I know about the Chargers is that Phillip Rivers is a great losing quarterback. The poor guy will throw for 500 yards and lose by 3 in the last second. He reminds me of Archie Manning, great player on a bad team.

  

Am I more interested in watching the Chargers because they moved 100 miles north? Doesn’t change much for me. Tickets to games cost a lot of money. A good mancave with two big screens sets you up as good as a sports bar with a more accessible restroom. I’ll watch multiple games one way or the other, if the Chargers are playing I’ll watch…as long as the Rams aren’t on.

Raccoons can show up to eat your salmon cat food

Part of my MancaveMancave scheme was to make a place for my two cats to live. We have a one story 3 bedroom house with a separate garage. The cats don’t come in the house but can access the mancave through a cat door. 

We live in the city but there are still critters. I made a mistake back a few years ago, I didn’t realize how much raccoons like salmon flavored cat food. You could see the smell like a fish fog wafting out the cat door. In the middle of the night I heard an intruder, a raccoon the size of a small dog made it’s way into the living room. In seconds I found myself half-naked swinging a mop trying to coax that hairball out the back door. After that invasion you would think I would remember to skip buying salmon cat food. That was 3 years ago.

The other day I entered the mancave in the morning. I forgot, I bought salmon cat food again. I had a gravity feeder filled with yummy, smelly raccoon chow. They had entered through the cat door and had a party after washing their hands in the water dish. I came up with a plan, keep the food in a cooler at night so they won’t come back. Wrong. They came back but were frustrated by the cooler. They left bite marks in the plastic but couldn’t get in.

Logic has taken over. I found a 15-pound plastic container on Amazon that I keep in the pantry to hold the extra food. At night I bring the  gravity feeder in the house. Now, no problem. 

The lesson here is for people that have a mancave with a cat door. Don’t buy salmon cat food, open the bag and leave it within smell distance of a raccoon. 

Using your ManCaveMancave for double sports watching

Growing up in Los Angeles I am a Dodger/Laker/Ram fan. My cave does not reflect my teams, I don’t have flags and banners hanging in the rafters. I prefer watching them play. Last night was an interesting opportunity. The Dodgers and Rams were on at the same time. My television setup has a 50” on a beam facing North and a desk mounted 40” UHD facing South with comfy chairs. There is enough room to stand in the middle and see both games turning left and right.

I put the Dodger game on the beam and the Rams on the 40”. The decision of sound comes up, you only can listen to one at a time or your head blows up. If you put the same game on both TV’s, for me the timing is off by about 20 seconds. I was listening to the wrong feed and knew everything before it happened. 

Everybody who is a sports fan wants their team to win. Watching the 2017 Dodgers as a Dodger fan is ridiculously joyous. They are winning at an amazing pace coming back to win games like the Warriors. Winning  is usual, losing is rare. This is the best Dodger team I can ever remember. Watching them play a game is exactly the opposite of watching the news. The game is focused on blue not orange. 

The Ram game was a different story. It’s the first practice game, not a lot on the line. The blue and white helmets looked great. I had one as a kid. They are banking on Goff to be great. I hope so. Hopefully he has learned where the sun sets. Last year I went to the Coliseum by train and saw the Rams/Cowboys. Sean Mannion and Nelson Spruce tore them up for a win. Today, all the talk is about Kupp with Spruce rarely mentioned. He caught a few balls yesterday, I hope he makes the squad. 

I haven’t ordered my $500 Baller Brand shoes yet. I hope I have the opportunity to watch all 3 teams simultaneously. I can stream the NFL game, watch the Dodgers on cable and catch the Lakers on ESPN,

all while working and reading the news. 

A Neon Light is a necessary item for an official Mancave

Every dessert needs a cherry on top. When I designed my MancaveMancave the planned final addition when I finished, was to hang a neon sign. I was originally thinking cheap beer. Keystone, Pabst Blur Ribbon, Coors, Rolling Rock, Bud Light, Strohs, Old Milwaukee, Miller, Game Day. Nothing against cheap beer, but I rarely drink. Being an artist, I decided to explore making my own design. My logo, BigRedShoes has two clown shoes that I believed would make a nice light.  I did some research and found JantecNeon. Wow, nice surprise. You can design your own or buy a neon light they already have on their site.

First I simplified my logo realizing it would end up a tube. I sent them a file, they got back to me suggesting that the text should be a cut out rather than neon. I was blown away with the quality. They send it to you perfectly packed with a guarantee that it’s not broken. They want you to save the packaging in case it needs to come back. I had a spot saved above the couch. I mounted a couple of hooks and put it on a timer. 

Everyday I get a reminder when the light turns on at 6:30. It goes out at 10:30 reminding me that you can’t work all night. 

How much TV can you fit in a Mancave?

When you are planning a Mancave, video is a big question. How big a TV can you fit in your space?

First you have to deal with code. Old garages had wood beams in an “X” brace pattern. When you re-build, current code requires an “H” pattern which creates a perfect mount for a big screen TV.  

Doing the math, a garage is generally 200’X200’. We have two eyeballs. Therefore we should buy 400 square feet of television, 200’ for each eye. My original thought was to get a TV so big it would be the garage door. After recovering from my delirium I started making plans that were actually possible. 

I am an artist. For many years I have had a television within view while working. It’s like having people around but they don’t bother you. In my Mancave design my desk is in the back facing out giving me command of the room. Fung Shui requires a few adjustments. 

• Clear Clutter

• Desk Position (to see as much of the room as possible)

• Hang Positive Images

• Balance (incorporate wood, earth, metal, fire and water)

• Choose Colors (soft yellow, pale gold, blue green earth tones,  white for clarity

• Use Stress Relievers (running water, mist or oils, no harsh lighting

That’s enough new age B.S., lets get back to televisions. I paid a visit to Best Buy. Walking around I saw some giant screens on the wall. There was a 65” demo TV that they would sell me for $600. I decided to give it a try. It wouldn’t fit in my car, I had to come back with the van. Being this was not the latest model it was fairly heavy compared to the newer TV’s. After some wrestling I mounted the big moose on the beam. Tough, heavy. The idea was to be able to look over the computer monitors on my desk and see the TV at a glance from about 8’ away. 

We turned on the set where I immediately discovered that you CAN have too much TV. Holy Moly!  I flipped the channels ending up on CNN. I could count Wolf Blitzer’s nose hairs...gross. My girlfriend walked in and started laughing. Back to Best Buy. 

I came home with a 50” and I am still happy. Of course, I want a better TV already, but what do you do with the old one? That’s for another article.

The picture with this blog post is taken from about 2’ behind the desk. That’s a 27” on the left, 23” on the right and a 50” on the beam.  I found this a tolerable setup visually, and it works well for creating. I mainly work on the 27”, use the 23” for extra space. I glance up at the 50” for entertainment.

Everyone has different taste, for me this works. If I was going to change anything I’d move up to a 55” UHD.