Third in a series.
Last night, we had a meeting for the Toronto Cartoonist Workshop group — the talented bunch of creators who are writing and drawing the Sensational Holmes Incorporated second issue that I’m editing. (I’ll start to show off some of the fantastic images from the new stories soon!) and after the meeting, one of our crafty and skilled writers (Mighty Mike Marano) got to chatting with me, and I mentioned that I’d appeared as an actor in some old Canadian TV shows about twenty years ago, and I foolishly told him the name of one of them: Katts and Dog.
Dog and Katts. Note: I am neither of these actors
And so Mike promptly got to looking for it on Youtube, and found a clip or two online, because Youtube is a level of hell where all your past mistakes are in streaming form.
Before we go to the clip, talk show rules require I set it up…. I play an annoying rookie cop – an academy classmate of the main character, Katts. The role required sighing, snorting, barking and behaving like a dick whenever the camera was on. My dialog included the memorable line, “Woof Woof, punk, I’m a dick.”. It’s where the Emmy I keep in my “sun room” comes from.
Seconds before a sigh. Soon, I'll be barking. Note: I'm the one on the right.
After you watch this clip, I’ll explain why this is even remotely interesting…
Okay…so I’m looking for a link to where you can buy the DVD set, or the IMDB page for this show or something, as is nettiquette correctness dictates, and found out that the only DVD sets of this old show available or in French. And in French, the series has a different name:
Rin Tin Tin Junior!?!? Being in Katts and Dog, I could care less about, but I was in a Rin Tin Tin TV show! That’s cool, even accidentally! I remember meeting the dog, but we didn’t do anything on screen together. I think his name was RUDY. But ignore that I’m terrible in the part, and that I never worked on screen with the dog, or that his name wasn’t originally Rin Tin Tin….I worked with a Hollywood legend’s fifteenth generation, French-Canadian heir…. Rin Tin Tin JUNIOR!!
It seems the series was set in San Fransisco or Paris. Or both. Perhaps it involved a magic transporting genie-dog who flew between cities. I've never seen the show.
Apparently, in either the French of the English version of the series, I had a two second moment in the starting montage of one of the seasons. Which means, when it was on the air, I would have friends tell me they saw me on TV all the time, even though I wasn’t actually on the show, but I got whopping residual checks for like, fifty bucks every year or so for a while. The instant fame caused me to seek drugs and whores, but Dr. Drew cleaned me up.
By season three, the dog adopted an orphan, and a drunken Katts was arresting street car tracks. I had long ago left the series, by this disappointing season, unaware for years that I'd even been on it.
First I was made a subway station in Gotham City, then a minor character in Planet of the Apes, and now, again… in the deepest corners of the most obscure records of Hollywood history, I am an astoundingly unimportant footnote in the legend of Rin Tin Tin!
Oh the life I lead.
Ty the Guy OUT!
Here now, your BONUS Rin Tin Tin Comic Book Moment:
What kind of a heartless monster would trick a dog and a child?
Ty Templeton's ART LAND!! 
First guy seen in the classroom, Was that a very young Kelsey Grammer?
Considering that it was shot in Canada in the 90s, I’d have to assume it was.
Woof, growllll, woof woof!
Cheers!
Steven Willis
XOWComics.com
Was it hot under all that fur …wink!
Trivia fans: “The first of the [Rin Tin Tin] line (c. September 10, 1918 – August 10, 1932) was a shell-shocked pup found by American serviceman Lee Duncan in a bombed-out dog kennel in Lorraine, France, less than two months before the end of World War I. He was named for a puppet called Rin tin tin that French children gave to the American soldiers for good luck”.
I always heard that Rin Tin Tin was found in a trench in WW1, but I’ll accept the level of detail in your story as more likely. I’m pretty sure Rudy was a DIRECT descendant of the original, or else they’d NEVER have tried to assume the name, right?
Katts and Dog lasted five seasons. Twin Peaks was cancelled after two. Infer what thou wilt.
Oh! Oh! I know. I can infer that Twin Peaks was a self indulgent mess of nonsense that wore out its welcome five minutes after they revealed Palmer’s murderer, and they had literally NO idea what to do with the characters next. What do I win?
It was self-indulgent nonsense, yes, but it was GLORIOUS self-indulgent nonsense!
As for your prize, you win this owl. Be careful! It’s not what it seems.
I was chuckling and joking about Katts & Dog.
But…, to know that you were in Rin Tin Tin Jr?? WOW!! My seemingly boundless admiration and respect for you has reached new heights!!
Doesn’t branding make all the difference? I remember when I lost the family nest egg in a casino a few years back, my wife was VERY angry at me, until I told her I lost it at the blackjack table at the original Flamingo (before it was torn down, obviously), and suddenly it was all a great story. It’s all about the branding.
In the States, this was known as Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop, and it was on the old Pat Robertson-owned Family Channel…
So when do we see the clips from Sea Of Love?
You’ll have to go rent the movie and watch ’em yourself. I’ve never seen them and cannot tell whether they’re worth posting. I’ve still not watched the clip of Rin Tin Tin Jr. up there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself act on camera, it’s a strange and unpleasant experience that many actors find they’d rather not do.
Out of curiousity Ty, is there a reason why reading comics you’ve contributed to is more palatable than watching acting you’ve done?
I am going on the assumption that you DO in fact read the final comics you’ve read/drawn, but correct me if I’m wrong there.
I actually DO read the comics I’ve contributed to sometimes, usually to check for spelling errors or mistakes that will make me mad after I can’t fix them. Some comics I’ve worked on, I’ve never read…usually when I’m the artist, rather than the writer…but most comics I’ve worked on get put on a shelf and not looked at for quite a while. I do enjoy looking at comics I did years ago, as they’ll be old enough that I’ve forgotten what I did on them, and I can see them with somewhat fresh eyes. There’s nothing more fun than forgetting a joke I’ve written, so that I can enjoy it years later. But I’ve not “read” the Spider-Man that came out last month yet, as I haven’t been sent a copy yet. I saw the pages in digital form, though, and checked for spelling errors and the like…and I did read the OTHER chapters in that book that I didn’t draw, to support my buddies.