Bonus Minions #316 - Drywall Day!

Be Sure to Read Our Post for the Romantic, True Story of "Drywall Day!"

Click Cartoon for More On-the-job Romancing!

Hey, gang!  Welcome to a special, top-secret, mid-week "Minions at Work" update!  Why the bonus cartoon, and what the hell is "drywall day?"  Well, it's a very special anniversary, both for us here at the Lair, and for long-time friends of the Minions (and us), Rob and Ximena, and here's the untold story...

Way back when Mrs. Minion Master and I fled Eugene, Oregon, just ahead of the authorities to our present undisclosed-location, we cleverly disguised our new lair by buying a 1940s cottage with the intent of upgrading it to serve the forces of evil.  At some point about ten years ago we decided that we would convert the semi-attached garage into a new office for myself and my large collection of action-figures.  At this point, the Minions were but a glimmer in my eye.  We had no idea that the office would soon double as the photo-studio in which the Minions and their tiny world would take up residence.

We elected to take on the conversion ourselves, and to speed up the work, we called on a group of extra-friendly friends and had a "drywall party," kind of like a modern-day barn-raising, where we'd have plenty of hands to put up the sheet-rock on the walls.  And like I said, a good number of excellent friends showed up from near and far, including Rob and Ximena, who decided to car-pool over.  Just to show you the kind of friends they are, it was Rob's birthday and they came anyway.  (We did get him a cake, turning it into possibly history's only "drywall birthday party!)

Anyway, Rod and Ximena started out that weekend as a carpool, and ended it a couple, and they've been together ever since!  In fact, they're married, and a while back, moved from Oregon to sunny Arizona.  And apparently, they'd kept alive the memory of "Drywall Day" as a kind of anniversary for them.  As and I said, it has been ten years.  So when Ximena approached me about doing a special "Minions at Work" cartoon in honor of their anniversary, there was absolutely no way I could say no!

It was a bit of work though.  For example, I decided that I needed some Minion-scale surrogates (not look-alikes, that would have taken a lot more time and resources than we had) for Rob and Ximena, which was tough, considering we only had one female Minion, Number 67, and she didn't even remotely look the part.  But it was well-past time to diversify the crew, so I grabbed one of the Frankensteined Liv dolls I've been using to make female civilians and slapped a Minions uniform on her.  It was a rush job, and the fit of the uniform isn't great, but I think she turned out pretty good.  I'll try and tweak her look for future appearances, but she'll definitely be back.  There were other complications as well, like cutting sheets of 1/6th scale drywall!

And life threw us some curve-balls too, in the form of a major, seemingly life-threatening health scare for a family member, and Mrs. Minion Master was in the midst of finishing up her next mystery novel, which was already past deadline!

As always, there are things I wish we could have gotten better, but we got-er-done!

Anyway, happy tenth Drywall Day, guys (happy birthday too, Rob), and we'll be celebrating the birthday of the Lair here as well!

And we'll see everybody back here Monday for our regularly-scheduled Minion Madness!

               - Matrimonial Minion Master, Steve

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Minions #289 - Redecorated

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Greetings, Tasteful Wall Hangings!


Well, for better or worse, we're back to producing all-new Minions material this week!  Now, be patient with us while we get up to speed.  This is one of those, "is this dreadfully funny or just dreadful" weeks.

Sometimes the process here is, I've got an idea (and some props and materials) for a set, and no cartoon ideas to go with it.  Sometimes I just build the set anyway and wing it.  This was one of those times, and given that I just completed the set last night (and wished I'd had time to dig up a few more things for it) I really just had to go with my punchline and hope that it made somebody chuckle.

Of course, now that I've posted this, I've come up with (and shot) what I think it a better cartoon using the same set, and I've got an idea for at least one more to shoot before I tear the throne-room down and do something else.  It will likely be a struggle for a while, as I set-up and tear-down one set after another, but hopefully we'll get back to the point of having enough recent inventory that I can take a week or two off here and there.

Oh, by the way, I'm a best-seller on Amazon Kindle!  Last week, Amazon's 'bots noticed that my holiday short-short gothic-horror story, "One Foot in the Grave," was free on other bookstores, and marked it down to free as well.  What this means is, suddenly you start moving hundreds of copies a day.  Actually, I've "sold" nearly 2000 (maybe more by the time you read this).  I've been as high as #7 on the Kindle fantasy best-seller list, and well into the top #100 in genre fiction.  All of which is -- not making me a penny. It's a loss-leader, and you hope folks will like the story and go buy more of your stuff down the road.

Oh well.  Maybe I'll be rich next week!  Meanwhile, you can support the under-funded activities at "Minions at Work" by giving us a little tip through the donate button at the bottom of this post.  Thanks!

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Minions #287 - Don't Tell, Don't Ask

Click for Bigger Rates!

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Greetings, Office Headaches!

Tuesday is Monday this week, because of the holiday weekend here in the U.S., so no complaining that we're late.  MINIONS GET LABOR DAY OFF!  IT'S THE LAW!  (Yeah, like that ever stopped an Evil Overlord.)

After a long break of mining our multi-gigabyte photo archive for material, I'm finally about to getting back to some new shooting here.  I'd hope to be into it already, but I go distracted when I found that some of the lights in our shooting studio weren't working, and I'd totally lost track of how our nest of extension cords was hooked up (not quite as bad as it sounds, since all our lighting these days is with low-wattage CF and LED bulbs, and the loads are quite small).  So I tore the whole thing apart, installed the first of several permanent power strips on our shooting bench, and rewired the whole thing.

Hope to have totally new material for you next week!

- Minion Master Steve

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Minions #286 - Lost Patrol

Click Cartoon for Bigger Capacity (not really)

Stand by, following the usual strap-hanging for an abrupt stop by your Minion Master!

  Your interminable wait is important to us. To serve you better, a supervisor may feed the representative assigned to serve you to the razor monkeys just before they can answer your call. It's just one more way of saying, "we care, just not about you."

Join our "Minions at Work" group on Facebook. And yes, I'm finally on Twitter. Follow me. I'm JSteveYork there (clicking on the previous link will take you straight to my profile page.) Eventually I'm getting No. 1 his own account for Minions-related-business, but one thing at a time. Still: We're everywhere! We're everywhere!

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Belated greetings, Minions fans!


Sorry we've been missing-in-action the last week and a half.  We had a family tragedy which I will not bring you all down by going into, but trust to say that it was bad.


Mrs. Minion Master and I are fine (physically, anyway) though, and despite our neighbor's efforts to drop a 70 foot spruce on us (I blame the Forces of Good) the lair is intact as well.  So we will be working on restoring our battered psyches, and working on Minion at Work is exactly the kind of fun distraction I need in these troubled times.  So hopefully, as summer  winds down, I'll be going back into serious photo-shoots again, and adding some nifty upgrades to the Minion apparatus.  And hopefully there will be no more unplanned disruptions of our schedule.


So, sadness for us, fun for you!  It's just the way that evil works...


- Minion Master Steve

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Minions #192 - Kennel Ration

Stand by, following the usual dog run for a yank on the collar from your Minion Master!

Your interminable wait is important to us. To serve you better, a supervisor may feed the representative assigned to serve you to the crab parasites just before they can answer your call. It's just one more way of saying, "we care, just not about you."

SUPPORT THE FORCES OF EVIL, WITHOUT WHOM YOU'D HAVE TO LIVE IN SOME BORING UTOPIA OR SOMETHING! HELP FINANCE "MINIONS AT WORK" BY BUYING STUFF YOU WERE GOING TO BUY ANYWAY! IT'S LIKE STEALING, ONLY LEGAL!
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Minions at work is inadequately supported during this financial crisis by your purchases from our web stores and our advertisers. Feed the economy and help us bleed green just a little more slowly by purchasing tee-shirts, buttons, calendars, hats, undies (we kid not!), and other fine Minions at Work items at one of the following stores.

While waiting for your impending doom, pick up a Minions at Work tee-shirt or other great souvenir of your visit to the Lair:
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"Satisfaction guaranteed or we'll make make you buy something else!"

and

NUMBER TWO'S HOUSE OF NAUGHTY
(For very small values of naughty.)

Or just click on our "Donate" button and send us cash add to our "Buy the Minions a Camera Fund!" 100% of your contribution goes to allow starving orphans to buy blankets for kittens.

Nah, not really, it all goes to ME, in order to further the cause of EVIL, and the photography thereof.

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And yes, I'm finally on Twitter. Follow me. I'm JSteveYork there (clicking on the previous link will take you straight to my profile page.) Eventually I'm getting No. 1 his own account for Minions-related-business, but one thing at a time.

Still: We're everywhere! We're everywhere!

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Greetings, Mongrels and Litter Runts!

We're finally getting back on track around here after a month of schedule disruptions, distractions, and sickness.  I'm back to building some new sets and trying out some new props and characters, back down in the bowels of the lair where we belong!  (All that fresh air we've been getting lately has just given me a kennel cough!)  Hopefully we'll be back here, on time, and with fresh material for a while!

By the way, our Latino minion has shown up a number of times, but I'm now giving him an official designation.  Henceforth he shall be known as "Numero Cinco," (Number Five) in honor of the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo.  (Which in the U.S. is a celebration of Mexican pride, and in parts of Mexico, a celebration of the day the Mexicans kicked the French in the ass, which is pretty fun in itself.  And don't tell me they didn't have it coming!)

That's not to say that Cinco is necessarily Mexican.  It's typical gringo stupidity to assume that all Hispanics are Mexicans.  Cinco might be Cuban, or Columbian, or Salvadorian, or who-knows-what.  He might even be a red-white-and-blue Texas-born Tejano.  I'd like to keep that kind of vague, so he can stand in for all of them.

I know people have strong feelings about this, but most of the Latinos I know, citizens and visitors alike, are good, hard-working, family-folk.  Many of them take important-yet-dirty-jobs that the rest of us wouldn't touch, keep our nation running, and as thanks, often get nothing but grief and abuse.

In other words, they can proudly count themselves among the ranks of the Minions!  

Yeah, just like the rest of us.  Remember, we're all equals down here under the thumbs of our Overlord oppressors, so don't take it out on them.  Ain't no border wall high enough to keep The Man from shipping jobs out of the country.  Just saying.

See you guys next week

- Steve

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