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Recently in Salon People

People Feature
The evil that dogs doo
The more dogs I meet, the more dogs I hate.
By Steve Burgess
[11/13/99]

My Lunch With
Nick Tosches, the man in the leopard-skin loafers
The author of "Dino," "Hellfire" and the forthcoming "The Devil and Sonny Liston" talks about the Mysterious Pig Iron Man, Hollywood and snake wrangling in Florida.
By Rex Doane
[11/12/99]

People Feature
I want to be a millionaire!
In which our hero aces the telephone test, hears an actual voice recording of Regis, qualifies as a contestant and prepares to make his fortune.
By Steven Scott Smith
[11/12/99]

Nothing Personal
Blood on the dance floor?
Michael Jackson IS Poe; MTV rocks vote, kids vote rock; and artist Mark Kostabi mortified over -- oops! -- premature communication. Plus: This is Newt on a budget.
By Amy Reiter
[11/11/99]

Column
I'd rather eat tacos with Daniel Johnston than swordfish with Damien Hirst
Spiritual squalor at an opening of chunky shock-pop for the rich, and a performance of melting honesty and sweetness by the musical equivalent of Joseph Cornell.
By Cintra Wilson
[11/11/99]

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In fact, he doesn't much care what the masses think, so long as they continue to visit his Web site and buy his T-shirts. Tom Winkler isn't in this business for accolades, he's in it for laughs. His own.

Through his Web site, doodie.com, Winkler gets to embrace what he finds funniest, and what he finds funniest happens to be toilet humor. Through a series of Web-based animations, he has explored the subject from every conceivable angle and delights in disgusting the public on a daily basis. This is why he ditched his dream job as an illustrator on "The Simpsons": to clear his schedule for a full-time focus on feces.

Also Today The evil that dogs doo The more dogs I meet, the more dogs I hate. By Steve Burgess

doodie.com features a new, four-to-12 second animation every day -- each one is based on waste. The characters in his cartoons are literally full of it: they shape it, play with it, toss it, roll in it and relish it. It becomes a revered substance -- albeit a hilarious one.

Constant idea generation isn't easy for Winkler, but stints on "The Simpsons" and John Lovitz's "The Critic" have ensured that he's well-versed in animated humor. Easy-to-download GIFs make the site accessible even to the slowest modem, and Winkler's artistic flair keeps the fans coming back -- to the tune of 6,000,000 hits each month.

"All the masters say 'follow your bliss,'" says Winkler in his matter-of-fact manner. "Well, doodie humor cracks me up. I think it's just incredibly funny." As, apparently, do many others. Winkler has turned doodie into a full-time business. He sells advertising banners on the site and t-shirts and club memberships on the side. This brings in enough to hire two part-time employees, though Winkler plans eventually to employ a full staff of animators. This would bring doodie.com's creator full-circle: paying striving young artists to make sure that doodie's doodie look exactly like it does right now -- just the sort of thing that drove him from "The Simpsons."

Winkler, who moved to Los Angeles from Connecticut in the early '80s for just such an opportunity as "The Simpsons" provided, is hardly contrite about his decision. "Don't get me wrong. It was an honor to work on that show," he says of the season he spent there. "But as an artist, I wasn't fulfilled. They were only interested in making sure Bart Simpson looked like Bart Simpson, and I just don't think I'm very good at being a spoke in a wheel. It's a great show, but I'm more of an entrepreneur, more of a creator, more of an artist. That makes me sound like some sort of pretentious jerk, but I really believe it."

Reluctant to work for anyone but himself, Winkler's prospects did not look promising -- until he became intimate with the Internet. In a turn of events he still finds amazing, Winkler discovered in the Web a means to identify exactly what he wanted to do. Then he followed his dream to fruition. As an animator in the pre-Internet 1980s, one could either make shorts for fringe film festivals, or pitch ideas to animation studios around town. "But if you pitch something to a studio, you walk in with Wally the Whale, and leave with Andy the Ant," he says. "I'm just grateful that I live in this time."

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