At Fox Animation

When I walked into Fox Animation Friday, the first thing that struck me was the gallery show in the main hall.

There were long rows of faux album covers -- Abbey Road, Fleetwood Mac, Thriller -- all with Peter Griffin and Company. The one that hit me hardest was a dead ringer for this:

It hit me for a couple of reasons: First, Whipped Cream is one of the iconic albums of my youth. It was released in April of 1965, cracked Billboard's Top 40 on June 12 of that year, spent eight weeks at #1, 141 weeks in the Top 40, and 61 weeks in the Top Ten. That spans a sizable chunk of my teenage years.

(The model was Dolores Erickson, pregnant and covered in shaving cream rather than whipped because the dairy version melted under the lights.)

Second, the Family Guy version was a close duplicate of the above, except picture a three-dimensional Peter Griffin in place of Dolores, covered in whipped cream, with everything else pretty much as it is above. Highly amusing.

The staffs of FG and American Dad are back at their desks, board artists and revisionists sporting new Cintiqs.

On the other end of the building is a new suite of offices for The Cleveland Show, with writers in place and board artists coming on board. (From the looks of the suite, it was recently a law office). A staffer said:

"We've got thirteen episodes for the first order, and they're hiring people gradually, as they need them. The directors are being brought on one at a time, not all at once ..."

With luck, TCS will have a long and lucrative run. Here's hoping.