6B • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY,SEPTEMBER11,2002
ENTERTAINMENT
Jimmy Neutron gets cable show
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — The boy who's so smart he can build a satellite from a toaster and a spatula suddenly seems to be everywhere.
Two years ago, the world had never heard of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. Last year, the movie was nominated for an Oscar, and a marketing blitz introduced Jimmy Neutron action figures, games and cereal boxes.
Now Jimmy has arrived on the Nickelodeon cable channel in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, airing Fridays at 8:30 EDT.
With the premiere last week, Jimmy bumped longtime fellow Nickelodeon hit SpongeBob SquarePants from its perch atop the list of favorite shows among kids 2-11.
It was all part of a plan to build a buzz about Jimmy before the TV series premiered, says Cyma Zarghami, the network's executive vice president.
"We had a yearlong plan to introduce Jimmy as a Nickelodeon character so that there was a level of familiarity about him even before he got to the movies," she said.
Jimmy is a regular guest on Nickelodeon shows, borrowing a technique once used with great success by Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck at Warner Bros. Jimmy drops in unannounced on other shows.
He's the brainchild of John A. Davis, a 40-year-old animator from Dallas.
"When I was in elementary school, all the space walks, the moon landings, were happening," Davis said. "As far back as I can remember, rockets were a really big deal."
He always wanted to build one of his own, he remembers. But, he adds with some regret, he was no boy genius.
But Davis was smart enough to use a movie camera his folks had, and that led to a career writing, directing and animating shows
such as Olive the Other Reindeer, which earned him an Emmy nomination.
Davis came up with the idea for Jimmy in 1995. He initially called him Johnny Quasar — before lawyers told Davis the name sounded too much like Johnny Quest.
"Well, was there any other name?" he asked himself as he went for a walk one day. It was then that Jimmy Neutron was born.
"He sort of looks like the Bob's Big Boy, only cuter," Debi Derryberry said, referring to the symbol for a popular chain of restaurants.
Derryberry — who provides Jimmy's gee-whiz, happy-golucky voice, one that's deeper but no less exuberant than her own — also thinks part of Jimmy's charm is that while he's brilliant, he can have a bumbling persona.
"While he makes his mark being so smart," she says, "he's not really another conceived bad boy on campus."
Crossword
ACROSS
1 Amorphous mass
5 Horse checkers
10 Dud
14 Casino city
15 Swashbuckler Flynn
16 Mine find
18 Profess
18 Exchange
19 Abreast of
20 Las Vegas hotel with gondolas
22 Smoldering coals
24 No longer current
25 Scrap of food
26 Figures experts: abbr.
27 Evangelist
28 Play part
32 Animal poisons
35 Long, pompous speech
37 Originate
38 Drink slowly
39 Rips
40 Sound suppressor
42 Diagrams
43 Three-way junction
44 Hatch
46 Wire spiral
47 Roadside stop
48 Cassowary cousin
51 Hereditary
54 Reduced
56 Forest denizen
57 Semblance
59 "___ Lang Syne"
60 Sinewy
61 German industrial city
62 Acacia or baobab
63 Singer Nelson
64 Distributed the cards
65 Fortuneteller
DOWN
1 La Scala cheer
2 Raze
3 Upright
4 Use a drill
09/11/02
$ \textcircled{2} $ 2002 Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
5 Hits the hay
6 List of corrections
7 Teheran's country
8 Silent assent
9 Rip Van Winkle, e.g.
10 Bungles
11 Easy gait
12 Scent
13 Sties
21 Harasser
23 Long races
26 Fellow
27 Stance
28 Sound like a bird
29 Culture medium
30 Abrupt
31 Hardy heroine
32 Far-reaching
33 View from Cleveland
34 Cairo's river
36 In the vicinity
38 Streamlined swimmer
41 Cowered
Solutions to yesterday's puzzle.
42 Approval
45 Type of locomotive
46 Tiresomely sentimental
48 Harden
49 Fracas
50 Milk dispenser?
51 Stagnant
52 Requirement
53 Rosary piece
54 Bonet or Kudrow
55 Has a bite
56 Operate
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