In Memoriam We Love You, Sweet Maisie

Our beloved Maisie, the furry heart and soul of Knock Knock, passed away last week, and we are heartbroken. Every dog is special. But Maisie was special. A model of self-possession, she was preternaturally calm and keenly observant. She had a remarkable poise even the humans among us admired, and a dignity that demanded reciprocation. She was also capable of …

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The Days Crawl By, But the Years They Fly Head Honcho Hello

Sweet Maisie as a puppy, soon after her homecoming. I don’t know what was up with those awful streaks in my hair, but I do know I was in the middle of organizing or housework or something.

December is a very special holiday month for me and Knock Knock—because it’s Maisie’s birthday. It’s the whole month rather than a single day because when I adopted her from the South Central LA Animal Shelter, in February 2000, I was told she was eight weeks old. All the young puppies were kept together in one kennel area, and as …

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What Do You Mean, “Have a Nice Day”? It’s Our “Something for Nothing” Feature!

Oh, so gosh-darned cute. Who doesn’t love an iconic yellow smiley face? But wait—where the hell does it come from? Read on, grasshopper.

The original concept of Knock Knock included something we were calling a “catazine” or “magalog”—at the time, we didn’t realize this was a real thing. In addition to creating product for sale, we were going to put out a magazine, a publication that had only one advertiser: us. I quickly realized that (a) creating and distributing products might be a …

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The Alleys of Venice It's Our "Welcome to Venice" Feature!

Happy dogs at the intersection of Navarre and Seville Courts (in my Venice mini-neighborhood, the alleys all have regal Spanish names: Cordova, Granada, and Toledo are a few of their alley hermanas).

Note: After approximately 678 words of exposition, there are many cool pictures with descriptive captions below. If you have no desire to read the introductory essay—and believe me, I wouldn’t blame you—just skip down to the pictures. I’d never experienced alleys before I moved to Los Angeles, and to Venice in particular. Right before I landed in LA, in 1998, …

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Whence the Name “Knock Knock”? Head Honcho Hello

Long shot, medium shot, mediumer shot, and closeup of the door that launched a very, very small empire.

Knock Knock was formally incorporated on January 1, 2002, but we didn’t release our first products until October 2002, so somewhere in between is where I count our anniversary. In 2012, we’ll be ten. Ten! Just like humans think they’ll never get older and it takes a long time to reconcile oneself the fact that one is, indeed, older, I …

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