Lately, I’ve been asking myself a question I know no one else on earth ever has: whatever happened to that Garfield cult? You may recall around nine months ago, I set out to explore Garfield cookbooks, ruined my health, and discovered an Instagram cult run by a vengeance obsessed former Garfield restaurant owner. So, you know, a pretty typical Monday here at 1900Hotdog.
Since that article ran, I’ve been keeping an eye on the evolution of Nathfield, the knock-off Garfield cartoon created by the former owner of GarfieldEATS, Nathen Mazri. If you missed the first article all you need to know about Nathen is that he was spurned by Garfield and it made him go insane. His claim to fame was being “the world’s youngest Garfield Licensee,” and when he lost the license, he invented Nathfield, a cat in an orange suit who loves cheese and religious extremism.
If you want to get a cartoon made, a good way to start is to generate interest on social media, so that’s what Nathen did. Nathfield’s 341 Twitter followers get occasional updates on his thoughts about life, sperm, and which celebrities are going to Hell. (Spoiler alert, it’s most of them). Nathfield is the uncle that Garfield dreads having Thanksgiving dinner with. He is the From line when the Subject line says “FWD: New Evidence on Odie’s Laptop PROVES Jon Dog S3x Plot.”
You would think promoting a cartoon would mainly involve tweeting jokes, maybe some artwork, not going full the-water-is-turning-the-Nermals-gay on your silly cartoon cat twitter. I can’t begin to think of a way to go about this that is more wrong. I guess maybe it could be worse if he decided to promote his cartoon by kicking Betty White’s ass. Or by claiming… uh, Allah told him CO2 was harmless? Especially to sperm?
Sure, he does use the account to share some concept art and fill us in on the details of his characters. That’s how I know Nathfield loves cheese and styling his hair. It’s also how I know that Angel Gabby doesn’t menstruate. I didn’t need to know that, but I do. Angel Gabby and I are now way closer than I ever expected.
The Nathfield Twitter account is part social activism and part cartoon promotion, but it’s mostly where Nathen goes to rant when things go wrong in his life. Nathen has a lousy trip to Walmart, and Nathfield tweets at them to say their stores have “become mad houses for criminals.” Nathen gets angry at Andrew Garfield for wearing an orange suit and being named Garfield, and Nathfield is right there to supportively retweet his rage.
You might expect all of Nathen’s time to be taken up angrily tweeting Nathfield’s thoughts on the Amber Heard trial, but Nathfield is not Nathen’s main current business venture. Before I tell you what appears to be his primary business at the moment, you better get a fucking hat so you can hold on to it. While this man is soft launching his punitive Garfield rip-off, he’s also looking to promote an app and website called Egeez that will allow people to buy officially licensed merchandise.
The idea behind Egeez, maybe?, is that consumers are horrified by the idea of knockoff merchandise and need somewhere that they know for certain all of the profits from their Lightning McQueen wine decanter are going directly into Mickey Mouse’s pocket. Basically, this unlicensed Garfield character has created an extra step in the retail process in the desperate hopes of saving Disney’s lawyers some work and nothing else. His idea is basically “Hot Topic” but with more of a copyright law theme. Wow, what a business model! No one tell this man about Amazon or any other commerce website. He’ll be crushed. Or maybe he knows this is stupid and it’s a failure fetish? I only mention it because this is the real, unaltered copy on his website:
Obviously, Egeez is difficult to explain. I didn’t understand it until I listened to Nathen Mazri’s interview about it on the debut episode of The Nathfield podcast. Yes, Egeez is the sole sponsor of the “Adult Comedy Cartoon Podcast show” The Nathfield. In fact, the entire first episode of the podcast, titled “Egeez presents The Nathfield,” is a segment from another podcast called “Picture Time O Clock,” where Nathen was interviewed about Egeez. It doesn’t mention Nathfield at all. It’s just a boring pitch for his website wherein he bashes Redbubble and Etsy for selling counterfeit merchandise as if most people think that’s a bug of those sites and not a feature.
It’s a bold move to feature a nine minute long commercial as the first episode of your podcast, but Nathen Mazri is a big swing kind of guy. He also said that Egeez would soon have a launch party in ten cities. He tweeted that Nick Cave would be making music for Nathfield. This is a man three years deep into a breakup with Garfield that has wrecked his mind and soul. He can’t be expected to make sense all the time.
If you’re wondering about the content of the podcast, it’s about what you would expect from a man who can’t even complete a promotional tweet for his show without also calling out Mindy Kaling for making Velma Indian and being a “nymphomaniac.” All he had to do was tweet “hey look, a new episode of my podcast is out,” without sneaking in something weird and aggressive, and he couldn’t do it. He often pitches himself as a master of branding, but the number one thing brands don’t do is tweet about controversial topics. If Nathen were in charge of Wendy’s Twitter account, it would be like, “fries are half off today; also, Kanye did nothing wrong. #juniorbaconcheeseburgers are named that because they’re #children. Reclaim your virginity with #vaginacement bye”
If you like a lot of loud chewing and snorting, I can highly recommend the first episode of the Nathfield podcast to you. It’s technically titled episode “1- Evil Vs. Angel” and Nathfield is still not in it. First, they introduce the story’s villain, a pig man named Bill Cramer, who’s aiding the Dajjal, an Islamic Antichrist figure, by posting on Reddit and overeating. Nathfield introduced him on Twitter via a Nespresso ad that I’m sure Nespresso would beg him to take down if they were aware of its existence.
The episode begins with Bill Carmer doing a monologue about greed and God, kind of accusing God of being a pervert because he “likes to watch,” and we’re all here for his own “cosmic gag reel.” He also mentions that he hates Nathfield because he “rises, sleeps, and eats cheese all day.” When a ghostly voice calls his name, he says, “step-mommy, is that you, bitch?” I think that’s Nathen Mazri’s idea of a joke. One of those really sophisticated ones where the punchline is that bitch is a no-no word.
The voice turns out to be Angel Gabby. They do a monologue about how Nathfield is Jesus. “Nathfield pisses me off too, always fixing his hair, but he’s our sole savior and warrior with cattitude in today’s digital war on earth. No one can save us but Nathfield, the prince of Nazareth.” Is this a podcast about a cat who hates Mondays or Nathen Mazri’s pitch to be the Islamic Kirk Cameron?
Finally, in episode three, we get to hear Nathfield for the first time. The first thing the hero of this story says is, “Ah, what a glorious morning. Makes me hard. Oh my God. Go away, temptation!” The first words our savior speaks in this series are to his boner. Then he’s visited by the angel Gabby, and this is how that conversation goes:
Nathfield: “Are you the angel of death? Is my time up already? I’ve barely started my fast food chain, NathfieldEATS.”
Gabby: “Fuck your cheesy fast food chain, and listen to me. I SAID it is important news from the one king of the worlds. Get it? Or is there too much hair paste in your brain?”
Nathfield: “How dare you!”
Gabby: “You sound like Andrew Tate now!”
Nathfield: “And you sound like the scammy little green child Greta.”
Gabby: “The time has come for a hero to rise up and save the world from corruption, and that hero is you, Nathfield.”
I know a lot of that seems completely disconnected, but I transcribed it word for word. The acting is done by two people who went through the kindergartner school of drama where the louder you are, the more you are acting, so they’re screaming at each other and taking big, long breaths right into the microphone the entire time, which made it even harder to follow and transcribe.
So that’s what’s going on there. He also dropped a third episode the day I needed to turn in this article that contained a theme song for Nathfield that’s an edited jingle for GarfieldEATS I’m pretty sure Nick Cave didn’t write. It has the vibe of someone Photoshopping their new girlfriend’s head over their ex-wife in their wedding photos.
The lyrics are also just the words love me, feed me, don’t leave me, in various poppy arrangements. That was the slogan for GarfieldEATS so it doesn’t have anything to do with Nathfield, unless he’s supposed to be a fan of GarfieldEATS? Maybe in the canon of this story, NathfieldEATS was going to be a ripoff of GarfieldEATS. Nathfield is holding a signature GarfieldEATS Garficcino in the main promotional photo they used for all social media, so it does exist in his world, but my guess would be it’s on its way to getting a smiting from Nathfield.
It feels like Nathen Mazri is an avatar for this website, or at least my little corner of it. I’m genuinely worried I did something to summon this man into our world; maybe in my sleep, I accidentally drew a pentagram and put shitty food, a Garfield keychain, and a Dennis Miller book in it. I hope someday Nathen succeeds in his mission to ruin Garfield, or Garfield ruins him. Either way, I’m in.
