"J'eet?" asks John Ratzenberger.

	Debby Coleman John Ratzenberger, left, who has starred in every Pixar Animation Studios film, is directed by John Lasseter during a "Cars" recording. Click photo for larger image. Related article 'Cars' review

First word out of his mouth. It takes me a stunned moment to muster the proper reply.

"No, j'ew?"

Thus, in fluent Pittsburghese, does conversation begin with "Pixar's good luck charm" -- a guy who has voiced all six of that company's animated hits ("Toy Story" 1 and 2, "A Bug's Life," "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles" and "Monsters Inc.").

The man behind the voice is better known (and seen) by millions as know-it-all postman Cliff Clavin on "Cheers." Currently, he's stumping for "Cars," the seventh of Pixar's pix, which opens nationwide today. But he has his priorities straight.

"Pittsburgh!" he enthuses, knowledgeably, a la Cliff. "You know, the greatest bagpiper who ever lived -- Alistair Gilles -- teaches bagpiping there, at CMU. He was a piper in the Scottish army. The queen asked him to be her personal piper."

OK. Did she have to pay him?

Ratzenberger ignores the impertinent question, moving on to, "Say hi to [Allegheny County Sheriff] Pete DeFazio for me! We've been in parades together."

Turns out he has a favorite neighborhood here, but more on that later. Time to get down to promotional business and "Cars," in which Ratzenberger voices Mack the Super-Liner, who accidentally ditches stock-car hero Lightning McQueen on Route 66 while transporting him to The Big Race.

How, exactly, does one prepare to play a truck?

"I've traveled on Route 66 a lot -- been traveling all my life, really," says the Bridgeport, Conn., native, whose father was a truck driver and mother a factory worker. "There was no such thing as a family vacation for us. That was for people who had money. But I was an avid reader of James Fenimore Cooper -- "Deerslayer," "Last of the Mohicans" -- and wanted to be like Natty Bumpo ... just go off on a boat or into the wilderness without a map, figure it out on the way."

Ratzenberger hit the road early, exploring New England, the Midwest, the South and Europe, eventually spending 10 years in England and France. "But I found out," he says of the Continent, "that if you have a new idea there, they tell you how and why you can't do it."

Not so in the good old U.S.A. New ideas are at the heart of his show "Made in America," now in its fourth successful year on the Travel Channel. The program features Ratzenberger's visits to factories around the country, spotlighting uniquely "American" inventions and products -- from Monopoly to Gatorade, John Deere to Harley Davidson. (His companion book on the subject, "We've Got It Made in America," is now on the stands.)

For his own part, Ratzenberger is the founder of Eco-Pack Industries, a company dedicated to creating alternative bio-degradable, nontoxic packaging from recycled paper products.

Unique animation products are the hallmark of Pixar, whose success Ratzenberger attributes to the fact that "Pixar actually writes for its audience, like Laurel & Hardy -- just keeping it simple."

The mechanics of Pixar's voicing method are surprisingly simple, too, he says. No lip-synching or heavy confabs with fellow voice-characters are required:

"You don't have to have that kind of contact when you work with [director] John Lasseter. You just stand in the sound booth and watch John's gestures and facial expressions. He tells you exactly what he wants. They'll be building the images later. The visual details wait until they record the actors. The characters are drawn in general by them first. That's the foundation of the house. The animators do their work later."

What kind of work would John Ratzenberger like to do later? It relates to that aforementioned Pittsburgh neighborhood.

"When people ask me what I really want to do, I say my dream is to take over where Fred Rogers left off," the actor says. "My curiosity is about how things are made. I made sure my kids understood there was a process to making a bow and arrow or building a boat -- everything. I wouldn't let them watch `Sesame Street' because it's such a bombardment of images, it teaches you not to concentrate. But I encouraged them to watch 'Mister Rogers' because Fred always took you through the whole story and talked in a pace that wasn't hurried."

His "ratzenberger.com" Web site is devoted in part to reminding parents of simple things they can and should do with their children: "Actually FEEL the sand for its texture! Get some and actually get dirty playing in it with them outside. That's where common sense is taught -- not in the computer. All the important things in the world start in the sandbox."