The problem with humor is that you have to be quick about it. The news cycle goes quickly. Before you realize it, people are talking about the next big thing. In order to have great comedic timing, you have to say something no one else has said, and you have to say it quickly.
So I tried something. I have a YouTube channel where I spoof the news. I made a satire video about the FBI investigation into whether Hillary Clinton broke the law by using a private e-mail server. I uploaded this video for two reasons: 1. A lot of the news articles I was seeing was missing the point that the investigation was just to see if she was treasonous (in other words if she did it on purpose). And 2: To see if people would click on my video over a week after the news broke.
The Hillary e-mail thing is kind of old news. However, it is proving to have a bit of an evergreen appeal, as people continue to talk about it. Considering it takes a long time for people to actually find my videos, anything I publish is old news.
I made a mix CD for my daughter for Christmas of songs she likes. As I sit here listening, I decided to try a writing experiment. Here’s a conversation I invented using lines from each of 10 songs, in the order they appear on the album. I imagine it’s one person trying to cheer up another. The answers are in the tags.
Charlie Brown: “Break the doors down.
Don’t go wasting your emotion.
Didn’t I see you crying?”
Zach Galifianakis: “It’s been a really messed up week.
I need to get my story straight.
Gonna be a big man someday.
There’s no time for losers.”
Charlie: “You’re a good man.
I heard about you before.
Just take a chance and believe in you.”
<Zach doesn’t say anything.>
Charlie: “Your silence is deafening.
You treat me like a stranger.
I’m your only friend. I’m not your only friend.
Maybe you don’t know me because you’re dead wrong.”
You know those things people post on Facebook that are just a phrase on a colored background? Well, someone posted a saying that there is something that a woman can shut down – the Republican party.
In response, I created this. It shows something else women have a lot of control over.
It’s in handy bumper sticker form if you click on it.
Someone told me that 85 million gun owners didn’t shoot anyone yesterday. I don’t find that a particularly reassuring statistic. What about the day before?
And maybe they were just not trying hard enough. So I made a t-shirt and bumper sticker. I hope you enjoy:
For a parody to be successful, it has to be both good and first.
The official trailer for Men In Black III (shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyaFEBI_L24) went online two weeks ago. My animator sent me a link and asked what we could spoof about it. I had a script done in two days. Within two weeks of the trailer being online, my video is online (shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-x0KkLjS0)
If you search “Men In Black 3 parody” in YouTube, my video is the first to come up. And it’s the only one that’s really relevant.
What I’m hoping by all this is that by being first to the party, I’ll get a head start on views. The script is good, and I especially love the ending. And the video is first, or at least among the first if I missed the others.
So, take a look at it, and let me know if it’s successful. Thanks!
Doctors and nurses hustle through the surgery tent. The charismatic doctors deliver deadpan one-liners while digging through the young men torn up by battle. A young man walks into this whirlwind of activity.
“Radar, put a mask on,” one of the doctors yells.
“I have a message,” the young man says, faltingly. “Col. Henry Potter’s plane…was shot down over the Sea of Japan, it spun and…there were no survivors…”
The doctors all fall quiet. Just the clank of scalpels dropping on metal trays.
From the Associated Press: Harry Morgan, who died Dec. 7 at age 96 after having pneumonia, was in the top ranks of actors who could take a small role, or a small scene, and bring it deftly alive. He added richness to any comedy or drama smart enough to call on him.
I always loved M*A*S*H and wanted to give Morgan a send-off that Henry Blake had.
Even as a kid, I liked how that show could go from goofy to serious and then back again. The seriousness made the goofiness that much more important and the goofiness made the serious parts all the more real.
What I Learned: If you want to balance comedy and drama, it starts with the characters. They have to be funny because they are reacting to the sad parts. The two feelings go hand in hand.
An animator I’ve been working with asked me to come up with some R-rated jokes to animate. He wants to sync into the popularity that comes from Family Guy and especially Seth McFarlane’s private channel.
I already created a character who plays movie-based video games and makes fun of them. So, all right. He wants adult humor. Fine. What terrible movie should become a video game?
“2 Girls, 1 Cup.”
Yes, the 4-year-old Internet meme that won’t die…it just keeps on going…If you haven’t watched it already, don’t. Seriously. It’s disgusting. This isn’t reverse psychology.
So, I came up with a few jokes and wrote it. It took me an hour, probably. I figured the idea was worth an hour. I have a college degree. I’ve been a professional writer for about 10 years. I didn’t want to spend any more time on this than I had to.
Then came the actual production. It takes a lot longer to animate, and the back-and-forth e-mails as we narrowed stuff down took quite a long time. We had to agree on character and background designs, an intro to the series, and I did the voice acting.
End result: NINE hours to create this video. And that’s just my half.
So, watch the video. Let me know if it was time well spent.
I’m not proud. In fact, it helps to own up to your stupidity outright. Let me give you an example. I was sitting in a car, when a friend came up to the side to ask me a question. I stuck my head out and bonked it right on the window.
“Did you just hit your head on the window?” he said, laughing.
“Yeah.”
He laughed some more, and that was the end of it. If I had denied it, he’d still be busting on me to this day.
So, to that end, here are three things most people wouldn’t admit:
3. Stuck between a fork and a hard place
You know when a drawer won’t close because a utensil gets wedged in there real good? The handle is stuck on the bottom somewhere and the top gets propped up against the underside of the cabinet?
Well, imagine instead that it was a fork getting crammed between the utensil holder and my middle finger.
I was pulling out a spoon for my daughter to stir her chocolate milk. She was talking and I was paying more attention to her than what I was doing. I pushed the drawer closed with my hip as my hand was over the forks.
Here’s a nice little video that shows the damage:
2. The builders are coming!
Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, there were always houses being built. They were a beacon to neighborhood kids. We climbed all over them, imagining what the rooms would be like, what the people would be like.
When I was in third grade I was venturing into one such house. And then I heard “The builders are coming!” My exploration partner sighted the worker van coming down the street. I leaped off the first floor.
But it was built on an incline. In the back of the house, the first floor was about five feet off the ground. At least, that’s what I guess it was now, looking back. It could have been three.
I remember just lying on my back on a slab of wood. I didn’t move and I felt like I couldn’t and I didn’t know why. Then my friend grabbed my hand and pulled me up. My neck hurt instantly. We ran. It turned out it wasn’t the builders, just a similar-looking van.
For the rest of the week, I couldn’t move my neck without pain. My teacher told me to keep moving my neck little by little until it felt better. It did, eventually. My parents said I never complained and they never knew. I was a quiet kid, but I still can’t figure out how this got missed. Anyway, it was probably whiplash, the reason I have scoliosis and regular headaches to this day.
1. The Kazoo
I used to keep a kazoo in my car at all times. It’s a good idea. You never know when you’re going to need a kazoo.
My car had a perfect place for it – a small cutout to the left of the steering wheel. In a more expensive model, some wonderful feature was probably supposed to go there – like a chocolate dispenser or a flux capacitor. As I got the bottom line model, it was just a hole. The older man who sold it to me told me twice “You can put your McDonald’s hamburgers in there.” Instead, I kept a kazoo there, with almost half of it sticking out.
It had rained while I was at work, and there was a big puddle by the driver’s side door. I reached over the puddle and opened the door. I judged the distance and guessed I could jump over the puddle into my car.
Somehow my legs went wild and my knee scraped against the kazoo. The cheap plastic mouthpiece scraped the first few layers of skin off my knee.
At first, I was too shocked to know what happened. Then, the blood seeped up from the wound. It ran down my leg and soaked my sock on the ride home.
Again, I tell people these things because it’s not good to hide stupid things you’ve done. You should share them and let everyone in on the joke.
Besides, I already told one person and he tells everyone so there’s no keeping it a secret!
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