Category Archives: Comedy

Reflections on or attempts at

Unexpected surprises: Steve Allen autobiography

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Steve Allen

So, as I was waiting to join my friends in a taping of our sketch comedy show SomeTV!, I decided to check out a nearby second-hand book store.

Under normal circumstances, this would be a complete love-fest for me, but as funds have been a tad tight lately, I was really only in the store to browse (yeah…that could happen). Well, as I moved through the section of film and television books, I happened across an autobiography of Steve Allen, who among other things was the first host of The Tonight Show.

As I had nothing but respect for Allen’s comedic timing and his ability to get amazing, ad-libbed comments out of pretty much anyone, I picked the book up only to see that they were only asking $2.99 for the book, entitled Mark It And Strike It.

Despite this price being five times the cover price of the book, I decided I could afford the few dollars and bought it.

Wow! Was I in for a surprise!

That Allen manages to include information about his childhood, marriages and early jobs is the only reason that this volume could ever be called an autobiography. The reality is that a full two-thirds of the book are dedicated to a vast range of subjects that reflect more Allen’s thoughts on and opinions about the world in which he lives in 1960 (yes, the book is three years older than me).

Allen discusses the vast gulf that separates Art from Science. The loss of spirituality, or perhaps more accurately, the misappropriation of spirituality in the United States. McCarthyism and anti-Communist terrors that permeated society. Issues of racism and sexism that were tearing the country apart. The nature of humour and comedy and its tortuous demise at the hands of populism.

Aside from my surprise at finding such topics in an autobiography and in the ideas being expressed within the pages, the greatest reflection came as I reached the end of the book and realized that almost 55 years later how little has changed.

The Arts still suffer in a school system fixated on the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).

There is still rampant use of God and Jesus as weapons across the United States in defense of excluding other cultures.

Admittedly, anti-Communist sentiment has subsided as Communism itself has subsided, but it was quickly replaced by anti-Muslim sentiments.

One need only look at the leadership of the United States and the parasitic pundits to realize that racism and sexism still cling like so much fecal matter.

And the recent controversy over the Colbert Report shows that satire and wit remain under constant attack.

Yes, this was possibly the most effective $2.99 I have ever spent in my life as it gave me more than a few hours of entertainment…it gave me a never-ending stream of subjects to contemplate.

 

(PS This is not intended as a comment on the United States as we have more than our share of problems in Canada. I simply discussed the US as that was Steve Allen’s context.)

 

For more about Steve Allen, check out these links:

Frank Zappa on The Steve Allen Show

Steve Allen’s Man on the Street

Steve Allen Online (official web site)

Lesser known April days

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slip_on_banana_peel

April Fuel’s Day – when gas is half-price at all retailers (particularly taco joints)

April Fall’s Day – when pranksters leave banana peels all over busy downtown streets

April Phallus Day – when everyone gets to be a dick

April Fail’s Day – when the community makes all those stupid videos about stupid ideas

April Fill’s Day – when women named April have sex

April Fell’s Day – when Norman’s daughter April holds a memorial for her dad

April Foal’s Day – when everyone gets to horse around

April Feel’s Day – when everyone on the subway/metro gets handsy

April Phile’s Day – when everyone who loves April won’t shut up about it

(Image is property of owners and is used here as a joke.)

Longer Penis (not spam)

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Size

Do you ever find yourself, for whatever reason, wishing you had a longer penis?

I found myself thinking this the other day while standing at a urinal in a sports bar.

You see, as I’ve gotten older, I have found myself becoming increasingly hard-of-seeing. Although I have accepted reading glasses as an everyday thing in my life, I still find that I have to play trombone somewhat when trying to read a book or the newspaper, particularly in poorly lit areas.

So, what does this have to do with a longer penis, you may ask.

For the uninitiated, over the urinals in many if not most sports bars in Canada, the bar posts a section of the newspaper (most often the sports section), which gives gentlemen something to look at while in the bathroom. I’d like to tell you it is for the betterment of our understanding of the human condition, but am more apt to say it is to keep us from inadvertently gawking at our neighbours.

Well, of late, I have found it increasingly difficult to read this newspaper because I am standing too close to the wall. Even with my reading glasses on, I cannot make out the print of the story. And let’s face it, if you have to put your reading glasses on to pee, you are either blind as a bat or have a really short penis.

With a longer penis, I believe, I would have the opportunity to stand further back from the urinal and potentially bring the newspaper into focus. Standing further back with a shorter penis just leads to a mess no one wants and would keep me from accurately hitting the little soccer ball (some of you know what I’m talking about).

As it is, my only alternative is to try to read the paper over the next urinal, which has its own risks.

If I am alone in the bathroom, no problem. But the minute another fellow stands at the next urinal…

Well, let’s just say no one likes to have a stranger read over your shoulder, so you can imagine how you’d feel having a stranger read over your penis.

So, yes, sometimes I wish I had a longer penis.

Oh, and unless you have a third hand, don’t try turning the page over…trust me, it’s better for everyone if you just read the rest of the story later.

urinal-journal

Writing for puppets

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Monty meets Muppets!

Monty meets Muppets!

As some of you may know, I am one of the comedy writers for a sketch show called SomeTV!, which is currently in production in Toronto. As our godhead Nic likes to describe it, the show takes the no-sacred-cows approach of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and combines it with the playful anarchy of The Muppet Show (no hubris here, eh?).

Now, for some, that may sound like the greatest writing gig ever. Those some have clearly never written for puppets.

Human actors—or as we call them, Fleshies—can be tricky enough to deal with. Prone to completely misunderstanding the point of a scene or sketch, they tend to have difficulty learning lines that make no sense to them.

Luckily, their natural insecurity, despite the outward facing ego, means that they can be molded into subservience, if only in two- to five-minute chunks, the longest most are willing to go without checking their make-up or cell phones for calls from their managers.

At their core, Fleshies are the rhesus monkeys of the performance world, clinging to each other for some semblance of affection but ultimately willing to give that up for warmth and sustenance.

Not so puppet actors, aka the Felts or Felties.

Flesh v Felt

These are the apex predators of the performance world and should always be treated as such. Sure, they look cute and cuddly, with their giant heads, bulging eyes and disarming colours, but that’s exactly what they want you to think.

You don’t write for Felties so much as start a sentence that is perpetually interrupted with ideas or lines the bastards think are smarter, funnier, crazier.

Fleshies forget their lines because they’re not too bright…Felties “forget” because they are malicious egotists.

Adding to the challenge is the near-impossibility of figuring out a Feltie. He, she or it is the poster-child for multiple personality disorder.

You think you’re writing a scene for a young Spanish girl, when out of nowhere a tall Jovian Codswadder shows up to take the scene in an entirely new direction. (To this day, the only thing I know about Codswadders is they come from Jupiter, where given the crushing gravity, their height makes no sense.)

Not the home of young Spanish girls

NOT the home of young Spanish girls

It’s like dealing with someone with hyperactive comedic Tourettes, and trust me, I’ve taken enough improv classes in Toronto to know what that looks like.

Felties are also astoundingly lazy creatures. Sure, they look frenetic on the television screens, but in reality, these buggers will literally not lift a finger without someone doing it for them. Our show has an entire team of Feltie fluffers whose entire job is to see to the every-last needs of these freaks. We’re talking major OCD: obsessive-compulsive demands.

Trust me, the dictionary writers of the world have the concept of “puppet master” completely backwards.

Masterclass

To be fair, the Felties do sometimes come up with lines that are funnier than the stuff I wrote. But on the flip side, they get away with lines that no intelligent Fleshie could ever hope to pull off.

This has two impacts: 1) the Feltie doesn’t have to try very hard to get a laugh, and 2) they can be as crude, rude and insulting as they want, knowing everyone just thinks “awwww, how cute”.

There’s a reason you don’t hear a lot of puppet radio programs…the shit they come up with is repugnant.

NPR = Nasty Puppet Radio

NPR = Nasty Puppet Radio

So, why do I stay? Why do I continue to write for these self-glorified hand-warmers?

Most days, I don’t know.

But then the rent comes due and I realize that my best chances at succeeding as a “comedy writer” is to have my words (or some semblance thereof) come out of a Feltie’s mouth…and those lint-sucking leeches know it, too.

 

SomeTV! is being produced by Lemon Productions Inc.

Like us on Facebook: SomeTV! / Lemon Productions Inc.

Follow us on Twitter: @SomeTVNews

Ergo ego

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(Property of evolution.berkeley.edu)

(Property of evolution.berkeley.edu)

Be as egocentric as you want, but always remember: You were one point mutation away from being somebody else.

(PS To the genetics nerds out there, I know they messed up the “original” strands in this diagram as the originals from different strands cannot be identical but rather should be complementary.)

Writing “Line by Line”

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Do you want to be a writer but don’t have any ideas?
Are you afraid of looking like a fool?
Don’t have time to complete a project?

Then check out the blog “Line by Line”, a project to create a story one line at a time by anyone who wants to contribute.

No money down! No payments ever! No long-term commitments! No sense, at all!

At “Line by Line”, you’ll read sentences like:
“Without realizing I was doing so, my hand reached out for the vial, and Dorgon hesitated before finally releasing it to me, nervously licking his eyelid.”
and
“Instead, I pulled myself to my feet using his adam’s apple for leverage and pushing his face into the floor, such that I finally had the upper hand.”

Check it out!

This innovative new idea for building a story, line by line, day by day, was hatched by Ionia Martin and Julian Froment.

Jerk

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CORRECTION: Earlier today we posted a comment where we recommended you “Jerk your cock liberally”…

We of course meant to inform you that you should “Jerk your chicken liberally”…

We regret our error and would like to apologize for any West Indies-themed dinner parties we may have inadvertently ruined.

Failure is not an option…it’s a skill

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Fear-of-failure

I used to be terrified of failure. If I couldn’t know that I would succeed at something, I would put it off and potentially never do it.

And this was true in all aspects of life.

Driving. Dancing. Playing musical instruments. Talking to girls and later women. Athletics.

I became the best I could at one or two things—the things for which I seemed to have a natural aptitude—to avoid having to worry about being asked to do any of a thousand other things.

To me, failure was not an option. (I could spend months discussing why, but I won’t…at least, not here).

It has taken me a long time, but I have finally realized that I was only half right.

failure_success

Failure is not an option…it is an imperative.

It is a skill that I must practice time and time again in all aspects of life.

At its simplest, if I succeeded at everything to which I turned my hand, I would stop doing it.

I succeeded. I achieved my goal. What more could I hope to accomplish? Everything after that is pure redundancy and repetition.

When harnessed, however, failure and imperfection can be that thing that drives me forward, when purely creative urges do not.

ziglar

Failure is my teacher. Failure is my drill sergeant and mentor. And yes, failure can be my devil.

Perfection is an illusion and is therefore unattainable. This means that even at our zenith, we have failed. So what?

Even if we do not strive for perfection, but for an attainable, measurable goal, we are likely to fail if for no other reason than once we have achieved that goal, we instinctively move the goal posts. Our best is always a thing of the past and acts as a goad for us to do better.

Herein also lays the further challenge of failure in Art. There typically is no real metric other than external opinion. Rare is the individual who targets using 7.83% magenta in his next painting.

coyote

Wile E. Coyote is about the only artist I know who can actively test the realism of his Art. He has achieved his goal if the Roadrunner runs into the cliff wall painted to look like a tunnel. Ironically, his downfall was the hyperrealism he achieved such that the painting actually became a tunnel. In succeeding, he found failure.

Where I used to fear failure, I now embrace it. I use it to stretch myself and my skills. I use it as a lesson plan.

Failure-is-not-falling-down-but-refusing-to-get-up

But for this to work, I must envision failure as something internal and self-defined rather than something external and based on the opinions of others. There lies madness.

Yes, I rely on feedback garnered from others to determine my degree of success, but I do not allow others to define that success.

It is my Art. I define it and in doing so, define myself. And to do that, I must fail and fail again.

failure-and-success

(Images are property of owners and are used here without permission, which may be an epic failure on my part.)