As an unemployed ex art student with few discernible skills, about to turn 30 I wrote a big list of things I was good at & what I wanted to be when I was little to try & find myself a job I wouldn't hate.
This list pointed to one thing. I'm going to make a TV show. With puppets. Puppets talking about pop culture & music.
This blog is going to follow that process.
Click the purple words. They are links.
I had an idea for a little cut away section with super low tech puppets, I was going to cut out figures on sticks, but I'm using those for some jokes in the main bulk of the show, so I decided on SOCK PUPPETS. The whole joke I came up with was that they should start with a typical tough guy trying to start an argument line like "Are you looking at my bird?" which would then be replied to in the politest possible way eg. "Why yes I was, may I say she looks ravishing!" This would then lead to a throughly lovely discourse said in true Chap style.
What do you mean you haven't read The Chap? Here old bean, click this.
As I needed some sewing practice before tackling my main puppets, I thought I'd have a go at
making the sock puppets, I wanted them to have button eyes & look very homemade. Here is the sketch page with the ideas:
You may notice some terrible theme song lyrics, more on that later.
Here are all the buttons my Mother gave me to play with:
I wanted to throw them all on the floor & rol around in them like a cat, but that would've been messy.
Here are the socks with the buttons chosen for eyes:
All these socks are mine. I have cold feet now.
I really didn't think through the logistics of sewing buttons onto an over-the-knee length sock. It took me all night to finish one. By which point I was a bottle of wine down & watching music TV. Then this happened:
To me Slow Hands by the amazing Interpol was a pretty funny song to film to. In doing it I realised several things: I don't know the words of that song as well as I thought. Also my hands are much smaller than my feet, so the sock was quite baggy & didn't move in the way I wanted it to, I may need to look into some padding. I'm also concerned that my camera didn't pick up some of the faster movements very well.
There will be more from these little fellas next week I promise!
So there's going to be a pug puppet. I think it's mostly because I like saying "PUG PUPPET" Go on, say it, it's super super fun to say. PUG PUPPET!
Also, Pugs are expensive & dumb & funny as all hell. Here are my 4 favourite pug videos:
How much fun will it be to make my Pug Puppet do that action?
This video makes me weep with laughter, everytime I see it. Srsly. I have been trying to cut this to music, but I'm having a super hard time with my video editing software. The Music I want to use is by AnAlbatross They have the number 23 (More about this later) in their myspack URL. Which is awesome. If you know their music, you will probs guess which track I want to use.
I like this video because it highlights two great things about pugs: The stupid noises they make & the amount of stupid they have, make & do!
Pugs make dumb noises. They are funny, I've been practicing making those weird creaky sounds, but they always turn into snuffly pig noises (Not because I can't, but because I LOVE making snuffly pig noises, it's fun.) Also, there used to be a dog that lived in one of the houses near mine who would come into our yard and play with me & the cat. I called him Pigdog as when he got excited (Which was every two seconds.) he made that noise. I heard him being called by his owner once & found out his name was "Beckham". Oh My Days. I think Pigdog was infact a kinder name.
If you don't know the noise I'm talking about, imagine a cross between a truffle pig & Willie The Weasle:
Here is the first sketch of the Pug Puppet:
There's a couple of things about this page I will mention: you can see on the left me working through names for the guys. I wanted the dog to have a super long name My cats full name is Charlie Kingston Carwash Fonzerelli III. (I could explain why, but it's not that important right now.) But as this is a pop/geek culture show it made sense to me to name him after someone, I was debating Billy Dee Williams:
This picture tells you why. Lando can double cross me ANYTIME.
Here is is in the trailer for Fanboys playing a Judge called Judge Reinhold also, it's an excuse to look at Jay Baruchel (Dressed as Darth Vader does something I probably shouldn't admit to.) again...(Also it's an amazingly funny film.):
But there will be quite enough Star` Wars references. You should be able to see, at the bottom of the page, the name "Julius Cassius III" Which should actually be Julius J. Carry III .Who in the Zombie Hookers From Hell is he when he's at home, or anywhere else he may choose to be?" I hear you ask? He played SHO 'NUFF: THE SHOGAN ASSASIN in Berry's Gordy's The Last Dragon.
This is the best film you will ever see.
Here is Sho 'Nuff in action:
Hey Kayne, you DID NOT do these glasses first, or bestest!
Here are a ton of pictures, because he is just super dope:
He is not a gay fish, no siree. KISS HIS CONVERSE!
Being a Berry Gordy production, the music in this film is incredible. The Stevie Wonder track "Upset Stomach" is always on my mp3 player. But it's this song (Below) by VANITY that really does it for me:
This video WILL be featured on the show. Mainly because it is dope. There is so much I could say about Vanity, Sho 'Nuff & The Last Dragon, but I'd really just say: watch it & have a read about these guys. I wish Prince would give me a new name...
Back to Pugs.
I can't really mention them without talking about Natalie Dee. She wanted pugs, then she got pugs, when she isn't drawing comics about Anal Bleaching:
(This comic makes me do the kind of laugh that makes a little bit of wee come out.)
Natalie Dee does a comic everyday, make sure you read them. I could've posted SO many more, but these ones sort of cover the Pug behavior I'm after.
He is going to dance at the end of each episode & not turn up much more than that. He is going to be based on two things. Firstly the puppets from The Young Ones:
The Gir thing is especialy usefully as everytime I draw pugs it looks like something else in a pug costune, I'm thinking about putting this into the design of the Pug Puppet. Pugs look awesome in costumes.
He is sad because he is wearing a red shirt. He Gonna Die.
I Like how Batman Pug looks like he's fartin & REALLY enjoying it.
This picture was labled "Star Trek Pug" Is it ok that makes me want to kill? It is? Fanks!
One more Natalie Dee (Because I love her comics SO fucking much:
So I haven't posted for a couple of weeks due to moving house, this sucks as it means I'm miles away from anywhere, but rules as the few things I am near are far more condusive toactually making this thing instead of the endless pages of scripts & writing I've been doing. Or calling everything reserch, when really I'm just googling places to buy Star Wars curtains.
Pretty much the first thing I put to paper was this:
Having drawn them, the idea being they should look like the comic characters I had previously drawn, but some how they came out looking like Canadians from the South Park Universe.
I'm kind of happy with this as Canadians are awesome. Here are some of my Favourites:
There are plenty of others including Shatner, Cree Summer, Tara Strong, Phill Hartnell, The inventors of Trivial Pursuit, Mike Myers, Seth Rogan but I ran out of patience, time for bands:
Again, a bijillion more I coud name, Japandroids & Vovoid spring stright to mind... But that's quite enough for on. Back on course. Saturday I went to my favourite haberdasher/material shop, Anglia Fashion Fabrics. It's just magical & the ladies who work there are all just superstars. Most of my little fella's clothes will be made from dolls clothes & my scrap bag, apart from the girl cardy, which I've started knitting. So all I really needed were the eyes & some felt to play around with. I've choosen dark pink for the girls skin as I want them to have dark brown hair (Yeah for old hair extensions...). I've got the nose for my dog puppet (More on that later) & a bell for his collar. Here is a picture of what I bought!
Honestly it's made me pretty excited. Hehe! I have also picked out names for my guys: I believe they will be Called POPPY & HUTCH, they are both names I've used before in short stories & they seemed to work well. If you can read my scrawlings around the top of the pictures, you will see the have personalities set out & there's also the phrase that will be the title of my show, but more on that later.
I started drawing a webcomic. Some of the jokes are from here so I'm going to put them in. Along with a bunch of Sketches. Some of them are a weird colour. They are all hand drawn collages made with newspaper & magazines & greaseproof paper.
It was going to be called What Are You For? I can't remeber why. This what I was going to be the name of my show, but I thought of something else, more on that later.
The humour is pretty different, I had a no swearing rule. (I was swearing a lot at the time & trying to control it.) But some of the word play jokes I'm going to use. There is a Spelling Mistake in one of them. Find it & win a prize!
There are more & sketches. I may post them on a slow day. Hopefully they are big enough to read....x
(Yes that is what his voice does to people, English Will Arnett ?)
Or from Look Around You:
If you don't know him from these things, or don't know of these things go & buy these things on DVD (See below) & find out about funny. Just that list of stuff should tell you how super-duper he is, but he also passes one of my number one tests of super-duperness, he was great on NeverMind TheBuzzcocks (Josh Groban also falls into this category, oh so much more on him later.)
The main reason for me bringing him up, apart from his DVD being out & selling really quickly, (& I mention him in my description.) is how fun he is to play 6 Degrees with. The reason why I'm bringing it up in a blog about making a TV show is I'm writing an episode about playing 6 Degrees.
I decided that I wanted someone with quite a long name & was think about maybe using ZachGalifianakis. Who is easy to connect to American stuff, but not so easy for anything else (If you haven't seen his old VH1 show Late World With Zach. most it is on YouTube, yes the guests on that show are Henry Rollins & Ray Romano, yes that's just fucking super.) Our Peter however has done a number of things that mean 6 Degrees is super fun with him. Also he has the kind of hard to pronounce name that's funny when you say it over & over again.
(See: Brian Boitano from the South Park movie South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut song What Would Brian Boitano Do? in which the name is repeated many times. Although his name is not that hard repetition is funny, but I'll get to that. SO if a name is going to be said over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over, the longer it is, the funnier it is.)
Now back to 6 Degrees. Originally this was done with Jesus. We are only 6 generations away from Jesus, or my parents were or something. This is no fun to play as IMDB cannot be used to prove you've got it right.
6 Degrees of KevinBacon was the original I belive.If you aren't sure how to play this you are stupid, but the rules are simple:
1. Person A names someone.
2. Person B tries to link them to Kevin Bacon is less than 6 steps.
3. Each Person counts as a step.
(There are more rules than that in our games, but arguing about them forms most the script, so....no.)
Popular With Gays. Also Doesn't age.
I like this game. I'm good at it. Here is how I connect Kevin Bacon to Peter Serafinowicz:
"But you mentioned Will Arnett & Josh Groban as well? Bet you can't connect them as well..." Fuck you. Of Course I can. "Bet you can't contact all 3 in some super 6 Degrees...." SUPER FUCK YOU! I can.
I can tell you who did the voice on pretty much ANY [adult swim] cartoon & connect them to Peter Serafinowicz in less than 6 steps. I have no other skills.
