Moldy Bagels: Episode 4 (Part Three)

Considering some of the things I say and do on the show, I think TBNK, the public access that airs my show, is extremely permissive with some of the things they let me do. Although I bleep out the swearing and tone down the material to a certain extent and they air my show at 11:30 at night, it's still probably more risque than they'd like it to be. Last week I went to the station to hand in the 5th episode on DVD, and in the studio two small children were filming an adorable news show. They were sitting at a desk and reading headlines about how the Covington elementary school teams were doing and what the cafeteria was serving for lunch. I felt a little bad that my show which throws around rape references like footballs is sharing the same channel with that program.

That being said, I still fucking hate that I can't go as all-out NC-17 as I did on my old Ron Mexico Productions sketches, and I enjoyed the section where I bleep myself out whenever I use the word "help" because it's a rare instance in which I got to use the content restrictions of the station to my advantage. If it didn't take place on a TV show where you have to bleep out the swearing, the premise wouldn't really make any sense.

I also had a lot of fun doing the tag where I play the three different characters singing "Save Tonight." The dialog is pretty close to a word-for-word transcript of a conversation I had with a customer at the restaurant. Save Tonight played on the radio, and this redneck said it was a George Clinton song because his voice is unmistakable. By some miracle I managed to completely avoid laughing in his face.

It was a pretty amazingly awesomely terrible exchange that I had to share with the world in some way, and I'm surprised that there haven't been more times that interacting with the Kentucky locals on an almost-daily basis has inspired comedy. It would make me feel better about myself when they leave me shitty tips, which is all the time. Yeah, maybe you completely screwed me over by shorting me on wages that I deserved, but at least I wasn't the loose basis for any widely ignored Youtube videos today! Suck on that!

Moldy Bagels: Episode 4 (Part Two)

In keeping with the theme of rehashing old stuff, an old joke about doing a three-part series of sequels to 1984 is repackaged into a conversation between Snake and Colonel, and of course an old Crapstick Doodle cartoon follows.

The segment about Manute Bol is the leftover from an aborted idea for a web series I had a long time ago called Person Reviews that I might bring back someday in a different form. Basically, I'd review human beings and give them a score, much in the way critics give scores to movies, video games, restaurants, and whatever else. I wrote one for Manute Bol and another for Hitler and had ideas for a few more, but I didn't feel that the concept had enough mileage for me to commit to it for very long, but I dusted it off because it seemed good enough to fill two minutes of the show.

Moldy Bagels: Episode 4 (Part One)

You know the drill...

I thought it would be fun to do a self-congratulatory anniversary-type celebration for what's only the 4th episode of my show. It takes well over a month to pound an episode out, and considering the fact that I do literally everything, including but not limited to writing 15 pages of jokes, shooting 5 to 7 individual sketches, drawing as many as 70 pictures for the cartoons, editing 22 minutes of video, acting, and driving three towns over to hand in the completed DVDs to the TV station, sometimes it really does feel like I've done enough work to warrant this kind of thing, although it's still purely sarcastic when it's done on the show. Still, I feel like I deserve some kind of medal for doing over 4 months worth of comedy work without saying "fuck" on camera once.

But honestly, saying that I create 22 minutes of comedy is a bit of a misnomer, seeing as how so much of the show is stuff I've already made, or repackaged material from a different medium. For example, the piece on the Atari 5200 is essentially a slideshow set to a segment from a book I wrote about video games a year and a half ago. Since about 90% of any TV show starring a stand-up comedian is rehashed older material, I think I'm on the right track.

Moldy Bagels: Episode 3 (Part Three)

The Nine-Juan-Juan sketch from this segment is one I've had an idea for for over 3 years. Seeing it finally come to life is slightly less underwhelming than everything else in life. The most important sketch for this one is the one for Zambran-O's. I could explain at length in this paragraph the response the sketch got, but episode 5 of Moldy Bagels does a more than great job explaining the whole thing. Just enjoy the Zambrano sketch, because as far as I'm concerned it's hilarious.

Moldy Bagels: Episode 3 (Part Two)

The Prankin' Myself sketch is a shot-for-shot remake of a project I made in my final semester of college. By that point I didn't give a shit anymore and just wanted to get my degree and be done. I think it shows. The "Fight the System" sketch is also a shot-for-shot remake, in this case of one of my oldest live-action sketch comedy bits. Also, the Snake Under Fire bit is a word-for-word recreation of the time I engaged an annoying guy at work in a conversation specifically for the purpose of annoying him. In summary, this segment of the episode contains exactly 0.0% original content.

Moldy Bagels: Episode 3 (Part One)

I made this episode a long time ago. I actually just finished episode 5, but I swore I'd get around to posting this to the blog eventually. Here's part one of three:

I wrote the cold open because I really wanted to include my amazing talent for spinning trays on my finger in the show. A long time ago I was working at the restaurant on an extremely dead Sunday. I got about one table an hour that day. The day essentially boiled down to killing time, which I can't fucking stand, so I went to the backroom and decided to practice spinning a tray on my finger until I mastered it, because I view any extended period of time in which I haven't learned or gained something as a grievous waste of the limited time we have on this planet. It's a skill that takes all of 20 minutes to learn, but most people are extremely impressed when they see me do it, so I act like it takes years to figure out. Am I a wonderful guy who doesn't want to ruin their illusion, or am I a pathetic, attention-starved asspipe who desperately seeks praise for my tragically ordinary skill set? You be the judge.

If you've seen my CrapStickDoodle cartoons you've already seen the Crash sketch. It's definitely one of my favorite cartoons and I think it's worth watching a second time. As for the Snake Under Fire sketch, I find it more or less unbearable to watch because my greenscreen effects are so terrible. Me and the boxes are bouncing all over the place while the background stays put. For a while I thought it was because the floor in my house is uneven and shifting my weight causes the camera to move. It wasn't until last month that I figured out that my camera's default Steady Shot option makes the camera move automatically to follow me as I shift my body. I've since fixed that problem and now the subject and background stay put. Now I only have to worry about my shitty lighting, acting, and writing.

I originally planned the mailbag to be a feature in every episode, but I had to abandon that for two reasons: First, I tend to turn a single comment into an entire meandering 3 to 5-minute comedy bit. Multiply that figure by three and you have a show that's 70% responding to things people are saying about me, and only 30% actual content. The Colbert Report already has the market cornered on that type of ratio, so I'm hoping to avoid all that.