Cleaning The Scum Traps
I once wrote and directed a TV commercial featuring the worst job in the world. There was this fake company, Lardco, maker of lard and lard by products. Their slogan was “Lardco .... We Get The Lard Out!”.
Well, this young college guy was offered the job of swimming down to the bottom of the lard vats and cleaning out the hair and scum traps. (Let me tell you, I don’t know what was more fun: building the lard vats on set,or the fact that for the 12+ hours of filming the entire crew spoke only with the accent used by the characters in the movie Fargo.)
But back to the matter at hand. Loose Parts has hair and scum traps.
Every week, I sit down – okay, lie down – and write, like 15 jokes. I draw, like, half of those. What’s wrong with the others? They suck, that’s what’s wrong.
So I thought it would be kind of fun to open the ol’ joke book and share some of the really bad ideas that never see the light of day.
• I have this note from last week: Accordion player/world’s greatest texter. Now, this may not be so bad. It’s sort of unformed and I can’t seem to get it formed. I got to thinking that a really good accordion player, pushing all those little black buttons at lightning speed, would make him a really good texter. Like I said, unformed. And not funny. Yet.
• How about ... Hairball art? Yeah, that’s an odd idea. Unfortunately odd isn’t funny. It’s just odd.
• Franklin Gets A Job With The Better Business Bureau. This was going to be a picture of a guy sitting on a dresser of drawers. And this brings up a good point. Puns are generally the lazy way out. That’s what this would’ve been. Now I’m not opposed to puns ... but they have to be pretty damn good. This one wasn’t.
• “Go lyeth over there. Oh, David, you slay me.”
Yes, I wrote that down. When I look at it now, I want to stab needles in my eyes for even knowing that came out of my brain.
• Here’s one that falls into the Series Of Things category. That’s where you draw a picture of loosely related things. In this case, the note read BELT SANDER. SUSPENDER GRINDER. CUMMERBUND POLISHER. Man I bent and twisted that one dozens of ways and I couldn’t get it to be any funnier than it is right here.
• CORNISH GAME HENS.
This was going to be birds playing poker and talking in British accents. It would’ve been funny looking ... but a lazy joke. It got caught in the scum traps.
• “I like a man who can multi-task.” This caption was to accompany a medieval torturer hanging, chopping and whipping.
You know, you get in a comedy fugue and you forget common sense. You write down something like this and later realize you’re putting torture in the comics pages. I figured I’d just edit this one out before my editor did it for me.
• Occasionally I discover sentences in my joke book that I can’t ever imagine I ever thought were funny. Here’s one:
“...and the dollar weakend today against a box of rocks and a handful of beads.” Wow. What the hell was in my food?
• Sometimes there’s a joke that I swear is funny but is just a reach because not that many people will get the underlying principle upon which it is built. Here’s one:
WHEN NORTHERN HEMISPHERE VULTURES AND SOUTHER HEMISPHERE VULTURES MEET. This would have two vultures circling in opposite directions smashing into each other midair. This is based on the old concept that things spin in different directions in different hemispheres. But is that true? And does it affect birds as well as water down a drain? And if so, why would Southern birds and Northern birds meet? Are they at the equator? When you have to ask that many questions, you have a bad cartoon.
• Okay, here’s one that I don’t think is funny now, but may become funny to me one day:
Imagine type at a cocktail party. One letter in a couple says to another couple of letters, “Yes, Sans was my maiden name. But now I’m Goudy Sans-Serif.”
• Let me finish with this one. I can’t remember what it means. All I know is that I wrote down: JESUS/SKIPPY
So you see, we just don’t draw up everything that pops into my head. There are scum traps. Thanks for letting me clean them out. Maybe I’ll do it regularly.
Till next time ... Stay Loose.
Loose Parts Blog
Sunday, March 8, 2009
