4/20

Director Troy has written a really touching piece about the events in Colorado 10 years ago.

I highly recommend it.

ALL HAIL KEEPER

It is with great fanfare and other such things that I announce the winner of the 2nd Froynlaven Reader Participation Contest (the one with a real prize). The winner is:

KEEPER! KEEPER! KEEPER!

He swept all the categories. (True, he was the only submission...but...he has won! He's won!

What did he win? Keeper has won an autographed Freakazoid Season 2 DVD!

And why did he win. Well, just look at this:

I know you all join me is saying, "Well done, Keeper."

Unfortunately...and I hate to be a nudge about this...but I couldn't help but notice Keeper is also wearing a Freakazoid T-Shirt. I don't think it's an official Warners Licensed Freakazoid T-Shirt either. Which is too bad because Keeper is probably going to go to jail once the people at Warners find out. They are not to be trifled with. Trust me.  I knew this old lady once, she was like, 100 years old and she really liked Freakazoid and she got a shirt similar to that and Warners found out and they threw her in jail. And she was like, 100 years old or something! Another time, I knew this 4 year old boy and his dad got him a Freakazoid T-Shirt like that and Warner found out and they had him thrown in a juvenile work camp. And he was only like 4 years old! And those are just human people I'm talking about. Once, these old folks knitted a sweater for their dog and it had the Freakazoid logo on it and Warners found out and they had the dog put down and they made the old folks watch. So...

ANTHONY NEWLEY SINGS FREAKAZOID CONTEST

Hey all, we've just returned home from our 1,700 mile Northern California Easter Break. That's a lot of driving. I wasn't going to put this post up until 9pm pdt, but I fear I won't be up till then.

So, please provide your links to your submission in the comments section and let's see...

The prize is real this time. 

Paul

EXTRA BONUS BLOG!

So, I already blogged today(see below)...but, here I am again. My wife is going through our closets looking for stuff for our trip and she came across some photos of my going-away party at Warner Brothers Animation.

I figure...what the heck. Here are a few of them...

Warners was a great time and I worked with great people. Let's look at the first pick, eh?

Here's Joe Leahy (our announcer), Jonathan Harris (Professor Jones), Me and John McCann. As I recall, we were had all done massive amounts of shooters.

Greg Shepherd, John McCann, Me, Doug Langdale and Spike Brandt prepare to burn the pilot script for the Daffy Duck Prime-Time show. We had all worked months on the project. Jamie Kellner didn't like it. In all honesty, it was the best thing we had done at Warners.

Greg Shepherd was our assistant on Freakazoid and Daffy. Some of you may recognize his likeness from the episode, "Island Of Dr. Mystico." Greg is now very wealthy and important.

John and I with our amazing editor Al Breitenbach. John and I always called him, "Uncle Al." Without his lunacy, Freakazoid would never have been any good.

PADDY CHAYEFSKY AS PROPHET

When I was around 17, I went to a movie with a buddy. The movie was NETWORK, and it remains one of my all time favorites...if not my absolute favorite. (This top spot always waffles between DR. STRANGELOVE, 2001, & MY FAVORITE YEAR.)

As I sat in that darkened theater as a bright-eyed youth, I became creeped out as NETWORK unspooled before me. It wasn't the movie I thought it was going to be. It was worse...and better. It made me super uncomfortable. A movie had never done that to me. NETWORK was a horror movie. I saw most of the people in it as monsters. Unreal monsters.

Now in middle age, I have met and worked with most of the archetypes. They are quite real, I assure you. And if I haven't most of my friends have. 

NETWORK tells the tale of television gone awry. More to the point, it tells the tale of popular culture gone awry. As a teenager I took comfort in my perception that it was pure fantasy. 

I am now convinced that screenwriter, Paddy Chayefsky, was a prophet. Not only have we arrived at his television nightmare, we have surpassed it. 

In the story, a stodgy network news program is turned into pop culture entertainment. I remember thinking that would never happen. Boy, was I wrong.

Paddy Chayefsky imagined a world in which most of the television shows were reality based. Boy, was he right. 

Chayefsky portrayed a world in which popular culture had become nothing more than collective, creepy voyeurism.

He wrote about a world filled with TV Psychologists, Psychics, Advice Experts and Geeks. I'm telling ya, the man knew.

If you haven't seen NETWORK in a while...or have never seen it at all...get it. Watch it. 

Maybe it's time to be mad as hell...and not take it anymore.

The family and I will be driving up the coast of California for the next 8 days. I shall return with the special 9PM (pdt)  blog on Sunday, April 19th so ya'll can provide your Youtube links for the big contest.

Peace and Happy Easter

THE THREE STAGES OF A STAR'S HOLLYWOOD CAREER

Are as follows:

1. The Beginning.

2. The Middle.

3. The Children's Book.

This highly profound thought hit me while spending lonely hours practicing my puppetry in a dark, empty studio last week. It's hard to write down thoughts because they're so brief and shoot into our mind from out of nowhere. But the process went something like this...

"I'm hungry. It's dark in here. My shoes feel funny. The floor in here is very flat. I wonder if they paid to make it that flat or just lucked out. I wonder if there's someone who's paid to make floors flat. It's dark in here. Maybe I should write a children's book. I'm hungry."

I rolled the idea of a Children's Book in my mind for a while and then quickly decided against it. "I'm not that washed up yet. I still have a few good years left in me. Maybe in a few years."

It seems when an actor has nothing left to do, they write a Children's Book. I don't know why this is. 

It makes me feel sorry for kids that they're forced to read books written by people who are too tired or depressed to do anything else. Or worse, read a book by a celebrity who has a lot to say about social issues and can only say them in a Children's Book. These books are usually titled something like, 'Mr. Higgly and The Lonely Tree.'  Or, 'Clucky, The Duck With A Sideways Waddle.' (These books are usually about being kind to people who are different, misunderstood or have disfigurements.)

A few years ago, Madonna wrote a children's book. It was something about a man who had apples. I read it to my daughter one night. We haven't looked at it since. My daughter was too young to realize that it really wasn't about apples but something much more important. I was old enough to realize it wasn't about apples but couldn't quite figure out what that much more important thing was. But I know this: when I think of wholesome and inspirational messages for children, Madonna is always top on my list.

Search any kids section of a book store and you will find the carcasses of Children's Books written by celebrities in this third stage of their career. 

Curiously, some of these books come with a quote from a child psychologist. Something like, "In Bunny Num Num's Cotton Caper, TV's Donny Most from Happy Days has managed to magically convey the importance of Social Justice and Liberation Theology in this story of a spirited Bunny who's just trying to sell his cotton to a finicky pig."

Usually, however, there is no underlying message to these books and just lazy, third stage career prose. A good example is Abe Vigoda's Children's Book, Funny Tree. "Funny Tree was hungry. Who had lunch for Funny Tree? Mike did!" See? What's all that about?

I think probably the best explanation for why third stage career celebrities write Children's Books is because...truth be told...most childrens' books are shamefully stupid. 

Come on. I'm a dad. When my daughter was two, I spent countless hours reading her things I couldn't believe someone got paid to write. Sometimes, there were only two or three words per page. Sometimes there were only four pages. That's 12 words! In a book. 

I always try to think how a 12 word book comes to be. Does a writer come up with those twelve words and then look for an illustrator to bring them to life? How do you pitch a 12 word book to a publisher? Do you only give them two or three words for fear that if you give them all 12 they might steal your story? How does that work?

I notice there's always a photo of the author on the back cover and a little bio. "Ethel Wenz-Loopine is the author of numerous 12 word Children's Books. Her trilogy Spider's Big Day, Spider Takes A Nap, and Spider Sees His Reflection have sold over 8 million copies and been printed in every known language. Ms. Wenz-Loopine lives on a 100 acre farm and drives a different expensive car for every day of the week."

Hmmm. Maybe I will write that book.

WHERE THE HECK HAVE I BEEN?

I meant to blog. I really did. I super, really did. 

However, I didn't anticipate that my every waking hour would have been filled with a desperate panic that my "O" and "E" mouth shapes weren't up to snuff. Until they were, blogging would have to wait.

We wrapped the Henson puppetry gig last night and...my "O" and "E" shapes never got much better. The good part is, I don't have to panic about it anymore, though. Whew.

After having spent the better part of two weeks entombed in a dark studio, I am once again a child of the light. 

We only filmed for two days, with two days of rehearsal before that. A week prior to that I was in the studio every day practicing. And practicing. And practicing. My wrists are numb. 

We used Henson's awesome digital puppetry system. It's an amazing technology. Seeing folks like Drew Massey and Tyler Bunch operate their rigs is akin to watching Vladimir Horowitz play the piano. 

Me? Uhhh. If you like Chopsticks....

Anyway, time to restart the blogging train...

A Reminder: don't forget the CONTEST. Entries are due Sunday the 19th.

Okay then...

Nice to blog to you again.