Hello again, everybody. It’s the girl they call “Moose” for reasons they never bother telling me. Uncle Fun really should be writing this, instead of me. However, he’s begged off, saying that he’s far too busy with his duties as the honorary mayor of Funsville. Today (supposedly), he has to oversee the distribution of the annual Lou Grant land grants, in honour of Ed Asner’s birthday. I highly doubt that such an occasion even exists—but stranger things have come to pass in that weird burg.

I think Uncle Fun is just using any excuse he can get for ducking out of explaining his part in the story I’m about to tell you. It all started (as they say in the storytelling business) when I went to take my cat Dom to the vet for his annual check-up. (Dom, by the way, is short for “Dominant Life Form in the Household”, which, as any of you who’ve ever had a cat will know, is just another way of saying “cat”.) Ever the soul of generosity, good old Uncle B. Fun offered to save my family a costly vet bill by doing the exam himself.  When I quizzed him about his credentials, he boasted of his extensive experience volunteering on weekends with the Ladies’ Auxiliary Veterinary Corps at the Funsville Park Petting Zoo. I let the matter rest there, not wishing to hear what kind of experience this actually involved. Sparky also offered to assist, claiming to be familiar with the details of a standard veterinary check-up. I didn’t really want a clarification on that one, either.

Dom’s check-up didn’t get off to the kind of start we all might have hoped for. In fact, it got off to this kind of start:

 

Things might have gotten a little better from there…if only Sparky’s aim had been a little better.

 

 

The next thing I knew, I was on the receiving end of some decidedly second-rate first aid.

 

 

I’d like to say it all ended well. I’d like to say a lot of things, but that one isn’t any more true than the rest of them. Between Dom wielding his claws like spokeshaves and Sparky doing his David vs. Goliath act on me with that hypodermic, I have enough stitches in me that I could change my name to Raggedy Ann. Not that I’m likely to. I have enough trouble with the name everybody here’s hung on me—even if they never tell me why.

Moose

Vasco da Gama, episode #7 (or, “The Conquistadors of Space”)

     Every now and then, I get a hankering to write comedy sci-fi. Then I write some, and remind myself why I only get the hankering every now and then. I can’t decide whether this is because I don’t like science fiction enough, or because I don’t hate it enough. I like science fiction for its element of “let’s pretend”, but I also know that sci-fi requires you, at least temporarily, to believe in some pretty ridiculous things. Zombies. Time travel. Ordinary people flying through space at speeds that would give ordinary people the worst case of motion sickness ever. William Shatner as a writer. William Shatner as an actor. William Shatner, period.

     My point here is that taking ridiculous things seriously is where comedy goes to die. An amoral robot dictator is hilarious when it’s Bender from Futurama. When it’s Stephen Harper…not so hilarious, really.

     So, this episode of Vasco got the sci-fi out of my system for a while. “Not nearly long enough”, say those of you who’ve heard any of the episodes of Science Boy vs. Professor Proteus which have links from other entries on this blog. I won’t argue that one with any of you. Fans of S.B. vs. P.P. (the law of averages says there should be one or two) will note that this week’s Vasco features the first appearance of Professor Proteus. They’ll also probably be grateful for the improvement in him over the years.

     I don’t know if they’d also be grateful for a Professor Proteus origin story (of sorts), but here goes. It all started with a thing my brother and I dreamed up to explain away the incomprehensible yet still trivial mischances that life has to offer. TV on the fritz? Professor Proteus must be jamming the signal with his thought control ray. Car won’t start? Professor Proteus is obviously testing his remote-controlled deep space energy-draining device on the battery. Lose a sock in the wash? Professor Proteus drew it to an alternate dimension, where he’s creating a fearsome behemoth out of loose laundry held together by static electricity.

     All that aside, it stands to reason that, with Science Boy and Professor Proteus appearing in this episode of Vasco, it’s sort of a lost “first” episode of Science Boy vs. Professor Proteus. Well, not exactly. Science Boy and Professor Proteus don’t even appear in the same scene together. Nope—not even once. For reasons I couldn’t defend even if I could remember them, I chose not to overdub one of the voices, or write the dialogue so that I could switch back and forth between them. Maybe I’ll write another show someday to explain why this all came about. Perhaps Professor Proteus zapped me with his Anti-Character-Doubling Beam.  

     There’s a bit of doubling going on in the structure of the episode as a whole, though. Not only is the “Misadventures With Rob” part of this episode a science fiction tale, so is the “Vasco da Gama” part. I attribute this to my ongoing and inexplicable fascination with bizarre futuristic updatings of historical and/or quasi-historical figures, most notably the epic exercise in almost-good-but-nearly-never-quite-bad-enough-to-be-so-bad-it’s-good known as Rocket Robin Hood.

     There—I’ve said it—I’m a Rocket Robin Hood junkie. Make of that what you will, but beware a mighty blow from my electro-quarterstaff. And before I go off on a tangent about whether the Maniacal King Tut of the Planet Nilor is a more worthy opponent for Rocket Robin than the Wicked Sheriff of N.O.T.T., I should just put up the link so you can listen to…

Vasco da Gama, episode #7

 

 

 

     Once in a blue moon, Uncle Fun, Sparky, and the rest of their cohort let me use this space, ostensibly in the interest of equal time, but really because they can’t think of anything to say. This week, they’re all too busy—Funsville has been wrapped up in preparations for the annual Joe Flynn’s Birthday Jubilee. What with all and sundry running around quacking “What? What? What?” at one another, it always makes for more work than anyone anticipates, and far more work than anyone really wants to do.

     All of which leaves me wondering what to do myself, which in turn gets me thinking about how it all started for me.

     By “me”, I mean “me” of course, and by “it”, I mean work in the wonderful world of almost completely obscure entertainment and smaller-than-small-time show business. I came to this game by way of the recording studio, so when I decided to make the switch from voice acting to face acting (what a word to give it in my case!), I had no idea what to do with my hands. My extensive training behind the microphone (almost seventeen minutes, non-consecutively) had already taught me not to do anything even remotely like this:

 

     The worlds of stage, film and television are not nearly so sensitive to the effects of overzealous gestural flourishes, mostly because boom mike operators are careful to keep their expensive instruments well clear of even the most windmill-like of emotive flailing. Even though there usually aren’t boom mikes on stage, theatres do have expensive lighting instruments—but they’re generally hung far out of accidental slapping range for actors of my limited height and jumping ability.

     Still, the question remained when I began my training as the kind of actor you have to look at as well as listen to (seventeen minutes and ten seconds, non-consecutive, to date and counting):

WHAT DO I DO WITH MY HANDS?

     Years upon years of classes (mostly missed), rehearsals, shows, and cab rides to and from cast parties have yet to yield me a satisfactory answer. All I’ve managed to gather is a consensus of opinion among a number of broadly-defined groups with interests relating to the performing arts. Here they are, for the sake of posterity and the furtherance of knowledge, but mostly because it helps to fill space and kill some time:

 

Directors: I don’t care what you do with your hands, as long as you don’t put them in your pockets.

Stage Managers: I don’t care what you do with your hands, as long as you don’t drop the props.

Certain Cast Members: I don’t care what you do with your hands, as long as you keep them to yourself during rehearsals.

Certain Other Cast Members: I don’t care what you do with your hands, as long as you do it at my place tonight.

Members of Set, Lighting, Sound, and Other Backstage Crews: I don’t care what you do with your hands, as long as it isn’t something a member of our union should be doing.

Costume Designers: I don’t care what you do with your hands, unless I have to measure you for gloves.

Hair and Makeup Crews: I don’t care what you do with your hands. We don’t deal with them.

Agents: I don’t care what you do with your hands, as long as they sign the contract so I get my fee.

Audiences: Actors have hands?

 

     And that’s the sum total of what I know about what to do with my hands—when I'm performing, at any rate (and the rates I'm willing to perform for are ridiculously low). As for the rest of my time, I probably shouldn’t have put my hands on a keyboard to write this thing, but what else am I going to do before dawn on a Friday morning in November?

     Okay, a lot of things, but none of them fit in right now with my busy schedule of insomnia.

 

Vasco da Gama, episode #6 (or, “The Maltese Vasco”)

     This, folks, is the episode where Vasco da Gama becomes Vasco da Gama.

     Maybe I should say “the episode where Vasco da Gama becomes VASCO DA GAMA”, just to emphasize it. After five episodes, we were starting to get comfortable enough with doing a half-hour comedy show to throw out all the rules we’d set up for it. From here on in, the series is all about identifying our own rules, breaking them, and stomping on the broken pieces just to make sure everybody saw what we did, so they could tell on us.

     It’s been twenty years, so there’s no sense waiting around for anyone to tell on us—I’ll do it myself. First of all, the show doesn’t open with the familiar Vasco theme song…although it does open with a better explanation of Vasco’s basic premise than any we’d come up with so far. That figures. It also figures that the episode of the “Vasco da Gama” sitcom that we wedged into the middle of this story is tighter and better paced than any of its predecessors.

     It really also figures that this episode full of rule-breaking is the one that introduces one of Vasco’s character-defining obsessions: his professional rivalry with (read, “hatred of”) Christopher Columbus. No, I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me sooner, but you can bet I used the idea every chance I got after that. It is a sitcom, after all…well, the bit with Vasco in it is, anyway…what I mean to say is that the part of Vasco da Gama where Vasco da Gama plays Vasco da Gama is a sitcom, as opposed to the part where Vasco da Gama plays himself, which is to say Vasco da Gama, but doesn’t play Vasco da Gama, in the sense of Vasco da Gama playing Vasco da Gama…oh, the heck with this; I’ve painted myself into a corner and I know it. You figure it out.

     There’s a lot more that I could say about this episode, but since the whole thing is about stuff you didn’t see coming, that’d spoil the surprise, now wouldn’t it? Go ahead—click on the link. You can always ask me about anything that piques your curiosity by writing in the lonely empty “comments” section at the bottom of this post.

Vasco da Gama, episode #6

    Okay, I’ll tell you ONE thing. Around the 7:30 mark, you’ll hear a rather peculiar proposal for funeral arrangements. It’s not really meant to be a joke—this is more or less how I want to go.

     Hm…maybe you won’t be so eager to ask me anything more when you find out what I’m talking about there. Sorry about that.