I continue slowly catching up on Sketchwar commentary. I think we all hated this topic — not Oprah-level hate, but hate nonetheless. It’s hard to predict which topics are going to be agonizing for the Sketchwar types….
 
 
“Clean Bill of Health”
Mr. Coyote’s comment on this was, “I think there are two good sketches that could be made from this mess, but I don’t have either of them.”

And maybe that’s so. While I appreciated “barbers do liposuction” as a concept, the execution pretty much just grossed me out. Maybe I’m not familiar enough with traditional barber shops to be amused by the surgical variation on the place.

Then there’s the news segment — again, I think there’s the start of a good concept in there. Making fun of corrupt politicians is always gold, and rampant organ piracy is awesome in a “Modest Proposal” sort of way. But then, I don’t think the segment really tops the setup — it just explains the concept, gets one good dig against Ted Kennedy in there, and stops.

As far as I can tell, the third chunk has the most potential — it could be one of those sketches that takes the basic high concept (“barbers perform surgery”) and makes an interesting scene out of it (“reluctant couple gets medical care at the barber shop”). I liked Johnny’s bedside manner, and I liked how flummoxed the situation made Lisa.

I’m not sure exactly how you would have expanded the third chunk to the whole scene, but I think that would be the best route to go with the material.
 
 
“Stuck Between a Rock and a Bitch of Gurney”
This is an odd one. It didn’t make me laugh much, but it held my attention, as the kids say, liek whoa. Just the fact that such horrible physical mishaps could happen to these poor patients at any time was enough to keep my eyes on the page. And the tense, miserable, overcrowded hospital room was (knock on wood) so far outside my experience that the setting was really novel and engaging.

Basically, the whole time I wasn’t so much “full of chuckles” as I was “queasy and horrified”, but I get the feeling that this was completely intentional on Lynn’s part.

The sketch didn’t seem to have much shape to it — the incidents could have been rearranged in a different order without changing the sketch much — but I don’t know if that hurts the sketch much. It might be a better sketch if it had an arc — say, the things Alberto has to deal with get awful-er and awful-re — but I think this one isn’t so much about its plot. It’s just there to convey a setting, a really horrible setting.
 
 
“Medicine of the Future”
Well, this is also an odd one. I know I wrote this whole sketch just so I could include the line, “I’m going to have cancer for three days?” I sort of built the sketch around it, IIRC.

I come from a family full of doctors, so I wind up hearing the other end of medicine — the peevish patients who repeatedly demand to see the attending physician (i.e. the supervisor) for their sprained pinky. Couple that with the fact that nobody seems to have any respect for the progress that medicine has made (no, I don’t want to time-travel back to the 19th century, because, hello!, I don’t want to die of cholera), and I saw the potential for comedy.

I don’t think I quite got there. Like I said, this sketch was basically an excuse to include one funny line, so I spend about a page laying pipe so I can get to that line. There’s lots of cute sci-fi talk, but not a lot of funny.

At the end of the sketch, I pull another crazy Ivan and veer off into an “sexy-robot salesman” ad. I don’t know if that was particularly hilarious, but it was a neat twist for the end of the sketch.

I continue slowly catching up on Sketchwar commentary.  Ah, I was back in Austin and back on the scene this week.
 
 
“Cicero and Brutus”
I admit, this didn’t strike me as the most promising comic material — a post-game-style interview following the assassination of Julius Caesar — but it starting winning me over in short order.  “Sixty-to-one power play” is just plain funny, as is thanking Jupiter for your victory.

I was a little confused by the prepared statement — I understood what was happening on-screen, I just assume that it’s a reference to maybe some Michael Vick interview I have managed to not-see.  I might trim the Visigoths bit.

But generally, I was pleased with the rest of the sketch.  I love that Brutus manages to translate absolutely everything about classical Rome into jock-talk.  “I’m going to Crete!” is a ridiculously cheesy ending, but this sketch should not end any other way.
 
 
“God’s Worst Nightmare”
It has been a long time since Sketchwar has had a crazy-ass dream sequence, so kudos for giving us a real mess-with-your-head format.  Frankly, I’d hold off on the ‘it’s a dream’ reveal — currently, you have Letterman say that about fifteen seconds in; you might do better to just make the audience wonder what the hell’s happening for the first minute or so.

I find it funnier when God tries to answer everybody’s questions, as he does on Yo!  MTV Raps.  I kind of wish he’s started to give an answer regarding the platypus, but gotten switched over to The View before he could complete it.

I think things start to come apart with the O’Reilly Factor bit.  I don’t see any reason to keep Jesus-as-production-assistant, and then… well, I don’t envy you the task of ending this sketch.  It’s basically a ‘list sketch’ that’s just a bunch of people asking God questions, and there’s no obvious way to make such a sketch feel like it’s ended.

I suppose “God destroys the media” is as natural an end as any, but you have to get through a lot of unfunny exposition to get there.  Honestly I might just cut the “it’s a dream” conceit entirely.  Just make it “somebody is screwing with God” throughout, and then make the Couric interview as agonizing for God as possible (I think that’s your arc here:  make the talk-show segments more and more annoying as time goes by) until God gets out of it by un-making the entire news-media industry.
 
 
“The Fightin’ Penguins”
You know, Joss Whedon has a saying, along the lines of:  “If you’ve got a story, you don’t need jokes.  If you’ve got no story, no amount of jokes will save you.”  One thing I’m very slowly learning in Sketchwar is that, for sketch comedy, it’s the exact opposite.

This is the first of my own sketches that seems a lot *better* to me now that I’ve had a few months to not look at it.  And this sketch is all jokes.  It’s just one part “really horrible things a victorious quarterback could say” to one part “amusingly eloquent ways he could say them”.  No story.  No characters with objectives.  It’s just two to three minutes of a guy saying things that are funny, and I think it works a lot better than my other, more drama-informed sketches.

I continue slowly catching up on Sketchwar commentary. This week, I got back from Chicago and immediately took sick with bronchitis. Fun, fun, fun. So, no sketch from me the week of 5/6/09 either.
 
 
“Virgin Mother’s Day”
Definitely a good concept here, and mostly a good delivery. For a second draft, I’d recommend creating a clearer ‘arc’ to the complaints about the children. First there’s a minor complaint. Then there’s a heavier complaint. Then an even more serious one. In fact, the women could be deliberately trying to outdo each other (“Oy! You think *you* have troubles?!”) in ‘My Kids Suck’ poker.

I really dug the right turn into surreal-land at the end. I appreciated the fact that you brought in the robots early and let the audience wonder what the hell was up for a bit. And the payoff, where they all speculate as to the symbolic significance of the fight scene, felt very entertaining.

I love it when comic characters keep resolutely being themselves under suddenly-changed circumstances.
 
 
“Chocolate?”
I don’t usually get hung up on logistics (at least, I don’t *think* I do), but this time, I couldn’t get away from this question: why would Roger go to his mother’s bedroom? Wouldn’t he see all the accoutrements laid out for an elaborate, romantic, Valentine’s-Day tryst, and… well… leave?

I dunno, I guess I didn’t get this one. I like the basic idea of the fed-up mother bailing on her family and spending Valentine’s Day in Hawaii, but… I dunno. The long build-up to the discovery? Not so much ‘funny’ as ’setup’. Then the antics with the blow-up doll and the flash-bulb? Not so much ‘funny’ as ‘confusing’. And then the long, recorded tirade from the mother? Not so much ‘funny’ as ‘angry’.

Even the closing button — while it was a nice callback to the box of chocolate that Roger brought — felt a little weak, humor-wise.

Ah well. Mr. Stinton has written sketches I’ve liked before, and he shall write sketches I like again. This one just didn’t work for me for some reason.
 
 
“The Line Between Mother and Other”
Aha! Good direction to go with this. Over-the-top mommiphilia and this culture’s They Live-like “BREED AND CONSUME” messages are ripe for derision.

I have mixed feelings about the sketch. I loved the general shape of it. The setup, with Michelle banned from the “Mothers” party section with the good food, is perfect. I love that you went for the crazy, over-the-top fight like on the “Taxes” entry. And the “barren and loving it!” twist was really strong. You might could have gotten from beat to beat more quickly and efficiently, but you definitely have the right events happening in the right order.

That said, I think this sketch got a little hamstrung by preachiness. Basically, if you have a party where the non-mothers are segregated to a dingy ghetto, you’re making your point loud and clear. Likewise, if you have Michelle try to rouse an “Others’ Rebellion” to get the decent food, that announces a message very loudly.

Basically, once you’ve got this metaphor factory in place, you don’t want to cover the same ground in your dialog. Instead, you can (and should) just focus on the story. Michelle doesn’t need a speech about the iniquities of the matriarchy — just let Michelle focus on her quest for crabcakes. Jeannie’s dripping contempt and Lynette’s thorough ’sniff test’ will convey volumes.

Still, I think there’s a good sketch in here. A little more speed and a little less preaching, and I think you’ve got something.

Side note:
The following items are inherently funny: azaleas, diaper genies (when airborne), Crazy Aunt Bea.
The following items are capable of reducing me to “aw whoozza cute widdow wuggums”-style baby talk: German Shepherds.

I continue slowly catching up on Sketchwar commentary. I took this week off because I got face-malleted with a cold, and recovered from that just in time to fly off to Chicago. That plus my usual bent towards laziness equalled no sketch from Peter.
 
 
“Team Acme”
Hmm. Well, I give this one full marks for setting up a Rube Goldberg coyote-mishap worthy of Termite Terrace. But beyond that, adding the color commentary didn’t do much for me. As far as I could tell, the commentators didn’t do much beyond describe what was happening on the screen, which put a low ceiling on how funny they could get.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a funny sketch in here — I just think the commentators need to surprise me a bit. Maybe they persistently guess wrong about what the two creatures have in mind. Maybe they drag in wacky historical details and background trivia. Hell, I don’t know, maybe there’s weird unresolved sexual tension between the commentators.

I think the sketch is almost there; the commentators just need to do something beyond ‘describing the action’.
 
 
“¡El Ocho Es Muy Caliente!”
First, good on you for getting to the comedy quickly. One quick TV intro, and we’re off to the Chihuahua-diderod. And then, we move quickly to the croquet match, where the Xtreme/British conflict is a fine comedy generator. But then the braiding contest? Eh, not so good. There doesn’t seem to be a joke there beyond, “Wouldn’t it be strange to have a braiding contest?”

I think you could get a whole sketch out of those two OMG EXTREEEEEME hosts trying to comment on a croquet match. I really like watching those two get flustered by the genial English lawn game, and it seems like the hosts could have a bit of an arc to how they handle the situation.

(Wait, The Ocho was from Dodgeball, right? Ah well — easy enough to use a different name.)
 
 
“Bonfire of the Academies”
Yay Bob and Jim! Ms. Raica, any time you want to bring those two back to Sketchwar, they are welcome on my computer screen. And I love that they’re both bitter about the ridiculously small-time gig, but in unique (& conflicting) ways. (Side kvetch: Jim doesn’t need all those wrylies. We get that he’s bitter.)

I might cut the ball-gag joke. I’m not sure why, though. I suspect that having one source of zany (the bonfire-leaping) is fine, but adding additional sources of zany (ballgag, etc.) is too much of a muchness, unless you’re going for balls-to-the-wall, brain-exploding absurdity. Basically the number of zany-sources in a sketch should be zero, one, or infinity — not two.

I feel ambivalent towards the event itself. I get that it’s a neat little satire on college-professor life, but I feel like the sketch is really about Jim and Bob. When we were apart from Jim and Bob, I was watching jokes that I could appreciate intellectually, but didn’t really care about.

That said, nude-Jim taking out the competitor was a great way to wrap up the story. You might try to trim down the material from “the mob pursues Jim into the cornfield” to the end, but the general shape of it — Jim faceplants by the table, Jim voices his complaints, Bob says that last line — feels sound.

I continue slowly catching up on Sketchwar commentary. If I recall correctly, “Radio Serials” was my suggestion. It’s been a favorite format of mine since we improvised the “Killer Robots” radio serial at the Hideout Theatre way back when. I’m eager to see what the Sketchwarriors came up with for this….
 
 
“Future Man, Episode 1: Google”
Generally, I was really happy with this one. It captures the ambience of old-timey radio drama nicely, and the “time-travel to the studio producing the time-travel show” conceit did a good job of tying my brain in a knot.

My only kvetch is that after Future Man says “he’s willing to guarantee a share of the pie when the whole Internet thing hits,” it feels like we’re done. I’m not saying it needs a blackout (“fadeout?” “silent-out?”) right then, but the rest of the sketch could be *very* streamlined. Let Future Man give a few more details about the business arrangement, give the radio people a few lines to wonder where the script is coming from, and then boom — send Future Man on his way.

You’d lose the radio profanities and possibly the ‘that was the commercial’ bit. I like that latter bit, but I think it’d be a net win — you’d wind up with a shorter, funnier sketch after trimming it down.
 
 
“The Silver Stoat”
Ha! Well-played, Mr. Coyote, giving us a scene in a radio station. And damn if it ain’t soaking in ambience.

And yes, just as soon as we get comfortable with the romanticism of old-timey radio, you hit us with that “fortified with cocaine” bit. Well-timed, and it got a big laugh out of me.

From there, it just gets better as the second foley artist botches everything. I’m not sure why it’s so funny, though I guess watching a precision operation fall to pieces + everyone frantically trying to save it = hilarity.

And then — gah! If you’d just kept playing out the foley artist’s doomed, misguided love for cocaine-infused bourbon, this would’ve been absolutely perfect. Instead, it looks like you backed off of that so you could play out the rest of the radio-serial episode. Grr!

You did do a fine job of getting to the end of the show-within-a-show episode, but it looks like you sacrificed the natural conclusion of the *sketch*, which probably comprised the studio burning down and the foley artist fleeing the scene with a bottle of his precious, precious bourbon.

I’m sure there are a dozen other ways to end the sketch, but really, anything that took the comic twist you introduced to its natural conclusion would have worked. There is a very, very good sketch in here.
 
 
Boring Science Fiction Theatre, parts 1, 2, and 3
Wow. Nicely-done horror this time. In fact, everybody is really nailing the ambience of their chosen genres on this one, and that makes me very happy.

I really like this concept; it’s simple and effective.

On the first episode, I might pare down the initial description of the meal and the bickering over whether to get dessert, but both of those are clear parodies of genre conventions and probably work just fine in performance. I might cut the “Zombie Moth” excerpt. Yes, it reflects the “next time on <blah>” convention, but it doesn’t really add anything to the title joke.

Second episode: “curséd” made me laugh, and the delivery was spot-on throughout. Yes of *course* he passes the necklace on to another doomed customer at the end. Again, I’m not 100% on board for these excerpts from the following episode, although I like this one better than the “Zombie Moth” excerpt.

(Tell me there is a recording of this episode somewhere.)

And eh, the third one didn’t do it for me. I think the police chase was a little too exciting, as was Frankenstein’s dialog. I think at the very start I sorted out that it was going to be Frankenstein’s monster, only with a sandwich, and then the rest of the sketch didn’t really surprise me with any unexpected jokes.

Still, the first two were hilarious, so hats off to you, sir.
 
 
“Colonel Matt Mecury – Defender of Earth!!!”
I’m afraid I don’t have much of anything useful to say about this one. I think it’s got a little too much platform at the start; I’d get to “They’re live on the air, ma’am!” a bit quicker. Once you get to Dan and Ray trying to act out the episode while simultaneously fend off Bess, you’re golden.

Honestly, I might cut past the exposition about exactly what sort of altercation Bess and Dan are having, and go straight from the “It may have gotten me into bed” line to the series of seductive lines from Dan. You’d lose the cup advert and the “inflate” line, but you’d also lose a lot of explain-a-logging, and likely come out ahead. Likewise, I’d probably cut from “Damn, he works fast.” to the announcer’s wrapup.

The shape of the sketch is exactly right, there are just some lulls I want to skip past.
 
 
“Anything Goes on the Radios”
This one is pretty good as is, but I’m guessing if you’d simplified it down to “Bing Crosby hosts a Jerry-Springer-esque radio show” you would have been better off. I don’t think including the family listening at home really added much to the comedy, and it meant there was that much more platform to lay down at the start of the sketch.

Likewise, I don’t know if we gain much by having the show-within-the-show being obviously staged. Frankly, I would love to see a straight-up Jerry Springer episode hosted by the smooth, convivial Mr. Crosby.^[1]

That said, there’s still that kernel of Crosby-as-Springer in the center of this sketch, and I found that aspect of it really entertaining.
 
 
“Raoul and Dave Confuse the World, Episode 25″
On to mine.

It looks like I was the only one who didn’t put the format in its proper historical context. Instead, I used the theme as an excuse to play with a concept I’d already been working on here and here. I think that the market for radio serials is underserved, and the format is relatively easy to produce, so I test out a lot of story ideas in this format.

I dunno about this attempt, though. I think I’ve got a funny character going with Raoul, and a lightly amusing character dynamic going on between him and Dave. Generally, though, this came out pretty plotty, a bit confusing, and not so funny (á la “Grosvernor Square”). At least I tear through it pretty fast and end on an intriguing appearance from the Vatican.

Ah well. This was a neat little exercise in seeing what that particular concept can do in its simplest form.

_______
[1] Yes, I know that a Springer episode is mostly staged. I still think that having the foley artists fake the fighting adds some needless complexity and confusion to the sketch.

Wow.  So… um… it’s been three months since I’ve written any commentaries for Sketchwar.  The closest thing I’ve got to an excuse is “I was sick three times and I had a couple of dance weekends.”  It’s almost like this effort gained inertia from my inactivity.

But now, huzzah!  I’ve found myself with some extra time, so I’m puttering through these back issues.  First up is “The Taxman Cometh”.

Magical Audits, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4
This is a pretty straightforward take on the topic — what if magical beings had to suffer through tax audits?

It starts promisingly with Clark’s showdown with Death — it’s just great to see an ominous figure, somebody used to being in charge, get utterly flustered by circumstances foreign to his experience.

The next bit — the tooth fairy one — got a little bogged down in detail.  This isn’t a disaster; it just means that there’s a much shorter, much funnier sketch somewhere in this longer, logier one.  The ‘we’ve already met’ bit and the ‘all I want for Christmas’ jokes were cute, but the sketch might have been better served by beelining to the $275 million in expenses line.  That led into “things that happen to the Tooth Fairy” section, which was the funniest part.  Once that was done, it wandered off into the “incorporating in Delaware” section, which never quite gelled as a joke.  I feel like this one wanted to be chopped down to a blackout sketch.

Apparently, Mr. Coyote came to the same conclusion, because he followed up the first “Magical Audits” with several much shorter sequels.  I didn’t much go for the jokes, but that’s just me, and someone else’s mileage may vary.  I can say that the structure was dead-on — get in, ha-ha-ha, get out — and the variety of situations Clark gets into was perfect.

The leprechaun one is more stretched out.  Lucky’s history in the state department is more ‘intriguing’ than ‘funny’, but once we get to the “kids are after me” section, that gets us to a nice little reversal with Clark springing the two kids on him.  Again, there’s probably a shorter, funnier sketch in here that limits itself more strictly to cereal.

“Cause I’m the Taxman”
This one definitely takes the prize for setting.  Both Coyote and I went for staid, underdescribed tax-audit offices, but this was definitely something else.

Great bizarre opening and closing jokes.  In between, I’d try to beeline from “making a loophole for Tony” to “burning the bar” quicker.  Yes, seeing all the different ways lawmakers can be corrupt is fun, but nowhere near as fun as watching lawmakers-gone-wild throw around Molotov cocktails.

So maybe one deduction for Tony, another deduction for Paulie — something simpler than the Death Tax, I think, and then we’re good for the chanting and destruction, no?

“Mrs. Purcell”
This is a new experience for me — enough time has passed that I can read my own Sketchwar sketches with a somewhat more dispassionate eye than usual.

Occasionally for Sketchwar, and without really intending to, I’ll write a dramatic scene that isn’t actually funny.  On the other hand, there are other times where some drama seeps into a normal sketch and makes it more interesting without torpedoing the humor.  All in all, it’s an okay tradeoff, but it means I’m stuck with the occasional dud.

Unfortunately, I think this time I torpedoed the humor.  I had a solid sketch idea — man gets audited by his mother, hijinx ensue — but I wound up veering from standard borscht-belt sorts of jokes (‘you got rid of Aunt Vera’s present?’) to eerie, pained family arguments (‘I hate kids!’).  It was an uncomfortable read — which is certainly better than nothing, but not quite the hilarity one wants with sketch comedy.

[Side note:  this is mirrored on the Sketchwar site.]

I admit, this time around, it’s a little bit like kicking a three-legged dog. “Silent Scenes” was a brutal topic for pretty much everybody. We seem to do well with content topics; even if it’s a topic we know nothing about, or a topic that’s infuriatingly abstract, we can all still come up with something. If the topic is ‘write something in this format,’ then we (okay, I) get flummoxed. Odds are I should have imposed further restrictions on the topic for myself: “This will be a silent scene about <x>.”

Anyway, on to the scenes:

“Girth of a Nation of Dozens”
Wow. Well, this one takes the prize for “longest duration of time where I’d keep watching just so I could find out what the hell is going on.” Nothing funny happens for the first minute or so, and there’s no comprehensible conflict — I just see one weird thing after another. But it’s enough to hold my interest until the real fight starts. And then once the fight starts, it’s a simple, comprehensible conflict — group A versus group B — and it’s just surreal enough to keep me intrigued to the end.

It’s weird — this is a style of scene that just shouldn’t work for me at all. I don’t know if I’d say it was funny (although “yo mamma” was a great punchline), but it was worth my time to read it. Congratulations?

.

“Prank Warfare”
The nice thing about silent scenes in improv is that they force you to go simple. If you can’t *talk* about the conspiracy to hide the magic phlebotinum from the Rosicrucians, then, well, odds are your story isn’t going to be that detail-y. Instead, you’ve got simple, clear goals without a lot of distractions. This is often a good thing for improv — improv tends to get lost in details and tangents — but working silent might be an impediment to scripted sketch comedy, since killing the dialog removes one of your main tools, and nobody can *see* the performance in your script.

In any case, this one goes the ’simplicity’ route: it’s just two people playing pranks on each other over the course of their lives. As it is, it doesn’t really work for me, but I think it might be really close to being really funny. I think it just needs a slightly different arc. As it is, we arc from a very slight prank (glue in hair) to a slightly worse prank (cutting a hole out of jeans) to one substantial prank at the end (the condom). Maybe a different arc could work better?

One option would be to raise the stakes ridiculously over the course of the sketch (at the end, a medium-sized city gets nuked). Another option would be to get progressively more surreal, perhaps? Heck, even pranks involving increasing numbers of ferrets might could work.

And yes, I imagine the author of the sketch was thinking hard along those lines, but just didn’t find a way to make it work by the deadline.

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“Ire with a Muffin”
This one just confused me.

I never sorted out why Ben was staring at the clock or why he had this peculiar blind spot for the section of the table immediately in front of him. I never sorted out why the waiter was repeatedly ignoring Michelle and then refusing to give Ben water. Maybe if I re-read it a few times I could puzzle out what was going on with all of that — as is, I spent the whole sketch in a state of “Huh?” — and not in a pleasant, surreal sort of way, like with “Girth”.

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“Lead Foot”
Again, the silent format generally forces people to go really, really simple. In this case, we’ve got one joke: “speed controlled by aircraft” means “there’s a harrier jet waiting over the next hill to shoot any speeding cars”. The joke is perfectly paced, so it’s all down to whether you find that sight gag funny or not. It didn’t do much for me when I read it, but that’s just me, and maybe I’d like it better onscreen.

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“Caffeine is a Helluva Drug”
Hooray for a simple conflict! A guy wants his mug back. That sounds like a good silent scene to me.

I admit, I’d expect the scene to do some classic sort of heightening — the mug gets harder and harder to reclaim; the two men do ever-more devious things to reclaim the mug; different people wind up making off with his mug on a series of days — I was actually pleased that it took that left turn into “Barry has to hide a body” territory. I wasn’t 100% sure *why* Barry was hiding the body, but I was entertained enough not to care. Similarly, I wasn’t 100% sure why Hank was suddenly trying to kill Barry, but again: fun to watch, ergo don’t really care.

And yeah, having Hank head off to Starbucks at the end made sense. So it was a simple litle sketch with a few pleasant left turns. I enjoyed that.

Quick note: I like the “this is not his mug” beat on the *page*, but I’ve got a feeling it would look pretty confusing *onscreen*. Anyway, bits like that that aren’t quite cinematic should be easy to fix.

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“Radio Reception”
I’m of two minds about my sketch.

I like that I wrote something simple, and I feel like I’ve written something that *could* be funny. It could give a few performers who were gifted at physical comedy a chance to shine.

On the other hand, I’d rather write a sketch that’s funny on the page, so that it doesn’t *matter* if the performers are any good, and they can just rely on the quality of the material. As written, I think this sketch is elegant but not particularly funny.

The other problem is that radios are old technology. The audience will still understand what’s going on, but the more hipsterish types would never laugh at the sketch, because they’d be too busy signifying to their friends that they have *so much* contempt for something as embarrassingly ancient as a *radio*.

Priorities, don’t you know.

“CSI: Sesame Street”
Well, first off, setting a CSI on Sesame Street is the best idea any of us had this week, and all the muppets are perfectly cast. (I can only hope that someday we see Sam the American Eagle as a gruff police sergeant.) And taking us all the way through a CSI case was pretty ballsy.

In the end, I couldn’t follow the case in question (“Okay, there’s a book, and that’s somehow — and, wait, they find the killer dead? What?”), but the individual scenes ranged from “moderately funny” to “very funny”, and they felt like the sorts of scenes you’d expect from a bland CBS procedural. The potshot at TV-drama photo enhancements was good. The runner about Cookie Monster trying to quit his various vices was good. The nod to “one of these things is not like the others” was great.

So: plus points for funny, minus points for plot.

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“CSI: Supposably”
And then this one goes the opposite way: it attends closer to carefully seeing the plot through, but that leads to a sketch that feels longer and less funny than it should be.

Then again, part of that could be that I don’t follow CSI closely enough. It looked like most of the jokes there were digs at the conventions of the show. Some of them worked for me — especially the “Huh?” after each of Hilario’s peculiar one-liners; but others, like the physical business with forcing the door open, didn’t do anything for me. In particular, when the characters themselves call out that they’re making fun of CSI (“What do you think this is? A TV show?”), I find myself rolling my eyes a bit.

So: not quite my thing, but I suspect a CSI buff would get a lot more out of it.

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“CSI: Old Mill, North Carolina (SA-LOOT)”
Well, this is a nice change of pace. I rarely see this sort of slightly-altered reminiscence on Sketchwar, and I’d never have expected to see such a thing on CSI week.

Honestly, I don’t have much of anything helpful to say about this one. The “reaching for a brick” button struck me as a hair too cartoonish for the realistic setting. The Bob/Briggs exchange (“why they broke it, I think”/”There he goes again”) kind of muddles things a bit; it might be clearer to have Alice be the one that’s consistently amazed at the cops’ incompetence, and to have Bob be the one that’s consistently conciliatory.

Apart from those quibbles… no complaints. Nice, solid little scene.

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“CSI: Alaska” parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Well that’s interesting. I don’t think we’ve had a group of mini-sketches like this before. This one has a nice, simple concept: Levi Johnston kills off a series of CSI investigators. The first two bits were pretty run-of-the-mill potshots at the right-wing — I agree with the sentiments, but I’ve heard them *so many* times — but the third one breaks the pattern in a fun way.

And yeah, the fourth one felt like the right ending for it. So: only the third one made me laugh, but I have to admit this is solidly constructed, and it’s a neat experiment for Sketchwar.

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“CSI: Wittenberg”
*sigh*

So this week I set some sort of personal record for “quality differential between concept and execution.” There are a hundred million sketches you could write about a CSI team wandering through the works of Shakespeare, and… well, I didn’t pick the funny one.

I got stuck on Hamlet early on, and I started planning out this whole plot where it turns out ‘henbaning somebody’s ear’ is just an ordinary, non-fatal prank of the sort that Claudius *still* played on his older (older?) brother — *but*, Norwegian agents had somehow pre-dosed Hamlet, Sr. with something that interacted fatally with henbane. Result: Claudius is wracked with guilt about regicide, the Danish state is riv’n asunder, Norwegians come in and take over. And so it’s somehow up to Horatio (nope, couldn’t resist the name-coincidence) to unravel the whole thing.

Then I realized I didn’t want to re-write the entirety of Hamlet this week. So, I backed out of that plan and tried to write a quick blackout sketch that included an all-important pre-credits one-liner.

Meh. I’m amused by Hamlet getting accused of the murder, and I’m amused at the similarity between a Caruso one-liner and a rhymed, scene-ending couplet. I like that the ghost is fruitlessly trying to get Horatio’s attention. Apart from that? Swing and a miss, I’m afraid.

(Side note: I’ve been meaning to write sketches that would be easy to shoot or put onstage; didn’t happen this week, obviously.)

“This Is March”
Alas, I couldn’t quite get on-board with this one. The basic idea (“Wouldn’t it be funny if the Trojans and Spartans squared off in mascot-specific ways?”) maybe gets a wry chuckle out of me, but that’s about it. 300 references don’t really do it for me any more. On the plus side, even though I know nothing about Bill Raftery, Bill’s voice in this sketch did amuse me, for what it’s worth.

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“Basketball, Bullies and a Blue Freeze Pop”
Technical note: in non-dialog sections (that is, prose), try to break up big paragraphs, and generally avoid forms of “to be”. (I know it sounds silly, but it’ll force you to write simpler, more active descriptions.)

“Way Too Literal”
~ chortle ~

Ah, well — we all have our weeks where everything goes haywire. If it’s any consolation, I now want to see an animated cartoon all about the adventures of various bits of punctuation.

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“The Big Show”
Great scene-setting as always.¹ Nice touches with having the characters inherently skilled at aiming throws. Nice detail on the announcers’ coverage. Great that you build up tension in the game, and it’s really satisfying, seeing Myron make the shot from half-court.

The twist at the end strikes me as just okay. I think I get the joke — people in this family are great at throwing accurately from big distances, but crap at throwing at nearby targets — and it’s moderately amusing. Frankly, I think once Myron makes his shot you need to get to the end of the sketch *fast*.

Bah. “Make the end more funnier!” is not constructive criticism, is it? I can’t think of a better twist than the one you’ve got — maybe just make it happen a lot faster?

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“Statbot”
Yeah, one could argue that I’m kinda sorta ripping off “Pimpbot 5000″ here (especially with Weathertron). I figured giving the “pissy about March Madness betting” to an AI would be amusing enough. Given that I don’t know anything about basketball (note the fictional college names), I had to find *some* oblique way into this topic.

I dunno. I found a few sort of funny things to do with Statbot’s rage. I made a nice little detour with Statbot gambling with the weather AI. Nothing great here, but it keeps trucking along.

The only thing I really learned here is that it is a lot of fun to end a sketch with the line “Yeah. Wait, what?” Yes I’m ripping off the first act-out from a recent LOST episode, and no, I don’t care. I just love confusing the hell out of a character and then hitting the blackout before they can find any relief.

Side note: yes, I actually wrote an explicit “Beat” into this sketch. I’m going to try being (very) slightly more direct-from-the-pagey on Sketchwar entries, since these are for reading and not performance.

1. Although I’d offer the same advice I offered E. L. Raica about how to make the prose look more screenplay-like. Then again, you’ve got a produced *film* already, so take that with a decent-sized grain of salt.

“MacGruber?  Really?”
This one didn’t quite work for me.  (No worries, you’ve written sketches I’ve liked before and shall do so again.)  One of the inherent weaknesses of the “Really?” format is that if the verbal wit isn’t up to snuff, it just feels like an angry letter to the editor that accidentally got presented in sketch form.  Belushi’s line about ’seeing a dead guy’ made me laugh, but that was about it.  From then on, I was just listening to a rant.

As for the scene with Richard Dean Anderson and Will Forte tied to dynamite, I suspect I’m not really the target audience.  I can’t muster enough anger towards SNL (or, I suppose, towards Richard Dean Anderson) to really get into this revenge fantasy, and the image itself doesn’t strike me as inherently hilarious.

Finally, the opening bit with Belushi’s samurai struck me as kind of tacked on.

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“And now it’s time for…”
The only real question here is whether this a sketch of “wondrous glory” or “glorious wonder”.  It’s such a simple concept — the Samurai goes into modern I. T. — but it works perfectly.  From what I recall of the original sketches, you’ve structured it the exact same way as the original SNL sketches (which is great — if it ain’t broke, for god’s sake don’t try to fix it), and not only do the jokes work, but it gives the reader a warm and fuzzy feeling:  Belushi died way too young, and in a better world, we saw that samurai go on a ton more adventures.

The only suggestion I’d make is to somehow plant Danielle (and the Samurai’s attraction to Danielle) at the top of the scene, so that the “suggestive” line feels like a stronger payoff.  Oh, and maybe kill the “Asians are good with technology” joke — it’s cute enough, but it slows up the sketch’s momentum right at the end.

Side note:  as I said before, I really hope the cart is a Lone Wolf and Cub reference.

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“Emily Litella on Bernie Maddoff”
Bwah!  No useful commentary.  Got the original format down.

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“Roseanna Roseannadanna on the economy”
Less amused by this one, but perhaps this was a character that was mostly in the performance.  Were Rosanne Roseannadanna’s speeches really that long?

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“Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley”
Hmm.  Here’s another one that didn’t quite do it for me.

The intro worked well, with the apology to the two muggers from the Mission.  That was nice and twisted.  But then the section with Norm Coleman didn’t make me laugh.  I certainly *got* the joke, with Coleman forced to deal with a character played by Al Franken.  It seemed like there was a long stretch of exposition:  establishing that Coleman is suing over a contested election, establishing that Coleman recognized Smalley.  Once we’d gotten to “Coleman addresses his feelings”, we had some comic potential — maybe Coleman excoriates absolutely everyone?  I dunno.  I just don’t see the jokes here.

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“Live From New York, It’s Speed Dating”
Alas, the “Nicholas Fehn” section was lost on me.  (After reading this, I went to Hulu, looked up Nicholas Fehn, and discovered that odds are, the whole character is lost on me.)  But the bits before and after were fun.

For Phil, I think “hot monkey sex” was your strongest joke.  I don’t know if his section about The Incredibles and Chubby Hubby quite works, in that he’s suddenly trying to sabotage his own date.  IIRC typically Subliminal Guy would explain how he wanted a long-lasting relationship while subliminally telling the girl not to hold her breath.

The Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein section is probably the strongest of the three, because Frankenstein is just a perfect rule-of-threes punchline to every setup.  I’m not sure the ‘heart of a romantic’ pun works for the button (a pause, followed by “Oh, me get it.” seems like a really low-energy way to end the sketch) but I’m not sure what I’d replace it with.

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“Continental Sensitivity”
Perfect, perfect setup.  Often the funniest thing you can do with a character is put them in the worst possible situation and no, the Continental does not belong in a sexual-harrassment workshop.  (Well, he really *does*, but I mean… oh, you know what I mean.)

You get through the initial exposition promptly, which is good.  You make Pam a strong character who’ll clash with The Continental, and you even get a nice joke into the info-dump with the “court mandate” bit, so that’s also good.

And then it’s a perfect rule-of-three joke into the Continental’s first bit of insanity.  You’ve got this structured just right, with enough stretches of ‘normal dialog’ to set the stage for Walken to say something batshit-insane.  (Minor quibble:  is “in both cases” the appropriate phrase for Pam’s ‘quid pro quo’ line?  Seems like “in that case” would be the correct phrase….)

After that, I might have cut quicker from the “Don’t be silly” line to the start of the role-playing scene.  I really don’t want to see people have a dull argument about whether the Continental is offensive, and then whether they should start the scene.  The scene works pretty well, although actually seeing the girl pinned to the wall is perhaps creepy in the not-funny way.  (Did The Continental actually go that far in the original sketches?)

Then, Pam asking The Continental to teach a sexual-harrassment course was a perfect button.  (Although I didn’t get the ball-gown-glove joke.  Was I supposed to get it?)

All in all, though, it’s a very solid sketch.

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“The Night Watchmen”
Huh.  I always thought the point of the original Frankie and Willie sketches was that the two guys would complete sentences with words and phrases that *didn’t* quite make sense.  (“You know when you get a…”  “Ball-peen hammer?”  “Yeah!”)  And then, those suggestions would invariably lead to something painful and/or disgusting.

It seems like you took out the pain and/or disgust, and now the setup doesn’t quite work.  Maybe if the two guys had had to do increasingly-disgusting stuff to scrape by, you’d have something on that same topic that would feel truer to the spirit of the original.

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“Happy Fun Ba’al”
I’m not happy with my sketch this week, because I think I kind of missed the point of the topic.  Any time I mentioned to someone what the topic was, they’d immediately fire back sketch ideas:  “Oh, you could just have <character_name> go to a <location_name>.  It’d be funny!”  And yet, when I sat down to come up with topic ideas, none of the characters I could think of really appealed to me.

I kept getting drawn to oblique takes on the subject.  (Maybe there was a cult devoted to the teachings of Jack Handey?)  I’m not sure how I finally settled on Happy Fun Ball — it is one of my favorite SNL skits, so I guess it makes sense that I’d settle on that.

When I’m doing something with source material that’s nigh-on twenty years old, there are two ways to go with it.  You can be sort of timeless about it, and write a new sketch that exists in the same universe and at the same time as the original.  Or you can be chronological about it, and assume we’re living in some sort of alternate timeline, where the original material actually happened way back when, and now it’s nigh-on twenty years later.

For some reason, I’m always drawn to the latter — to giving the ficitional character (or in this case, a product) a history up to the present day.  (I blather on about this in, of all places, a review of Tron.)  So I guess it makes sense that I’d do a sketch about a dad picking up a Happy Fun Ball off of ebay.

That said, I didn’t really deliver on the premise.  I just came up with a few increasingly-crazy warnings (that were nowhere near as funny as Jack Handey’s original ad — “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball” is timeless) and then had something horrible happen to a small child.  I didn’t plow through the exposition quickly enough, and then for some reason I had a tender character moment in the middle of my Happy-Fun-Ball sketch.

Ah well.  Better luck next week, me.

(Perhaps I should have gone with my original idea:  “What my administration’s investigation has uncovered is that yes, Toonces can manage the Federal Reserve — just not very well.”)