Hi all — here’s my take on the “SNL characters, past and present” edition of Sketchwar….<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Happy Fun Ba’al”<\/p>\n
FADE IN:\u00a0<\/p>\n
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY<\/p>\n
An ordinary suburban living room.<\/p>\n
A medium-sized box sits on the table.<\/p>\n
JAMES (6) laughs offscreen.<\/p>\n
HAROLD (late 20s) enters.<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
Just one second, James!<\/p>\n
ANNE (late 20s) joins him.<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
That just arrived from ebay.<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
It’s here!<\/p>\n
Harold opens the box up to reveal --<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
A Happy Fun Ball?<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
Don’t you remember? Back in ’91, every kid had one of these!<\/p>\n
Harold gets it loose from the packaging and plays with it.<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
You are not letting our son play with that.<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
It’s fun!<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
It caused cancer.<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
Sure, in rats, but --<\/p>\n
Anne fishes an instruction manual out of the packaging and flips through it.<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
Wasn’t this the ball that could get lodged in your head?<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
Only if you dropped it off a building or something!<\/p>\n
Anne reads from the manual --<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
“If using Happy Fun Ball for extended periods, a bell may sound, signaling the aperture of a portal to a Hell dimension.” How do I look Reverend Jeffries in the eye if James does that?<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
They probably just made that up.<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
It’s an “explosion risk?”<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
I’ll tell James it’s very important not to set Happy Fun Ball on fire.<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
I won’t endanger our son just because all the kids had this when we were growing up.<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
But... I never got to have one.<\/p>\n
Puppy eyes. Anne melts.<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
Oh no!<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
Look, James is a careful kid. He’ll be okay.<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
All right, but if anything goes wrong --<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
-- I’ll take care of it. Hey James!<\/p>\n
He throws the ball offscreen.<\/p>\n
JAMES (O.S.)<\/p>\n
Wow! This is great!<\/p>\n
A BELL SOUNDS.<\/p>\n
The room darkens.<\/p>\n
Wind and lightning fill the room.<\/p>\n
A DEEP GROWL is heard.<\/p>\n
JAMES (O.S.)<\/p>\n
Aaah, it’s eating my soul!<\/p>\n
ANNE<\/p>\n
Harold?<\/p>\n
HAROLD<\/p>\n
Got it.<\/p>\n
He exits.<\/p>\n
STILL FRAME<\/p>\n
The old promo image of the Happy Fun Ball.<\/p>\n
NARRATOR (V.O.)<\/p>\n
Happy Fun Ball! It’s fun in any dimension!<\/p>\n
More GROWLING.<\/p>\n
FADE TO BLACK.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Peter’s take on the “SNL Characters, Past and Present” edition of Sketchwar: “Happy Fun Ba’al”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[186],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sketches","tag-snl-characters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sketchwar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}