Today we're sharing a published comic strip that I had a hand in producing way back in my college days of the mid-90's. I ran this comic years ago when I started this blog, but I like to dig out old holiday stuff and reuse it so here it is again. Cleverly titled, Mr. Ed's Far Side Rip-Off this one shot comic deal ran in the late October 1994 issue of my school's bi-weekly newspaper. Basically, I wrote the joke and a buddy of mine created the artwork. At the time, there were so many professionally produced comic strips obviously ripping off the style and pacing of Gary Larson's masterpiece The Far Side I just wanted to do a comic that was completely obvious. Those other comics always had names like The Other View or Flip Side or something lame like that, so we just called it Far Side Rip-Off. I added Mr. Ed to the title thinking it would somehow be an extension of my wacky radio morning show that I did on the college radio station at the time. I'm sure nobody got the connection between Mr. Ed & The Wacky Wake Up Show and Mr. Ed's Far Side Rip-Off, but I liked to think of myself as somewhat of a media mini-mogul back in the day. Sadly, this was the only strip that ever ran in the Rip-Off series. We were just 11 strips shy of getting our own calendar.
Showing posts with label Catonsville Community College. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catonsville Community College. Show all posts
Friday, October 15, 2010
Rip-Off Rehash
Today we're sharing a published comic strip that I had a hand in producing way back in my college days of the mid-90's. I ran this comic years ago when I started this blog, but I like to dig out old holiday stuff and reuse it so here it is again. Cleverly titled, Mr. Ed's Far Side Rip-Off this one shot comic deal ran in the late October 1994 issue of my school's bi-weekly newspaper. Basically, I wrote the joke and a buddy of mine created the artwork. At the time, there were so many professionally produced comic strips obviously ripping off the style and pacing of Gary Larson's masterpiece The Far Side I just wanted to do a comic that was completely obvious. Those other comics always had names like The Other View or Flip Side or something lame like that, so we just called it Far Side Rip-Off. I added Mr. Ed to the title thinking it would somehow be an extension of my wacky radio morning show that I did on the college radio station at the time. I'm sure nobody got the connection between Mr. Ed & The Wacky Wake Up Show and Mr. Ed's Far Side Rip-Off, but I liked to think of myself as somewhat of a media mini-mogul back in the day. Sadly, this was the only strip that ever ran in the Rip-Off series. We were just 11 strips shy of getting our own calendar.
Friday, February 27, 2009
The Down South Anthology
The other day I scanned in some of the posters and program covers for some of the plays that I had written and produced in the 90's to post on Facebook. I figured since I've got `em in the computer now I might as well share them here too...
In the fall of 1994 some friends and I got together and put together a little sketch comedy show called SUDS. There were some skits, some improv bits and even a little music. I wrote the majority of the comedy sketches. The guy on the cover of the program, sitting in the tub, is Bosko - a very old pre-Bugs Bunny Warner Bros. cartoon character. He had nothing to do with the show but we thought he looked good on the cover of our program.
Two years later, I had grown tired of auditioning for shows and always being offered tiny little parts. I was taking a Theatre Writing class at the time and decided that my final project of a One Act play was good enough to turn into a feature length play. So I gathered together some of the same people that worked on SUDS, we established ourselves as a theatre company..Down South Theatre Company to be exact, and we put on a show. A full fledged two hour plus play called Barn of Thought, which was also based on a column I wrote in our school newspaper. The show was about growing up and moving on from college and it incorporated many of the subjects that I had touched upon in my newspaper column. The show was a success.
For our follow up to Barn of Thought I wrote Brothers & Sisters, a comedy with several different storylines that involved all the siblings of a large family. We held auditions and rehearsals were a few days away when I decided that I didn't like the script at all. It wasn't very exciting. So I stayed up all night before the first day of rehearsals and morphed Brothers & Sisters into Cupid's Arrow. Cupid is really just a collection of skits with a slight framework around it. Several of the scenes from Brothers & Sisters ended up just becoming sketches in the new show. The artwork for the poster and program was done by good friend Grant. It's the only time we used original artwork instead of just clip art.
Even though Barn of Thought was probably a better written show, the production I'm most proud of is Sunburned. The scope of the production was bigger than anything we had done before. It was a musical, which meant singing...and dancing. We ended up having a live in-house band perform the music live each night. The show consisted of three original songs and five summertime classics. The script was nothing more than a modern version of an old Frankie and Annette beach picture but as the production rolled on through the month of July 1997, our audiences got bigger and bigger with each show.
The final stage production under the Down South name was 1998's Passport To Hawaii. A very silly show with plenty of stock characters, cliche' storylines and slapstick humor throughout. Although the show wasn't a musical, it did have four musical numbers and again some live music to add to the festivities. The original posters and programs were printed on a light green paper, but for some reason all I have is this master copy of the artwork.
After four theatre productions in a row, we moved our attentions to film and attempted to make the first Down South movie. In the summer of 1998 we spent 10 long hot days shooting "Bikini Academy" which was plagued with production problems right from the start. The movie features performances from many of the actors that we had worked with in our stage productions. Sadly, in the end, Bikini Academy did not turn out to be like anything we had hoped it would be. We had one (kind of sad) screening for the cast and crew and then dumped the film onto public access cable where it aired in two parts for a few years.
In the fall of 1994 some friends and I got together and put together a little sketch comedy show called SUDS. There were some skits, some improv bits and even a little music. I wrote the majority of the comedy sketches. The guy on the cover of the program, sitting in the tub, is Bosko - a very old pre-Bugs Bunny Warner Bros. cartoon character. He had nothing to do with the show but we thought he looked good on the cover of our program.
Two years later, I had grown tired of auditioning for shows and always being offered tiny little parts. I was taking a Theatre Writing class at the time and decided that my final project of a One Act play was good enough to turn into a feature length play. So I gathered together some of the same people that worked on SUDS, we established ourselves as a theatre company..Down South Theatre Company to be exact, and we put on a show. A full fledged two hour plus play called Barn of Thought, which was also based on a column I wrote in our school newspaper. The show was about growing up and moving on from college and it incorporated many of the subjects that I had touched upon in my newspaper column. The show was a success.
For our follow up to Barn of Thought I wrote Brothers & Sisters, a comedy with several different storylines that involved all the siblings of a large family. We held auditions and rehearsals were a few days away when I decided that I didn't like the script at all. It wasn't very exciting. So I stayed up all night before the first day of rehearsals and morphed Brothers & Sisters into Cupid's Arrow. Cupid is really just a collection of skits with a slight framework around it. Several of the scenes from Brothers & Sisters ended up just becoming sketches in the new show. The artwork for the poster and program was done by good friend Grant. It's the only time we used original artwork instead of just clip art.
Even though Barn of Thought was probably a better written show, the production I'm most proud of is Sunburned. The scope of the production was bigger than anything we had done before. It was a musical, which meant singing...and dancing. We ended up having a live in-house band perform the music live each night. The show consisted of three original songs and five summertime classics. The script was nothing more than a modern version of an old Frankie and Annette beach picture but as the production rolled on through the month of July 1997, our audiences got bigger and bigger with each show.
The final stage production under the Down South name was 1998's Passport To Hawaii. A very silly show with plenty of stock characters, cliche' storylines and slapstick humor throughout. Although the show wasn't a musical, it did have four musical numbers and again some live music to add to the festivities. The original posters and programs were printed on a light green paper, but for some reason all I have is this master copy of the artwork.
After four theatre productions in a row, we moved our attentions to film and attempted to make the first Down South movie. In the summer of 1998 we spent 10 long hot days shooting "Bikini Academy" which was plagued with production problems right from the start. The movie features performances from many of the actors that we had worked with in our stage productions. Sadly, in the end, Bikini Academy did not turn out to be like anything we had hoped it would be. We had one (kind of sad) screening for the cast and crew and then dumped the film onto public access cable where it aired in two parts for a few years. At that point, myself and a few others involved turned our attentions to a cable access comedy show we had started and left the theatre behind us.
You can read more about Barn of Thought and Cupid's Arrow in past posts.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Cupid's Arrow - 10th Anniversary
Following the success of our Summer `96 production of BARN OF THOUGHT,the Down South Independent Theatre Company returned to the stage the following winter to stage my second play, CUPID'S ARROW. This time with me in the director's chair as well. The cast included six members of the BARN OF THOUGHT cast as well as some new faces. CUPID'S ARROW doesn't tell much of a story, instead it's really a handful of skits supposedly all sharing the theme of love and romance. The skits are held together with a conversation between Cupid (Kevin McCrum) the god of love and Mars (Keith Mack) the god of war. It seems Cupid is quite the jokester, and illustrates for Mars the different ways he makes love fail. Along the way we meet Michael (Brian Kaiser) and Heather (Terri McHargue), a couple who's relationship has come to and end and then takes a very weird turn. We also meet a young cheerleader named Sally (Sara Nunally) who gets her heart broken by Jake (Brendan P. Hines) the coolest guy in school when he chooses the class flirt Slutty Bumpkins (Joy Watkins) over her. There's a ridiculous scene where Benjamin Franklin (played by me) accidentally kills his wife Deborah (Carey Dillon) during his famous kite experiment. We also had a scene that was a parody of the Michelle Pfeiffer movie DANGEROUS MINDS, where the teacher (Ariel Tucker) and one of her students (Gareth Kelly) just start getting it on on her desk after being struck by Cupid's Arrow.
The last two scenes in the play were a little more down to earth. One involved a guy (Brian Kaiser) having cyber-sex with a girl who ends up being his sister and the other was my lame attempt to be a little serious and romantic and end the show with a cute little skit about a nice guy (Gareth Kelly) winning the heart of a jock's girlfriend (Joy Watkins.) Then any actual sentiment I was able to work up was all tossed out the window for the final scene which was a musical number, just for the sake of having a musical number because I think all plays (and movies) should end with a good musical number.The show was about an hour and 15 minutes long with no intermission. It was well received as people knew coming in that they weren't getting Shakespeare. Our scheduled short run of four shows was snipped to three when we cancelled the last show due to snow, but once again we all had a good time working on the show and pulling the whole thing off.
Those were great times, working with so many talented and fun people. It was alot of work directing my first play while also playing two roles in it but luckily in the second scene I was in one of my props was a magazine that I was holding. I ended up taping the script for the scene in the magazine and never really learning my lines, but with help I pulled it off.One of the very talented people involved with the Down South Independent Theatre Company was Jen Wadford, who had worked on BARN OF THOUGHT and a sketch comedy show we had done years earlier called SUDS. Jen made costumes and props and kept everything together while the rest of us were trying to show off on stage. We also got alot of help and support from Catonsville Community College, where we produced the shows. Not only did they let us use the theatre for free, the drama department helped us out with lighting and other equipment for the theatre. Like I said, it was really a collaborative effort.
Here's a picture of all the females in the cast taken one night after a performance. The back row is: Terri McHargue, Carey Dillon in her musical number outfit, Julie DiPanfilo as the goddess Vesta, and Joy Watkins as Dawn. The bottom row is Ariel Tucker as Mrs. Johnson, Laura Keller as student #3 and Tammy Coffinberger as student #4.The Down South Independent Theatre Company story continues this summer with the 10th Anniversary of our full-blown musical extravaganza SUNBURNED!
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