Flashback to high school. 2004. Not that far of a flashback, but I have a feeling it will at least need a minor one. I just graduated high school in Woonsocket, RI. I’m moving to Myrtle Beach, SC in five days. I’ve been accepted at Winthrop Unviersity, as a Mathematics Major and a Secondary Education Minor. So we go down to this college and I stay there for awhile, but I finally decided that I didn’t want to do this. I guess what I was looking for was an audience, as a teacher. One that would always be there, at the school, but didn’t really want to be there. Sure they wouldn’t always listen, but they’d always hear. I’m sure I would have screwed around in the classroom more than I taught. It’s more motivating to create things than to teach things that have already been created. I guess it’s just the fact that I knew I wanted to do something in the creative/comedy field, so this is one paradigm I looked at and still are lookin at.
For example, I often met these colorful characters in my life. I would often imitate them, doing my best to match their voice, doing different things in life. For example, I would put this one guy, Ben Higgins, who had this very verbose voice, kind of a cross between Forrest Gump and Kermit the Frog, into situations where he might get aggetated. LIke I did a verbal act-out of him in a restaruant where he ordered the Beef Strogonoff in a white wine sauce with a side of Eggs Benedict, but the Strogonoff was medium-rare and he wanted it medium-rare-medium.
And then there was a character only known as Doug. He is a real person, with a very, very soft-spoken voice. I used to work with him at a supermarket and he was a cashier. I was a bagger at the time. His voice was so fucking soft it was off the wall. He was actually denied a customer service job because he didn’t talk loud enough. So I did this character a lot, just in regular ranting, but eventually, I did a little act out of him talking to an elderly man who has trouble hearing. Let’s just say it ended with, “Hey, man, will you speak the fuck up? This old man can’t hear very well.” And he responded by saying, “I can’t! My voice isn’t loud enough.” And the old man says, “What?” It was pretty decent. I want to animate them, but I have to find some people who are good at things like that.
On the horizon for me is I want to develop these two characters who work in conjunction with one another. One of them is a real nice guy who can’t seem to keep a job and the other is someone who really doesn’t care, is a really bad worker, but never seems to lose his job. The guy who always loses his job is pissed off that he can never make ends meet and the other guy really doesn’t care about making ends meet, but always does anyway. Maybe they could be brothers. Who knows?
Some of this may go into my stand-up act because I feel sometimes a little structure is needed. I like to sometimes just take the identity of a character I created and put him/her in situation where comedy is second nature. It’s very hard to come up with unique, individual funny characters, but most of them are loosely based off people I’ve come into contact with. Most animated shows or sitcoms base many of their characters off people they’ve actually met. The Simpsons’ creator based Homer off his real dad, loosely I’m sure. Although I know many comedy show’s pretty much just churn out new shows, but I think the original creation of the shows, where they come up with all the characters and what they act like, that must have been the most amazing time to work on a show like that. Sure, when the characters are already established, it’s good to put them in situations, but creating the characters is the most enjoyable for me, at least.
In my stand-up act, I’ve given voices to objects, like my computer. Ironically, I made it sound like Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. It’s just what came to me in a dream. If I ever write a book, you can be sure that the characters won’t be two-dimensional, unless I write about the show South Park. But they’ll have depth to them. They’ll have philosophies about life, where they’re headed, and you’ll know where they’ve been. I know books usually focus on scenery and details of the room, but I would rather focus on meaningful character descriptions than describing a meaningless scene, although it will be noticeable if they are inside or outside.
This is what I love to do, so this is what I chose to do with my life. Some people may like it, some people may not. But the only person who matters is me when it comes to living my life. And that’s all that I need to remember.
Sidenote: I’m learning HTML and XHTML and CSS in spurts now because I feel it is necessary to have a great blog. I want readers to enjoy it.
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