Hello there! It’s been over two years since I last posted in this blog and if a lot can change in one year, well, two years is twice the change. In 2019, I stopped blogging mostly because I had found a creative writing outlet with sketch comedy and, in particular, my sketch ensemble—Souvenir—a former house team at the Magnet Theater. We would write and put on an all new show once a month for the next couple of seasons (about a year). It was a fun, exciting, and fulfilling way for me to use my skills as a writer, a comedian, and, occasionally, an actor.
As 2020 began, before I even had a hint that every form of entertainment would be going digital, I had committed myself to working on my YouTube channel more. (This was only partly because the aforementioned Souvenir was not renewed for a third season. I saw potential in building up a YouTube channel whether that continued or not.) I originally planned to start putting out videos in October 2019 but as they say, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. It took me a few months to get my shit together and, as it turns out, making these videos is hard work. That delay would shape how I would make videos for the next year…or so.
It was one year ago today, February 18th, 2020, that I made the trip to a playground near my apartment so I could film myself playing basketball for my first sketch, How Many Baskets?. It was a frigid, wintry morning; I wore thermal underwear underneath my street clothes. As an adamant rule-follower, I had to wait until school was out for February vacation as the basketball court is off-limits when school is in session. What a hassle that was to me at the time, children in school.
How Many Baskets? was was an idea I had been thinking about doing for several years and one day it just sort of clicked (in it, there’s a gag about an estimation jar which was the original pitch for the entire sketch). It was written as a sketch for multiple actors but I turned it into a sketch that I could act out all the lines by myself. I did this because I was, as usual, self-conscious of my abilities. I wasn’t a filmmaker, I didn’t know what was doing, and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time with my inexperience. I figured I would do a couple of sketches by myself and then I could start asking people I knew to act in the stuff I was producing. The sketch was released March 4th, 2020. I wouldn’t have multiple actors in the same room for the foreseeable future.
I got to live blissfully with How Many Baskets? for the next week or so. I had put it out, it wasn’t terrible—some may even have said it was good—and everything was pleasant. Then the lockdowns began. I had just put out a sketch about a teacher, in a classroom, playing basketball. I felt weird. I probably didn’t need to feel that way, in the time since I’ve seen plenty of content based in the before-times, but that’s the way I felt. My mind was asking itself plenty of questions. What kinds of things do I write now? What’s appropriate? Will something I write make people sad by reminding them about a time when they were allowed to go and do whatever they wanted? Around this time and for the next few months, everyone was putting out a Covid-19 sketch and lot of them were bad. I didn’t want to join that party.
The next nine sketches go like this: me and my wife in a commercial parody (commercials still exist), me and my wife in our apartment (staying at home, everyone can relate), just me in a sketch about going to concerts (using a green screen so I could do something not in my apartment, I found this to be risqué), I’m in heaven (and filmed it in a park), a horror movie parody in a kitchen with mostly just me and some voice clips from a few friends, just me back in the park (originally I was going to have a mask dangling off my ear as I drank a beer, I don’t recall why that was cut), just me playing a guy in the 18th century, another commercial parody with mostly me and a cameo from a friend, and finally, one last sketch with just me in my apartment. Oh, and my next video, I think that’ll be just me as well…in my apartment. On the plus side, once life is back to normal-ish, I’ll have all the experience I ever needed without bothering my friends.
