Fetch! Fan-fic?

Well not really, but I recently signed up to be a docent for WGBH, which involves and eight-week training class. My first homework assignment was to watch an episode of Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman and either design a challenge for the show or write an autobiography from his point-of-view (in the context of the assignment he won the Yuppy Puppy Canine of the Year Award and had to write an autobiography for the program to the ceremony). I decided to do the latter as it was genuinely fun to write jokes again.

I actually have a brief history with this show. Four years ago I started working at the Museum of Science. One Sunday morning I was groggily working in the lobby after a late night doing comedy when a camera crew and several kids between 10 and 14 ran up to me. "Do you know where the nearest star is?" they asked. I pointed them to the Solar System exhibit, the focal point of which is a model of the Sun, the centerpiece to a scale model of the solar system that stretches all the way to the Riverside stop on the D-Line. I signed a release from the PA who happened to be a former classmate of mine at Emerson and forgot about it.

Several months later one of my co-workers told me that her kid liked me in the show. See if you agree by clicking here and watching the part that starts at 6:30.

Anyway, I only re-watched that and a few other clips here and there, and looked at the Wikipedia entry for the show (wherein I was surprised to learn just how many animated supporting characters have appeared on the show in the past three years), before considering that enough research to do scribble a couple of pages on the way to class.

Ruff Ruffman is someone who doesn't just have delusions of grandeur, he's also a hopeless neurotic. It's that tension that generates most of the humor in the show. He's able to marry those two halves to form a cohesive whole that makes him a Chinese food loving, endlessly pretentious, and charming game show host that gleefully messes with the contestants by enforcing strange rules, but is also laid-back enough to know when to break the rules. I think I could write someone like that (this week's homework is much easier, listen to The World on WGBH Radio).

So then, here's the product of my frantic ride through the Red Line and the 86 bus:

Ruff Quixotic Ruffman

I can't tell you how waggy my tail is for having received the Yuppy Puppy Canine of the Year Award--and I applaud your literary taste in allowing me to write my own autobiography!

First of all, like most geniuses, I'm slightly neurotic and my work habits are a bit erratic. So I want to apologize for the tardiness of this biography...my person ate it...as a salad, with croutons, cucumbers, some lite Northern Italian dressing and a fresh mix of Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, shredded carrots, and some peppers for a little extra kick...along with my favorite: chow mein noodles!

But I digress...

I was born in 1995 or 13965 in dog years, either at the beginning of the year or the end of it. I don't remember. I slept through most of it.

Like most of my family, except for my cousin Murray, I was born a walking, talking dog (to the lay-down person); canine anthromorphicus (to the stand-up and be taxodermic persons).

Along with chopstick-using opposable thumbs, I was born with a love for every new thing around me.

So naturally, I gravitated towards music. I love big band so much my person got me a Benny Goodman squeeze toy.

I LOVE German opera. At my last checkup I used the word Brechtian so much my vet thought I had post-nasal drip!

And I love love love reality television, especially The Amazing Race (It reminds me of the time I let Spot Spotnik beat me in a contest to be the first one to catch a car. He sold his prize squeeze toy to pay for the resulting dentist's bills).

And it's that love of television, coupled with my curiosity, and my consummate leadership skills, sprinkled with my endless charisma that brings me here tonight.

That stir-fry of awesome has given me the insight to con--er, convince WGBH and PBS to buy my show.

On Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman I make all the rules! And I know when to break them!

Thank you for this award. I'll bury it in The Victory Garden.

Practice using Photoshop

Last week was a little slow, temporary-job-wise, so I decided to use some of the programs I actually bought specifically for this computer (I bought Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Elements because I figured that I should put my Film major to use, even as a hobby).

Here now are two of my favorite quirky folks of the moment. I wanted to get an older photo of David Byrne, because circa "Stop Making Sense" he looks scarily like Buster Keaton, but this photo actually works really well for what the photo is supposed to be. I considered making Byrne a warden, leaning outside the cell, but having him leaning inside was more of a challenge and I figured the two of them would probabaly be, either in the same pickle, or become fast friends in jail.

David Byrne now actually looks more like David Lynch now (as they both have psychotically upswept shocks of white hair). Maybe I'll add Lynch later. One could be an angel on Keaton's shoulder, the other the devil. I'd let you decide whom.