April Fools

And thus begins April Fool's Day, a day of douchebaggery.

I had an April Fool's episode planned, but work and life conspired to prevent me from having the time to properly work on it.  I produced a script, laughed a lot at it, and then realized that I'd encountered a problem.  Its a problem I frequently encounter, and one I'm normally pretty good at spotting: The jokes were only funny if you were in on them, but utterly failed to be funny if you weren't.  And explaining the joke ruined the joke.  It was a paradox of failure.

Here's how it WOULD have gone down: I'm working on a documentary called Touring Bus which Tom White and I filmed at MAGFest last year.  This is a legit thing, and I consider it a really interesting look into how we approach improv and shared memetic thinking.  It is also 100% parody and discusses a movie which does not exist.  I'm HOPING to have a rough cut ready for ConBravo this year, but once again its a matter of finding time and energy, two things which are in very short supply these days.

I will cop to having a lot of doubts.  I doubt the quality of my work, of my scripts.  Doubt plagues me often, and I find it difficult to work around it.  Work drains me, life drains me, and overall that's been a big problem these past 8 or 9 months.  I'm TRYING to work my way around it with these ToQger vlogs, and getting the Lets Plays back on track. 

But anyway.  This episode.

I was going to do an April Fool's review of Bus.  A review in which I managed to say precisely *NOTHING* about the film itself, composing all actual clips of it from dubbing over scenes from other movies and TV shows with the names of the characters.  I will admit, I still laugh that John and Bobert's epic exchange is a clip from Patton, "You magnificent [BOBERT], I read your book!", with its reply being a dubbed over Kirk screaming "JOOOOOOHN!  JOOOOOOHN!"  But...unless you know the joke premise we provided our improvers with FOR filming Touring Bus (that the main characters are John, Marsha, and Bobert), it all falls apart.  It isn't funny.  Its kludgy and stupid and it lacks craft.

I hold craft to be a pretty big thing.  When I say something on my show its because its something I feel is worth saying.  Even if its something ridiculous.  If the joke is dumb, if it won't work, then often I'll cut it.  Sometimes when I'm editting the episode because things just don't work the way I want them to.  This is one of those times.

I'm proud of my past April Fool's episodes.  They're something special for me, and something I try to craft with great care, because I want to provide something funny and ridiculous but still entertaining.  I went out of my way to get Sad Panda's permission for the Game of Thrones review (not to mention Featherweight's AMAZING title card), and spent a *LOT* of time working on a very serious discussion of Hoverboy.  But this year April 1st kind of snuck up on me.  I quite literally realized last Thursday that April Fool's was just around the corner and I hadn't done...well...ANYTHING. 

I'd originally had plans to work with my pals Manda Whitney (Whitless), Leeman (Ask Lovecraft), and Debs & Errol to create something really silly for April Fool's, but I failed to firm up on those and just lost track of time.  Which leaves me kicking myself, because I had a whole month to put together something awesome and I frittered it away.

So.  No April Fool's episode.  Because I would rather give you something GOOD (the three-week overdue Kamen Rider Gaim review, which features a wonderful little sitcom number with my friends, Jen and Alex) than something half assed and too bizarre to understand.  I don't know.  Maybe I *DID* create something worthwhile and I'm just being too hard on myself.  But doubt, as I said, is a constant companion, and I worry about throwing something moronic out there thinking it art.  I'm a week behind on the ToQger vlogs, but that's OK, actually.  It works out.  I have a *LOT* to say about the Gaim crossover, but not much to say about the week before's episode.

So that's kinda that.  I wanted to explain, because...well I feel like I don't really talk about what goes on behind the scenes enough, and sometimes I feel like I owe my audience an explanation for these things.

Be seeing you.