The only song in this show was Cool Yule by Louis Armstrong
I'm afraid I have to go about this in a scattershot manner because that's how this week's show was written. Primarily this blog exists to, and yes this is the most pompous thing I've ever said, chronicle the creative process that gets this show in your ears every week.
The Duel - This show started back when I didn't have internet access and so had no podcasts to listen to. One of the songs that came up on shuffle was The Devil's Gallop, a light classical favorite that is the music you hear behind the sword fight.
I've had this track downloaded for over a year but when it popped up a month or so ago as I was waiting for the bus I immediately thought, "Sword Fight!" At the time I imagined it being the climactic ending to some Razzap Snookums adventure .
The Wizard of Oz Ending - I imagined the swordfight going over a cliff not unlike the death of Sherlock Holmes and his arch enemy Moriarty but then how could I end the show? Aha! I could do a ripoff... I mean homage of the Wizard of Oz and that would let me get all my plugs in without using up all of the end credits.
The Intro - I vacillated between doing a Wizard of Oz beginning where I complained about boredom and sang over the rainbow but at the same time I was also thinking of the intro basically how it stands. The main difference between the intro as initially conceptualized and the way it plays in the actual show is the list. I was still operating under the notion that Razzap would be the villain in this show and that he would be zapping me back for some nefarious purpose.
The Knight - This scene is an obvious allusion to or again ripoff of, the scene in Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court where the Yankee is captured by a knight. Quite fortuitously I had been looking at iGoogle as my homepage where I have the Shakespearian Insult Generator which sometimes makes up new insults and sometimes uses actual insults from Shakespearian plays. I thought it would be entertaining to have the knight use the best writer of the English language instead of my sorry putdowns.
Two other points on this scene. 1. I stole the line ,"yeah... Sharks are peckers" from a Second Life DJ named Speelo who is something of a Jazzbo. Get him to tell the story of "Yeah... Sharks are peckers" and you will be amused. 2. I stole the concept of changing a violent duel to an insult duel from an episode of Benson that I saw one time as a small child and it stuck with me ever since. I know that the writers of Benson were not the first people to use this idea but I wasn't stealing it from the original source, I was stealing it from 80's sitcoms and the great Robert Guillaume.
Dunstable The Unstable Existentialist - Three quarters through working on this thing I decided it would be better if Razzap and Caleb had to team up against a stronger villain. Except for trying to blow Caleb up from time to time, Razzap's a pretty nice martian and most of the time Caleb's suspicions are unfounded and perhaps based on a certain bigotry towards little green men. I thought it would be interesting to monkey with the dynamic of their relationship by making them work together.
But the question left then is what kind of a villain would be a suitable nemesis for Razzap Snookums who claims to be a villain himself and who has such megalomaniacal aspirations? The villain couldn't be more into world domination without being essentially a clone of Razzap Snookums. An all powerful but completely enigmatic villain seemed the perfect counterpoint to Razz's unknown power and obvious goals.
The rest pretty much was filling in the spaces to get from one thing to another.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
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