Jennifer's in the retro post spirit this week, pulling up a couple of old posts that she loves (and wrote before she became a blogging sensation). That got me to take a peek back into the CJSD archives, back when I was in Single-A ball and three people were reading my blog (including me). I thought it would be fun to pull out a couple really old nuggets I like but don't make the best-of list.
I found a very early one that I think is still funny, has some significance for the blog, and demonstrates the fragile freshness of parody and satire: The Osbournes Animal Planet.
I read it over yesterday for the first time in years and found myself chuckling. If I may toot my own horn for a brief moment, I think it feels like one of those Saturday Night Live sketches people would be recounting to each other by the coffee machine on Monday morning. It helps that Ozzy is inherently funny and the jokes nearly write themselves when he's a main character.
The significance of this sketch is that it's taken from one of my many failed novels, Circle Jerk at the Square Dance. Before this blog was a gleam in Blogger's eye, I was writing a novel about a group of people trying to put on a sketch show, and I included sketches that the people were performing. The problem was, like many sketches themselves, the novel didn't have a particularly compelling plot. It seemed, as a wise man once said, like a bunch of stuff that happened. So into the trash it went. I was fairly devastated by this failure, as I thought it had a lot of promise at first...until I started writing it, that is. But out of that came the impulse to blog and the title for the blog, and that's given me nearly five years of entertainment.
The last thing this shows is how quickly parody and satire can age. Even at the time I wrote this, The Osbournes was on the way out as a pop culture phenomenon. Now, with what seems like decades since we watched Ozzy picking up dog poop in his kitchen and of course with the tragic death of Steve Irwin, it seems even more dated.
Despite all that, I still think the sketch works, and I hope you have a good laugh from it.
The Osbournes Animal Planet
Steve Irwin, aka The Crocodile Hunter, stands at a zoo.
STEVE
G’Day, and welcome to a special edition of The Crocodile Hunter. As all of you know, I love animals. I love the way they feel, the way they smell, the way they brush up against you when you sleep...Er, but I also love rock and roll! And today, we have one of the greatest rock and rollers ever, the Prince of Darkness ’imself, Ozzy Osbourne and is family!
The Osbournes enter: Ozzy, Sharon, Jack, and Kelly. Ozzy shakes as he stumbles toward Steve. Jack and Kelly fight.
KELLY
Fuck off!
JACK
No, you fuck off!
KELLY
Mom! Tell Jack that I said he has to fuck off first!
OZZY
Buh...buh...buh...Both of you can fuck off. Shut your meatholes, or I’m going to feed you to the bloody hippos.
SHARON
Ozzy, hippos don’t eat people.
STEVE
Very good, Sharon. ’ippos are plant eaters, or ’erbivores.
OZZY
Right, well, I’ll feed you two to the uh, to the uh, to the uh, whatever eats the fuckin’ hippos.
STEVE
Don’t worry kids, today we’re going to look at some animals that seem dreadfully frightening, but are really ’armless.
OZZY
Why’d you cut off their arms?
STEVE
No, Ozzy, there ’armless. You know, can’t hurt you.
OZZY
Because they don’t have any arms?
SHARON
No, he means they’re not dangerous, you fizzled old twat.
OZZY
Well why the fuck didn’t he say so?
Steve brings in a rhinoceros and pets the rhino’s head.
STEVE
First, we have one of the truly magnificent creatures of nature, the rhinoceros. No other animal is so powerful, so attractive, so sexy. Look at its jublies!
Steve grabs the testicles of the animal to show the audience.
OZZY (whispering to Sharon)
Gotta watch these Aussies. They've all been in prison.
STEVE
Now, ’ere’s question for all of you. What’s a rhinoceros ’orn made of?
SHARON
Bone!
STEVE
Good guess, Sharon, but incorrect.
KELLY
Bone!
STEVE
Your mother already guessed that, Kelly.
KELLY
But I wanted to guess it first!
STEVE
Jack?
Jack has his back turned to the camera and is making loud sniffing noises. He falls over.
STEVE
Crikey! Is he okay?
SHARON (looking over)
Mmmm, no convulsions. He's just resting his eyes.
STEVE
Um, okay then. Ozzy? ’azard a guess about what the rhino’s ’orn is made of?
OZZY
Uh, uh, uh, cement?
STEVE
All good guesses, but the correct answer is ’air!
OZZY
Air?
STEVE
No, Ozzy, hair.
Ozzy touches Steve’s hair, then the rhino horn, then Steve’s hair again, then the rhino horn, then his own hair.
OZZY
But how...but how...but...Sharon!
SHARON
Steve's kidding dear, it's bone.
STEVE
No, it's...
SHARON
Trust me, Steve, it's bone.
STEVE
Ah, right.
KELLY
I said bone!
SHARON
No, dear, you said hair.
KELLY
Oh, right. (pause) Fuck.
Steve leads the rhino away and returns with something concealed behind his back.
STEVE
Now, for our next animal, what looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and lays eggs like a duck, but isn’t a duck?
KELLY
A rubber duck?
Steve pulls out a platypus from behind his back. Ozzy leaps behind Sharon in horror.
OZZY
Sharon! Sharon, it's come back for me!
STEVE
Relax, Ozzy. This is a duck-billed platypus. This little guy is a mammal that lays eggs. ’e’s harmless. See for yourself.
Ozzy takes the platypus and looks it in the face. He turns it around and looks at its behind. Then its face. Steve sneaks up behind him and speaks as if he's the platypus
STEVE (whispering)
Ozzy, you will worship me!
Ozzy screams and drops the platypus, raising his foot to crush it. Steve cries out in horror.
STEVE
Double Crikey!
Sharon casually picks up the platypus just as Ozzy's foot comes down. Ozzy looks at the ground.
OZZY
Sharon! Get the gun, it's turned invisible.
Sharon hands the animal to Steve, who is calming down.
SHARON
That’s probably a little too much stimulation for him, Steve. Do you have an animal that doesn’t do much?
STEVE (breathing heavily)
Oi, that was close. Thought the little guy was a goner. Okay, this next one is from a group of animals that usually scare people to death, but ’e’s really cute as a button. Say ’ello to the Jamaican Fruit Bat.
Steve holds up a cute little bat.
STEVE
This little guy's name is Marley, and ’e's...
OZZY
Fruit?
Ozzy snatches Marley from Steve and bites its head off.
OZZY
Yuck! (spits out the head) It doesn’t taste like bloody fruit!
Steve grabs the head and the torso from Ozzy.
STEVE
Marley, oh my God, you...you...killed ’im!
OZZY
Tastes more like chicken.
Steve cradles the bat and rocks back and forth with it. He is unable to continue, so Sharon turns to the camera.
SHARON
Thanks for watching the Alligator Guy.
STEVE (to Ozzy)
Murderer!
SHARON
Please join us again when my husband will not be eating any animals. (To Kelly) Be a dear and fetch your father’s rabies kit.
7 comments:
LOL! Still funny, even though you're right, it all seems long ago.
And here's to the death of a novel and the birth of a blog.
LOL!!! I love this!!! Ah, the Osbournes. They never get old. LIke literally do not age.
Sharon! Get the gun, it's turned invisible.
that was fine. I may start to use it as a catch phrase, if I can remember it. Usable in SO MAY instances of modern life.
The biting the head off the bat? Could see that coming a mile away. Warning flashers and all. But I guess that's why it could make a SNL sketch.
ZRM, that's why I was promoted to Captain in the Obvious Corps.
My favorite moment, and actually one of the things I've written that still makes me laugh, is "Sharon, it's come back for me." I wish I could have seen this performed just to see that line.
No joking: my verification is "beast"
no offense meant, Brando.
"Sharon, It's come back for me" was good. I can see Ozzy lurching back in fear from a platypus, shrieking like a girl....
My favorite Osbournes moment was when Ozzy would go to Chipotle for a burrito, and would stand there wobbling, staring hungrily while they made it, his hands twitching like a junkie's....
Oh, none taken. I welcome all comments and criticism. In fact, in looking back on some of my older stuff this week, I've seen how much I've reused some gags or structures (the double-entendre laden news story being the most frequent repeat form). It made me realize I could stand to think outside the box more.
Heh-heh, I said "box."
it's hard to come up with a new form for dick jokes.
heh. "hard"
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