Mark Leslie is a writer, editor and bookseller who lives in Southern Ontario. In 2005, Mark joined the blogging bandwagon and started posting random thoughts and musings on writing, bookselling and being a father.
I had the opportunity to chat with Nichi of Dark Between Pages the other day during an hour long live chat. Okay, we went one hour and eighteen minutes. But that's because the chat was so fun, and the folks watching and commenting during that chat were so lively and entertaining.
We spent quite a bit of time talking about my Canadian Werewolf series . . .
Though we talked about all kinds of other writing things too, including my background helping authors steer clear of the predators and thieves trying to trick authors out of their money using a combination of "smoke and mirrors," false promises, and highly exaggerated "results" from their useless marketing packages.
It was a load of fun. It's always a grand time talking to someone who adores books.
I have long enjoyed sharing Dad Jokes. Heck, long before I became a father I had been a connoisseur of eye-rolling puns and stupid humor.
I'm also fascinated with adaptations of elements from one form into another.
The first example of this is a cartoon from Leigh Rubin.
My cousin sent it to me. It's a funny cartoon, but the guy in it also looks a little bit like me. (Same head and hair facial style, at least - I'm not quite so thin).
I thought it might be funny to translate the cartoon into a short video.
And came up with a new series that I'm calling A Stupid Dad Joke Short Film.
Yes, that's 35 seconds of your life that you'll never get back.
As a writer, I have, lately, been recognizing the value of recycling, or re-using, old material into newer forms.
Come to think of it, perhaps I have regularly taken that approach. I'm only just starting to recognize it now.
"I, Death," a 1000 word short story I wrote in the mid 1980s in my second year of high school was re-imagined into a serialized horror story in blog format in 2006. That same story was slightly revised and rolled out again in 2012, and then it was later adapted into a novel that came out in 2014.
A ghost story that I made up to scare students when I was teaching drama as part of a summer program at Carleton University (Prospero's Ghost) was re-adapted over the years to be set within the context of almost every new bookstore I worked at between 1992 and 2008, to entertain and frighten fellow bookstore employees. That story then got re-envisioned to take place at McMaster University when Kimberly Foottit and I co-authored "Prospero's Ghost" to be included in the anthology Campus Chills, which was released in 2009.
And yesterday, for May the Fourth, 2020. I released a silly parody video called Spud Wars: A New Hopelessness.
I spent a few hours on Sunday May 3rd working on the parody, which basically stars me playing every role, with not much in terms of costumes, makeup, or even acting ability, a Darth Tater Mr. Potato Head, and our dog, Maya. I then added in a few visual effects.
It is, of course, silly, and self-reflective, and produced with virtually no budget and a hastily written outline.
Of course, the parody video was based on the Spud Wars series rolled out on this blog, originally in 2006, and then re-vised and re-edited/crafted in 2011.
That original Spud Wars series was a text and photo based serialized story inspired by a a simple photo I'd taken of myself unmasking Darth Tater.
The original storyline, of course, actually had somewhat of a plot, which involves Darth Tater wanting to get revenge because I ate his father (as a plate of French Fries the night before) - he attacks, I am knocked out. The story continues in The Carb-Eater Strikes Back where I seek help from the wise old Yoda-figure mentor, Mister Bunny. He advises me to "use the forks" which I do to defeat the spud. The story continues in Return of the Spud-Eyewhere Darth also seeks help from the same old master, who advises that he clone himself.
At that point, the story devolves in terms of storyline and trying to parallel the original Star Wars movies, because the next chapter is Darth Comes Knocking - and then trying to adapt cloning into it (in recognition of the Star Wars prequel movies), with titles like Darth's Revenge Part I and Part II, followed by Mark's Last Stand where I am defeated by the clone army of Taters.
I then, of course, adapted a picture of Alexander man-handling my camera when he was about 18 months old . . .
The story continues with Alex Attacks and then more episodes, including images of Alexander fighting a bunch of the Tater clones in The Final Standoff, then coming to a truce and playing video games (because all this violence makes them want to play video games) in All This Violence.
It was supposed to end there, but I'm a sucker for cliffhanger endings, and so had someone creeping up on them at the end of that one, and the story ends with Spud Wars: The Conclusion and Spud Wars: Epilogue.
It was a fun 12 part serialized story.
Of course, writing a parody script to a few images and shooting an entire sequence of these things are two different things. Alexander most certainly wouldn't participate in it with me, and he's no longer 18 months old. He is 15. Most of the additional Star Wars Mr. Potato Head figures are in Liz's office at the school, so I only had the one Darth Tater in my office at home to use. Not to mention, I had less than 24 hours from conception of the movie trailer parody to wanting to release it on May the Fourth, Star Wars Day.
That is why the recent adaptation is so different than the original scrip.
The lesson, of course, is a concrete example of why the movie version and the original text-based version are so different.
No wait, the lesson is that re-adapting and re-imagining an idea can take many different forms and formats, over the years. It's all part of the creative process of being a storyteller.
Well that's neat. I started writing this thinking there would be a lesson about re-using and re-cycling ideas into different forms and I also ended up exploring one of the many reasons why a movie adaptation of a book, or comic can't possibly be the same thing, that it has to become it's own unique entity, it's own unique experience.
Two skeletons walk into a bar and say to the bartender: "We'll have a pitcher of beer and a mop, please!"
Me and Yorick
At least, that's one way to tell that joke.
I love that there are so many different ways to spin a joke.
Front yard joke sign for April 29, 2020
I mean, you start with a skeleton of an idea on how the word play can go, and then you flesh it out a bit, add a little muscle here, a little nuance that gets under the skin there.
The other day when Liz was online and I needed to stay off the computer, I shot a few stupid dad jokes on the skeleton theme using Barnaby Bones and Yorick. I later compiled them into a video.
See, I'm helping you exercise your eyeballs with all those eyeball rolls.
Barnaby and Yorick are jealous that at least YOU have eyes to roll.
If you have young ones in the home looking for something fun (and a little creepy) to do, why not check out this great series of videos from my friend and fellow horror author, Joel A. Sutherland.
(In all honesty, you don't have to be a kid to enjoy them - you can be, like me, a kid at heart. Because I've been loving this series)
Joel is the Silver Birch Award-winning author of the Haunted Canada series and has been called Canada's answer to R. L. Stine by Quill & Quire.
To top it off, he's a great guy, and a librarian. C'mon, how COULDN'T you love the guy?
Joel, who was born in Ottawa, kindly wrote the introduction to my adult non-fiction book Creepy Capital: Ghost Stories of Ottawa and the National Capital Region.
As of today (March 26, 2020), there are 9 segments of Joel's daily Haunted Canada Road Trip.
Definitely worth checking out.
Here's the first one in the series about a haunted hospital in BC.
Click the image above to see the original Tweet and Video. Or below to see it on YouTube.
It starts off with a woman sitting quietly in a living room and reading.
Less than a second in, a younger woman, her daughter, comes stomping into the room to the music of I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers.
A montage then begins of the young woman dancing, following, and invading the personal space of her mother. The tension builds as the persistent dancing becomes annoying as the matriarch tries to continue going about reading or other household chores while her daughter dances up a storm.
It's funny, and, at one point you suspect it might become one of those occasional Saturday Night Live sketches that starts off funny, and then gets less funny as it goes on, and you regret losing those 2 or 3 minutes of your life to it, or how that sketch made the weekly cut.
But instead, it gets better.
Because of the confrontation that happens.
And the resolution.
As Twitter user lonliness points out, the "infliction point" or the "inflection point" - basically where the conflict happens, or there is a moment of dramatic change, the mother has two choices. (Writers take note of this critical element that happens in a story)
The mother makes the decision that turns this video from cute and amusing to brilliant.
And it's also a story about the beautiful infectious nature of smiling, laughing, and dancing together.
To a great song that immediately inspires dance.
And we all need a little bit of that sort of infectious fun.
