Why, hello, I'm Mortimer weasel, and this is my "Holiday Special" Blog report!
Here you have my latest videos:
A 2-PART HOLIDAY SPECIAL, including my personal memories, a puppet show, some singing, and a wrap-up/round-up of all the funny and interesting Christmas Holiday Memes around the web this year!
And finally, I reluctantly submit to you a BLOOPERS REEL... Please don't hate me for it, I just like working with professionals and have no time for unnecessary frivolity and/or laughter on the set!
This year, Señor Loro asked me to come out of my hole and do something special, something Christmas Season-y and literary and worth reading for his supposed “backstage” blog.
I have so much in store for you!
First a HOLIDAY PRESENT!
Señor Loro at LosTiteres.TV thought he'd act like the cheap uncle this year and give you a hug; it's one size fits all and refundable.
Then I thought about all our creative friends and that everyone is gifted ~ except some people never open their package.
So I got crafty (I'm very good at origami and things that necesitate nimble fingers) and we made you a ... A DOWNLOADABLE, SPECIAL, ONE OF A KIND, COLLECTIBLE ORNAMENT from LosTiteres.TV! ...
De Nada and Feliz Navidad!
Just print it out and cut it out, and paste it together!
I’ve assembled ming using my bodily fluids as a gluing agent and my claws for the origami -- it's a work of art so original, it hardly has anything in common with itself.
When finished and hanging on the holiday tree, its sensibilities combine the soothing charm of John Denver, somehow coupled with the awkward, cheap sarcasm of a bad sketch on Saturday Night Live.
Print out the .pdf file above (the one below's just a .jpeg image), so you can see what it really looks like, pimped out.
More than likely, I’ve created something here worth making into a trending Twitter link?
Let's call it: "Your Low-Hanging Latino Holiday Tree Ball" ~ that might get it a notice?
I have high hopes for these CHRISTMAS SPECIALS! Let's hope they become videos so virulently viral, that even bacteria will watch it on YouTube! I wanna leave "Gangnam Style" dance craze, and the cute babies laughing, and the kid drugged up from the dentist in the car -- all of them -- I wanna leave them in the dust!
Meanwhile, here's how it all came about: The BACKSTAGE STORY...
God knows there is no formal backstage at the LosTiteres.TV Studios, because if you really put all these puppets in one backstage greenroom, it would at once turn into a fiesta, then a circus, and finally we’d entertain ourselves to death.
Instead, everyone's formulated their miniature offices within the confines of this giant, magical studio Señor Loro has created.
If you ask me, I think he's into the Cuban Santería, and he's had some magic man bewitch the place, for inside Conchita's Trailer, or Ronaldo's Office, or Schmedley's Giant Playroom, all sorted out in clever ways inside of a giant soundstage ... it's always much larger inside their dwellings than it appears on the outside.
I really don’t know what Señor Loro reports in his blog outside of the strange happenings in his own psyche, but I thought I'd paint a broader picture...
Most of the time there are people walking around the outside of the studio, real people, dying to get in to see a show. They're also trying to be guest stars on the show. You wouldn't believe it, but the market is inundated with human actors!
They all want to be on a spot and work with Los Titeres, they say... But they're too famous, Señor Loro says. When Angelina Jolie begged last week to be on with Brad, just for an online ratings boost, when Leonardo DiCaprio begged to do a couple of song and dance numbers with Schmedley, and when Lady Gaga called about a duet with Conchita ~ Loro turned them all down.
"I don't want no famous, name actors with all the desperate, rich financiers that want to finance everything they want! WE are the ones that are famous just like this, with no money! ... We want fresh, recognizable faces, like the ex-con that you saw in the paper, or the old lady who works as your maid!" and then Señor Loro, unexpectedly gets an itch under his wing and spends a good 15 minutes scratching.
And I'm standing right there. It's as if his mind just "blipped", short circuited. I have to agree with the assertion that birds come from dinosaurs and all that -- they also have an attention span just north of a knat.
I’ve never actually read Señor Loro's blog, but I’m sure it’s fascinating, with anecdotes about his early childhood, learning to squawk... and pecking his way out of an egg.
When I think of things coming out of eggs, I honestly think of brunch.
All my weasel instincts notwithstanding, “A wrap-up”, I suggested to the red parrot, as I burst into his private office, which is fashioned like a wooden parrot cage, lots of brown colors, books, one of those old sepia globes, plus an old typewriter.
“I propose a series where we do a little countdown of all our YouTube Holiday Videos!” I announce.
He looks up at me from his perch at a desk, from under his bifocals. Those giant ping pong eyes roll up at me: “That assumes they have some value.”
“I think ours are terrible webisodes, but if forced, and for some payment, I wouldn’t mind making a 2-PART HOLIDAY SPECIAL, plus a BLOOPER REEL, and then writing your blog for you and putting the horrid videos you do have in some kind of comprehensive order,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
See, the bird is an innate contrarian. Anything you say, he’ll find a "Cuban saying" that justifies why he should be against it.
“What kind of payment?”, he says into the air, as he looks over some graphs & papers, with his monocle on.
“How about two dead rats and a garden snake?”
“Did you come in here to break my huevos?,” he rolls his eyes and his monocle drops. He shudders, like birds do, and a few feathers fly off and spin around in the warm light coming in through the windows... It's actually a stage light with a yellowish gel behind his fake window inside the soundstage.
He starts moving towards me and I reflexively step back.
“Fine! … Money then! Give me that grubby paper money!... Disgusting that I have to touch it. Write me a check.”
“Seventy-five cents for a blog entry, maybe I can get you a dead jelly fish and a ticket to the: Get The Hell Outta My Officina Express?”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” and I immediately weaseled myself outta there...
Passed several “titeres” in the hallway that knew I’d been in that office. They offered me some faux sympathy in their eyes...
Yet I can’t be sure of that, because their eyes reflect light in all sorts of odd ways, given the fact that they’re made of plastic, and sometimes they're just wall eyed or cross eyed for no reason.
THE THIRD SEASON OF OUR MESS
With the coming of the HOLIDAY SEASON, Señor Loro took it upon himself to declare that we have now entered SEASON TRES online! …
I have researched carefully how many webisodes it takes to make a season, and there’s no given standard, so I’ll be forced to believe him, he knows how to count his eggs.
During the holiday season one should strive to see the best in others, although by his accounting for our webisode show, I can tell one certain thing:
We will be falling off our own personal LosTiteres.TV "fiscal cliff"...
But, Señor Loro is like the The Honey Badger, he don't give a shit! He owns a summer nest on the Fiscal Cliff.
In Señor Loro I see one of the best entrepreneurs I’ve known since I met Joan Rivers, when I got my face done and wanted a plastic surgeon who could do justice to the face of a weasel.
Like Joan, my dear Señor Loro’s one of those artists that keeps on performing live shows, never takes no for an answer, and given the chance, would sell you a shitload of merchandise on QVC.
Here he is in what he called Señor Loro’s Holiday Fandango...
(You’ll find out about how "down" the economy is ending up in 2012 at the end of the webisode.)
Señor Loro will show up to the opening of an envelope, as long as he considers that envelope being opened by a great artist.
Grant Baccioco is such an artist, and being invited to be on his yearly Advent Calendar was the highlight of Señor Loro’s year.
Most of the year, that red parrot spent moulting... so by the time he shot this, his feathers had grown back.
With patches of feathers missing here and there and that crazy eyed look he gets in his eyes when he’s moulting, he reminded me of a young Woody Allen.
Grant's Advent Calendar 2011 Video Podcast -- Day #007
Alfonso is one of our resident rodents, and we don’t want to say he’s a deadbeat dad, but let’s just say he hasn’t paid for child support since 1985.
I don’t know, but I suppose studying law like he did, he must have found loopholes in the law to get him out of those scrapes.
Let’s face it, Alornso may be tough on the outside, but down deep, he’s a romantic and a lover.
One of my favorite videos of the past few years, is one that shows Alfonso’s heart. This one he made especially for his wife, or ex-wife, or ex-wives, and kids.
Alfonso's Christmas Message to Martha & The Kids
Alfonso ended up moving into the building and then slowly found himself working as an attorney for Señor Loro, who is very proud of it.
When I’ve asked Loro about it, he’s always said, “Who better to be your lawyer than a dirty rat?... This guy’s a dirty rat with a heart,” he intoned. I can only hope he’s right.
At the start of another winter season, another intro sequence was shot with Señor Loro hosting and talking about his past life under Fidel Castro’s rule as his own, personal pet parrot.
I, for one, was raised in New York, New England, New Delhi, New Orleans.
Only places that are new, because I have an unending curiosity for novelty, and that’s why I am part of this show with Latino puppets.
Because they’re unique and rare on screen, although there’s enough of them that they decided the last election. The irony of that baffles the mind.
If you’re wondering how Latino I am, I will confess to you that my mother is Chilean and my father is from Guatemala.
How I turned up with a semi-British, upper class accent is purely from non-stop watching of Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard on Star Trek.
Enough about me, I present to you, another Christmas moment from the opening monologue segment of our show. By the way, in it, that image of Fidel Castro is nude, not naked.
Season's Greetings with Señor Loro & Alfonso.
Finally, not too long ago, we ranged up enough “titeres” and puppeteers (which is what we call our ‘tech crew’, they come in handy) to create a holiday song.
We wanted it to reflect our snarky feelings about this time of year, all the while with a touch of buoyancy and class. I was not asked to be in this thing, although I support it whole heartedly.
I mean, I shouldn’t get personal about these things, but really, I’m a cast member here.
Only common decency should dictate that I, at least, get the “first right of refusal”.
But no... That’s because Señor Loro refuses to make this a union business!
If we were being looked over by the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG) or the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFTRA), none of these shenanigans would be going down!
… I DEMAND TO BE NOTICED and NON-TRADITIONALLY CAST!
Why must I always play a middle-aged “stuffy” weasel?
I can get down in the dirt like the best of weasels...
You know, I’m sorry... There’s no need to have gone into that tirade simply to show you a silly YouTube video.
Here's wishing you and yours many "dead rats and snakes" in your stockings as you wish and a Merry Holiday season, as well as a Happy New Year!
"HERE COME THE HOLIDAYS" - LosTiteres.TV Puppet Christmas
Warmest Regards
from The Underground Sanctuary of,
Mortimer Weasel
Peabody Award Winning Reporter
Oscar Nominee for Best Documentary:
“The Mating Habits of The Nocturnal Australian Weasel”
