Attention World
I am now cool.
How, you may ask, has this improbable event come to pass?
The explanation is devilishly simple — I have recorded a voice for an upcoming episode of The Venture Bros. Yes, it’s true, I made the trek from Santa Monica to a sound studio in Burbank, a sound studio cleverly concealed within the converted garage in the back yard of a non-descript fake-Craftsman house on an anonymous street in an anonymous neighborhood in Southern California’s most anonymous city, not far from the Bob Hope Airport and beneath a row of enormous power lines. It was here in these secret surroundings that my transition from Fool to Cool was made complete. The lines were recited, the tape rolled and magic was created.
Needless to say, the details of the plot are highly confidential and cannot be revealed, even to me. In fact, I was not even given a script to read. Rather, for security purposes, I simply recorded a series of phonemes that will later be edited together by Mr. Publick to form words and sentences.
But Todd! you will gasp in disbelief. You suck! You suck, and voices for The Venture Bros. are only recorded by the coolest of the cool! Stephen Colbert does a voice on The Venture Bros.! Can I get a sweet gig like that?
It turns out yes, you can! The process, it turns out, is startlingly simple.
First, befriend Venture Bros. star voice-actor James
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
for 18 years. Then, ingratiateyourself with
by writing and publishing long, detailed, in-depth analyses of all 26 episodes of his TV show. If your analyses please him, before long, you will be invited to meet with Mr. Publick.
Your first meeting with Mr. Publick will be in a public (pun intentional) place, a bar or a restaurant in a crowded urban area. Mr. Publick will sit with his back to the wall (assassination attempts are, sadly, a daily event in his life). You are advised to bring Mr. Urbaniak along as a pacifier, a kind of racetrack goat — Publick is a true thoroughbred and is prone to irrational fears and sudden outbursts of paranoid frenzy. Bring plenty of cash — Mr. Publick has the appetite of several lions and can consume six chickens and a roast suckling pig at one sitting — and he will expect you to pick up the tab.
To keep up your end in conversation, you are also advised to research the darkest, dustiest corners of popular culture — no reference is too obscure, no quip too knowing to stump the fiery and provocative Mr. Publick, whose brain weighs over sixteen kilos (counting the one he has in his upper thigh to control his lower half).
This process may need to be repeated. Mr. Publick has many enemies with false faces and more than one shape-changing alien has tried, and failed, to get close to him in the past.
Once you’ve impressed him with your knowledge of The Eiger Sanction and Colossus: The Forbin Project, you will be required to submit a highly personal cv: allergies, fears, dislikes, loves and lusts, embarrassing anecdotes from birthday parties long past. Mr. Publick requires absolute loyalty to his cause and needs to know every single aspect of your private life in order to make sure there are no skeletons in your closet that he has not put there himself. This will require the presentation of an autobiography, a minimum of six hundred pages, which Mr. Publick will have read by the scores of Korean children who draw his cartoon show.
Then there are some sexual acts you will required to perform, which I will not recount here. Suffice to say, you will know what to do when the time comes.
Then, if all goes well, you too may be chosen to do a voice for an episode of The Venture Bros. And then you, too, will be cool.
Wow. That is cool.
Holy crap! Congratulations! That truly is the epitome of cool – you can coast on it for the rest of your life.
Hey, did anybody mention that you were mentioned at Dragon*con last week?
Somebody wanted to hear your commentary on the Venture Brothers DVD.
…you’re now even a deeper part of the Venture Brothers… oh my!
mmm….
Actually it was my girlfriend that brought up Todd.
Since so many people seem to complain about the lack of any real information on the commentaries by Jackson and Doc,we thought it would be interesting to have a second commentary track provided by Mr. Alcott.
Doc was…dubious at the prospect, but said that did enjoy Todd’s blog.
you know, it’s funny.. i’m one of the few who actually liked them (commentaries.)
Hey, that was me!!
Doc said that you “brought out the genius in Venture Brothers”, but that your blog was all anyone needed as is it great.
Re: Hey, that was me!!
That’s very kind of Doc, but I maintain that it helps to watch the show first.
Congrats! I’m too lazy to look up your IMDB stuff… have you done voice work before? Is there another place where I can hear a sample of the dulcet vocal talents of Mr. Alcott?
I believe this this would help you. Look for “Television by Skip Blumberg”
Question: is it possible to skip right to the sexual acts? That other stuff sounds way too involved.
Trust me, you’ll need the 18 years of acquaintance with Urbaniak just to get you limbered up for the sex acts.
Here’s the thing. You haven’t done all 26 episodes of The Venture Bros. (not including the pilot and A Very Venture Christmas). Are the first 13 forthcoming?
I’m a Hollywood screenwriter. You can’t hold me to bourgeois notions of truth and honor.
CV attached
Let’s see. James and I have been blog-pals for a couple of years now. Actual in-person pals? Hm, what, three months? 17.75 years to go there. I should really send him a heartfelt Ziggy birthday card to seal the deal.
Periodically I do accidentally stumble into a half-decent thought about the show, which I usually post in response to your far more eloquent and complex analyses. I try to throw in phrases like “anti-veneration” to make myself sound smarter than I am. Results are mixed. Whether these comments please Mr. Publick has yet to be established, but I once complimented his Mole-Men episode of The Tick, which somehow simultaneously delighted and appalled him. I may have some work to do on the critical analysis front.
On the pop culture front, however, I feel comfortable saying I can provide enough amusement value to keep Mr. Publick’s formidable brain occupied, at least for a while. For not only am I intimately familiar with Colossus: The Forbin Project, I am well-versed in everything from Fantomas to The Monitors to the engineering secrets of Gregg Toland’s “ultimate focus” lens which he stole from a secret Illuminati lab and which he paid for with his life (“coronary thrombosis” my ass), to the entire oeuvre of cleverly misnamed character man Jack “Tiny” Lipson, to the little-known fact that Nancy Kulp was capable of reproducing by parthenogenesis. And needless to say, my entertainingly arduous life situation has led me to master any variety of vocal registers and dialects, from Annoyed Shopkeeper to Irritated Bank Clerk.
Don’t get me started on the sex acts. I’ve read his blog, I’ve heard what goes on at the Astrobase. Jesus, who’s the landlord over there, Tinto Brass? But show business must be served. Besides, it’s nothing compared to the “special favors” I had to do for “Uncle” Vic Tayback when I played Tommy’s tomboy friend Skipper on Alice. Sadly, “Stow it” was not just an idle expression.
Add it all up and I think you’ll agree I may be emptying waste paper baskets and handing out warm towels in a Venture Bros recording studio by season 13 at the latest.
Will I have to perform the sexual acts ON Mr. Public, or just in front of him? And should I stretch before hand? If so, what should I stretch?
Will it help if I took a bullet from one of Mr. Public’s daily assassins? What if I killed or deactivated him/her/it in an attempt to save Mr. Public’s life?
Thanks for all the advice. I hope to be as cool as you one day.
Have you heard from the James Bond people yet about your role in the next Bond flick? Since I am sure they loved your analysis of their movies. Maybe you could be the next Q!
But…who’s going to write the analysis of the episode you’re in?
I’m sure he’ll be able to find somebody who’s appropriately unbiased.
First, befriend Venture Bros. star voice-actor James [info]urbaniak for 18 years.
How many years of loyal bloggage does that translate to?
That’s about two-and-a-half blog-years.
! Wow. You are cool.
You are my hero. The wind beneath my wings. Too cool for school.
All seriousness aside, congratulations! And also, once more, I’ve discovered a fascinating series of comments on a TV or film series that I am a fan of. Thanks for some good reading!
When I first saw Venture Bros., I dismissed it as just another lame, smirky Jonny Quest satire, but it has definitely become much more than that- like all worthwhile series do.
A couple of observations I made while reading all the archived posts- first, Brock’s tat is Icarus, sure, but it’s also the logo for Led Zeppelin’s vanity label Swan Song. I’m sure the ape-draped, Camaro-driving Brock is a big fan of Page & Plant and company. Also, the “ghost pirate” episode from season one stuck me as as much a rip on the Jonny Quest episode in which they investigated the frogmen in the Sargasso Sea, amongst all the wrecked ships, as it is the Scooby-Doo! cartoon. Those rascals, Publick and Co.- working on several layers at once-!
bad ass
You Fuckin’ Lucky Bastard!
I mean, congratulations!
Very nifty! If there’s a more keenly anticipated series than VB Season 3, it’s unknown to me.
Too bad about that barrier to entry though – but I suppose if they took just anyone, The Venture Brothers wouldn’t be the Aladdin’s Cave that it is.
Cool! I love “The Venture Brothers”! 🙂
To quote another poster Bad ass!
I wonder if it will be a hyper Hudsucker Proxy type voice performance? Most intrigued now. 🙂
I watched it all on DVD and could not find you in the credits, who were you?