Back before there was YouTube or FunnyOrDie, there was a rag tag site called “MangyDog.com“. Starting around the fall of 2000, Jesse Perry and I filmed a couple dozen sketches or skits or skitches and put them online in the incredibly shitty RealPlayer & Windows Media formats. People liked ‘em and stuff, but trying to put video on the internet at that time was kinda like squeezing a fat man into a tiny jacket. Some of those old clips are still online at MangyDog and/or at YouTube.. some are sitting on a hard drive somewhere still waiting to be edited.. and some never got made.

What follows here is an IM conversation Jesse and I had years ago that exemplifies our creative process: both on the clock, at work, collaborating on a script/concept. After work, we’d either shoot it, or go do a show or drink and rip on each other in my back yard and forget the whole thing. This is one of those forgotten things. I’d emailed this conversation to myself with the subject line “Pull My Finger” (the email was dated January 29, 2003 4:22:25 PM CST) – I think we were hashing out a script for a “Vaudeville In The Village” show we were about to put on at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville:

chadriden: we could come out and start some scene and have one of us flub a line or do something that causes the other to get pissed off and start a fight. we could declare that the live performance was ruined and ask somebody in the booth to just play a tape instead.. then they could play our clip.
MangyK9: Yes, and the clip is of us on the Belcourt stage doing our skit, with crappy sound so you can’t hear it
chadriden: ha
MangyK9: so then we come back out and ask Matt and Clay to perform the skit for us
MangyK9: or, the clip could be of us screwing up the skit and getting to a fight again, so then it’s a clip of a clip of a clip
chadriden: then come back and interrupt it all, saying “dammit. that’s gotta be the wrong tape.. that’s the tape of us screwing it up. play that other tape.. the one that has the last time when we were really funny.” and it’s a tape of a couple little kids starting a skit and then fighting.
MangyK9: HA!
MangyK9: Then the kids go, “wait, wait, wait, put in the tape from last week,” and then we film the tv
chadriden: film the tv?
MangyK9: of their clip from the week before
chadriden: oh oh..
MangyK9: they get up, grab a tape, and put it in the VCR
MangyK9: and one of the kids has a bald spot
chadriden: the other.. a beard
chadriden: and glasses
MangyK9: and they’re black
chadriden: ha
MangyK9: come out and just do a stupid, non-sequitur sketch, called “The Handyman and the Peanut,” or something . . .
MangyK9: We’ll be performing “our best-known and most beloved sketch, a timeless piece of American Comedy”
chadriden: “Pull My Finger”
MangyK9: “The Farting Penis”
MangyK9: Yes, “Pull My Finger” . . . you get made when I can’t squeeze one out
MangyK9: mad, not made
chadriden: that’s kinda funny
MangyK9: Either that, or film Those Wacky Brits
chadriden: maybe when the pull my finger thing totally is over, we can just “give up” and tell them to play whatever they find laying around.. then that’s Those Wacky Brits
chadriden: or whatever
MangyK9: We could talk about where we get our distinct brand of comedy . . . from that classy cult known as the British
MangyK9: Now, a special presentation of our favorite British comedy program
chadriden: “like most American Television shows, we get all of our ideas from the British. They’re much funnier than we are. ”
MangyK9: “That’s why they’re the Master Race, Chad.”
MangyK9: Of course they’re brilliant.  That’s why they’re so snooty!”