Gerret Swirled

So I have just finished my first major motion picture. I call it "Ducks on Ice." It was originally intended to be a contemporary updating of Eldridge Clever's famous book "Soul on Ice," but when production costs started soaring my backers strongly suggested that we change it from a nonfiction narrative to a fiction narrative, and that we set it in a country pond instead of the city, and that we make the main characters ducks. After extensive re-writes what I ended up with can best be described as "Soul on Ice" meets "The Golden Compass."

Clocking in at a hefty one minute and two seconds, "Ducks on Ice" tells the story of a plucky band of ducks who must cross the frozen tundra in search of the golden corn. I play the evil but well-intentioned polar bear that protects the corn from all who would steal it. It's a bittersweet tale that ends with the ducks safe but kvetching, obviously leaving the door open for a sequel.

Enjoy!

My apologies for the recent posts. Maggie's young and, well, young.

As for The Gerret? I've been thinking about all of you out there who've been asking, "Hey, Gerret, when are you going to make another major motion picture?"

Of course you're all remembering "Ducks on Ice" which garnered me the prestigious Golden Cat Turd award for best first movie by a dog of indeterminate breed at this spring's [Dog Food] Cans Film Festival.

Now, The Gerret is proud to announce, "Snake on a Plain." Part mocu-drama, part homage to low-budget horror movies, and part vanity production, SOAP stars The Gerret, along with Maggie, Chigger and Slim, who plays the snake. Some guy named Sam Jackson called and asked to be in the movie, but I took one look at "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" and told him "not for all the burnt hot dogs in all the 7-11's in all the universe." I mean he's got a pretty face and all, but could you imagine him playing a dog? The guy can't act!

SOAP is epic in length, with a running time of nearly three minutes. It has been my intention to "keep it real," and so, in taking a page from the Mel Gibson school of filmmaking, I've done the entire film in the original dog and snake dialects. I hope you're able to translate, because some of Maggie's lines are just hilarious. And Chigger's "Snake, what snake? I don't see no snake," scene will probably garner her a nomination. Granted, Slim maybe overacted a bit, but it suited his character.

I'm afraid this is pretty much an adult film. I eschewed the obvious happy ending for gritty realism and conclusion without resolution. You'll note how the movie leaves the audience in an existential quandary as we see a close-up of Maggie's horrified face when she notices a rope on the ground and wonders, "is that a rope, or is it actually another snake?" It's a question that strikes deep to the psyche of every dog and I cannot promise you'll sleep well having seen "Snake on a Plain."

Hi! It's me! Maggie! Again!!! It's like my birthday today! I'm a big girl now! No more puppy dog food for this teenager! And I'm sooooo super jazzed!!!! Because The Gerret is like soooo jealous and all up in my grill! What-evah! I used to think he was cool, but sometimes he's just soooo dorky!

Anyway, I've been like working on my first movie! Yes! Me making a movie! It's all done and it's totally awesome!!! It's called "Pup Fiction"!!! It's sorta like that other movie only different! Of course because I'm still the kid around here I had to use like the really really really old equipment. It soooo super sucks! It really blows chunks!!! So don't get all Ebert on me! Just chill out and enjoy it!! It stars yours truly and the other dog! And remember! It's my birthday!!!

Yes, been a long time between posts. That's because I'm a dog. And I work like one. Sometimes. I also sleep like one. And you know what they say about sleeping dogs. Especially The Gerret.

Anyway, that's a picture of Amy, who recently passed away. Why is this important? Well, because she was one-half of the comic duo Rufus and Amy, ("The Mallards") current residents of the pond. Around here we're kind of used to turnover in the resident duck pond population, but there's always a moment that's really annoying, and that's when you reach a point where there's only one duck left. As has now occurred.

There's nothing more pathetic than the last duck. Especially if it's a guy. He'll mope and pout and emote mournful semi-quacks and on and on and on. Rufus been all that in spades. He stares at his food, follows the chickens around, sleeps late, drops feathers all over the place and just generally sulks. Really no fun to be around.

So it was with some great sense of relief that Stump and Tweet came home with three new call ducks the other day. Call ducks look like regular ducks except they're smaller. Sorta like the Chihuahuas of the duck world. (Well, not THAT small. They'd probably eat one of them tea cup Chihuahuas. But imagine something that looks about like a pigeon except it has a bill and duck feet.)

So they put the call ducks in a pen and those ducks quack a few times and Rufus comes waddling up the hill. (You'd think he'd come flying up the hill, but no, he's too depressed to fly. Sheesh.) He sees the new ducks and you could see an immediate change in attitude. Best I can describe it is sorta like if there was a duck version of Enzyte, the once daily tablet for natural male enhancement, and Rufus was doing the TV commercial.

But still there was the problem of Rufus being on the outside and the call ducks being incarcerated. Of course the call ducks didn't know any better because they had always been in a pen. So Rufus spent the next day-and-a-half keeping a vigil and lobbying the governor for a pardon.

Finally this afternoon the word came down and they opened the gates. That actually didn't mean a whole lot to the call ducks who pretty much stayed put. So Rufus started talking and Rufus started walking and pretty soon the call ducks, sensing a ancient shared kinship, decided to throw their lot in with the big handsome dude with the green head and the corny sense of humor. (Two of the call ducks are girls, so there's definitely the makings of a reality TV show at work here.)

It was at that point that The Gerret, already in search of a subject for my next documentary, grabbed a camera and caught the drama.

The interesting part is that those call ducks didn't know a pond, or even a water feature, from a flat piece of dirt and the minute they hit the water and their feet didn't stop going down, they were totally panicked. But that only lasted a few seconds as they took to that pond like, well...

Remember Slim?! The Snake?! The star of The Gerret's totally awesome movie "Snake on a Plain"? Well OMG, he's back!!! And this time he's got a girlfriend and he's being like just totally romantic! Ha!

You probly wonder, what's a romantic snake do? LOL! Well here's some dude named E. Mohrman on eHow to explain it all for you!

Female [snakes] are resistant to mating from the beginning and throughout the process. Male snakes must hold females down with their heads and coil their tails around the female's. The female will continuously try to slither off, dragging the male along as he attempts to line up their cloacas. When successfully aligned — an effort that can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days...

Anyway, you get the picture! "A few hours to a few days"???!!! Sheesh!!! And I totally don't want to even know what a "cloacas" is! ROFL!!! Anyway, here's my latest movie, starring Slim!!! Careful! It's hot! NSFW!!! Ha Ha Ha!!

Gotta run! CUL8R!!! And watch out for your cloacas!!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!

So just when you think The Gerret is never coming back, well here I am! Chillin' in my Christmas crib, celebrating the end of my 14th dog year in residence and marking the close of the second human year of this, my carelessly casual but occasionally compelling blog.

So for your collective Christmas creature comfort I've crafted a customized and comprehensively creative cinematic experience containing a congregation of local characters. I call it: "A Corny Copious Collection of Christmas Clips."

Oh, BTW, it snowed here yesterday. Not a common calamity.

So this dour young lady is Snowball, one of our resident turtles. Snowball generally hangs out 24/7 in the frog pond so this is a rare land sighting, even for one as eagle-eyed as yours truly The Gerret. Tweet suggested that Snowball must be headed somewhere to lay her eggs 'cause that's about the only thing that would get her to leave the pond, but I know better. Snowball's clearing out for a few weeks because she knows that it's almost time for the annual Frogapalooza at Frog Pond Farm. That scowl is her way of saying "get me outta here."

And what, you ask, is Frogapalooza? I'm glad you asked. When Stump and Tweet first moved here there was a pond, and it had a lot of frogs in it, so they named the place "Frog Pond Farm." Personally, The Gerret would have preferred "Dogpatch" but I wasn't around back then to make my case.

Anyway, Frog Pond Farm eventually got listed in all those little froggie tourist guide books, and featured on the froggie Internet and even had several hundred thousand froggie fans on Frogbook. And out of that grew Frogapalooza. Happens every year. First week in June. Every frog from here to Calaveras County comes to the Frog Pond, or at least it seems like it. You got your tree frogs, and your bullfrogs, and your green frogs and cricket frogs and barking frogs and peepers and chorus frogs and every whichever kind of frog. They all show up at the pond looking for a little bit of that froggie love.

It'll be pretty quiet during the day cause they're all sleeping it off, but once the sun goes down, those frogs start hollerin' and humpin' and they don't care who's listening or who's watching and they don't stop until the sun comes up in the morning. They're so loud you can't hear a cat fart from six inches away.

So this here is my sound and pictures documentary of Frogapalooza, just so you know what I'm talking about. If you're brave you'll plug your computer into your sound system and crank the volume up to like 12, because that's makin' it real.