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“Pearl Necklace” – A Comedy Short by Zeke Mahogany

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We’ve all had that boyfriend (well, I haven’t – I’m a heterosexual male who’s never been, erm, “curious”) who’s a bit of a rogue, a player, a scoundrel and, quite frankly, a mega-douche. They drink, they cheat, they play around with your step-sister and then later, once you expose them for their selfish wrongdoings, they make excuses: it’s always the alcohol, the drugs or, in some cases, peyote from Chief Red Beard. And then they come knocking on your door, claiming to be a changed man, begging for forgiveness, ready to shower you with sparkly gifts they probably got for half-price off eBay, fully expecting you to just take ‘em back, and the whole process just starts all over again.

This situation is imagined in a brand new short from YouTube comedy troupe Zeke Mahogany, entitled “Pearl Necklace.” The rib-tickling clip, which lasts a measly two minutes, features the comic talents of Mike E. Winfield and Melanie Merkosky as the feuding couple, who argue in the latter’s doorway, with hilarious results. It is one of over 25 sketches uploaded by Zeke Mahogany, many of which have been featured on, among others, ESPN, Huffington Post, Gawker TV and Failblog ever since the channel’s inception in September of 2010. Zeke Mahogany have also promised a new sketch every Monday, so make sure you subscribe for an amusing, possibly surreal start to each coming week. [Read more…]

The Fantasy Football Draft [Video]

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I used to be so into fantasy football that I had to give it up about six years ago.  I’d spend all this time researching pass defenses, injuries, match-ups, etc. that it took away from my enjoyment of watching games.

Last year, I wanted to shoot a comedy sketch that covered all 17 weeks of the season.  We wrote a 12-page script then attempted to shoot it in one day.  Some of the fantasy football sketches were 1/8 of a page, some were longer – 4/8 of a page to a full page.

While we were shooting a TV pilot together, Mike E. Winfield and I shot the fantasy football sketches in between the main shoot dates of the pilot. Last week, we released “The Fantasy Football Draft” which officially kicks off our fantasy football series.

Because it’s geared for a specific audience, we thought the sketches might only appeal to people who are in fantasy football leagues.  But we wanted to try to appeal to a larger audience, so the writers and I created a rivalry between the lead, Mike, and the young boy, Lance.  The rivalry plays out over the entire season and there are some pretty funny stuff; quick scenes where some jokes don’t pay off until future weeks. We’ll see how it plays.

I’ll probably stick most of the fantasy football sketches on our back-up channel – ZekeM2 – on YouTube, so our main channel doesn’t become the fantasy football channel. Our main channel is ZekeMahogany and we do a wide variety of comedy (and soon-to-be VFX sketches). The idea for the draft episode was to introduce this group of guys and how intense they are about fantasy football.  And there’s always the one guy who doesn’t really know what he’s doing, shows up with a magazine, picks whoever the mag says to pick, and wins the league.

My friends and I gather for our fantasy drafts every year and it’s the only time I get to see some of the guys.  In fact, my fantasy baseball league draft has been going on since the late 80’s and two guys from Pennsylvania fly out to California to do the draft in person. We also have a major league player in our league (who will remain anonymous). He actually drafted himself in the league, which was met with about five minutes of laughter and a lot of smack-talk.

The lead of the Fantasy Football sketches, Mike E. Winfield, recently shot two episodes of The Office as a recurring character and his first episode will air on Oct. 6th, so check him out as Mike E. breaks into the big time.

And come on over to our YouTube Channel and subscribe to see the rest of the fantasy football series as well as our VFX and comedy sketches.  We’re just getting started over there, so please join us as we’re going to have a lot of fun as we just added a really great VFX artist to our team.  Thanks for the support and thanks to ThisBlogRules for always being so kind to us.

Best wishes,
Zeke Mahogany Comedy

Sock Babies

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For New Year’s Eve for the Year 2000, I went with two friends to Lake Tahoe to ring in the new Millennium.  It was a fun three days as I got to hang out with two old friends I hadn’t seen in a while.  One of them, Doug, had lived in Spain a few years back (so did I), so we had a lot to talk about.  He was in the Navy and lived in a small town in Southern Spain near the coast.  I lived in Barcelona.  He was telling me stories about being in the Navy so I asked him what the hell they did out on a ship for months at a time.  His answer: “We make a lot of sock babies.”  I had never heard that term before but instantly knew what he was talking about and had a good, long laugh.  That term stuck with me for years and I always wanted to incorporate it into a script.  I would usually write it in somewhere as a line of dialogue but it would get cut because it didn’t work in that context.  But the idea stuck with me.

Then we started shooting sketches this past year and I thought the Sock Babies idea would work as a short 2-3 minute comedy sketch.  I wrote the script and Matin (the other half of Zeke Mahogany) got it to Mark Christopher Lawrence, who plays “Big Mike” in the TV show “Chuck.”  Mark had shot with us one other time for our sketch “Uncle Matin’s Sword Trick.”  Mark and Matin do stand-up a lot together in San Diego and have a good friendship.  Mark read the script and really liked it, saying it was one of the funniest things he’s read in a while.  That made me feel really good and he said he’d do it.  Mark and the kid, Naim Omari, brought a ton of great energy to the set and we had a lot of fun shooting.  We shot the whole thing in my apartment and other than Naim almost stabbing Mark in the hand, everything went really well.

My editor, David Conner, did a great job cutting it all together and finding very cinematic music that was perfect.  He did all the voices of the Sock Babies at his apartment.  I can’t imagine what his neighbors were thinking.  Ha.  His commitment to the post-production process is amazing and our sketches are definitely better with him involved.

Hopefully Sock Babies does well, I’d like to shoot a sequel where Mark visits his son at his new job – at a sporting goods store – in the SOCK DEPARTMENT.

By Travis Kurtz

Just For Kids (starring Mike E. Winfield)

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I watch a lot of baseball.  I mean, A LOT of baseball.  Usually when I should be writing, I’ll procrastinate by watching a baseball game.  Between pitches, I can ignore the commercials and be alone with my thoughts to think about half-formed ideas or a new comedy sketch. [Read more…]

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