The Santa Story

Gather round, gather round kiddies!

Here's how it started. Alex is organizing a little (big) thing called SketchFest NYC, in which many comedy groups from all over this great country of ours will perform. Alex had an idea to shoot little promotional videos for this event, in which archetypal sketch characters (like pirates, ninjas, Santa Claus) are found in New Yorky situations. In fact, you can go to sketchfestnyc.com and check them out, as there are a couple already posted.

Stefan, Chris and I were the pirate, ninja and Santa Claus respectively. After filming a few of these short little bits, we all walked to grab some pizza. At the same time, we were going to shoot the last bit, where Ninja Chris buys a slice. Very New Yorky, buying pizza is. Instead of just going to any old pizza-slinger, we headed for Joe's. Cuz Joe's knows pizza. We didn't make it to Joe's.

We were still wearing our costumes, as we are ostentatious comedians. I was hearing all sorts of "Ho, ho, ho's!" and "What do I get this year?"s and "Santa Claus!"es from the particularly sharp ones. There was a film shoot going on in a playground on our way from Spring Street up to West 6th. From this film shoot a guy (who turns out to be a director) walks right up to me and asks:

"Are you using that costume all day?"

To which I snidely retort:

"Maybe. Why?"

It turns out that not 10 minutes before their Santa had just walked out on them. 10 minutes earlier, they fell into a predicament where they needed a Santa Claus. So then I, as Santa Claus, come waltzing down the street. And they asked me to be in their thing.

Their thing turned out to be the short film/advertisement for Virgin Mobile Alex posted below. I'll save the rest of the story (the actual shoot) for another time, as this post is pretty long already. But it was pretty weird.

And I think the weirdest part was that the film shooters seemed to have NO CONCEPT of how bizarre my appearance was. It's the weirdest coincidence in the world. I mean, for all intents and purposes, I should not have been wearing the costume! I was done for the day! It was hot! But no, I waltz up in full Santa regalia and they hire me.

Hey, our Santa's gone. Oh good, a Santa walked down the street 10 minutes later. That's handy.

That is weird as hell, man.