🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Cor5vx.KpD@rci.ripco.com>, bmuscle@rci.ripco.com (Buzzmuscle)
writes:

>Whoa.  I'm stunned and pleased to have bumped into you out here inna net:  I
>MUST ask you - what do you know about Blob?  I remember him as a character
>either on Gigglesnort Hotel OR BJ's earlier show, "BJ and the Dirty Dragon".  
>
>I recall a clay, uh, blob that BJ would shape and mold into whatever,
>complete with prop eyes / teeth...but the killer with Blob was his "voice",
>just an endless loop of something along the lines of
>"eeyuhhhawwwhrawwwhawww", BJ would converse with him, receieving only this
>sound.  Kinda like Garfield Goose, only instead of silence/beak snapping,
>you got this maniac reverby howling. God, that was cool.
>
>Man...Blob dented my psyche.  

Blob was great. And from my standpoint, one of the hardest characters to work
on the show, only because he was heavy (we're talkin' a LOT of modelling clay
here. Probably 10 to 20 pounds worth). Blob was mounted on top of a pedestal
and the casters at the bottom were a bit undersized. There was a few times
while we moved him around, the casters would catch on something on the floor
and he would pitch forward and, well, kiss the pavement. At least it wasn't
live on camera. (A piece of background info: The studio at WLS that was used
for the show was its smallest. It was only the only one that did NOT hove a
tiled floor. It was concrete that was painted. And the concrete had chipped in
quite a few places, so Blob didn't roll around well at all.)

Bill provided *ALL* of the voices for the characters with one exception: Lila,
dragon's girlfriend was done by the other puppetteer, Nancy Wettler. So Bill
hard to cart-up all of the segments where he was going to be on-screen on the
chracters had to talk.

This includes Blob. That's Bill's voice. Frequently, when there was a segment
where Bill was re-molding Blob, the director (Jim McPharlin) would have the
audio engineer load up all of the cart machines with Blob sounds and the audio
guy would just fire them at random or under Jimmy's command, but not
necessarily with any rhyme or reason.

Another piece of background information: Blob was also the object of a
Grievance that was filed. It seems that the stagehands thought Blob, being
mounted on a pedestal, was a PROP, not a CHARACTER. To have the crew handle
Blob was a bit... interesting. Here was a hunk of modelling clay, that for all
intents and purposes doesn't REALLY do anything, but to see a stagehand move
him around instead of a puppeteer, it was amazing that you could actually tell
on on the screen that Blob wound up not having ANY EMOTION at all, even with
the great vocal tracks. The situation was eventually rectified.