The Worst Thing I've Ever Written: The Eric Clapton Sketch

I used to be the co-writer of a local live sketch comedy show called Livestock Columbus. You can still find some of the sketches on Youtube, though it was somewhat of a short run due to the troupe losing their lease on the stage, and some of the financial backers evidentally turning out to be in some kind of a cult, bent on using the show in their recruitment drive. All told, I wrote about twenty or so sketches, only about a handful of which were actually performed over the three weeks in which I was a contributor. The other writer and I are working on turning the funniest stuff to come out of this project into a sketch movie of some kind sometime down the road, assuming the Upcoming Movie 43 doesn't steal all the thunder away from the concept.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because last night I was working on ideas for the sketch movie in my head, and I was suddenly reminded of the one sketch I wrote for this show that was so bad that I didn't even bother submitting it for review. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was pretty funny myself, but it was in so much bad taste that even I was ashamed of myself. Keep in mind, my other sketches were about a Gay Frankenstien's Monster, a pedophilic Boogeyman, Bigfoot masturbating, A statue of Tom Hanks dying of AIDS, Willy Wonka murdering children, and Q from James Bond sticking gadgets up his ass, so when I say this was in bad taste, I mean this was really something foul.

The set up for the sketch was the idea that famous singer song writer Eric Clapton was inspired to write the song Tears In Heaven after his infant son fell out of an open window. We establish this in the first few lines as Clapton is basking in the morose success of that single, and suddenly finds himself developing writer's block. The realization slowly dawns on him as it does the audience that the only way he can now become inspired to write any music is through the act of throwing babies out of windows, which he then proceeds to do several times throughout the sketch, after which he starts writing famous songs like Change The World.

At some point, his manager will be talking to him, and notices that he's taken up baby sitting, and casually mentions that this fact reminds him of all the recent baby snatchings going around town. Eventually the truth comes out, and the manager is the incredulous straight man as Clapton, now a mad baby killing supervillain, details his evil deeds. I don't remember a lot of the dialogue, though the one joke I thought particularly amusing was that Clapton used his baby throwing method to inspire him to release his MTV Unplugged version of Layla as a single, to much success. Naturally, the manager protests, saying that even if he accepted the premise of needing to throw babies out of windows to inspire original music, surely this did not need to happen to inspire the re-release of a song already produced.

As I said, this was probably the most horrible idea I ever had for a sketch, and I think I was wise to hide it away so no self respecting sketch show audience might see it. Still, I want this blog to be representative of all my stupid shit, even the stuff I don't necessarily like, so I thought I would share it here. Maybe I'll clean it up and submit it for the movie. I don't know.