As if Pucca weren’t enough of a phenomenon already, she’s now in the process of invading Europe faster than Hitler on amphetamines. The original flash animation shorts have been available online for years now, but the new episodes we’ve been producing for Jetix are starting to crop up on Youtube. The first cartoons I caught were in Dutch, but I guess it’s now airing in the U.K. because the latest ones to appear have all been in English. Among them is my Elan-nominated Treasure of the Comfy Sofa, making it only the second episode of something I wrote deemed worthy of piracy on the web (the zombie-nerd episode of Fries With That? popped my cherry two years ago).

This also marks the first time something I wrote has been censored by a broadcaster. A two-second nunchuck-to-the-head gag was snipped out, which is perfectly reasonable. In a cartoon series that encourages little pre-pubescent girls to be sexually aggressive and kick the shit out of anyone who gets in their way, the last thing you want to do is depict someone getting hit in the head in a slightly different fashion than all the other characters who get knocked in the head five thousand times per episode.

I’m hoping that sometime in the future we can look forward to a special-uncut-unrated-director’s-extreme-restored-version-you’ve-never-seen-edition of Pucca on DVD that will feature all available footage and help warp your children even faster.

Other clips from the new Pucca TV series have also slipped out, including the Jetix promo that’s currently on their top page, and this cool demo reel from Tony Cliff who worked on a couple of my episodes as animation supervisor. The infectious theme song is also worming its way into popular culture, and although some bands have expressed interest in covering it, the only covers I’ve seen so far are the kind that will get you beaten up by your classmates Monday morning at school.

For those of you who want to sing along, the lyrics to Plus-Tech Squeeze Box‘s insidious tune are:

Pucca loves Garu

He’s a pretty boy

Ninjas eat noodles

Kissy chase, kissy face

Wham bam bam!

Pu Pu Pu Pu Pu Pu Pu Pu Pu

Pucca funny love.

Cole Porter would be proud.

Portuguese girls sport their Korean merchandise in Scotland.

It’s the global village gone mad! Photo by Kirsten Newlands.

There are certain perks to appearing in pornography. I mean besides the amyl nitrate, fluff girls and mortified parents.

The pilot episode of Strip Club Confessions has been cut together and exhibited to select audiences in hopes of making a sale to someone somewhere who might need a titillating titty show. The trailer is available to a slightly larger audience — that being the entire world. If I were visible for more than half a second, I’d be embarrassed to the point of getting quickie plastic surgery by a disreputable South American doctor to assure my future anonymity. Should you visit the SCC website and view the trailer, I encourage you to blink so you’ll miss my performance entirely.

In a business that relies so heavily on who you know, it’s nice to know the sort of people who will pass on free stuff to you. For awhile now, I’d been feeling a little bad about not grabbing tickets to see John Cleese at the Just for Laughs festival. After all, it’s been one of my lifetime goals to see each of the Pythons in person. It’s a task that’s become rather more challenging since the 80’s now that they don’t really hang out together anymore, and they all seem determined to grow old and die eventually. I managed to stay one step ahead of the Grim Reaper, slipping Graham Chapman in under the cancer wire in 1988. I did a Terry Jones/Eric Idle double header in 2001. Cleese’s turn came unexpectedly the other night when I received an eleventh-hour call from one of SCC‘s producers, telling me there were two tickets waiting at the venue. Neither had my name on them, but that didn’t stop me.

The exact chain of title of who passed on the tickets to who when a whole series of people decided they couldn’t make it remains obscure. The situation wasn’t illuminated any further at the box office when the snobby Place des Arts ticket-monkey told me I didn’t look like an Eileen. I tried the usual round of name dropping in an effort to look connected, but he was immune.

“I haven’t heard of any of those people,” he told me in his bitchiest “I just work here and every day I turn away fifty assholes who try to snag comps by claiming they’re someone they’re not, or tight with someone they don’t know” tone.

Luckily, he wasn’t the guy holding my tickets. They lay with someone elsewhere who never questioned who I was, who I knew, or who I was claiming tickets on behalf of. Nevertheless, even as they were handed over to me, I was busted by someone else in the comp line.

“He doesn’t look like an Eileen. Check his I.D.”

No one checked my I.D. because it quickly became obvious it was just someone fucking with me. The someone in question was Jean Guérin.

Jean Guérin is one of those ubiquitous presences in Montreal who has his finger on the pulse of whatever is cool and interesting in town – and then somehow manages to infiltrate it. His greatest claim to fame came in the early 90’s, when he worked as a driver for a short-lived film festival of the fantastic. No one had ever heard of Peter Jackson back then, but Jean was pressed into service as his chauffeur while Peter was in town for the three screenings of his new film, Braindead. I was there the night Peter, in the Q&A session, announced that his next project would be called Heavenly Creatures, and that he had unexpectedly found the perfect Orson Welles during his stay in Montreal. One trip to New Zealand later, a brief on-screen snog with Kate Winslet, and infamy was assured. Thanks to this more than passing resemblance, Jean now holds the distinction of portraying Orson Welles almost as many times as Orson Welles did. And there’s still time for Jean to catch up since he continues to act, whereas Orson seems committed to staying dead.

“The last time I saw you, you were dressed as an Oscar,” I told Jean. That was at last year’s World Stupidity Awards, a show that degenerated into stupidity almost as dumbfounding as what it was poking fun at. Jean had appeared, coated in a gold paint, for one of the skits with host, Lewis Black. Even seated well back at the Imperial, I could recognize him under all the makeup. Who else but Jean could look like Orson “golden boy” Welles, painted gold? He went on to tell the tale of backstage fiascos and fuckups in a show that sounded like it was going down in flames long before the curtain went up.

As we compared notes about celebrity run-ins on stage and off, we got onto the topic of how many Pythons we had left to encounter. We quickly determined that so far we had seen the same Pythons at the same venues and only had two left on the checklist.

“So you saw Graham Chapman at Club Soda way back when?” I asked.

No, Jean admitted. He wasn’t counting Chapman because it was too late for him now. He hadn’t been to Graham’s “Looks Like a Brown Trouser Job” lecture series when he was touring. I could hardly contain my pleasure.

I’ve never kissed Kate Winslet and I’ve never driven Peter Jackson anywhere. I’ve never even seen Lewis Black scowl at a catering table that had been reduced to nothing but bread crusts and crumbs by an army of comedians long before he ever got to take a bite.

But I did get to see someone throw a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken at Graham Chapman when he asked for thirty seconds of abuse before his lecture began. Yes, I saw him in person, and Jean never did. And that’s something I can always hold over him.

Unless Jean gets a shovel.