Parrot Trooper

I've been using some swell business collaboration software to work on the sitcom pilot with my writing partner/lover. Remember according to Claudia Johnson & Matt Stevens screenplays are like sperm -- there's a one in a million chance they'll get made. (And I thought it was because most drafts leave a bad taste in your mouth).

We've got a 13 episode deal with ABC to replace that Caveman show when it gets cancelled next week. Oops, that's a secret. Keep it to yourselves. We were going to go with something about a lizard, but the lawyers wouldn't let us. I was hoping for an HBO deal so we could show some boobies to make up for the lack of character development but no such luck.

The star of the show is Bob, a talking parrot. Think Sabrina the Teenage Witch with that cgi talking cat meets Knight Rider meets Mr. Ed. Bob is the brains of the operation and I'm the lucky-as-hell doof who owns him. Thanks to Bob's super genius, every bad idea I have turns into a great situation where I wind up with bucks in the bank and a hot brunette on my arm.

My wacky neighbor is Muggsy Bogues the shortest NBA player to ever dunk a ball. He'll actually be called Muggsy just like they always had to do with Tony Danza's characters in any show. Muggsy and I will have lots of wacky adventures involving working in a chocolate factory, making vitamin commercials and running a bed and breakfast for a sick friend. We'll initially meet Muggsy where we can just see the top of his head over my backyard fence while he dunks a basketball. When everyone thinks it's going to be a rip off of Wilson, but then we'll just show him later and act like nothing happened.

My slowly being driven crazy neighbor is Tony Soprano James Gandolfini (he really needed the work) who plays Ralph. Ralph is the only other person who knows Bob can talk. Ralph keeps trying to expose me as a fraud and lucky idiot. Think Mrs. Kravitz meets Mr. Roper.

In the pilot episode, Bob discovers the internet but lets Al Gore and me take credit for it as long as I water-ski jump over a shark, I play some golf with Muggsy, Ralph inadvertently gets signed up for AOL and can't cancel his service, the Miss Teen USA bus breaks down in front of my house and Miss South Carolina makes an unexpected drop in cameo and we wind up playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

Stay tuned because we have evil twins, mistaken identities, lies that compound themselves into further complications, secret identities, very special episodes with a moral, Bob dialing a phone with a pencil in his mouth, good twins, sleepwalking, dance contests, more shark jumping, cute kids who have all the punch lines and act way too adult, catchy catch phrases, lots of product placements, and washed up guest stars from 80's television shows. In short, it's sure to be a hit.

I wish I were making this up.