15 Minutes of Fame

The image of this toilet is from a video I uploaded to YouTube. Click on the play button in the middle of the image to watch this short out-take from one of our recording sessions.

Who/What/Why Flapper©™?*

I have been working in a home improvement store for 10 years. I have answered thousands of questions ranging from "where is the bathroom?" to "how do I build a deck?" Every now and again, I get a question that stimulates my brain beyond the immediate answer. One day, about 8 months ago a woman walked by me using hand gestures, wondering where to find the replacement for the leaking "thing-y" in the back of her toilet. As I walked her to our plumbing department, I immediately imagined this "flapper" talking about his experiences living in a toilet tank.

This idea would not leave my brain. I shared a description of this image with friends at work and with family. I thought about things my character Flapper might say and asked others to brainstorm with me quips that might come from Flapper.

I imagined how Flapper and friends could share his adventures with the world if the front of the toilet tank was cutaway and he could talk. So I bought a toilet and cut out the front of the tank and set it up in my backyard.

Elley and I have played around with some video, voices and jokes with Flapper, his mute pal Wilson the float ball, and we even have put faces on the toilet seat "Seat" and the toilet paper "TP." We have discovered me are not comedy writers. We can handle the video and the technology around making Flapper and his friends' mouths move, but although we have some funny ideas about what they would say, we struggle with the dialogue.

If you, or anybody you know is a comedian or comedy writer, please have him/her get in touch with me. We all need more laughter and you have to agree that Flapper has an opportunity to be very funny because of his unique view of humans and the human condition.

*Flapper©™, with a capital F, is a character created by Robert "Robby" Hoffman in 2012.  Extensive research on Google and YouTube cannot uncover any previous use of a toilet flapper as a character. I have let it be known that I have a Trademark on Flapper as my character's name and have an exclusive Copyright to use Flapper in video or animated clips, in or outside his natural environment the toilet tank.