Written by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

When Cleopatra learns she can't run for Student Body President due to term limits, she convinces JFK to run as her puppet. But when Abe sees that Cleo has a thing for leaders, he throws his stovepipe hat into the ring. The students of Clone High don't care about real issues, so Abe must resort to extreme marketing. He does so with the help of a corporate sponsor -- "X-Stream Blu," a mysterious new food product to which Gandhi becomes hopelessly addicted. Oh, that whimsical Gandhi. (Marilyn Manson guest stars as himself, a singing nutritionist.)


Welcome back. It’s good to see you again. Not literally, of course. I can’t actually see you. Unless you have a webcam. In which case, email me at pundog@clonehighusa.com and we’ll get together, baby. Oh yeah. I know you like it.

Moving on.

THE GREATEST JOKE EVER WRITTEN
This week’s Greatest Joke Ever Written is actually a complete scene that was cut from the episode due to time constraints. Initially, Marilyn Manson’s song about the food pyramid wasn’t the end of the episode. There was one scene after that, which went like this:

ABE: Well, I guess we did learn that. But I was thinking more about how you shouldn’t sell out.
SCUDWORTH: Tell me about it, brother. I learned that if you sell out to a wealthy corporation, you can lose all your integrity.
JOAN: And I learned that a dog can be president, if he tries hard enough, and he has all his shots.
GANDHI: And I learned that these Corn Nuts are delicious.
Everyone is suddenly eating Corn Nuts. The official “Corn Nuts” logo is really, really legible everywhere.
BUTLERTRON: They come in eight totally vicious flavors!
ABE: Right you are, Mr. B. Let's all enjoy some corn nuts together, as we reflect on the lesson we learned about not selling out.
JOAN: (MOUTH FULL) What brand of outrageous toasted corn snacks is this?
Gandhi turns to the screen.
GANDHI: Corn Nuts brand! With flavors like Taco--
ABE: (DISPLAYING BAG) Ranch--
JOAN: (DISPLAYING BAG) and Chile Picante--
GANDHI: Corn Nuts are packed with that major flava you’re cravin’!
Everyone shoves bags of Corn Nuts into the camera in a totally extreme pose.
EVERYONE: CRUNCH INTO A CORN NUT!

You can also view the Leica Reel version of this scene by clicking here.

You may be asking yourself, what’s so great about this ending? Yes, it’s hilarious. Yes, it’s a clever commentary on our synergistic, corporate world. And yes, it was the perfect note to end an episode about selling out and extreme marketing. But so what?

I’ll tell you what: free Corn Nuts. Our producer Jenn actually contacted the Corn Nuts corporation to get permission to use their product on the show. They agreed, and sent us huge boxes filled with hundreds of Corn Nuts bags. We had so many Corn Nuts in the office. We ate them every day. They were delicious, as expected.

And so, dear reader, if you take anything away from this episode of Pun Dog’s Corner, let it be this lesson: if you ever get your own TV show, you should write a product that you like into an episode, contact that product’s corporate offices to get free samples of it, and then cut the product reference out of the show.

We also got free Pumas shoes for mentioning them in the Shadowy Figures scene. But now I’m just bragging. Back to Corn Nuts.

Everyone loves free Corn Nuts, right? Not so. One of the writers, Erica Rivinoja, who up until this point had shown a love for all foods, soon became grossed out with the excess of Corn Nuts. According to her, they made the writers’ room “smell like ass.” Upon her urging, everyone agreed to stop eating Corn Nuts in the writers room. Instead, one morning before she arrived, we took the rest of the Corn Nuts bags and put them in her office æ on her computer, on her windowsill, in her bathroom, in her desk drawers, on her chair, etc. She didn’t find it very funny. But it was.

GLOSSARY: THE WACKY-STACK
Here’s how the Clone High writers’ room worked: A bunch of funny people sit around a table, or on couches, looking at a particular scene. Someone pitches a joke. Everyone laughs. Someone else pitches an extension of said joke. Everyone laughs. Soon, everyone adds jokes to the joke, until the initial joke is so big that it is no longer funny.

This came to be known as a “wacky-stack.”

Usually, wacky-stacks were trimmed down to the original joke, or the funniest joke of the stack. More often than not, wacky-stacks never even made it into the script, but stayed in the extended outline where they belong. But episode two was written by the verbose duo of Phil and Chris without the writers’ room contributing to the outline first, so the entire first draft was filled with wacky-stacks. Their first draft was actually 61 pages. (A typical episode runs around 40 pages.)

Here’s a wacky-stack that made it pretty far. An abbreviated version of it actually made it onto the screen:

Cleo is in front of a podium, giving a speech.
CLEO: That's why it is my great pleasure, as president of the student body, to officially dedicate this impassable moat protecting us from the special-ed classroom!
JOAN: Do we really need a moat for those kids?
ABE: I don't know. Cleopatra says the electrified fence wastes a lot of energy. And the snipers do take a lot of naps.
CLEO: And I'd like to thank the National Acid Company, for helping us achieve our dream of filling the moat with acid. Thanks also to Exclamation Exotic Pets for donating the piranhas. And to Exclamation Surf and Sport for donating the acid-retardant wet suits for the piranhas.

By the time you get to the last joke in the wacky-stack , your brain has worked so hard to comprehend each one that you forget what the scene was about in the first place. And isn’t that what comedy is all about?

GANGSTA’S PAIRAGUYS
If you look closely, in the scene where Joan and Abe are sitting across from each other at the Grassy Knoll, you’ll see the tail end of two guys walk by right after Joan says “You’d think with a school full of former presidents and world leaders, someone would be interested in student government.” There was once a joke here. It went like this:

JOAN: I can’t believe JFK is running unopposed. You'd think with a school full of former presidents and world leaders, someone would be interested in student government.
GEORGE WASHINGTON and WINSTON CHURCHILL walk by, in gangsta clothes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON: Hey, Winston Churchill, you wanna go put fireworks in people's mailboxes and watch 'em explode?
WINSTON CHURCHILL: Na, George Washington. Let’s go smoke cigarettes behind the dumpster at the mall.
They exit.

This joke didn’t get a huge laugh at the table read, so the writers tried a more on-the-nose version:

JOAN: I can’t believe JFK is running unopposed. You'd think with a school full of former presidents and world leaders, someone would be interested in student government.
GEORGE WASHINGTON and WINSTON CHURCHILL walk by, in gangsta clothes.
GEORGE WASHINGTON: Hey, Winston Churchill, you wanna get involved in student government?
WINSTON CHURCHILL: Nah, George Washington. Let’s go sniff airplane glue in my garage.
GEORGE WASHINGTON: Aces!
They exit.

Eventually, the joke was cut completely, and the world would have to wait to meet the slacker versions of Washington and Churchill. And the phrase “Aces!” would have to wait for it’s inevitable comeback.

But if you can find the secret link somewhere in this sentence, you can download the scene and watch it in its fully-animated and colored glory.

DOCTOR MANSON
• First thing’s first: You can download the song here.
• The Marilyn Manson food pyramid song lyrics were written by Phil and Chris. It changed very little from the first draft. Only one line was cut from the first stanza, which used to read: “The ancient pharaohs were not too bright, they say./ They believed in more than one god, and let the Jews all get away./ But they made one contribution that I live by to this day./ It’s the food pyramid, and it’s endorsed by the USDA!”
• The music for the song was written by Liam Lynch, who did a lot of the original music on Clone High. He once created a show on MTV called Sifl & Olly, where sock puppets talked and sang songs. Now he’s a famous video director, musician, screenwriter, and home owner.
• During the recording of the song, Marilyn Manson was actually a really good sport, and quite funny. He suggested a number of jokes, and had fun saying a lot of medical terminology, which was cut for time. (Writers Judah and Murray Miller’s parents are doctors, and were helpful in suggesting medical terms for Mr. Manson to use.) You can hear some of Manson’s outtakes and joke pitches here.

X-GAMES
In the script, Gandhi was so excited about X-Stream Blu that he changed his name to Xandhi. Sometimes, it was pronounced it Zandhi, sometimes Ksandhi, and sometimes Ecksandi. Ultimately, it wasn’t pronounced in any of these ways, because the joke was cut.

X-LARGE
The computer animated Blushi in the commercial for X-Stream Blu was created by a company called Large Lab... the very same company that created this web site. Fascinating!

X’ED FROM THE SCRIPT
In the script, the “spinning newspaper” cliché was used a number of times to show who was winning the election. One time, we zoom out to reveal that the newspaper is on a lazy susan in the cafeteria. Another time, we zoom out to reveal Gandhi is actually running around the newspaper, which is on the floor. Another time, the newspaper has a subhead that says “Spinning Newspaper Gag Still Hilarious.” Surprisingly, all of these were cut.

HISTORICAL JOKE GRAVEYARD
Scudworth talks to the Evil Board of Shadowy Figures.
SCUDWORTH: In conclusion, gentlemen, your secret army of cloned historical figures is maturing according to schedule. Except Toulouse Lautrec, but we’ve got him on hormones.

Abe addresses the crowd in the auditorium.
ABE: Because a real leadership, like the kind my clonefather had, is taking a stand on something you believe in regardless of the political consequences, so long as it does not anger the South too much.

Word.
~Pun Dog