MAKING MAGIC

Rick St. Charles at his Channel 6 desk with Pun-Off trophy and Little Head troll.

FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS RICK ST. CHARLES HAS BEEN THE REIGNING KING of Puns in Humboldt County, winner of the "Almost Annual Pun-Off," an event benefiting Easter Seals. This year the Pun-Off will be held on Jan. 22 at the Adorni Center in Eureka, but St. Charles will not be competing.

DeAnna Sallady, special events coordinator for Easter Seals explained, "Rick has carried the crown for two years now. He has chosen not to defend the crown this year. He sent us an official pronouncement by e-mail stating:

"Two years of shining unrelenting glory as Humboldt County's Pun King is about all that I can stand. I shan't be defending my title this year, but if you want I can stroll down the aisle in the regalia and relinquish the garb of the reign."

In a conversation at his office at Channel 6 in Eureka, St. Charles said he got involved with the Pun-Off four years ago. He came in third the first time he participated. The next year he came in second and his third year he moved up to first and won it again last year.

"The more you do it the easier it gets, so I'm not doing it again," he declared. "One reason is -- and I've told all the judges this -- they tend to repeat the categories.

"One of the first categories I bombed on was pizza toppings. Afterwards your brain goes, `Dummy, why didn't you say that the upper crust of Humboldt County was in the audience tonight?' All of these ideas come to you. So last year or the year before, up comes pizza toppings again. I was able to pull out all those puns that frustrated me."

When you talk with St. Charles you start to see how his mind works. He has a million ideas in his head and bounces from topic to topic freely with tangents, flash-forwards and flash-backs, interrupting the flow of conversation. When he talks about other people or recalls past events he will often change his voice and shift into another character.

His business card defines his job at KVIQ as creative services director and his basic profession is being creative. You know his work from the television commercials he produces for local businesses. He is the man behind the "We do such beautiful work" for K & M Glass and the long-running series of TP Tire detective spoofs. He came up with talking couches for a furniture store, the Line-X truckliner take off on X Files, and the list goes on.

On his desk there's a television set with a TV camera plugged into it. As we began our talk he used the camera as a player, slipping in one tape after another to play his favorite spots. First up is a flashy piece done for the city of Arcata, a promotional collage of people, places and events.

With pride he shows off a public service spot he created for Tapestry, a local teen sex education organization. The group's director, Beth Chaton, had asked him to do something on the theme -- big head, little head. When it was done the station submitted the piece to a competition and took home a prize. After sending it to a CBS competition, the network sent a copy to all of its affiliates.

Dressed in black, St. Charles is the big head trying to talk sense into the little head, a troll doll he holds in his hand. The message: Control yourself, if all you can think about is sex, the results could be pregnancy or disease. The little head's response is a razz and the chant, "sex, sex, sex, sex, sex."

It's a prime example of what he does best: It's clever and funny yet simple with nothing to distract from the basic concept. The creativity is in the idea itself.

St. Charles spent his early years in Minnesota and moved to Los Angeles when he was 12. Perhaps it was the California sun that started the flow of his creative juices. His grandfather gave him a small reel-to-reel tape recorder which he used it to make little skits where he would play with voices or pretend to be a sports announcer.

"Then around the time I was 14 or 15 I got a Super 8 movie camera and started making movies -- just for the fun of it. It would outrage my father, who was a scientist, because I'd spend all my money and all my time making movies.

"`To what purpose? What are you doing this for?'

"I said, `I don't know. I'd like to make movies some day.' That was my goal."

The films he made showed the beginnings of the spoofs he makes now and they often involved puns.

"One of my favorites was one called `The Wrong Expedition.' It was a take off on Thor Hyerdahl's Ra Expedition. You remember he had a theory about how people crossed the Pacific in boats made of balsam. My main character was going to cross the `Sea of Banality' in ships constructed of sturdy, buoyant manure. He went all over the world searching for the finest manure and he recruited his crew just like Thor Hyerdahl. It was a spoof.

"Now my favorite kinds of commercials are when we parody something. Two of my favorite clients are TP Tire service and K & M Glass. For TP Tires we did `As the Wheel Turns' instead of As the World Turns and we did `The Young and the Treadless.'

"For K & M we did a takeoff on Field of Dreams. That's one of my favorites, `If you break it they will come,' and we show a little kid breaking a window. The catch line is the kid asking, `Are you from heaven?' `No, son, K and M Glass. They will heal your pane.'

"There's puns built into a lot of them, like there's the `Line-X Files' -- `It's starting to grow on me' -- an X Files &nbspspoof. One I'm working on now is for Roxco Furniture. They're advertising on 3rd Rock From the Sun, so we have to do `3rd Roxco From the Sun.' I don't know where it will go from there. Sherman, one of the owners, looks a bit like Capt. Picard, so there might be something there."

While he was still a teenager in Los Angeles, St. Charles focused his attention on writing for television. He and a friend would put scripts together and send them to the studios.

"We almost got on the first Cosby show when we were about 17 but it didn't happen."

Years later he got his first big break, an opportunity to write for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

St. Charles' first Hollywood job as a boom operator.

"I was on the show from day one as a stage manager and a boom operator. Being up there on the boom you hear everything because you have a headset on. You hear what the directors are thinking, how they're communicating. Is this joke working? Is the joke not working?

"I would crack jokes to the audio guys and the other boom operator. This was Hollywood, you didn't make suggestions to the actors and actresses. But the other boom operator -- Bill Spadaro, a good friend of mine, he still is -- he would go down and tell them the joke. If they liked it he would say, `Oh, that was Rick's idea.' If they didn't like it I would deny having anything to do with it.

"Anyway, one thing led to another and after a few months they asked me to write a scene with Mary (Louise Lasser) and Dabney Coleman, a very funny actor who played Merle Jeeter. They liked it so I got to be an outline writer for the show. I liked doing it, but at a certain point I had just had enough of L.A. If you've ever lived there you know it's a very hard place to live.

"I moved up to Morro Bay near San Luis Obispo. Then I got a call with an offer to write for Benson. I went back with my writing partner, Jeff Levin, and wrote six shows. They wanted me to stay there and be on staff, but it was a four-year contract and living in Los Angeles it was just... (He draws in a deep breath and exhales...) Then I met my wife, Lisa Monet. She was a singer, a musician."

If his wife's name rings a bell, it's probably because of her album, Circle Time, a collection of simple songs for toddlers, songs like Bingo, ("and Bingo was his name-o.")

In Mary Hartman's kitchen, 1977.

Flash forward to the early '80s.

"We recorded that in our laundry room," St. Charles recalled. "Ross Rowley and I were working together -- Ross is one of the most talented, funny people I know. We were working together here in the '80s and he was selling a four-track (tape recorder.)

"My wife and I didn't really have much money at the time, but I really wanted that four-track because I'm a musician by hobby. I love to play and record and multi-tracks are just magic to me. So I said, `We really have to get this because... uh... we could record you!' since she was a professional musician.

"At the time our son Matthew was in preschool. He would come home mumbling all these snatches of songs they sang during circle time. We went to the teacher and asked what he was singing and she said, `I wish someone would record these songs.' So Lisa said, `I'll record them.' About that time Music for Little People was just taking off. The synchronicity was just perfect. They picked it up and it hasn't ever stopped selling. It was originally a cassette, but they recently released it on CD."

When they made Circle Time &nbsp(which, incidentally, was followed by two more Lisa Monet albums), Rick and Lisa were living in Humboldt County. How they ended up here was basically random chance.

"What brought us up here was Lisa's sister, Wendy. She and her husband had bought the Gingerbread Mansion in Ferndale and wanted to turn it into a bed and breakfast. Because of some other commitments they needed us to baby-sit it for nine months -- this was in 1982.

"So we moved up and moved into the Gingerbread Mansion. We collected rent from the tenants, trimmed the hedges and took care of the place. After the nine months were up we had decided we love Humboldt County. We didn't want to leave.

"Lisa had a job and I signed up to find one with Sequoia Personnel. When I gave them my résumé they said, `We mostly do secretarial, office and clerical and you're a writer and so forth, so don't hold your breath."

Within days the employment service had received a call from radio station KATA/KFMI looking for a production director and announcer. St. Charles had one radio commercial in his portfolio, a take-off on the song "Hot Rod Lincoln," done for a car dealer. It got him the job.

"I was hired as production director which was to be in charge of the commercials for the radio station and then they needed an announcer. They said, `We want to put you on the air.' I had never done it before, but it was fun. After that I have a lot of respect for jocks because so much of the time you're just sitting there waiting. I think I'd rather have a talk show than have to play music all day.

Do these commercials look familiar? Above St. Charles makes magic with special effects for a CBS promo that puts Cheryl Black in the Trees of Mystery parking lot next to Paul Bunyon. From the bottom left, an `X Files' spoof for Line-X, Roxco's talking sofa and TP Tires' `The Young and the Treadless.'

"Then in `84, a job opened up in television, a position at Channel 3. It was less money than the radio job, but I knew there was room for advancement. So I took some of my films over there and got the job. I worked with Phil Wright. He was a wonderful teacher who filled me in on the fine points of video editing. It was much easier than working with film because you don't have to touch the tape. And I worked with Hank Ingham. He was funny and knew what was funny."

There is a long standing tradition of using comedy in television commercials. It's simple -- when people laugh they feel good. If you can associate that with your client's product, you are half way home. Funny commercials stick in your head whether you want them to or not.

Creating ads in a small market like Humboldt County -- where you are often working on a shoestring budget -- a keen sense of humor is essential. Your 30-second spot must vie for attention with those made by national agencies with monumental budgets. How do you grab the audience?

"The key is the concept. Even some of the national spots are very simple in concept. I've always felt it was content over form. My philosophy about a commercial is that it has one thing to accomplish: It connects a name with a product or a service. That's it. You should not try to do more than that in 30 seconds.

"You get clients who say, (he shifts into a crotchety voice), `I want my phone number and the fact that I've been in business for 40 years and my cousin owns this other business and...' I say, `It's just 30 seconds.' You see commercials like that every now and then. There's a term in the business; we call it `malicious obedience,' where you give them just what they ask for.

"My favorite client is the one who says, `You're the expert. Make me something funny that will make people laugh because people like to laugh.' We make many more straight commercials than funny ones, but I like it when a client wants to do something a little bit off the wall. When it's funny they remember the commercial and the business and they will come and do business with you because you made them laugh."

The '80s and '90s were times of television station musical chairs for St. Charles and his cohorts in the local television scene. In 1986 Rick switched over to KVIQ and worked with Ross Rowley for a few years, then with Deborah Heiman. After Rowley moved over to Cox Cable, St. Charles decided to go freelance for a while and made a deal with KVIQ to use its facilities for editing. On the side he was trying to produce a movie, ("But that's another story.") Then Rowley left Cox for Fox and suggested St. Charles as his replacement. While he was at Cox the management changed at KVIQ and the new regime made him a "very nice offer." He suggested Cox hire Heiman as his replacement.

St. Charles has nothing but praise for his counterparts at the other local stations. He sees them as part of the talent pool who have opted to remain in Humboldt County.

"What's happening is we are all getting more valuable. Because we all love what we're doing we get better at it. The clients learn to trust us and we learn what they want. The quality of production keeps going up. The highest compliment you can pay to somebody in the local business is to say, `That spot didn't look local.'
At this point in the conversation there was a knock on the door. Cheryl Black from the KVIQ news team says she is ready, even though she does not know what she is ready for.

We head across the hall into the control room and St. Charles shows her a commercial in progress. It's a CBS promo piece, a fast-paced montage with shots of CBS stars. St. Charles and his staff at KVIQ have added some local talent turned into giants. Dave Silverbrand is seen waving to someone on 2nd Street --he is taller than the Victorian light post. Weatherman Adam Gerber steps on Fernbridge.

St. Charles is in his element combining a touch of comedy with the magic of movies. The shots are special effects done with the wonder of chroma-key. The wall opposite the news desk is painted blue, what's known in the trade as blue screen. It's where Gerber stands when he points to a map showing the clouds rolling in or the temperature.

St. Charles and Kate Devries spread a blue tarp on the floor and as Rick watches on the monitor, Devries drapes a piece of blue cloth over Black's arm and places her in a scene shot at Trees of Mystery. She has become a giant and has her arm around Paul Bunyon.

They try a few variations on hand position and action -- Should she wave or should she throw a kiss to Craig Kilborn -- Then they decide to try it with St. Charles hidden behind Black with his hand becoming Paul's.

Satisfied that at least one of the shots on the tape will work they call it a wrap. Devries folds up the tarp, Black heads upstairs to the newsroom. As we return to his office St. Charles remarks, "I just love my job. I get to make magic happen. It is so much fun."

PUN MEISTER

THIS IS THE 15TH ALMOST ANNUAL PUN-OFF," SAID DEANNA SALLADY, special events coordinator for Easter Seals.

"It started 20-some-odd years ago and went on for a few years. Then they took a hiatus of about eight years. Someone resurrected in a few years ago, that's why it's `Almost Annual.'"

The first Pun-Off was a casual affair put together by Jeff Smoller and Lorna McCloud in someone's living room.

"I hear in the beginning it was pretty raunchy," said Sallady. "It got bigger and bigger and moved from one location to another and they had to clean it up because the public was attending."

Dr. Scott Sattler ran it for a number of years as a fundraiser for Humboldt Connections, a non-profit youth services organization. When the group faded away he turned the event over to Easter Seals.

"All the money raised is used by Easter Seals specifically to support our local center which serves about 3,000 people a year. We serve people who have disabilities of any type. It could be something they were born with, a result of an illness or an accident.

"The biggest program we have is the adaptive aquatic exercise program in our pool. We have a full-sized pool, the warmest one in the county where we run a program three days a week. We call it the Arthritic Swim Program, but we also get a lot of orthopedic patients, people who have had hip replacements, broken legs, what have you. They can exercise in an environment that does not impact their body."

The Pun-Off contest is a relentless process of elimination. Three contestants are chosen randomly, called to the stage and a category is chosen from a hat.

"Each punster in turn has a period of time to come up with a pun within the category," said Sallady. "They keep going round-robin style until one of them is unable to come up with a pun."

This year's judges are Martin Love, chief executive officer of General Hospital, Marianne Morse from Cox Cable and Dr. Scott Sattler, aka Doc in the Box. Their task is to determine whether a proper pun has been delivered rather than a mere joke, with a pun defined as a double entendre, a twist in the meaning of a word relating to the category.

"The way puns work is basically word association," said Rick St. Charles. "You start with a topic and let the words come to you. There's a word for it, the kids do it in school, it's called a Venn diagram. You start with one word and let your stream of consciousness flow with words associated with it.

"For example let's say the topic is `the Old West.' I think of Wild Bill Hickok, Indians, Matt Dillon, Chester, Doc, Miss Kitty. You hit one and know there's something there. It's like when I used to write in Hollywood and you knew there was a joke in the air and you could just sense it. It's just a matter of pulling the punch line out of the air.

"So Miss Kitty you draw on that and think of associations kittens, cats... ah ha, there's one. You have to introduce the context, so you say, `When I think of the Old West I think of the popular series Gunsmoke and Miss Kitty. As little kids we thought of Miss Kitty as the pretty lady who liked Matt Dillon and ran the saloon. We did not realize her name was Miss Kitty because she was also running a cat house.

"These puns don't have to be good jokes," he admitted. "It's not about the best pun, it's about stamina. It's quantity not quality."

The judges also see to it that no puns are repeated and that they actually relate to the category. Love, the Clock Master must make sure the contestant comes up with something before time runs out, although cash bribes for additional time are allowed and encouraged.

As the field of punsters is whittled down the difficulty rises and time is shortened. As one joker after another finds himself staring at the ceiling with nothing to say, it comes down to a final two-way joust.

Sometimes the last round can go on for quite some time. The most skilled punmeisters seem to have an ability to pull double meanings out of thin air, but ultimately someone's well runs dry.

There's no telling who that might be Saturday night. The only thing certain is that it won't be Rick St. Charles. He will be sitting in the audience groaning with delight along with the rest of the crowd.

The 15th Almost Annual Pun-Off takes place Jan 22, at Adorni Center beginning at 7 p.m. Admission is $12 in advance or $15 at the door.