Uncle Jeffy's Sketchbook v. 1.3

Sketch Three: Ace Hol -

No one knows much of Ace's past, or even what his given name may be. What little is known of his childhood is that he spent the majority of his time, both study and recreational, sitting atop the family dog house muttering to himself about "Sopwith Camels" and "Red Barons". It was the place he took solace in and it was a struggle for his family to get him down.

He grew up showing a natural ability to pilot any vehicle flawlessly, automobiles, motorcycles, planes, submarines, pogo sticks...you name it.

Doctors later found that he has an abnormally large iron deposit in the bridge of his nose, a quality which lets him always find magnetic north. Ace Hol NEVER gets lost!

His natural piloting ability, ease at flying and sometimes haphazard, devil-may-care, caution-to-the-wind attitude towards safety has led to rumors that he is the illegitimate son of Wiley Post...


...and Amelia Earhart...

...though no proof has ever been brought forth.

Nor has anyone attempted to explain the non-logistics of such nonsense.

Ace himself "pish-toshes" at any such explanation of his abilities as heredity or cranial mineral placement as pure "baloon juice". He himself attributes his fetes of aviation skill to an ancient and magical Celtic elixir which he says, sharpens his senses and harmonizes his humors, and allows him to focus on "the now" and "see the wind". See diagram below:

Whatever the story behind this daredevil of the stratosphere is, his call to arms is the fighting of injustices and tyranny around the globe.

Ace Hol uses his many talents of skill, speed and always keeping a steady course, in aiding Congo Jeffy and Action Frank in their never ending battle against the forces of evil around the globe!

Look for him at a blog post near you!

Uncle Jeffy's Sketchbook v. 1.2

Sketch Two: Action Frank -

Action Frank was born Akshunt Frank Franklyn to wealthy a Dutch-American family, heirs to a vst cookie importer fortune. Born with an asymmetry of the skull, doctors advised he wear a helmet from birth to help re-shape the bone. Much like a shark though, Frank's physiognomy actually contains no bone and his skeletal structure is made up entirely of cartilage, so his head never did come together.

In embarrassment, the family left young Akshunt to the care of "DWEeB" (Doctors With Expertise en Bupkus), a secret underground society to raise and experiment on at their will, and officially disowned him and destroyed all documentation linking them to him. The Doctors at DWEeB performed physical and phsycological tests on the boy, the horrors of which would drive any normal man insane. They convinced him he could speak with animals. They convinced him he had been born with a prehensile tail, then told him it had been mangled in a horrible thresher accident, just so they could monitor the phantom pain conjured in his addled brain.

There were many more, but I understand some of you are eating while reading this.

Young Akshunt eventually escaped the mad doctors, made his way to a grand jury and testified against their nefarious schemes. He then became a ward of the state, until he was assigned under the guardianship of the handsome, wealthy, benevolent Geoffrey Von Oberdorfer IV.

He would along the way trade in the football helmet he wore to protect his undeveloped skull for a more sporty pith helmet. He explains the practicality of this by saying, "No matter where you go, if you have to take a pith, it's right there!"

He tried to use his imaginary ability to speak with animals to become "The Cow Whisperer" and start an animal husbandry consulting business.

Then he found that "Husband"ry wasn't as erotic or romantic as it sounded, and gave up.

Now, armed with a "Never-Say-Die" attitude that can only come from pure, unadulterated ignorance and lack of common sense, Action Frank fearlessly fights side by side with Congo Jeffy!

Traveling the globe in battling for truth and justice and ever-long in search of true bovine-love.

Look for Action Frank at a pet store near you!

Uncle Jeffy's Sketchbook v. 1.1

As mentioned in the last sketchbook post, I'm toying with the idea of an Adventure-Western-Science Fiction-Superhero-Musical-Action serial a la Republic Pictures circa 1930's-1950's, titled "The Adventures of Congo Jeffy and Action Frank".

This past weekend "The Brain Trust" got together...

...and using the tools at our disposal...

...did some preliminary work.

Sketch One: Congo Jeffy -

Congo Jeffy is in reality young-gadabout-philanthropist-handsome-wealthy-industrialist-scientist-playboy Geoffrey Von Oberdorfer IV. Heir to the vast Oberdorfer Lederhosen Empire, no one can estimate his monetary worth as it grows so fast, but at last estimate it was approaching a gazillion dollars.

That's gazillion with a "G", people!!!

However as a young lad, he cast his fortune aside to run away and join the circus and see the world. While traveling with the sideshow he befriended and learned from the traveling freaks.

Mysticism from the swami, physical limberness and strength from the Indian rubber man and circus strongman, the power to cloud men's minds from the belly dancers and bull-shitting techniques from the carnival barkers. All talents he would one day use as an adventurer.

While wintering with the circus in French Morocco, he happened into a cut-throat game of Euchre with some locals and while collecting his winnings, was offered as partial payment..."The Utility Fez of Doom"! More on this as the story develops, but among it's tesseract hidden articles are a "Fex-a-rang", "Fez-CSI-kit" and "Fez-Shark-Repellent". It also has VTOL (vertical take off and landing) abilities as it doubles as a "Fez-Copter".

A habit learned by young Geoffrey during his time living out of a bindle on the road, was to keep a bit of civility in his day to day life. Like the British with their "tea time", Geoffrey established "toddy time" which he holds strict adherence to every day at 3 p.m. sharp. His "toddy" of choice is the classic gin and tonic, which also serves as part of his daily health maintenance regimen.

You see, the vitamin C in the lime helps stave away scurvy, the quinine in the tonic water fights malaria and the gin...well that's for everything else.

Armed with the skills learned in a globe-trotting circus side-show, a gazillionaires free time and resources, "The Utility Fez of Doom!" and a portable wet bar, Congo Jeffy travels the world fighting tyranny, injustice and sobriety wherever he finds it!

Look for his adventures at a blogging post near you.

Uncle Jeffy Sketchbook v. 1.0

Preamble Ramble:
Pardon me, dear gentle readers, for the frequency lapses over the last 10 days so of my humble blog. There have been a few days past with no new post.

This has bothered me, surely more than it has affected your daily lives, but the main point of my beginning this rambling was to force myself into picking up and using my satchel of creative tools. If nothing else to see what may evolve out of the daily effort. There are several other reasons too, which I'll get into another time.

Not to mention that this thing is called "Inside Jeff Overturf's Head". If there's no post, doesn't this imply that there's nothing in there? That's just a sign of a lot of bad things.

Over the course of the first few months of my doing this, I was pleased to see how easily I could produce content day to day. I guess over that time my subconscious began to shovel it into a particular direction, and now as I come up with things to say I find myself deciding that those things don't fit the parameters of this blog.

Poppycock! is my reaction to that thought. This is WHATEVER may be passing through...if the shine isn't on the pear yet, it's still probably good enough to eat.

Today I bring you the first view into what I'll call "Uncle Jeffy's Sketchbook". That's ideas I am playing with, that haven't reached full fruition yet.

It will be nice for me to have a record of how my ideas develop, and I hope still fun for you to see. I guess I've already done this type of post before, as can be witnessed by the post found here.

Also, don't let the term "Sketchbook" throw you. Some will be sketches drawn, others will take other forms. That's what multi-media's all about.

Now, on with the post:

A couple of years ago, I was sitting in my living room (minding my own business as I always do) and watching a few old movie serials. I was deeply immersed in the rollicking exploits of Flash Gordon or Captain Marvel or Dick Tracy or Tailspin Tommy or whoever, and Frank "The Douche" Terando was perched next to me pretending to watch, but mainly just chirping on about shit he didn't know anything about and annoying me.

At some point he made a semi-coherent, partially-relevant statement (a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters will eventually type all the works of Shakespeare). He mentioned that it would be fun to make our own version of one of these Saturday matinee staples of the 1930's-1950's. He then jabbered on about some nonsense or other (the monkeys don't type MacBeth all at once you know, there's allot of "afhdoiagh" and "vdaiqthqho" in between the real words) and I went to the drawing board.

See below my concept sketch of "The Douche"-named characters, Congo Jeffy and Action Frank.


Further discussion went out the window as I got to my "Douche" saturation point and had to start drinking to dull the sound of his chirping (I think the primates in the aforementioned analogy might have been howler monkeys), and no further work was made on this idea.

Frank's (you know..."The Douche"?) concept wasn't to actually film it or to draw it out, but to take still pictures of us and photo shop the bejesus out of them to create our jungle-science fiction-fantasy-western-adventure story. He then promised to bring over the above pictured hats so we could try them on.

Two years or so passed (monkey's get distracted you know...there were female howler monkeys to draw his attention and I'm sure there was more than one "poo-flinging" altercation that was gotten into) and he finally brought them over last weekend.

Surprise, the fez actually fit my ginormous head.

Seeing as my roommate Mike was now back in the picture, "The Douche" ("Le Douche" in proper society, "Oook-OOk-grAWK!" in howler monkey talk) brought by a hat for him to.

The following video of this fine brain-trust even captures us coming up with Mike's character name. Like catching lightning it's preserved digitally for all time. It even closes with proof that maybe this should have some old 3-D movie elements attached.



There you have it. The earliest stages in the first adventures of Congo Jeffy, Action Frank and "Ace" Hole.

Did you like my keen "Copter-Fez" effect?