One day, Zac Little (CAS ’10) decided to kill his boredom by setting up a few puppets in his apartment and making them converse about political and cultural events. Now, he’s a bonafide YouTube star, a part of his own sponsored channel and creating his own internet crazes. His short series, Rock and Sock and Robot, takes all the messed up parts you love about America and turns them into quotable, two-minute slices of comedy gold.

The Quad: The first question I want to ask you is: Ha Bisky?

Zac Little (CAS '10), Puppet Master | Photo by Nicole Cousins

Little: It’s really not my fault that it’s gotten this out of control, because I do other videos with a group of guys who took it and ran with it. It started as something a guy I went to high school with used to say. He was kind of a jock caricature, and we don’t really know where it came from but it was his all-purpose exclamation he would say whether he was excited or upset or anything. I remembered it a few weeks ago and decided it deserved a comeback.

And now it’s blown up on the internet.

Yeah, for a long time it was just a placeholder. I was going to come up with some other nonsense phrase, and everyone who I talked to persuaded me not to change it.

How did you start Rock and Sock and Robot?

I used to be involved with other comedy groups, and when I moved to Boston I really had no one else to do anything with. So, I kind of needed a way that wasn’t just me talking to myself in my apartment. So, I decided that if puppets were talking to each other it wouldn’t be as sad as me talking to myself.

How long does it take you to make an episode?

I guess it takes about five or six hours total.  My original plan was to just film it once and I would never have to worry about it ever again, but then I realized that that would not be very visually interesting, especially on the Youtube page. So, the first thing I have to do is shoot it again, which is pretty easy. But, then, after that I have to do all the voices. I have really horrible technology, so it’s a lot of moving things between two computers, because they’re both old and one can’t really handle altering audio and the other can’t handle video. So, there’s a lot of walking back and forth across my apartment with a flash drive. It’s really simple animation, so it’s a lot of hitting the same keys 400 or 500 times.

The animation is pretty topical, does it take much to find inspiration?

It does now, because the only thing that’s been happening for weeks is the health care reform debate. And it’s been going on for so long that it’s just boring and there’s no more jokes to be made. And, so, you just have to go back. Making fun of Glenn Beck is kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I feel like I need to do it anyway. It’s fun, but it’s not very productive.

Check out more of Rock Sock and Robot at Zac’s website, habisky.blogspot.com, or on the Angry Films Channel on Youtube .

if you like this...

• The Black Keys Are Back: ‘El Camino’ Puts the Glam Back In Rock