An Interview For Lily & Timmy’s Super, Awesome, Incredible, COVID-19 B-day!

I got the opportunity to read the ONLY CHILDREN’S BOOK ON COVID-19. Yes, comedians Mike Farrell and Jacob Horn decided to write a children’s book filled with hope, humor, and common-ground. These past few months have been insane; revealing to a world that, despite its vast, historical issues, thought it was okay, it was the opposite. People don’t know what is normal anymore; let alone safe. Yet, in the journey discover a new normal, Lily & Timmy’s Super, Awesome, Incredible, COVID-19 B-day! becomes a heart-warming tale on the many ways parents try to make their children’s lives special, even if in a crisis. Thus, I got opportunity to interview the two men who made me laugh and sweetly smile at a cartooned family realizing love is strong enough to push you through pandemic.

Diandra How has the pandemic made you reassess what is parenthood?

Mike: I think that the pandemic has opened up societies’ eyes on the resilience and creativity of parents. I can’t imagine being a parent in today’s day and age, especially a parent to young children. Our book explores a couple of really big questions: How do we explain a pandemic to children, and how can we give our children a sense of normalcy and happiness? It’s a lot to tackle for any parent, but parents in America and around the world are proving that they’re more than up to the challenge.

Jake: Parents always save the day for their children. In my mind, they have always been, but with lockdown and quarantine, now more than ever the children know that. With school, friend hangouts, and basically every other social situation that they are used to being shut off, the parents not only have but “had” to take it on themselves to make their children’s day to day seem somewhat normal and fun. With our book we are just trying to help out a bit.

Diandra: How have things like “normal” or “sanity” been redefined for you?

Mike: These are two words that no one would ever use to describe Jake or myself – haha! As comedians and storytellers, we see the world through a different lens. If anything I think that being quarantined has made us more creative. The world says, ‘you no longer have a job and you’re confined to this small space that is your house’; we say ‘might as well kill some time and write a children’s book. Never done that before.’

Jake: Absolutely. “Normal” isn’t the normal that we are all used to. It’s not what we grew up with and have had our whole lives. The “normal” now is something that everyone on this planet has to get used to because we are all moving forward with a life unknown. The same goes for “sanity”. That has always been an interesting word to use to describe a situation, but “sanity” is incredibly relevant these days. Everyone is being tested with their own. The parents on this planet don’t have the luxury of dealing with their own first because the “sanity” and well-being of their child’s mindset is most important.

Diandra: What about each other, as comics and writers, made you feel like perfect partnership for this book?

Mike: The book was never a project that was preconceived in any way, shape, or form. Neither of us had the glorious idea of ‘lets write a children’s book’ it was much more fluid than that. We were on the phone cracking some ridiculous jokes, and we stumbled upon this idea that we were riffing on – the notion about how bad it would be to be a young kid right now. Everything that the child wants to do gets shot down by Mom and Dad. Collectively, we thought ‘hey, we’ve got nothing going on. Let’s put this on the page and see where it goes,’ and from there inertia guided us the rest of the way. It wasn’t until we had an outline that we even realized that we had a children’s book on our hands. In regard to working with Jake though – he’s one of my best friends. We share the same the same quirky, zany, dark sense of humor and we tend to be bound at the hip when it comes to comedic projects like this.

Jake: Mike and I met about 6 years ago. Within 15 seconds it was clear that we were on the same wavelength. We both come from a place that we can find the humor in just about anything or any situation. So we quickly became the closest of friends. A buddy that you could always call or hangout with and your day would quickly become better for it. He and I both live in the creative realm of film and TV and we’ve done quite a few other projects and all of them have been a blast.

Diandra: What are the things you learned, about yourselves, during this pandemic?

Mike: For me, the biggest thing that I learned about myself is that my sense of humor can appeal to more people than just immature 30-year-old dudes. As a writer, I’ve always written about things that make me laugh, and by extension twenty to thirty-five year-old-guys that like preposterous jokes, toilet humor, profanity, etc, etc. Our book is mostly for children 4-10, and the mothers that would read these books to their children. That is the complete opposite of who I’m used to entertaining. I find it very refreshing that that we were able to keep some of our sense of humor in the book through the character that is the dad, but also reach this brand-new market of moms and young children and have them love what we’ve done.

Jake: I’ve learned that laughter can be the remedy that is needed most. Obviously if you are sick or have health problems real life begins to take over, but if you can find a moment to share some laughter with a friend or family member, or even a complete stranger I promise your day will get a tiny bit better. I’ve witnessed it first hand through watching my Mom slowly die from Parkinson’s as a child. She became worse and worse by the day. Got to a place where she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and eventually couldn’t even eat. It was very hard on all of us, but Mom and I could always share a laugh together. We could always find humor in something and when we did, a smile would show up on her face. It’s one of the few things I remember about her.

Diandra: Are there any family memories or people, in your life, that remind you of these characters?

Mike: 100%. Jake and I joke about this all the time. Both the mother and the father ended up taking on many of the traits of our own parents. The mother is much more relatable, calm, collected, genuine and sweet (very much like my own mom). The father character has his own way of operating, and although he can be a bit off the walls, means well, which is similar to my father. The father character is also the personification of all of the pandemonium that came along with the coronavirus.

Jake: Haha. Yes. Initially, we just started writing our characters and the story. We hadn’t really taken anytime to base them off of anybody. But as we were writing and going through ideas, we stepped back and realized that we had based the parents off of our own. The power and resilience of the Mom in the book was taken from both of our own mothers. The same with the Dad. His absurdity and panic was taken, in a humorous way, from our fathers. But even more, we realized that “Lily and Timmy” were us. We had written ourselves into the roles of the children: 6 year old us. We didn’t go through a pandemic as a child but we both had memories and feelings of being sad, of being uncertain, and of being happy. So we realized that we were, basically, just writing a story about ourselves. But I think most people on this planet will be able to find moments and feelings from this book they can relate to.

Diandra: Was there a specific moment when you knew you had to make this children’s book?

Mike: We wrote the book very quickly. I think that once we had written the book and gone through the hassle of having multiple story editors review the book, completing the book with illustrations and all was a foregone conclusion. At some point, we thought, ‘well, we’ve already done this, this, and this’ at this point we’ve got to finish this book.

Jake: Initially, we were writing a story and outline of a dark comedy. It was mostly just a story for Mike and I; with the possibility of becoming a book for our friends and people or our age. But very quickly we found out that our story was following these children around and seeing how they would feel and deal with the strange life of a pandemic. After we discovered that, the book was written in less than two days. It came very naturally for us. We obviously wrote this book for parents and children but I think we also wrote this book for ourselves.

Diandra: In the book, you humorously confront the difficulties and disappointments of having to keep kids “sheltered in place.” Was there a moment/ difficulty, in particular, that really stood out, in terms of your own “sheltered in place” journey?

Mike: I think that I probably have had the opposite experience than most people when it comes to being “sheltered-in-place.” I was fortunate from the standpoint, that I usually work from home anyway. So being “sheltered-in-place” was kind of like “hey Mike, keep doing what you usually do, just go outside a tiny bit less, and call it ‘sheltering-in-place’ instead of your life as you already know it.” For me, I had to think about what it was like to be a child again when I was constantly wanting to go outside, play with my friends, and discover new things. I think that “shelter-in-place” actually just made me more creative like the mother from our book.

Jake: Well, I always feel weird saying it, but “shelter-in-place” was one of the best things for me. It gave me so much time to jump into the creative world. Work on some scripts and some other ideas as well. Truthfully, I don’t think Mike and I would have gone through everything we did to get this book written, illustrated, and launched on Amazon if life had continued in it’s normal progress. Also, because we were writing a book that was a current topic with the possibility of going away we had to do all of the book creation in record timing. From the moment we had the idea of the book to the moment it was launched on Amazon was about a month. It was stressful, but very rewarding.

Diandra: Many parents have been at home teaching their kids. What is one lesson/ subject from school you excelled at and another that you totally did not get?

Mike: I really enjoyed school growing up. Like many young children, PE was probably my favorite subject growing up. The one that was the most challenging (tedious really), was any type of math. It wasn’t that I didn’t get it, it’s just that it tends to be the most boring subject. Not to mention, most parents, mine included, despise teaching it.

Jake: I loved being physical. PE was a blast especially when I was child. It really was just playing games with friends. I also LOVED English.I loved to write stories. I grew in a family of actors so watching movies was a very big part of my childhood. Writing stories in English was just writing a movie, I just didn’t realize at 7 that that’s what I was doing. Math was not fun. As I became better at it, it was tolerable but I didn’t like dealing with numbers. It just felt really boring as a kid.

Diandra: Disney is consistently mentioned throughout the book. What is your favorite Disney film, and if you could be a Disney character, which would you be and why?

Mike: Yes – Disney is mentioned because our characters were supposed to go to Disneyland for their sixth birthday but didn’t get the opportunity to because of shelter-in-place orders. Jake and I, even as adults, love Disney movies and Disney movies have had a huge impact on our upbringings. This is kind of a tough question because the Disney company has acquired a lot of new properties like Marvel, Pixar, etc. However, looking at the original 2D Cartoon Disney movies: a couple of my favorites would be Rescuers Down Under, Robin Hood, and Peter Pan. If I had to choose a character…let’s go with one of Disney’s newer live actions films and say Captain Jack Sparrow. I would love to be Captain Jack for a day and cause some mischief. That world just seems like so much fun to me. And if you let me choose a Marvel film (because Disney now owns Marvel), of course I’ve got to say Ironman. Who wouldn’t want to be Tony Stark?

Jake: Disney has been a MASSIVE influence in my life. I grew up in southern California; so by the age of 10 I had been to Disneyland 15 times I imagine. I loved that place. You truthfully felt that you were in the Disney films. I still get that feeling when I go there. Going back to my childhood, in the Theater and Film realm, my parents made Disney films as much of a part of my upbringing as school or anything else was. My dad and mom would often play the role of Disney characters with their voices and antics just to get me to laugh. Looking back now I start to see why I turned out the way I did. I love storytelling. I love characters. Growing up, I always wanted to be Peter Pan. To be able to fly, fight pirates, live up in a tree house. Everything about that life fascinated me. Then “Hook” came out when I was 11 and I wanted it even more. I used to sing, “The second star to the right, shines in the night…for you.” all the time.Truthfully, I still do.

Diandra: In the end, what does family mean to you, now, more than ever?

Mike: Family means everything. One of the few good things that this pandemic has shown us, isIa spotlight on how we don’t actually need all of the materialistic things that we thought to make us happy. I’m glad that parents are getting to spend more time with their children and that people are getting to experience new forms of togetherness around the home. My hope is that those sorts of positive aspects will stick around long after the pandemic goes away.

Jake: Family is you. It’s because of Family that you turn out the way you do. They are responsible for your happiness, sadness, anger, and pretty much all emotion as a child. There are times that you hate your brother or sister, but you still love them more than anything else. It’s such a powerful task to take on, to raise a child. Your life is all about you for most of it. Then one day you have a child and your importance almost ceases to exist. Now the importance is your child. Making sure that they get everything they need and want. I’ve talked to so many of my friends that have children and many times I hear, “I think I’m doing this all wrong.” But they aren’t. Raising a child is a learn as you go endeavor. You do it as best as you can. That’s what Family is to me. It’s a group of people that all love each other and are doing this thing called “Life” as best as they can.
Click Here To Buy Lily & Timmy’s Super, Awesome, Incredible, COVID-19 B-day! by Mike Farrell and Jacob Horn.