Hey, Joe, whaddya know?

How to run for Congress, apparently.

Copyright laws on the Joe the Plumber brand prohibit me from using an image of him, so here's basic cable television star Michael Chiklis.

Yes, Samuel Wurzelbacher, who played the part of “Joe the Plumber” on the 2008 sitcom “The Presidential Election,” has filed papers to run as a Republican in Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District.

In the interest of capitalizing on the “Name, followed by the definite article ‘the,’ followed by an occupation” (it’s kind of fun like a Mad Lib, isn’t it?), I have a slate of candidates of my own.

Mack the Knife – Tough on crime, but his foreign policy skills leave something to be desired. “Nice country you have here, Mr. Karzai. Be a shame if something happened to it.”

Knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.

Bob the Builder – Solid work ethic, although his union ties may be a problem with conservative voters.

Jimmy the Greek – Postive: He’ll lay you odds on a matchup between the U.S. military and any other country in the world. Negative: He’s dead.

Pro-recycling.

Oscar the Grouch – No wife. No kids. No nonsense. Also, probably the greenest candidate around.

Alice the Camel – For when those meetings of the House Subcommittee on Whether to Charge by Column Inch or by the Word get so dull they need a musical pick-me-up that only a Cub Scout singalong can produce.

Darth Plageuis the Wise – Not sure, but I think Dick Cheney killed this guy in his sleep.

Ack!

Bill the Cat – Hairballs on the floor of the U.S. House. It would probably compliment the manure that has been collecting there since time immemorial.

I’m sure there are others, but my brain is shot. Feel free to supply them yourselves in the handy-dandy comments section below. And subscribe if you haven’t already.

Booooooooooo!

Suggestive Halloween costumes that may never see the light of day…

1. Sexy IRS agent. Spoiler alert…you’re gonna get screwed!

2. Naughty Wet Nurse. Not as fun as it sounds.

3. Oedipus Rex. Complete with temporary “I Heart Mom” tattoo, “MILF Hunter” T-shirt and Jules’ “Bad Motherf—er” wallet from Pulp Fiction. “Hey, Josephus!”

4. Hunky Bassoonist. It could happen.

5. Slutty Philatelist. Anyone wanna play Post Office?

Performance anxiety…

Thursday night I got up on a stage for the first time in years. It wasn’t great, but it didn’t suck and I was invited back to sing with Swingstreet, the group that so graciously allowed me to crash the stage tonight during the pre-Festival of the Horse activities in downtown Georgetown.

Truly, it was fun, and it’s something I wish I could do on a regular basis. If you have never had the pleasure of performing music, dance or theatre live on stage, it’s hard to explain.

Once upon a time when I was a music student at Morehead State University, I had a work-study position as stage manager of the music department recital hall. Most of my time was spent backstage, listening to performances given by faculty members and my classmates. As a result, I never did spend a lot of time in the audience.

On the occasions when I was the one on stage, it was exhilarating. Naturally, my first time performing solo, I was scared shitless. I can’t remember what piece of music I played. I’m hoping one of the founding members of the Tom Musgrave Bassooniacs or my April 1994 spread in Tiger Beat will have that information.

Being my first time, as with the first time performing other pleasurable activities, I sucked. I hit probably 97 percent of the right notes, though in my defense I had only been playing bassoon for about two years, and that instrument is a bastard to master. I’m sure the tempo was off and, the bassoon being what it is, intonation was not always the best. But I got through it and lived to do it again. And, again, like that other pleasurable activity, the more you do it, the better you get at it. The fear is still there, but over time it becomes your friend; the thing that propels your ass out on stage to collect the cheers, applause, and, in some cases, women’s underwear by the truckload.

(That was a memorable senior recital. I’m quite sure the high point was my cadenza in the first movement of W.A. Mozart’s Concerton for Bassoon. I bought my cadenza from an out-of-work musicologist who needed money to support his Tylenol PM habit. He promised it would be a panty-peeler. Who knew?)

(True story. I hate Timothy McVeigh. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also because my senior recital date was April 19, 1995. How do I remember this? Because that’s the same day McVeigh chose to turn Oklahoma City’s Alfred Murrah Building into rubble. On the day of my recital. Thanks a lot, dick.)

(This signals the end of the parenthetic thoughts.)

So, to this day, I disdain being in an audience. I’d much rather be up on stage. And I think anyone in the entertainment industry, from operatic tenors to pole dancers, will agree that the best seat in the house is standing center stage with a spotlight following your every move.

Unless you’re name is John Wilkes Booth, you just shot Abraham Lincoln and jumped to the stage, delivering your one-line Latin soliloquoy. Then the spotlight just sucks.

Carly & Me

I never knew this song was about me...

I have a confession to make. I am the man Carly Simon is singing about in “You’re So Vain.”

To be fair, I never did think that song was about me. It wasn’t until a few years ago, I was, for no apparent reason, perusing my scarf collection with a friend when she pointed to one and said. “Hey! That’s apricot. Like that song.”

Just to set the record straight, that one eye I had in the mirror was my lazy eye, which is why I keep my hat tipped so low over it. It’s very light sensitive.
My downfall with Carly was “the morning after.” There are three words every woman wants to hear from her lover first thing in the morning.

Unfortunately, they are not “what’s your name?”

No lead in my pencil

In an attempt to bitchslap myself back to life, literarily speaking, I’m going to lay bare my insecurities and deficiencies as a writer.

At this moment I am experiencing what we in the writing biz call “writer’s block.” It’s like performance anxiety, only there’s no woman sitting next to you telling you that “it happens to lots of writers.” Also, there’s no magic pill to straighten out your problem.

I blame it on my day job. I’m convinced there are a finite number of words I’m able to produce each day, and whatever I have left at the end of the day is what I have to work with. They’re never the good words either. I’m stuck with words like goiter, dour and berber. Hence, the steaming pile of crap you are reading right now. If I could do a better job of managing my words during the day, you could be reading a wonderful ditty about a young bassoon player whose car breaks down in front of the Playboy Mansion on the way to his first big gig and is gently guided into manhood by a cadre of women for whom gravity apparently has no sway.

That’s completely made up, by the way. It never actually happened.

Dammit.

So I’m sitting here with the literary equivalent of erectile dysfunction, sharing this rather embarassing condition with you, good reader. Because I’m not writing this stuff in an attempt to land a sweet deal writing for Conan O’Brien or Saturday Night Live. It’s about the art.* I do it for you. So I’m going to use every trick in my bag — imagining the audience naked, thinking about baseball, humming the theme to “Sanford and Son” — to get the job done and make sure your experience here lives up to the standard that you have naturally come to expect.

* -It’s not about the art. Follow me on Twitter at #whoreforanentertainmentcareer.**

**- Please, don’t.

Let’s talk about sex

It’s gold nuggets like this that remind me why I love NPR News.

Scientists at the University of Indiana have determined that having sex is what keeps us an evolutionary step ahead of those repressed, puritanical prudes that reproduce asexually. I’m looking at you, liverworts!

Two wild and crazy guys...doing their part for human evolution. "Now for the foxes!"

The study postulates that “parasites, including bacteria and viruses, are one reason species developed sexual reproduction in the first place.”

Oh, and it’s also awesome wrapped in bom-chicka-bow-wow!

It’s worth pointing out, also, that as I was listening to this report, I had just pulled the car into the garage. Paging Dr. Freud.

This is the kind of research that I think will lead to big advances for humankind. How many nooners are we away from inventing warp drive and lightsabers? How many quickies will it take to get us to the point where all of us can do incredible things with our minds, like bend forks and unhook bras.

As you can see, the human potential is limitless. And it might — just might — cut down on the “not tonight, dear; I have a headache” obstacle.

If I may indulge in a bit of soapboxing for a moment (and I can…it’s my damn blog), this is the kind of reporting that makes NPR worthy of your pledge. I would give fifty bucks a year. Keep the coffee mug and just continue the “we should have more sex because the evolutionary fate of humanity lies in our burning loins” news stories.

In related news, from the “Best Thing Since Medical Marijuana” file, Wisconsin Public Radio personality Dr. Zorba Paster prescribed daily sex to a caller complaining of irritable bowel syndrome. I admit, irritable bowel syndrome is kind of a boner killer, but there are pills for that and if daily sex is the cure…well, we do what we must.

So, we can either drop the needle on some Marvin Gaye and put a human being on Mars, or we can go extinct watching “Jersey Shore.”

I vote for sending up the rocket.

Tased and confused

I never had 50,000 volts pass through my body.

Here’s a nickel’s worth of free advice. If, for whatever reason, you ever find yourself on the wrong side of the law and a cop draws a taser and levels it at you, go ahead and surrender.

Earlier in the year, I wrote a story about Georgetown Police Department’s reactivation of the Citizen Police Academy. There are a lot of benefits to participating in a class like that, and I encourage anyone who has the time to commit to the Georgetown class (it’s free) to do so. For those of my readers who don’t live in Georgetown, check with your local police department or sheriff’s office to see if they have something similar.

Anyhow, when I interviewed Sgt. Todd Stone, the academy’s commandant, so to speak, he hooked me with a single line.

“And you can find out what it’s like to get tased.”

I’m not a masochist, but I am a journalist, and there’s a certain intrepid spirit that we kindle in ourselves and when we aren’t actively pursuing trouble, we’re trying to make it ourselves.

So I signed up for the citizen police academy to learn about the relationship our officers in Georgetown have with the community, but what I really wanted to do was ride that taser eight seconds and dare it to toss me off.

On Tuesday, I got that wish. About eight of my classmates and I linked arms, forming a human chain. One of the cops serving as our instructor hooked one of the probes from the taser to a person at one end and the other probe he hooked up to me, at the opposite end. We all kneeled, putting ourselves closer to the floor. The classmates of ours who elected not to get zapped knelt in front of us in case we buckled forward.

At first I questioned whether eight of us linked together could possibly experience the full taser effect. I resolved to ask for another round of tasering if I didn’t feel the first round was adequate.

It turns out I am a dumbass.

With little warning (and no foreplay), the officer pulled the trigger on the taser sending 50,000 volts through me and my classmates. The pain defies description, but I will attempt to do so for you.

As I listened to the rat-tat-tat-tat of electricity arcing through the taser unit, I thought of drums. It was as if Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa were playing dueling drumsets and my skin was a snare drum head. And then someone gave those two bastards matching sets of electrified drumsticks. Gene, everybody knows Buddy’s a prick, but you?!

It turns out that having us kneeling to the floor was a really good idea, since that’s where we all ended up. Swear words are so great, because in the right combination they can create quite a tapestry. And I wanted to use them. All of them, in rapid succession in multiple octaves.

Unfortunately, all I could manage was “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Which is great if you’re having really great sex, but not so much if you’re riding a 50,000 volt tidal wave of pain.

Two-and-a-half seconds after the trigger pull, the arcing noise and the electricity stopped. We were still on the floor, recovering. I’m afraid I can’t adequately describe the aftereffects. The only think I can say, for a fact, is that I will never, ever voluntarily get tased again. No way. No how. Not for anything.

I would be happy, however, to pull the trigger.

Nothing to see here

If you notice things changing here, I’m just experimenting with different themes. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.

Fiddle-dee-dee

This summer marks the fifteenth anniversary of my association with Morehead Theatre Guild’s production of Fiddler on the Roof.

Tom Musgrave as Motel the Tailor, ca. 1996. I know. The camera adds about 10 pounds...and chiseled features and overall sex appeal.

I have never forgotten the experience, but I had lost track of the years until the recent addition of a Facebook friend who had been in the cast, too.

For me the experience was significant because it was my first — and I think only — experience on the musical theatre stage.

It wasn’t my first go-around in musical theatre though. I’d been in a handful of pit orchestras for Morehead State theatre department productions prior to Fiddler: The Apple Tree, Cinderella, Into the Woods, Bye, Bye Birdie. Birdie was probably the most fun because in addition to playing in the pit. But it really wasn’t a pit because we were about 15 feet above the stage on a platform built inside a giant jukebox the set crew had constructed. It was genius. It also was the last time I’ll ever play anything sitting 15 feet above a stage on a platform built by college kids. But that was long ago when I was much braver than I am now.

In Fiddler I graduated from the pit to the stage. It was not the route I intended. When I contacted one of the directors, Octavia Fleck, I did so to express interest in directing the pit orchestra. I say this partly to tell a story, but also to let people know that at one point in my life I was actually a decent musician. To paraphrase one of my favorite musical satirists, I don’t want people to get the idea I have to do journalism for a living. I could be making tens of dollars a week singing “Volare” on the nursing home circuit.

Octavia kindly let me know her husband at the time, John, would be directing the orchestra, but asked if I’d be interested in auditioning for a part. I hadn’t thought about it, but figured, what the hey. I already had planned on being on campus for summer school. So I went to the audition. I sang and I read a few scenes. Some time later Octavia let me know I had landed the role of Motel the Tailor.

True Fact! Motel the Tailor had been played on Broadway by the late Bert Convy. I’m available if anyone’s interested in a “Win, Lose or Draw” revival.

Fiddler was great fun. A lot of what I learned during that production I still find myself referring to when I’m viewing other stage work with a critical eye. I cringe when I see an actor turn their back to the audience, especially when speaking. Consequently, I don’t feel like such an idiot when interviewing theatre-types for arts stories. I think I could actually do this for a living.

In the story, Motel courts and marries Tzeitel in a wedding Tzeremony that gets trashed by Russian soldiers at the end of the first act. In our production, Tzeitel was played by the lovely and talented Janean Freeman. Janean was the classical music host on our public radio station, WMKY and although she’d probably never admit it, males ages 25 to 40 seemed more interested in classical music during her tenure at the station.

Janean was fun to play off of because she was so good and managed not to take herself so seriously. During the wedding ceremony scene, we’d have to appear as though we were repeating vows from the Rabbi. We actually were filling in with nonsense, like lines from Monty Python sketches, just to make things more interesting. This was a woman who, the summer prior, played Maria in the Guild’s production of The Sound of Music, and even though I think that particular musical is a steaming pile of saccharine-laced cow flop, she performed beautifully, making that theatrical death march just a little more endurable.

I never have returned to the stage since then; not in a theatrical production anyway. I’ve threatened to. There are roles I’d love to play if ever given the opportunity: Leo Bloom in “The Producers,” Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls,” Abigail Adams in “1776.” I’ve also been cooking up an idea for my own production called Scathing Revue, which is basically a collection of some of the most naughty, irreverent and fun tunes from comic opera and musical theatre. Think of anything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Mel Brooks. Booze would be sold during the show to pay the royalties for all the songs because of the stupid copyright laws. Who knew composers liked to be paid? So, set ‘em up, Joe.

And there goes a quarter to the estates of Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen. Already, I’m in the hole.

I also have been tossing an idea around for a spinoff musical based on one of the descendants of Motel the tailor. It would be set in the 22nd century and revolve around the life of Motel’s great-great-great grandson, also named Motel. In post apocalyptic New York he has tossed aside his family’s tradition of creating high fashion in favor of reviving the long dead tradition of economy lodging along major U.S. highways. The title of the musical?

Motel VI.

For those of you that hung in there until the punchline, you’re welcome.

To the [insert name of high school here] Class of 2011

I was going to write about the practice at Scott County High School, and other high schools, of awarding a bajillion valedictorian honors to its graduating seniors, but I think I can sum up my thoughts on the matter pretty succinctly: SCHS please grow a pair. This is not T-ball where we don’t keep score and everyone gets a trophy. This is dress rehearsal for life. Just like in the Final Four, Highlander and job interviews, in the end there can be only one.

And now for something somewhat related …

I didn’t get to give the commencement address at my high school. We did it by vote, so the speakers were selected by their mass appeal as opposed to their ability to string together a cogent series of thoughts. On the whole, thought, I was not disappointed. Nor was I inspired to greatness, otherwise I might have chosen a more lucrative career than journalism, mightn’t I?

Still, I always felt robbed of the opportunity to rain down a veritable weak mist of wisdom upon my fellow graduates. Twenty years later, lo and behold, the Internet has given voice to millions who otherwise never should have been given such a public forum, even in a free and open society. Never. Ever.

Except for me. My intrepid blog and I will function as a virtual guest commencement speaker.* This bit of prose is intended not only to rectify my rather deplorable omission from the graduation dais, but it might also bring some sense of hope to the class of 2011, wherever they might be.

But mostly, this is just for me.

Without further a-doo-be-doo-be-doo …

Faculty, staff, administrators, former lovers and, of course, graduates, I am honored to stand here before you donned in this unseemly gown, cardboard hat, and cheap clip-on tie. And if anyone in the front row is going commando underneath, please refrain from crossing your legs until after the ceremony.

If there was only one piece of advice I could give you, it would be this: stop texting, put down the mobile phone and for the love of God be interesting.

Be interesting to your fellow human beings: friends, coworkers, sexual partners. You have been raised in the age of the Internet. Your teachers, muttering the rallying cry of “if you can’t beat them, join them,” incorporated those abominable devices into their lesson plans with the intent of making education “hip” or “relevant” to your generation, but they have really turned you into “zombies,” or worse “social eunuchs” (the rest of you can take a moment to look it up).

A long time ago, in a high school one county away, if you were, say, socially awkward around females, a bit gangly, had an unusually long neck and an abnormally high forehead, you made up for those physical deficiencies with something I like to call “personality.” As in: “He’s not much to look at, but he’s got a good personality.” If you were an insufferable band geek, you went to Personality Graduate School and received your “sense of humor.”** Armed with a “good personality” and a “sense of humor,” most guys and gals could, one day (if they really put their shoulders to it), score.

What? You were expecting me to say meet and fall in love with the man/woman of your dreams and spend the rest of your lives together? No. That’s much too advanced right now. Truth be told, getting each other into bed at this point is probably a non-starter, even with “personality” and “a sense of humor.”

Still, scoring is not the goal of developing your “personality” and “sense of humor.” But I believe you have an obligation to be interesting to someone else, because that’s in such short supply in your generation, I’m afraid. In my professional life I can count on one hand (possibly two, but definitely not three) the number of honest-to-God young people I would sit down and have a second conversation with. And I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition, but we’re moving on. Or on we’re moving.

One hand. That’s five fingers: the number of high school kids who intrigued me even a little bit; who gave more than a “yes” or “no” answer to a question. And I meet a lot of young people in this line of work (journalism, in case you didn’t read the bio in your program). I don’t meet them in the creepy “Oh, my God! What’s Chris Hanson doing here?” sense, but rather in the course of writing stories or just out and about.

Just as scoring should not be the goal in the development of “personality” and “a sense of humor,” impressing me should also not be your goal (although you are welcome to try). It should be about successful non-horizontal social interaction. And I recommend the non-horizontal version before advancing to the bonus round. Believe me, you’re gonna want to have some good conversation skills to fall back on after that first time. Otherwise, those awkward moments are just filled with a lot of crying (and possibly some pointing and laughing).

So, to recap. Put down the iPod, cell phone, Gameboy, or whatever the hell else you kids are holding in your hands to substitute for real life. Put them down and engage. Let us see that there is a human being behind those glazed over Borg-like eyes. Rejoin the human race. You won’t get rich by doing it, but you will — I hope — make someone else’s experience richer merely by your presence.

Oh, and don’t do drugs. Or at least don’t do the ones your parents were doing when you were conceived.

And wear a condom. Always. Even if you’re a chick.

Thank you, and good night.

* Now taking advance booking for the 2012 graduation season. Cash only, please.

** I am not talking about myself. Seriously. Why would you think that?