The Black Tie Martini Club is Opening Soon!

I'll be honest folks. As of 1:30 AM Friday morning, I have no clue what is going to be on this weekend's show.

You see, I've been completely distracted during the day by moving offices and at night by Second Life.

But coming very soon in Second Life will be a live (virtual) Black Tie Martini Club. Complete with music and martinis and all the things that make Second Life worth living.

I guess I'll be talking a bit about that on this weekend's show. And probably I'll brainstorm something else... Let's hope so, huh?

The Good The Bad and The Ugly (though not necessarily in that order) - recap

The idea for the How To Talk To Your Kids About Satan, came from... I don't remember what set me off but it started as My First Meth Lab. Like one of those playsets for toddlers where they can pretend to be grown up. I tried out a variety of things that would be just too horrible for little kids to do and switched it to a self help pamphlet.

The Squirrel Song, I'm sorry that the drums and Chris Walken are so bad on that. Unfortunately that is the only version I have left. That was originally mixed down on a 4-track cassette recorder and put out on my Tape, The Worlds Best Fictional Bands. I think that song was by Serge and Sam.

It's actually, the same chord structure as "Learning The Blues" a Frank Sinatra song. I was trying to show my friend Andrei how to play it and he kept getting the timing wrong and starting singing about squirrels. I helped finish the lyrics and arrange it so people wouldn't immediately go, "Isn't that a Sinatra song?" Even though it's not a high quality recording, it still is one of my favorites. I absolutely can't sing that high anymore.

Great Moments in the History of Royalty is based on a true fact about Hank 8. It's one of those weird bits of history that has always freaked me out. For the record, he was also the king who associated stank with disease and really encouraged cleanliness in a way that was seen as downright weird by Britain's finest.

How To Talk To Your Kids About Religion. turns out, it's actually about Alcohol. It just struck me that most of their arguments would fit just as well about religion and it's effects. Except for replacing the one term with the other, it's all straight from the Govt.

Honestly, I'm fascinated by the FCIC and it's many many pamphlets and brochures. They have one booklet for immigrants that should be given to every person at 18 just in case. Most of the advice in there is really obvious but its all stuff that will bite you in the ass if you don't know it.

The News. I don't know why but I was in a big tongue twister mode this week. Still, you have to admit, not enough people write new tongue twisters.

The New Covenant This all started from George Carlin's bit about why do people pray on the Sabbath when it's supposed to be God's day off? This also came from an Idea I had back in the days when Rudy Roy Moore was pimping the 10 Commandments in the Alabama Courthouse. The notion to merge those two things... just sort of happened. Still, I think we could all live by those rules pretty well.

America's Favorite Non-Threatening Black Entertainers

Coming up on this weekend's show:

• Nazi's, Rap and Gymnastics
  
• How to talk to your kids about...
• Great Moments in The History of Royalty
• A Bible Lesson
• much much more?

There's a bit that won't be in this weekend's show that is bugging the hell out of me. I had this idea that it would be really funny to have Wayne Brady and David Alan Grier, who are both immensely talented singers, comedians, and actors and have reputations as manic improvisers; starring in a very serious drama. I was thinking of something from theatre, a classic, maybe Glengarry Glen Ross, Master Harold and the Boys, No Exit, something of that ilk that requires great strength and seriousness. The obvious catch would be that they would approach this work like they're other work and riff comedically and sing through it. It would be beautifully inappropriate and might even touch on the concept that America's most beloved non-threatening Black Men are fine, so long as they are playing the clown.

But there were two obvious catches to this concept. The first is that I don't have copies of any of these great plays on me and probably couldn't get one for free in time. The second is that I don't do an impersonation of either of those two men that is even close to passable.

That said, if you know either of them, or both of them, I'd very much like to get them to completely fuck up some serious drama together. I think that would be brilliant theatre and art on many levels and entertaining to boot.

Celebrate (recap)

Okay, the whole thing starts with a dog. A friend of mine, the same friend discussed in last night's program and last week's program about intolerance, had a dog with a tumor. The tumor turned out to be cancerous and was surgically removed. At the time, about a week ago, she was told that the dog would probably have six months to a year before things got too bad and the dog had to be put to sleep. So she resigned herself to make the dog's time as good as possible.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the tumor came back. It came back fast and large. So it was eventually decided on that it would be more humane to give the dog a very short and good life than a slightly longer one full of pain, drugs and immobility.

This all hit me very hard. Not only because of her pain but because it seemed incredibly unfair. I know cancer never seems exactly fair but on an older person, they've usually engaged in some kind of risky behavior to make it seem less absurd. Even in an older dog, you could kind of understand it. But this was a young and otherwise very healthy dog. A dog with big sad brown eyes. The fact that you can't explain cancer to a dog also makes the whole thing extra hard to deal with. At least for me.

Anyway, because of all this sorrow. I was thinking about this particular friend a fair amount and also I was generally out of sorts about life. So I thought I would try to combat my own sorrow and discomfort with a celebration.

This same friend, who was on my mind, saved my life a couple years ago now after not really being in contact for some time. But back around the time when we first met, many years ago, she once gave me just about the most romantic sort of moment. It was a spur of the moment thing but in a mutual friend's house in Indiana, she read I Sing The Body Electric to me while petting my hair as I rested my head in her lap.

I thought I would try to re-create that for you all. Admittedly, my version isn't nearly as sexy but I'm not nearly as sexy an individual. Also, she wasn't trying to fit any of it to music. Looking back on it, I should've recorded each chapter individually and fit the music to it afterward but the notion came to me as I was listening to Chicken and Biscuits and I wanted to recreate the moment of the first idea as faithfully as possible. Perhaps it would've been better to forego that immediacy for a more polished approach but my instinct is always that a flawed spontaneous moment is more interesting than a perfect planned one. If you have opinions on this, I'd love to hear them, as always.

Anyway, she's gotten another dog now. It seems a little soon but it is a helpful distraction for her and the other dog in the house so perhaps all is well that ends well.

Don't worry, next weekend we'll be back with more inappropriate humor and barbed attacks at the current state of politics.

What if Jerry Falwell was right?

Coming up on this weekend's show:

• I Sing The Body Electric
• Good News
• A complete lack of politics or controversy

In among all the talk about Falwell, those who loved him and hated him all had something to say, one thing that kept getting mentioned was his saying that AIDS was God's Punishment of Homosexuals.

Most people write that off as the insane drivelings of an inbred lunatic but what if it were true?

Just imagine, if you will, that the 18,000 or so deaths from HIV/AIDS in North America are because God is punishing Homosexuals. First of all, why wouldn't God pick something that worked better? I mean at least something that air doesn't kill. HIV is a huge wimp in the Virus game. You can't kill the common cold with anything mankind has found but HIV dies if you blow on it; literally!

Also compare 18,000 to other things that kill people in this country... Like cars. 43,000 people die every year from automobiles just in this country, the 18,000 figure for AIDS includes Canada. So who is God punishing, Gays or Drivers?

And then, of course there are the 654,000 who die from Heart Disease mostly from obesity and smoking. Wait a second... wasn't Jerry Falwell obese? Didn't he die from Heart Disease? God must've been punishing him. Him and the other 543,999 Americans who will die from it this year.

So if God really is punishing the homosexuals with AIDS, he's punishing all of us with cars twice as much and he really is punishing all of us who eat too much, smoke or drink. So the good news is, even if HIV is God's disease to punish the gays, he doesn't hate them a tenth as much as he hates fatties.

God Hates Fatties? Somehow I don't see that being alarming enough for Shirley Phelps.

The Lighter Side of Intolerance (recap)

Wow, I guess more of this has to do with my workplace than I realized. I work in a health system and the Darwin's Hospital idea came to me while I was dealing with a patient we had fired for being a pain in the ass. You didn't even know that hospitals could fire patients did you? Neither did I.

By the way, I'm almost as sick of George Tenet at this point as I am of Paris Hilton. As far as I'm concerned they could both go on a nice vacation somewhere so long as they stay out of the news.

The Fabulous 50's night was a real corporate outing that I actually didn't go to but I kept seeing the flyers for it and imagining what it would be like if they celebrated the way the 50's really were. I've had that idea in my notebook for a while but thought I could bring it out for the intolerance show as a way of demonstrating how intolerance can suck you in and make you feel good about yourself if you aren't on the receiving end of it and how you might not even notice anything wrong for a while.

The conversation about how much intolerance is out there on the streets also came from work because I had noticed we have an Office of Diversity website that is very poorly designed. To be fair, it's new. The Useful Resources section was completely empty except for a link to some consulting firm but elsewhere on the site, in a completely unrelated area, there was a link to the only diversity group at my place of work. The diversity group is a GLBT group, and when I pointed it out to my friend, she said they had had so many complaints about the group's existence at all, it wasn't a surprise that the link would be hard to find.

What stunned me is that if they weren't just saying there had been complaints because they thought there would be complaints, then someone complained to an Office of Diversity because they were too diverse! My mind was blown. It still is. I can't imagine who finishes and sends that complaint because it seems like no matter how much you hated gays, you'd realize that an Office of Diversity just didn't share your views at all. And from there the conversation moved on to whole just how much intolerance is acceptable to display.

Racist foods obviously came from all the talk recently about Aunt Jemimah, Rastus, and Frito Bandito because of how Uncle Ben, has been upgraded from Uncle Tom to executive. Honestly, I hadn't given it much thought but I like both Cream of Wheat and Aunt Jemimah and never really paid attention to the fact that their spokes-characters were also spokes-characters for institutionalized racism. I still wonder why you don't have more of that, though you could make some argument I suppose that Italian food has a fair amount of weird stereotype characters.

Coke vs. Hep-C has nothing to do with anything I just kind of walk around rhyming like an idiot much of the time.

Private Dicks

First of all, I have to show you this:
Aren't they the cutest couple?

Coming up on this week's show:

• Offensive Cereal
• Gay Cops
• The Coke Challenge
• And Much Much More!

It occurred to me this week that if you take the stylized verbiage of classic pulp crime fiction and throw homosexuality into it, there's an awful lot of unintended double entendre. You could probably stage dramatizations of old noir tales with an obviously gay lead and get laughs for days.

Think about the lingo: There's a lot of talk about partners, "When a guy's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it.", Rods, "I felt his rod press into my back and did what he said.", Dicks, "A chill went through me when I saw those dicks enter the room; I had to do something fast.", plus guys getting fingered, guys getting pinched, guys taking it on the chin and going down hard, and just about everybody has to blow sooner or later.

It wouldn't be at all out of place for someone to incorporate it all into a narrative like this. "When I saw the dick, I knew someone had squawked and I had been fingered. I grabbed my rod and let him know he was going to have it hard if he tried to pinch me. The seamus came closer and took it hard on the chin and went down. I knew right then I had to blow and blow good if I wanted to stay out of the can."

Thank god for the Hayes code, eh?

Bonus Post: The Text of the song

If anyone wants a copy without a talk up just email me and I'll mail you the MP3

I am the very model of a bad attorney General

I've information criminal immoral and unethical

I know the chief executive I have supported him for years

Even when he would do cocaine and used to drink a lot of beers

I'm very well acquainted, too, with all matters political 

I wrote the defense of torture though it is hypocritical

I invented the theory of the unified executive

Whatever my boss wants to do, is only his perogative

Whatever his boss wants to do, is only his perogative

Whatever his boss wants to do, is only his perogative

Whatever his boss wants to do, is only his peroga-agog-ative

I'm very good at mangling anything that is logical

I argued habeas corpus was not quite constitutional

In short, in matters criminal immoral and unethical

I am the very model of a bad attorney General

In short, in matters criminal immoral and unethical

He is the very model of a bad attorney General

To me those checks and balances are merely something trivial

And the Geneva conventions are merely something optional

International laws I feel should be considered much more vague

Or one day we will be on trial for war crimes in front of the hague

I believe all abuse of power is thoroughly acceptable

I even fired prosecutors for reasons quite political

I data mine your phone records, your wire transfers and other things

I feel its quite acceptable to spy upon our citizens

He feels its quite acceptable to spy upon our citizens

He feels its quite acceptable to spy upon our citizens

He feels its quite acceptable to spy upon our citi-citi-zens

Then with a simple signing statement I can just ignore a bill

Even though legislation is supposed to come from on the hill

In short, in matters criminal immoral and unethical

I am the very model of a bad attorney General

In short, in matters criminal immoral and unethical

He is the very model of a bad attorney General

When testifying I may seem to know almost nothing at all

To congress I can only say that I just really can’t recall

They’ve really made a fool of me, though I am the president’s voice

I’ll never be a supreme court justice because I am pro-choice

Even John Ashcroft thinks that I have overstepped my legal role

And turned the Department of Justice into the worst kind of hole

In short, when my record is looked at in the light of history

You'll say a worse Attorney General had never sat a gee

You'll say a worse Attorney General had never sat a gee

You'll say a worse Attorney General had never sat a gee

You'll say a worse Attorney General had never sat a sat a gee

My history is one of hard work and one of due diligence

A lowly son of immigrants who has risen to prominence

But still, in matters criminal immoral and unethical

I am the very model of a bad Attorney General

But still, in matters criminal immoral and unethical

He is the very model of a bad Attorney General

The Great American Blowhard

First of all, I have to apologize for thinking of the title after I did the show. If I had started from the Great American Blowhard premise, I would've taken more people down a peg. I would've mentioned that Tyra Banks is in the Time 100 list for saying it's okay to be fat even though she spent a month in the tabloids railing against paparazzi who took a picture of her where she looked fat. I would've mentioned a thing or two about the man who pushes abstinence for the White House resigning because his name was on a list of johns. And most importantly I would've taken shots and not only George Tenet but all the people in the media who feel that taking him down a peg for not speaking up when it mattered, takes them off the hook for not speaking up when it mattered. But enough of that, there's a corpse to dissect and lets get hopping

Intro-

Don't bother trying to reverse the backward masking portion of the intro, if it was interesting played forward, I wouldn't have reversed it.

If I sound a little manic during the into, it's only because I had been recording for a very long time at that point and was having one of those nights where every time I hit record, my upstairs neighbors would run back and forth in their apartment. The sound of that recorded is not entirely unlike the sound of pachyderms playing tennis. So I was a little edgy at having to spend an incredibly long time at something so simple

The First Church of American Atheism-

This began as the concept of Stripper Church many years ago when I read a news story about Alabama banning the sale of sex toys. It occurred to me at that time that if one made the sale of sex toys part of their religion, they could still sell them in church no matter how repressive a bible belt state they lived in.

Since then, any time anything is banned or otherwise restricted,. I cannot help but think that some church with come along and make that part of it and skirt the law that way. Hell if American Indians can smoke Peyote and Christian Scientists can keep medicine from their kids, why not a church that lets you just do what the hell you want.

The Very Model of A Bad Attorney General-

Okay folks, I have never sung light opera before. I've never even heard the real version of the song, only other parodies. And yet, I felt urged on to make fun of Gonzales in this way. It would be better if someone who didn't smoke constantly tried to sing it though. I can't deny that.

The Carnival Hunk-

It started with eating fire. I thought it would be easy to get the sound effect portion recorded but it turns out all the things I tried to record were too quiet to sound like much. Because I record on a computer, there is an awful lot of fan noise in the room. That's a major reason why I almost always have music behind me when I speak. Anyway, I soldiered on and tried to cover the not so well executed concept with a lot of bluster. This bluster reminded me of Tom Waits' Carnival Talker character in the song, which reminded me of the Coasters, which reminded me of Groucho and hence a theme was born. The part of fire was played by a bag of floss picks and a slice of home made spinach and pepperoni stuffed pizza. It was delicious.

Scrotum Ironing-

I believe this came as a response to some wrinkle cream that was supposed to remove wrinkles from people who were old enough to have them. I don't really get why you'd want to do that. If you've earned them, they usually look pretty cool, at least to me. Anyway, I thought of where else you might unnaturally try to remove wrinkles and the scrotum came to mind. I think the fact that I had failed with sound effects on the Fire Eating bit, made me overdo the sound effects here but I like overdone sound effects most of the time because I do like sound effects and can just listen to them all day for no reason. It's a curse.

Obviously the Bob Wills song is just a cheap ball gag... not a ball gag like to gag on but... oh never mind. By the way do you ever think about how scrotum rhymes with throat em? I once saw a small time Chicago rock act use that rhyme in a song, a long time ago, and I've been incredibly jealous ever since.

Public Radio Talent Contest

Coming up on this week's show:

• Lucky Charms Gone Bad
• Alberto Gonzales Sings The Blues
• Stupid Carnival Tricks
  
• and much much more.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Before we go any further, go here http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/622 and vote for yours truly, please. It's a radio style reality show and the ultimate winner gets their chance to produce and pitch their own Public Radio program. Vote for me now, and I'll totally hook you up with a tote bag later when I'm kicking it with Carl Kasel.