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Things to do in Dayton | Restaurants, Theatre, Music and More

J.T. Ryder

Southern Comfort Food

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Huffie’s Serves Up The Best In Q

Mural by Dayton artist Ronnie Williams

Food. All you have to do is look at my expanding midsection and you will instantly know that, although I may not know the fanciest places to eat, I know the places that serve the down home cookin’ that you can only get from a family owned restaurant. Huffie’s Bar-B-Que, located at 925 McArthur Avenue, is one of those places. Now, I fully realize that describing any type of bar-b-que is tantamount to getting into a political argument with all sides taking up the cause of their own particular favorite, so I will avoid making any sweeping statement about it being the best bar-b-que in the city…even though it is.

Anyway, the secret is the method of preparing the ribs and the way that the bar-b-que sauce is created. Of course they did not tell me what went into the sauce, as they would have had to have killed me immediately afterward. Suffice it to say that the sauce is not too vinegary nor is it too overpowering. Some sauces strive too hard, covering up the taste of the meat with either a spicy heat or an overabundance of spices in general. Huffie’s is a perfect blend, allowing you to taste the preparation of the pork along with the rich tang of the sauce itself.

Huffie’s menu covers a broad range, taking in the Southern style favorites like fried okra, fried green tomatoes, greens and cornbread. Put that on as a side to your slab of ribs, pulled bar-b-que pork sandwich or whole fried catfish and you have yourself an incredibly satisfying meal. In recent years, they’ve added a lot of vegetarian items and heart friendly foods to the menu, such as salads, baked fish and vegetarian soups and beans. You can cap off that meal with a wide selection of pies and cheesecakes, especially their famous sweet potato pie with the crust still made with lard. Perhaps Dr. Oz might disapprove of the cholesterol count, but your palate will kick his Oprah lovin’ ass for saying such disparaging comments about something so wonderful.

I was able to sit down with the owner of Huffie’s, Howard “Huffie” Huffman, to talk about the history of the restaurant, the processes of running it and cooking for it as well as some of the memorable events that have happened there over the years.

J.T.: You guys have been here, what? Forty-three years?
Huffie: Forty-five years.

J.T.: I thought it was opened in ’65?
Huffie: Actually, it was ’63. My sisters started working here in ’65. I’ve worked here since I was thirteen and I was born in 1950, so about ’63 or ’64.

J.T.: Did it start out as a family business?
Huffie: Yeah, my father started it up. It all started out when we were in Joy Apartments on Millicent and they built a pit outside. Down South, everybody barbecues all the time and they share, so the neighbors would start coming over and we used to have as many as fifty or sixty people in the neighborhood coming over and eating our barbecue. That was at the Joy Apartments in the early sixties…sixty-one, sixty-two I’d say.

J.T.: Is most of your food still based on family recipes?
Huffie: Oh yeah, almost all of it.

J.T.: Have the recipes changed over the years?
Huffie: Not too much. It’s Memphis, Tennessee style barbecue. My father’s from Mississippi and my grandfather is also from Mississippi, so it’s basically Southern type food. It’s changed for like the extended menu, like cheese steaks and things like that, but the barbecue sauce is still the same, the ribs are still the same, the pork shoulder’s still the same. We smoke them outside. One time we got a commercial unit, but we found out that it just didn’t give you the same taste, the same authentic taste, so we went back to the hickory wood and charcoal. You know, we marinate the meat like two days ahead of time then we smoke them. We do things the old fashioned way.

J.T.: Do you buy your ingredients local?
Huffie: Oh yeah, we buy from meat companies and produce companies like, but things like the ribs and the pork shoulders, we buy from companies like GFS.

J.T.: Are there any plans for expansion, as in opening other restaurants?
Huffie: We had four or five restaurants before. I had my own restaurant one time and I’d do catering. I was over by the golf course for about two years and over by Kettering Field for like six years and that was enough. We found out it was best to just run your own single business than to try and have four or five others and trying to have someone else running them for you. You lose that family atmosphere and you kind of lose touch with things. You run into problems with people rushing the ribs or too much of a portion on a platter trying to get big tips. I mean, I’d do a franchise where someone could pay me a set amount of money and you could buy a franchise, because that gives you more control where you supply them with everything.

J.T.: Do you do a lot of catering?
Huffie: Like, I do hog roasts and Hawaiian luaus. I’ve catered for places like NCR, Mead and General Motors. I used to cater folks like the Temptations. I still have pictures. They used to know me by name. I fed the O’Jays and one time, a big named star was here at UD…I think he was about sixteen years old at the time…and he bought a couple of slabs of ribs and I took them to him and he gave me a hundred dollar tip! The best tip I’ve ever had to this day!

Huffie’s Bar-B-Que is located at 925 McArthur Avenue on the West side of Dayton, right off of Germantown St. You can call ahead to make a take out order or to make reservations for special occasions at (937) 263-2289. Their dining room is clean and spacious and, on many occasions, there are local jazz artists and other talented musicians playing while you dine. My only problem is after I eat my favorite meal there (pulled pork sandwich with a side of fries), I have to stave off the urge to curl up in the booth and take a nap. The “itis” is a force to be reckoned with.

Playing Possum In The Forest Of Argonne

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Possum Creek MetroPark’s Hidden History

This man is exerting far too much energy for this to be considered a "relaxing" activity.

As Spring hurtles uncontrollably into Summer, my mind reaches out to find the activities I can do outside. My own definition of “outdoor activities,” however, has little or nothing to do with being active at all. More to the point, I like to try and find places where it can appear that I’m doing some sort of activity, while remaining completely inactive. Fishing usually fits this bill. I will confess here that I have rarely ever caught a fish (which would go against my goal of being inert) and sometimes, to insure that some fish with either a death wish or a very slow mental acuity won’t inadvertently leap onto my baited hook, I usually fish with no bait. This serves a twofold purpose: one, a fish will generally avoid my barren hook in search of a more agreeable dinner, thereby allowing me to remain in a seated position and two, it makes it so that I don’t have to put my hands near any icky worms which, on especially humid days, feel much like a semi-solidified string of undulating snot. I guess that while I’m confessing things here, I might as well add that, even if I had the misfortune of catching a fish, I would throw it back as I can’t stand to eat fish and I can assure you that a mounted fish on my wall would definitely clash with my rather eclectic form of interior design. Moving on…

The reason that I bring this up is that it reminds me of one of the places that I love not to fish: Possum Creek MetroPark. The first time I was there was sometime in the late eighties/early nineties… you will forgive me as time has been somewhat of an elusive creature my entire life, so remembering dates isn’t one of my strong points. I do remember that a group of us were supposed to be driving to Indianapolis for Pink Floyd’s Division Bell Tour, if that gives anyone a frame of reference. One of the group thought that the park would be a bitchin’ place to party before the concert. It wasn’t. Some of the group got lost and we damn near missed the concert. Fast forward to around ten years ago. I was scouting all the parks surrounding Dayton, exploring all of the wonderful points and playgrounds with my two youngest sons. We meandered over to Possum Creek one day and found that it not only had several fishable lakes, it also boasted some really interesting hiking trails, a community garden and a farm area with many types of animals on display.

On one of my excursions, I was trying not to fish on the shore of one of the lakes, but my wife insisted that I bait my hook so that I could catch her a catfish to fry up that evening. Not wanting to exert that much energy trying to reel in a catfish, let alone the potential injuries I may sustain from the stinging barbels, I convinced her that all the good catfish were in the middle of the lake. I got out my trusty inflatable raft and, utilizing the convenient foot pump, filled it with air and pushed off from the shore. Now I could actually lie down in public without seeming as if I were a lazy ne’er-do-well. This was pure genius. Well, while I was floating about on the water, I noticed some splashing and activity nearby. I didn’t even dare to have a hook on for fear that a catfish might be attracted to the shiny metal and hook it’s stupid self, so I just kept casting sinker in the general vicinity of the splashing, which seemed to create more splashing. From the shore, I’m sure that it must have looked impressive. Well, the splashing began to come closer to where I was floating and, after a few more casts, seemed to make a beeline directly for me. Now, I’ve seen Jaws I and II, so a tremor of fear trickled down my back until I remembered that the Great Whites were destined for deeper waters than those found at Possum Creek. I was rather shocked, however, when the splashing got really, really close and I found it to be caused by a very pissed off beaver that I had apparently conked in the head several times with my sinker. Apparently there are a literal ton of these flat tailed rodents gnawing about Possum Creek and, thankfully, I was able to extricate myself from the situation unscathed.

The walking trails are incredibly intriguing as well. You can explore areas that range from lakeside trails to wildflower fields to farmland and then into a beech tree forest, full of loamy trails and deep ravines. This is where I found some things that struck me as odd and made me explore the history of the park further. I came across a massive trestle, a large square expanse of concrete and several rusted out trolley car frames sitting inexplicably in the middle of the woods. The name of the woods also intrigued me: Argonne Forest. While it may sound like something out of Lord of the Rings, history’s most famous forest of the same name was a deadly battle site during World War I. Why would someone name a forest in Dayton after the site of such an epic battle?

In the late eighteen-hundreds, a boy was born named Null M. Hodapp. His boyhood friend was a boy named Ralph Clemons with whom he shared many adventures. They grew into adulthood together and enlisted in the Army to fight the Germans in World War I. In a sadly ironic twist of fate, Ralph was killed mere hours before the Armistice Treaty was signed. Ralph’s death was devastating to Hodapp as he returned to Dayton to resume his life. He eventually married LoRean D. Hodapp and became a widely regarded judge in the Dayton area. In the 1930s, Hodapp purchased 400 acres around Germantown Pike and dubbed the land Argonne Forest Park, in memory of his friend and the place in which he had died. The first building that was constructed was a clubhouse for veterans. Eventually, the park consisted of a dance pavilion, a horse track, a car racetrack, a shooting range and a swimming hole with a diving platform. “Swimming hole” is more than a slight misnomer as the “hole” was actually constructed by building a huge wall to block the Possum Creek, which created a massive swimming area replete with diving platforms, the remnants of which can still be seen today. Hodapp also bought several streetcars from the Oakwood-Dayton lines to be used as impromptu cabins and for the children to play in. Hodapp would also perform the Battle of Argonne Forest every Fourth of July, in memory of 322nd Field Artillery Unit who had fought there during World War I.

As the world moved into the next War, rationing and depletion of money contributed to the eventual demise of the park. Some sections were sold off, but the bulk of the park remained and was made into what is now known as Possum Creek MetroPark. Walking amongst the paths and seeing the relics of a bygone era, one can almost squint and see the shrieking children cannonballing off the diving platform or hear the music and the shuffling feet scrape over the dance hall floor. The grandeur is gone, but the memory remains indelibly etched into the sodden trails and the swaying branches of the forest.

The Connection of the Collective

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The Fifth Annual Sideshow To Be Presented At The Armory

By Kidtee Hello

Walking up the three flights of unfinished wooden stairs, one would not expect to find much more than possibly a storage room filled with forgotten industrial supplies and broken machinery, but upon opening the heavy door to the third floor of the Armory’s loft, you will find nothing but wonder. Dispersed under the exposed and age darkened wooden beams of the loft is a olio of objets d’art. Cascading down from one of these beams is a latticework of vibrantly colored worry dolls, connected, as we all are, by the most tenuous of threads. Your eye will fall upon molten sculptures, hyper-realistic photographs, abstract painting that cry out to the viewer in a silent scream. Stages dot the area, awaiting the humming strum of musicians who will take to them during the Fifth Annual Sideshow to be held on May 14th and 15th at the Armory as a part of Dayton’s Urban Nights.

Across the length of the room, crosswise from the main door, a stark black and white photograph hangs, drawing you across the creaking floorboards. The photograph depicts a woman, head thrown back with her eyes closed in a frozen moment of ecstasy. The large picture is adorned with brightly colored flowers which frame and then flow under and in front of it, creating a descriptive display. The photographer is Kidtee Hello and she is the lead organizer of this, the fifth installment of the Sideshow. In speaking with her, I was able to get some of the back history of how the Sideshow was first developed.

By Deloris Bucanan

“When they first started these events, there wasn’t much going on for your average person or artist. Unless you were a graduate of a really good school and had something to show in a really fancy gallery, there wasn’t really anything available except for small art shows like the ones at the Pearl…which actually kind of sparked the Sideshow.” Kidtee went on to describe how the event began. “Laurana Wong wanted to have an event with a little bit of everything and now you see more DYI type art shows…”

Jeff Opt, through an online correspondence, was able to expound on the early days of the Sideshow, having been involved since the beginning and being a part of all the subsequent Sideshows in one form or another since then.

“The original Sideshow idea started with Laurana Wong…it was her idea to throw an art show where the artists worked together to define the show and one that didn’t cost money to throw. It was a community building exercise. There was no theme to the show other than what the participants worked together to create.” Opt went on to say that, “The first show was so successful that it gave birth to the Dayton Circus Creative Collective, a group of like-minded people who wanted to see the spirit of art and community continue year around in Dayton. Since then, the Sideshow has become the premier event for the Dayton Circus.”

This is a perfect depiction of what the Dayton Circus Creative Collective is: a circular energy that feeds and creates itself. The Sideshow begat the Circus and the Circus now gives rise to the Sideshow. It has become a self-sustaining entity of energy and art whose members both feed off of and feed others with a perpetually positive synergy.

With the help of Kate Ervin and Emanuel Cavallaro, I requested Circus members and Sideshow participants to share there thoughts as

By Sean Baumgardener

to what the essence and purpose of the Sideshow was and is. Within an hour, I had at least ten responses, all eloquently espousing the positive contributions that the Sideshow has made not only to the artists and the patrons, but to the community of Dayton as a whole.

“I think what those of us who have been involved with The Sideshow from it’s very first year probably want The Sideshow to become is a cultural institution in Dayton, an event that people can rely on occurring year after year. This is our fifth year, and I’m extremely proud to be involved.” Cavallaro then answered my query directly by saying, “As for what it means to me, personally? Honestly, all my friends are artists or performers of some sort, and from all different backgrounds. Art is what we do and who we are. The Sideshow is a chance for us to share that with the city. And it’s a chance to celebrate and express ourselves. We’re a motley group, and this is a big undertaking that requires weeks and weeks of preparation and hours and hours of hard work, but we somehow find the time to have fun doing it.”

The responses kept coming, all eloquently passionate about what the Sideshow specifically and the Circus in general meant to each individual artist.

“To me, the Sideshow is a multimedia arts event that recognizes local artists of all ages, races, and social classes. It’s an art event for the community. It may be a grass roots production, or seen as an urban underground show, but it’s also a collection of Dayton’s most progressive and Avant-garde artists.” wrote Christine Gaffney, and aspiring film director said. She then added, “The sideshow is more than just an art show, it’s an experience you can’t have anywhere else in Dayton, and it’s only once a year. Dayton is full of Talent. Much of this talent hasn’t made it’s way into the traditional art gallery yet.”

The belief that the Sideshow provided artists a non-traditional venue I which to express and display their non-conforming works was echoed in many of the messages received and conversations I had with the artists, participants and organizers.

Matthew James wrote, “The Sideshow is an opportunity to get outside of the normal space of commercial artwork, a chance for people whose creative works don’t flourish in the ‘normal’ art world to share their contributions with the community. It’s also an opportunity for artists, performers, musicians, and community organizers to get to know one another and come together around a common cause – two nights of outrageous entertainment!”

The very act of trying to draw together all of these divergent artists, secure a location and coordinate the activities of the Sideshow must be a logistics nightmare. While speaking with Kidtee Hello, I asked if this was her first year dealing with all of this as a lead organizer.

“Yeah. Last year I helped Maggie Ottoson with the Sideshow she put together and then this year, I’m organizing it.”

Margaret “Maggie” Ottoson was very direct and emphatic with her description of what the essence of the Sideshow is:

“Empowerment! Freedom to express in any way you like. A collection of the best music art creativity and activism in Dayton.” Ottoson went on to describe what the overall intentions of the Sideshow are, “What is the purpose of the Sideshow? To bring together like minded people who would otherwise have never met and teach that you can do anything if you simply dare to act.”

Tom Watson III wrote that he used his art as a self imposed art therapy regime to help him rehabilitate from a brain stem stroke he

"Worry Dolls"

had suffered. His artwork has turned something that he has feared to reflects a fascinatingly organic view of the brain and the power that it holds.

“It’s one of the artistic highlights of my year!” Tom wrote. “This is my second year as a participating artist and this year is going to be even better than last year’s event. It is a nice way to show my work in an environment that is conducive to free expression and not as restrictive as many venues tend to be. It’s also an opportunity to meet and interact with a lot of other local artists and musicians. It’s also a reunion of sorts for those of us who’ve done it before.

Another factor, almost more important (if not more important) than getting exposure for the artists is the interaction of the artists themselves. The sheer ability to be exposed to each others forms of expression and be influenced to take their own art into areas that they may have never considered possible. Lisa Alexander wrote to express this very aspect of the Sideshow by saying:

“It gives opportunities to local artists to not only showcase their work but to also be involved in a community-building activity.” Alexander succinctly said. “It gives artists a chance to exchange ideas, make contacts, and make friends. It gives the artists a sense of pride in the work they do to help the entire show go off, not just from creating art. It also gives artists a sense of being involved in something bigger than themselves.”

By way of example, Cathy Jeffers described her own experiences as to how the Sideshow influenced her own artwork.

“It really got me to break away too. I usually do art quilts. Last year I did and installation called Fire and Ice.” Jeffers went on to describe the display. “It was a combination of fabric, streamers (representing fire) and white paper mache, (frozen like) figures. I spent hours on it at home and on sight. I really enjoyed the final look…and I could really see the three dimensional impact of the installation in the space.”

Emanuel Cavallaro brought all the elements of the Sideshow and the influence that it has on the artists, the organization and the patrons alike.  “The essence of The Sideshow is its malleability. It changes every year. New organizers each year, new artists, new performers, new venue. It’s chaotic as well, because there is never a specific theme. So the artwork, installations and performances are remarkably varied.” Cavallaro “Something very intense can be followed by something very subdued, something appalling by something beautiful. So it can be aesthetically jarring at times, but in a good way, the way in which a roller coaster ride is jarring. In that way, there is something for everyone.”

What: The Dayton Circus Creative Collective’s Fifth Annual Sideshow

When: May 14th and 15th from 6:00 pm until 1:00 am.

Where: The Armory –  201 E. Sixth Street (Entrance in rear of building – parking is off of Patterson Blvd.)

Why: See story above

For more information or to see other events that the Circus is involved in, check out their website at  www.daytoncircus.org.

Top Ten Lessons I Learned The Hard Way

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There Is No Learning Curve In Life

  1. Don’t laugh when a woman asks you if you have ever thought about marrying them.
  2. Don’t eat any food that the aforementioned woman might serve to you if in fact you did laugh.
  3. Even though it is sometimes referred to as the “Muscle Of Love,” Ben-Gay should never be used on it.
  4. Never assume that your friend turned off the correct breaker before you start working on the electric.
  5. You will always hear the click of the lock at the exact moment you realize that your keys are still inside.
  6. All fat people are not jolly.
  7. Zippers are not forgiving…they play for keeps.
  8. If an African-American man is using the urinal next to you, don’t say, “So! It’s not true what they say about you guys!” He will not find it amusing at all.
  9. Don’t assume that a woman holding an iron skillet just wants to cook you something.
  10. Never ask a random stranger on the street, “Hey! Do you know where I can cash a winning lottery ticket at?”

Top Ten Reasons Why I Am Not Working

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I Will Tell You Why I Procrastinate…Later 

  1. The Conan/Leno debacle has me all verklempt. At least Conan got custody of Andy Richter, so I can sleep a little better tonight.
  2. While doing research for an article, I accidentally misspelled Hadron Collider on Google Search and now my computer inundated with pop ups for gay porn.
  3. After the aforementioned disaster, I have also inadvertently found a new meaning for “teabaggers,” which has not allowed me to stop simultaneously vomiting and laughing at the same time.
  4. While cleaning up the vomit, I noticed a rust stain in the sink, which I scrubbed out using an SOS pad. Not wanting to waste a whole pad on such a small job, I looked for something else to clean. Three and a half hours later, the oven is clean, the windows are washed, the kitchen floor is swept and mopped and for reasons I don’t feel I need to explain, I shaved the cat.
  5. A really attractive Jehovah’s Witness knocked at the door and it became a battle of wills as to which one of us would convert who.
  6. I had to sob on the couch for some time, realizing that I am older and extremely off my game and have now been corralled into passing out Watchtowers.
  7. I noticed that it was around noon, which meant that I only had two hours before I had to leave to pick up my kids, and anyone knows that is not enough time to actually get anything done, so why start something that you’re not going to finish.
  8. I notice that the cat was cold after being shaved and decided to cut five holes in a sweat sock for her to wear as a coat. Making the coat took no time at all, but cats are pointy at four of their five ends and don’t take kindly to being shoved inside a sweat sock.
  9. I had to rest after the above-mentioned ordeals, so I sat down and contemplated how I was going to meet my publisher’s deadlines. I came to the conclusion that all I needed to do was outsource the work, but since I don’t know anyone inBangladesh, I had to settle for a local crackhead.
  10. The crackhead said that he needed ten bucks for supplies, so I’m just waiting for him to get back and then we’ll be on a roll! He should be back any minute now…anytime now…

Top Ten Things I Love About Summer

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Some Like It Hot

  1. I can go to any pool or beach and see women wearing what are essentially bra and panties without the inconvenience of standing in the bushes outside their window.
  2. My melanoma is hungry after its winter hibernation.
  3. I absolutely love putting on SPF 5000 sunscreen all over my body, some zinc oxide on my nose and making sure that my hat creates a five foot circumference swath of shade around me so that I can go outside to enjoy the sun.
  4. I’ve never lost the tips of my toes to “heatbite”.
  5. Women + Thin T-Shirts + Air Conditioning = Eye Popping Event.
  6. You can urinate in the woods without the fear of shrinkage, frostbite, hungry squirrels seeking “nuts” or the potentially life threatening mistake of getting “it” frozen to a metal fence post.
  7. There is no better experience than hitting a swarm of cicadas on a motorcycle at 60 mph.
  8. It’s great to be able to turn the air conditioning on, lowering the temperature of the house to the same level that you were freezing at during the winter.
  9. Watching a bleach blonde’s hair turn green after she’s been in the pool for a while.
  10. Finding out exactly how hot the change in your car is after roasting in the car all day. I still have the imprint of a 1978 quarter on my hand. I felt just like the German guy in the first Indiana Jones movie.

Top Ten Things I Want To Do Before I Die

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Better Start To Work On This List Now

  1. Hopefully find a cure for what’s going to kill me.
  2. If it is a malignant type of illness, like a brain tumor, I’ll purchase a large tow truck with push bars on the front and teach retroactive driver’s education to those moronic motorists who so desperately need it.
  3. With my last breath, I hope I have the presence of mind to call my family close to me and whisper, “I’ve been stashing money in the house. There’s about $80,000 in the…aaaggghh!” and then die. It will be hilarious to look on from the afterlife as they destroy the house searching for it.
  4. A three-way with Jessica Alba and Jessica Tandy. Yes, I know Jessica Tandy is dead.
  5. I want to have an animatronics alien surgically implanted into my chest that monitors my heartbeat. When my heartbeat stops, a countdown clock will begin that will send the alien bursting through my chest, hopefully during my viewing.
  6. I want to rack up $100,000 in credit card debt so that I have something to leave to my kids.
  7. To bitch slap the creators of the Lifetime network for forcing me to suffer through an endless barrage of bile inducing “real life dramas” that seem to unify the female populace into believing that even if something horribly tragic hasn’t happened to them, it probably will during the commercial break.
  8. To split an infinitive…or to divide by zero…whichever.
  9. I would like to translate some of the Dead Sea Scrolls to prove that Angela and Brad are adopting another child from Bora Bora so that their twin hell spawns have something to feed on after they are birthed unto the world, thus breaking the seventh seal, bringing about the time of darkness.
  10. To have hot monkey lovin’ with the cast of Planet of the Apes: The Musical!


Top Ten Reasons I Question My Masculinity

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I Am Secure In Carrying My Man Purse

  1. I know the lyrics to most of Lady Gaga’s songs.
  2. I know that my woman is an Autumn and not a Winter, as she so erroneously believes.
  3. I can tell the difference between a green, a pink or a yellow based beige.
  4. I have been referred to as being “snarky.”
  5. I misunderstood and brought a tube of lube when some guys asked if I wanted to play cornhole.
  6. I’m the one who decorates the house and picks the color schemes. It’s only because if my better half were allowed to do it, it would look as if a Serbian whore had eaten a Family Dollar store, washed it down with a blueberry Slurpee and then vomited the whole mess up in our living room.
  7. I won’t watch football, baseball, hockey or basketball…but I will watch figure skating and gymnastics.
  8. My mom calls to discuss her plans on interior decorating.
  9. On that point, and not to cast any blame or anything, my mom wanted me to become a hairdresser. My grandmother wanted me to become a priest, so either way…
  10. I pick out fabulous greeting cards!

Top Ten List Of People I’d Like To Meet

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First Thought

I am not sure whether I understand the question or the phrasing of the question at all. Does it mean that I get to have an encounter with a dead person? I believe that the interaction that I might have in mind is illegal in most of the Continental United States, if not most of the world. Why would somebody want to meet a dead person anyway? It’s not like they have great conversational skills or many activities that they are into besides rapid decomposition. I mean, we could pretend that either the person in mind miraculously came back to life or that I was magically transported back in time to meet them before they died, but what is the point? This is just an exercise in futility, really.

 

On Second Thought…

  1.  Jessica Alba after she partook of one of Woody’s Wondrous Roofie Coladas.
  2. The guy that looks like my kids.
  3. Orville Redenbacher
  4. Jim Morrison
  5. Nikolai Tesla
  6. Bob Newhart
  7. The jackass that parked next to me at the Dip N’ Sip so I can dent the shit out of his car door.
  8. Whoever invented Mountain Dew.
  9. T.S. Eliot
  10. The man who created the concept of money so that I can show him the inherent greed and evil his brainchild begat…then smack him around a bit before he goes back to the seventh concentric ring of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk too loud in public on their cell phones.

Droopy Drew Donisi: El Dago Diablo

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“Droopy” Drew Discusses Donnie Baker, Motor Boatin’ And Fun

Hailing from the deep south (somewhere around the Franklin, Ohio area), “Droopy” Drew Donisi takes the stage brandishing a guitar to play his own originally warped southern rock tinged tunes. Drew’s approach to comedy is open, engaging the audience with his sincere bouts of storytelling interspersed with original melodies.

“I don’t want to complain and I don’t want to get on stage and bitch about anything.” Drew said during a recent interview. “I just want to tell a story that I may have made up, but it’s going to be a funny ass story.”

Headlining at Wiley’s brings this local comedian full circle as he had originally started his comedic career performing open mic sessions there.

“I did the open mic thing there on Sunday nights, trying out new material and ideas that I had and that’s where I came up with all my songs.” Drew reflected. “You know those open mic nights were just having fun.”

Fun seems to be the watchword of Drew’s performances. He seems to be more concerned about giving the audience a brief respite from their daily concerns and allow them the just let loose, have fun and possibly sing along to one of his many original songs. Some of his could be seen as purely sophomoric, but again, they are purely just for fun. I asked him about the process of writing the songs, whether the melody comes first and the words are hung upon it or if the tune is written around the words…and where did he come up with the ideas for the songs?

            “Well, like that Motor Boatin’ song.” he said. “I saw somebody with big (globular mounds of flesh found on the chests of females)…I know you can’t write that in the article, but…and I was like, ‘Holy smokes!’ and I just started thinking that there are a lot of things that I like to do, but that is one of the things that I love to do, so I just made the whole song about things that I like to do, but the one thing I love to do is motor boatin’.”

And no, if you don’t know what motor boating is, I’m not going to tell you. That’s what the Internet is for. While this and some of Drew’s other songs are riddled with sexual innuendos, a lot of his material is extremely accessible by all audiences. His humor and prowess with the guitar even caught the eye of the Bob and Tom camp. Drew has opened for Donnie Baker on several occasion (the most recently being in Indianapolis in April) and has appeared on the Bob and Tom Show. I asked Drew to fill in the details on how he came to meet Donnie Baker.

“I featured for Dwight York at Wiley’s last year and Donnie came in and did two shows. Dwight moved down to feature and I moved down to opener.” he related, “which, as you know, when they bring somebody big in, the opener usually gets dropped. So Rob (Haney, owner of Wiley’s) kept me in the rotation. So, I hit it off with the band and Donnie was really easy to work with.”

            Drew’s direct approach and unpretentious acceptance of what he wants his comedy to convey has made him a favorite son of not only Wiley’s, but many other venues around the country. His good natured demeanor reflects in the honest answer that he gave me pertaining to what he wanted audiences to take away from his shows:

“All I’m trying to do when I’m doing my comedy is to give the audience the chance to forget about the crap outside the doors.” he said. “When they come in, it’s just stupid humor. It’s nothing that you have to think about. It’s nothing that you really have to know any politics. It’s just a good time out with your friends and a guy that will make you laugh.”

(Writer’s Note: Sadly, Drew passed away suddenly on March 10th, 2012. You will be missed by many “Droopy.”)

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUqCubmyMnU’]

The Dichotomy Of Comedy

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Mark Fradl Brings Clever Comedy To Wiley’s

            Throughout the history of mankind, smiling, laughter and humor have become noted as an integral part of our genetic makeup, as evidenced in the rudimentary, usually obscene, hieroglyphs of the Egyptians, the crudely drawn doggerel of the Greeks and Romans and on through to the laborious treatises written by philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and medical doctors over the ages. Although the impetus for laughter varies wildly from individual to individual, the reaction itself is one of the most universally accepted, yet least understood in the lexicon of human responses.

Plato examined the negative aspects of humor in his exposition entitled The Republic, and concluded that the inherent “psychopathic laughter” was indicative of one’s envy and malice against his fellow man or an egocentric method to secure one’s superiority through the brutal ridiculing of others shortcomings, circumstances or lower social status. Arthur Schopenhauer later developed his “theory of the absurd,” which, simply stated, says that laughter is the reaction to the realization that a person’s expectations have been been misdirected by an incongruous element that, in the final analysis, is absolutely ridiculous. Theorists and scholars have postulated wildly divergent theories as to the origin of laughter and humor, yet have been shown to be debatable at best.

The reason I am expounding on the theories of humor in this rather long winded intro is that it reminded me of a series of correspondences I began with comedian Mark Fradl sometime back in late 2007, a dialogue that has been maintained into the present. When I first corresponded with Fradle, a Dayton native who splits his time  between here and Austin, TX, he was just getting back into the comedy scene after taking a six year hiatus after becoming somewhat disillusioned with the world of comedy. Even after reemerging on stage around 2005, Fradl still remained somewhat nihilistic with regards to the direction mainstream comedy was heading in as well as the broad cross section of audiences who are less interested in clever comedy as they are in being entertained. One of the reoccurring themes of lie within the definition and decisive nature of a certain type of comedian.

“There’s the dark breed that want to connect with the audience…but only on their terms.  As I write that, I’m realizing that this is really where the difference lies between the good comics and the hacks; Are you trying to put yourself where they are or are you trying to bring them over to where you are?” Fradl went on, referencing some previous discussions that we had had on the topic. “So that goes back to something we ended on yesterday; The difference between trying to bring the crowd onto your way of thinking, or pandering down to meet their way of thinking. Are you making them say, ‘Yeah, that’s what I always say too!’ or are you making them say ‘Hey, I never looked at it that way – he’s right!’”

The universal appeal of comedy is almost as illusive as it is accepted. While on the one hand, almost everyone needs the release that laughter offers, while at the same time, what one person may find as patently offensive another may find absolutely hilarious.

            “Again it comes back to the unique nature of comedy. It has to have more universality than almost any other art form I can think of. Gore Vidal is a legend, yet most people have never read one of his books. Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits are never played on the radio and yet they’ve had immensely influential careers; but you really can’t be in a niche in comedy. The comic equivalent of Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen or Elvis Costello would die a miserable death in the average club. Even legends like Bill Hicks, Mitch Hedburg and Doug Stanhope were banned by more clubs than they worked, and only through years of persistence did they build their followings and move from clubs to theaters.”

At one point, Fradl was able to clarify, somewhat, was the nature of comedy for the masses with a rather apropos metaphor.

“Ranch dressing is bland, inoffensive (except to those who are offended by it’s inoffensiveness), and sells by the bucket load.  No one’s ever sold a bucket of Sesame Ginger Wasabi Vinaigrette.  You can’t get Roast Raspberry Chipotle dressing in a 64 ounce squeeze bottle.  Likewise, comedy has to appeal to the broadest possible market.  In most cities there are only one or two clubs, and those clubs survive only by attracting the largest cross section of the population – suburban couples, urban hipsters, a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, a bachelorette party, the trucker, the lawyer, the graphic artist, the cashier and the fry cook. Imagine coming up with anything that group can agree on.  Best to just put out the ranch dressing – a lot of people will love it, most will like it, and even those who hate it won’t be surprised to see it.  Welcome to comedy.”

As an example of the seemingly incongruous separation between brilliance and mass acceptance, Fradl related a personal experience he had.

“Bill Hicks is a legend of comedy, right up there with Lenny Bruce or young Woody Allen, but I don’t think most people know that when he was alive, his career was struggling. Even with numerous Letterman appearances and several HBO solo specials, he was having a hard time getting work because he wasn’t for everyone. I saw him live in 1992 in Cleveland and he ate it.” Fradl recollects that, “We were sitting in the second row in a room filled with 500 people just dying at his dark rantings, and I remember turning around at one point and seeing 495 faces staring at us, trying to figure out what the hell we thought was so funny.”

Comedy is the act of walking a thin tightrope in the dark, always at the mercy of the prevailing winds of public opinion and never really sure how far the fall might be, especially for a comedian who is just starting out or struggling to get ahead. Even road veterans are sometimes tripped up by the seemingly arbitrary change in social mores or the pressure of honing their material to appeal to the largest swath of the populace.

“But that argument misses an important point, one I’m only just now realizing as I think about this. Comedians are not weakened by this limitation, this need to create within a box. It is, in fact, our greatest asset, because it forces us to communicate our ideas with people who might not otherwise entertain such thoughts. This is our advantage over avant-garde performance artists, or fringe theater, or the protest singer touring the Unitarian Church basement circuit. The problem with deeply controversial art is that it never gets outside its own bubble.”

Fradl’s comedic appeal is one that is fast and intelligent while still being accessible to virtually every audience. It’s a hard course to chart, but one that Fradl has navigated through many times over. While Fradl has no problem with the the comedic form being used as simple, straightforward entertainment, it is just not the type of comedy that he is striving for. While mainstream comedy definitely has its place within the pantheon of comic legends, some of the clubs across the nation actually contribute to the dilution of the color of comedy, sometimes to the point where it becomes translucent. Clubs whose main audiences are drawn from a rather large, arbitrary swath of folks who may just be looking for some mild entertainment in between dinner and dancing at the club, people who may or may not even care about the actually artistic nature of comedy.

Over the course of years, I was easily able to discern a marked difference in the tone of Fradl’s recent emails and I wondered if current world events had changed people’s acceptance of comedy and, if so, were these changes good or bad.

“I’ll tell you one thing that has changed very much for me in the last five months is that my bit of cynicism about comedy has evaporated. In all the years of doing comedy, I’ve never seen people so appreciative and receptive to comedy.” Fradl went on to say, “Not to sound trite, but there’s this almost tangible need for relief. People have always come up after a show and told me they had a great time or they thought I was funny, but lately it’s been more about them expressing how much they needed to have this good time and how grateful they are to hear something that connects with them.”

On a parting note, Fradl imparted an insight into the misconception that plagues those of us that don’t live in one of the magical meccas of entertainment.

“A quick clarification of terms – when I’m talking about comedy here, I’m not talking about the stand up that happens at some experimental theater in Los Angeles or in a basement open mic in New York City.  I’m talking about the comedy that takes place in strip mall clubs and bar one-niters (Comedy Thursday Night!  Mechanical Bull Friday Night!) in the artistically unappreciated part of the country, which is to say most of it. A comic I worked with last week in Cleveland said ‘So, what do people do here in Cleveland?  I grew up in NYC and live in LA, I always figured everything in between was Kansas.’   Nice of him to bestow upon us his august insights.”

You can check out some of Fradl’s clips and commentaries on his website, www.markcomedy.com or follow his schedule to see when he will next be appearing at one of the many venues in around the country.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AycZYgE7v_Q’]

Top Ten Songs I Want Played At My Funeral

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Compositions For Decomposition

  1. Your Time Is Gonna Come – Led Zeppelin
  2. Man In The Box – Alice In Chains
  3. 6 Underground – Sneaker Pimps
  4. Close My Eyes Forever – Lita Ford & Ozzy Osbourne
  5. Dress Sexy At My Funeral – Smog
  6. People Who Died – Jim Carroll Band
  7. Electric Funeral – Black Sabbath
  8. Happy Phantom – Tori Amos
  9. Down In A Hole – Alice In Chains
  10. The End – The Doors

The Truth Behind The Eyes

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Into The Intuitive Mind Of Craig Karges

            Hallucinatory suggestions. A table floating through the air guided only by the merest touch. Blindfolded eyes that still can see. All of this and more will be witnessed when you go and see Craig Karges: Experience the Extraordinary. One of the things that I find incredibly compelling about Craig Karges is the subdued simplicity in which he creates his magic and the straightforward manner in which he makes his predictions. There are no massive props, pyrotechnics or bombastic music to distract the audience. There is only Karges peering into the shadows of the human psyche, seeing what most of us cannot.

During a recent phone interview from his West Virginian home, I asked Karges how he would describe his act. I was expecting to be riddled with a litany of mysterious allusions that would never really answer any of my questions. I was incredibly surprised by Karges’ succinct and honest responses.

“Well, part of what I do is magic or illusion; it’s a trick. There are things that you’re not seeing and what you see is not exactly what you’re getting.” Karges went on to say, “Then there is psychology; knowing people well. I bring people up on stage and I give them a free reign of choices, but yet I know that certain things factor into people’s behaviors. I recognize those patterns of behavior and I act on them. So a lot of it is just basic psychology. Then there is a portion that is true intuition. It’s similar to what some people may consider being psychic, but I just prefer the word ‘intuition.’”

            From Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlocke Holmes to the recent television series, The Mentalist, people have been absolutely intrigued with those who seem to possess almost supernatural powers of observation. Very recently, there have been studies (as well as Karges’ own book, Ignite Your Intuition) suggesting that all of us possess this intuitive ability and utilize it to a small degree in our day to day interactions with others. Karges, however, has been able to tap into the underlying resonance that allows him to read people at will and in a more refined manner.

“There are quite a lot of things that you may think are very ‘unique,’ and everyone is unique, but there are also patterns that pretty much everyone falls into.” Karges went on to describe in detail that, “There are even patterns based on ages, males, females and all sorts of things. That is part of my job and to recognize those and when I pick people out of the audience, I read and interpret body language during the show. There’s a lot of conscious psychology going on, but there’s also the intuition part. I don’t really know how to define it because it could just be my own subconscious processing of what’s going on or it could be something that’s more akin to psychic (abilities) with no real explanation.”

Karges was awakened to his intuitive potential after meeting his great uncle, whom everyone called simply called ‘Doc,’ while in his early teens. ‘Doc’ was what Karges described as “the black sheep of the family” and earned his living as a counselor of sorts for a local clientèle.

“He was kind of a poor man’s psychologist and he helped a lot of people. He was very altruistic.” Karges said, describing his great uncle. “He wasn’t out for himself and he did impact a number of people, so much so that when he passed away, people would show up at the door not knowing he had died and my aunt and I would greet them and when you told them that Doc had passed away, the looks on their faces was frightening. I was fourteen at the time and to see that reaction and to start to realize how much faith people put into him was amazing.”

            Beyond bringing the young Karges’ intuitive abilities to the fore, Doc’s teachings became the bulk of what was to become Karges’ performances, which would pay his way through college as well as take him onto thousands of stages and television shows across the nation. Karges described to me what his performances usually consist of.

“Well, the show is done in two acts. The first act is like the mind reading section of the show. It’s different every night, so I can’t really tell you what will happen at theVictoria. I just invite the entire audience to start concentrating on things and I’ll start to tell people their names or facts about themselves or things that they’re concentrating on.” Karges went on to detail other acts to be performed. “There’s other segments where I’ll be blindfolded with tape all over my face and people will come up on stage and I’ll tell them what they’re holding in their hand or call off a serial number on a piece of paper currency or from a driver’s license.”

“We do all that stuff in the beginning and then we come back for the weird part of the show and that’s more of the physical side of what I do.” Karges went on. “I always tell the people right before I finish the last piece before the intermission that we’ll back with the weird part of the show and people laugh because the first half is weird enough as it is. When we come back, the first routine is a group suggestion thing with the entire theater, then we do a very specific hallucination on stage with two people. After that’s over, I say, ‘See? I told you this would be weird.’ Yeah, it is weird.”

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya4RUaZJsr8′]

Armageddon Flu

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 Preparedness Or The Incubation Of Fear?

“All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”

~ Leviticus 13:46

November 2007 – Overseas, increasing numbers of people are hospitalized with flu-like symptoms. Some of the cases are confirmed as H5N1, the avian flu, with some of the health care workers contacting the illness, thereby indicating that the virus has attained the ability to spread from human to human. By mid-December, 2007, it becomes apparent that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) containment zone is ineffective and that the anti-virals that have been developed are unsuccessful. In February of 2008, the virus has spread unhindered throughout China, Indonesia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East…and now cases begin appearing in California with an estimated four weeks until it is spread across the country.

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Thankfully, none of this has actually occurred…yet. It is a scenario from a functional exercise titled Armageddon Flu: West Central Ohio Region Pandemic Influenza Exercise which was conducted in February of 2008 by over a hundred and sixty-six agencies spanning eight counties in West Central Ohio. This was the second year that this type of exercise was held. Even the local video news agencies did their part, recording “live” news updates updating the “players” about local and national situations (see videos here)

During a recent interview, Larry Cleek, Medical Reserve Corp (MRC) County Coordinator, gave me an abridged version of what the first year’s scenario consisted of.

“In 2007,” he said, “we did a build up where the first ‘play’ date, we had the initial ‘cases’ in the region and then each subsequent week, it got heavier and heavier until all the hospitals were inundated and had to provide a medical surge and they couldn’t handle the influx of what was coming in.”

The focus of the 2008 exercise changed from being in the middle of an ongoing situation to giving the agencies time to plan, prepare and stockpile provisions and then to see if they had the clarity of foresight that they thought they did.

“Pretty much, we took feedback we received in 2007 and we got a lot of answers from some people saying, ‘Well, if I would have had more time because I knew that it was coming, I would have done this, this and this.’” Mr. Cleek detailed. “In 2008, we kind of went in a different route where the first day was, ‘It’s a month away (the pandemic outbreak). It’s starting to spread over Asia and parts of Europe and it’s going to be here in less than a month. What are you going to do in preparation of its arrival?’ The second ‘play’ day, we had, ‘It’s hit West Central Ohio. Did you prepare up to what you wanted to?’ On the third ‘play’ day, we did a whole recovery phase where the wave has gone through and, ‘How are you recovering from this in preparation for the second wave of this that might come?’”

With the public being recently inundated with disturbingly sinister sounding radio and television commercials that detail the pandemics that have been occurred in the past, ending with the tag line of “it will happen again” leaves some feeling slightly uneasy. In recent press releases, Bret Atkins, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Health, stated that the ads were stark and edgy to get people’s attention and that, with federal money quickly drying up, preparation for a pandemic flu outbreak will fade. With the tenor and the frequency of the advertisements, it seems to walk the fine line between inoculation and indoctrination.

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One of the aspects that may go against such an awareness push seems to lie in the sheer number of avian flu related deaths. The Center For Disease Control’s (CDC) website states that as of June 19th, 2008, there have only been 385 cases of avian flu confirmed in the world over a five year period. Deaths related to Multidrug Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) were estimated at 18,650 for 2005 in the United States alone, thus possibly surpassing the number of deaths from AIDS. Why then is the focus of the Ohio Pandemic Flu website (www.ohiopandemicflu.gov) as well as the national PandemicFlu.gov (with its mirror site, AvianFlu.gov) specifically about avian flu (H5N1) to the exclusion of any other potential pandemic pathogens? I consulted with Sara Morman, another spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Health, and received this answer; an answer which was extremely similar to the answer I received from Larry Cleek a week earlier.

“Well, I believe that’s because the greatest threat at the moment is from the H5N1 virus circulating overseas and they have had human cases.” Sara said from her Columbus office. “It has not yet achieved the ability to be transmitted easily from person to person. The H5N1 virus is the one that scientists are keeping their eye on of the next potential pandemic flu strain.”

While the avian flu carries a high mortality rate (around 53%), the infinitesimal amount of currently confirmed cases cannot be construed by the average person as being an immediate threat. After the echo from the Public Service Announcement’s warning of an imminent pandemic begin to fade and the number of visitors to the pandemic websites wane, could the state and national health organizations find that they have made a error in judgment? By presenting to the people a specific scenario that, for all intents and purposes, is negligible and distant to most Americans, after the initial curiosity and fear passes, the thought of a pandemic will go the way of the infamous “terrorist threat levels.” Again: Why specifically avian flu? What if the avian flu pandemic that is envisioned by the scientists and health officials doesn’t occur? Will all this training and preparation be transferable to battle another threat that has as yet to be seen?

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“Yes, and you’re looking at a pandemic of any type, so that’s the main premise; you’re preparing for a pandemic.” Larry Cleek asserted. “It doesn’t have to be influenza. It could be something else that popped up. The other thing is that it ties in with other biological related things. You’ve seen Outbreak with Ebola and that type of thing, so if something like that did happen, all of this planning is going to cover those biological areas.” As an aside, he went on, “Let me bring up something else really quickly; in regards to smallpox or anthrax or those types of things, at least we’ve got a vaccine for those. The biggest thing with a Pan-Flu or a flu related item is that it will take six to eight months for us to get a vaccine to fight that specific item, so that’s probably the biggest difference. Because you can’t make a vaccine for it until it’s here and you know what you’re dealing with.”

Sara Morman, who stated that she was not that familiar with the logisitcs of the pandemic exercises held around the state, replied with an answer pertaining to the website and subsequent materials produced and/or distributed by the Ohio Department of Health.

“Well, that is one of the things that we stress in our printed material to remind people that preparing for a pandemic, whether for a strain of H5N1 or another strain, will help them be prepared for any emergency.” Sara Morman said. “So, it is something that we stress more in our printed material, but is probably stressed a little less on the website.”

“Avian Flu: is it a pandemic? No. Basically, in the last century, you’ve had three pandemics; in 1918, in 1957 and 1968. 1918 was really the only severe one. There were milder forms of it in ’57 and ’68 and in the eighteen hundreds, there are three other pandemics that are registered, or historically identified. Basically, the big influx is, they say we’re due for one.”

Perhaps I’m being obtuse with regards to the number of cases of avian flu and its potential severity. Perhaps there are things about mutations with regards to influenza that I can’t even begin to understand, yet I know that, as is common in human nature, if one keeps repeatedly hearing the cries of “Fire!” and yet no flames are ever seen, people tend to turn a deaf ear to the warnings. Yet, maybe the answer to my question is held within the responses that were already given to me.

 “And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed.”

~ Numbers 16:48

For the complete West Central Ohio Region Pandemic Flu Excercise 2008 scenarios, go to http://www.schlorman.com/aflu/

Tangled Up In Blue

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Following The Bliss Of A Blue Man

The Blue Man Group’s How To Be A Megastar Tour 2.1 can be most easily described as Dr. Suess meets Sousa. What better way to articulate the primitive rhythms that course their way through contorted PVC pipes and other instruments with such eccentric names as the Tubulum, the Drumbone and the Piano Smasher, all the while being played by three earless, cobalt mutes.

The Blue Man Group began as an expressive idea that sprung from the minds of Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton (collectively known as CMP) while they were working as caterers at Glorious Foods in Manhattan, New York. They donned the now familiar blue grease paint, latex bald caps and black clothing in the late eighties, appearing on the streets in full regalia. Sometimes they meandered sporadically through the city, astoundingly innocent in their observations of their surrounding and the myriad masses of people that walked past, equally astounded by their appearance. Other times were spent mimicking dance moves across the street from hot nightspots sans music. They held a funeral for the Eighties, which prompted a modicum of media exposure.

Eventually, they began performing small routines in The CLUB at LaMama Experimental Theater Club, garnering them a review in the New York Times, by critic Stephen Holden hailing the show as a “deliriously antic blend of music, painting and clowning.” Their short  performances led to The CLUB’s owner, Meryl Vladimer, commissioning the group to create a full length show, which resulted in TUBES. The Blue Man Group’s popularity quickly soared and the show garnered them a Obie Award as well as a Lucille Lortel Award which led the show to be taken to the Astor Place Theater off Broadway in 1991.

Since those early days, the Blue Man Group has become and empire unto itself, breaking through in advertisements, the music industry, stage, theater and movies as well as toy development, a traveling museum exhibit and even a school for children with an emphasis on creative learning processes. Their shows are staples in New York, Chicago, Boston, Orlando and Las Vegas with tours across North America and an international tour that has stops in Stuttgart, Switzerland, Spain, France and Austria. These overlapping shows and venues have compelled the original group to hold massive auditions for talented individuals to become second generation Blue Men (which I will term The Blue Brood 2.0). I set out to speak with one or more of this new Blue Brood 2.0 to see what the whole BMG experience was like.

My first attempt at an interview with the Blue Man Group did not go well at all. The only sounds to be heard on the recording of our “conversation” was my own voice asking astoundingly interesting questions, only to be pelted with marshmallows. Halfway through the tape, one can hear my surprised cries as the trio experimented with the acoustics of my balding pate with a large mallet. They were very courteous hosts, however, as illustrated towards the end of the interview when many Twinkie wrappers can be heard crinkling as they offered me their sole source of sustenance in an act of mute hospitality.

            It was my mistake to attempt to speak with them while they were still in character, so I decided on a different course of action. I contacted BMG’s agent and he set up an interview with Marc Roberts, who was once a criminal justice major before quickly switching to theater performance after seeing the Blue Man Group live. Roberts spent over two years auditioning for the group, eventually being selected from an original open casting of over twenty-five hundred applicants.

J.T.: With a casting call of something like 2,500 other people auditioning, what set you apart from the others and what was the process of getting in there?

Oh my gosh! Well, you know, it was just one of those things where I just went in and I was myself and sometimes the stars align. You just happen to be more you than anyone else, I guess. It’s just one of those things. It’s such an indescribable process, the whole audition process. When people asked me what happened, I have to just tell them what specific events happened, like how it happened. I guess I just kept cool under pressure better than the next guy…I don’t know to tell you the truth. They could have just drawn a name out of a hat.  Either way, I’m happy I’m happy I’m here.

 

J.T.: In your opinion, what’s the biggest difference between the theater shows and the arena tours?

Roberts: The challenge is to try and keep the characters as natural as possible. You know, you want to get out here…I mean, I even had that problem going from off-Broadway, which is only about three hundred seats to Vegas, and then from Vegas to a big arena. There’s an intensity that you want to up just because you want to raise the stakes, but at the same time, you want to keep the integrity true. You don’t want to start “miming”. You don’t want to start indicating to people that, “Hmmm! I’m thinking!” as you’re grabbing your chin or holding your head, because, for the most part, if something’s done honestly, it’s read well. We have a huge advantage with the tour because we have a camera and we have three high def screens behind us, so the subtleties like the eyes and stuff that usually wouldn’t transfer, they will now. I would say the biggest challenge for me, to be completely honest with you, is endurance. It is a tiring show. I mean, I’m out of breath, crying by the end of the show, hawking up paint, grabbing for someone while I’m walking off stage because of cramps. It’s embarrassing. That’s my big challenge right now.

J.T.: How hard is it with the arena shows is it to break through “the fourth wall”: to connect with the audience and bring them into the performance?

Roberts: You know, I think with a rock show, it’s a bit easier because people tend to view a rock show with more involvement. There’s more give and take at a rock concert then there would be at a theater performance. When I was at the Astor in New York, it was pretty ridiculous, because you would get a lot of people that wouldn’t know what to expect and they’d be a bit more apprehensive. They wouldn’t want to be looked at. They wouldn’t want to be touched because they want to go to an evening at the theater. I think here, they’re just begging to be involved. I mean, people just run up to the edge of the stage when I break a stick or (when I drop) a stick into the audience, there’s a mad dash to grab it. There’s people running up, grabbing us, taking photos. If anything, it’s kind of scary! You know, there are still only three of us, no matter how big the audience gets, there’s still just the three of us.

J.T.: Well, I know in the beginning, when Chris, Matt and Phil would have meet and greets after the show, they would break character and actually talk, it kind of freaked people out and kind of blew the illusion.

Marc: Well, they’ve never said that we had to stay in character. They’re huge fans of talking about the show. It’s kind of something that we’ve all agreed upon to not talk because for selfish reasons because the instant you talk, you’re going to get people who just want to quiz you like, “How can I do what you do?” “Where does the paint come from?” tell them secrets about the show, you know, “What’s your real name? What’s your phone number?”…that kind of stuff. Then, it’s always like the one person, I feel the one person that I’m going to make really happy by talking is going to be totally counteracted by the fifty other people in line behind them who just want that magic to keep going. They want to believe, with all of their heart, that I’m a “Blue Man”. They know I’m a person, but for the last two hours, they’ve escaped and they just think that there’s this innocent creature out there who just looks at life differently and it just makes them happy and I just want to keep that going. I just want to say that I’m so happy that you’ve…you know, I get a lot of interviews where people just ask me, “Why blue?” or “How long does the make up take?” This is awesome! You know what you’re talking about and I have to say that I really appreciate this.

J.T.: No problem at all. Actually, I wanted to get into some topics, I guess for my own personal interests, that were a little bit deeper. I’ve always been amazed with the group because they are like the perfect outsiders and there’s a duality within the group that these perfect outsiders have somehow connected with the outsider within all of us and have become so popular, so now, the outsiders are popular.

Marc: Yeah, yeah! It’s kind of like the outsiders become the majority and they’ve now become this paradox of the inside. I totally see that. I was definitely drawn to the first show by the fact that there was absolutely no ego. There was the hero aspect of…I mean…I didn’t know what this was, but I was going to go straight towards this and there’s no fear of failure, no fear of looking like a fool and in that aspect, no matter how ridiculous they look, people will just love it, you know?

J.T.: The groups ability to be funny in such a minimalist way with just eye expressions and slight gestures is just amazing.

Roberts: Oh my gosh, yeah. That’s something they teach us. You let the audience write the funniest story. You know, the more you guide them, the more you tell them what’s funny, the less it will be. You try to set up the framework for the joke and they will write the funny punch line for themselves. When they taught me that, and it made my job so much better.

J.T.: What’s new on the How To Be A The Mega Star Tour 2.1 and what is the set list?

Roberts: The How To Be A Mega Star Tour is like an adapted set list from The Complex Tour. It has the music with the vocals. It has some new stuff and it has a few pieces from the original show that are adapted. I would say, compared to the Vegas show, like 85% to 90% of it’s all new. Don’t be expecting to see too much from the “sit down” shows. One of the great things about being on tour is that it’s an organic experience. With the “sit down” shows, we bring in new stuff every couple of months or every year or so, but the tour is one of those things that they just keep constantly fine-tuning. It’s such an amazing experience to get to be at the front end of all this. You know, you go in and they’re like, “No, no! We’re working on this! We re-wrote this style!”

J.T.: In the beginning, when Chris, Matt and Phil (the creators of BMG) would have meet and greets after the show, they would break character and actually talk, it kind of freaked people out and sort of blew the illusion.

Roberts: Well, they’ve never said that we had to stay in character. They’re huge fans of talking about the show. It’s kind of something that we’ve all agreed upon to not talk because for selfish reasons. I feel the one person that I’m going to make really happy by talking is going to be totally counteracted by the fifty other people in line behind them who just want that magic to keep going. They want to believe, with all of their heart, that I’m a “Blue Man”. They know I’m a person, but for the last two hours, they’ve escaped and they just think that there’s this innocent creature out there who just looks at life differently and it just makes them happy and I just want to keep that going.

J.T.: Is there a fun aspect to the anonymity to it?

Roberts: Oh my gosh! I absolutely love…one of my favorite things stories is, I did this show in Vegas and afterward, I was cleaned up and left, and usually it takes about thirty to forty-five minutes to take the make-up off and take a shower and we talk about the show every single night. So, I’m leaving, walking through the casino this time, and I see a girl that was in the show with me (who was) a featured guest. In the meet and greet, we sign (autographs) by giving kisses and she happened to ask for one on the cheek. I never say no and I’m always willing to go with it on genuine emotion, so I give her a peck on the cheek. Well, I saw her afterward with all her friends and I just wanted to hear what she would say, so I stop and was eavesdropping and she caught me! She gave me this look, like, “Get away from me you weirdo!” and I’m laughing to myself because part of me wanted to be like, “You do realize that I was with you.” but I didn’t want to ruin it. I didn’t want to make her experience become real, as much as it was a fantasy. As much as it was that experience, I didn’t want to then put my face with it and get her weirded out, you know. So, I absolutely love that aspect. I get to put the mask of a “super star” on. I get to put that mask on, but I’m not that…I’m still just Marc Roberts.

There is an idiosyncratic, paradoxical dualism to the Blue Man Group. These utilitarian homologues are the perfect outsiders that, through their naïve view of the world and their use of subtle gestures and bombastic rhythms, reveal to us the underlying complexities that make us truly human, thereby making the perfect outsiders one of the most wildly popular acts in the world. Even within their own small group of three, one of the members can, from time to time, become an outsider themselves by reacting differently then their abnormal norm.

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Turn By Turn

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The Life and Music, Thus Far, Of Art Garfunkel

“I sit here thinking of memories we knew
Life rushes by so fast
We all are blind, and we stumble through our days
As the future turns to past”

Private World

Artie Garr

The digits I had dialed traversed the six hundred miles or so from my home to Art Garfunkel’s New York. The call was answered quickly by the friendly, warm voice of Art saying, “Hi J.T. Just let me close the door of my office… hang on.” The candid and familiar tone set my nerves at ease, somewhat. The sound of silence was finally broken when he picked back up and said, “How do you feel today?” There was such an actual genuineness in his tone that all of my apprehensions faded quickly away.

Our conversation wended its way through politics, global warming, the environment, the disingenuousness within the recording business, apathy and the role of technology in making us even more apathetic. There were fascinating twists and turns, none of which were covered on my meticulously prepared list of questions. We did however get around to his current project, Some Enchanted Evening and the subsequent tour to support it. Some Enchanted Evening is an eclectic collection of Tin Pan Alley style songs by the likes of Johnny Mercer, Jimmy Dorsey and Rogers and Hammerstein, which is wholly engaging in its selection as well as its execution.

It was daunting to interview such an iconic figure, a man whose achievements ranged from a masters in mathematics to all of the songs, music, prose and poetry he has created. Were there other worlds that he has not able to conquer and things that he still wished to attain?

“I still haven’t gotten to sing as good as I can, so the first thing your question makes me think is right down the mainstream, the middle of what I do. I’m a singer first and foremost. I can sing better than the world knows me to sing.” he stated flatly, while in my mind, his soaring counter tenor rang through Bridge Over Troubled Water, and I found no flaws whatsoever. “I’m still in the process of getting my full act together, being maximally effective. I don’t look outside of music when you ask me a question. …I am a singer. Have I really done it all? No.”

I disagreed with him, tactfully of course, telling him that the sheer silkiness of Some Enchanted Evening was just astounding. The selections from America’s songbook, containing classics such as I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face, Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars (Corcovado) and the album’s namesake, Some Enchanted Evening, were all expertly arranged and the singing had such a melodious quality to it, you could feel the relaxed sense of release within him.

“I’m smiling because, you know, I’m quite pleased with it. I know you’re not supposed to say this, but after a bunch of albums, I’ve been convinced to put the vocals way up front finally, very palatably…don’t show off as a singer. Don’t make them go, ‘Look at the singing!’ Just tickle their ears. Serve the listener aurally. So I’m trying to be a servant of delight in this album with the vocals way up front and I thought the phrasing came out good.”

With his background in mathematics, I wondered if he ever saw the musical form as an elegant mathematical process.

“Well, I certainly see Bach and his fugues that way. I calibrate, very carefully with great precision…I am precise. When I’m singing, time and the exactness of rhythm and the solidity of the groove, something that Creedence Clearwater was so brilliant at, is just total, solid time. When you feel that solid time, the mathematician such as I, likes to play with it and surge just a little ahead, a little behind. The precision of the exactness, of feeling it, allows you to play games with it and you pull your listener into such a sensitivity when you play these games. Now you can grab the next word, and just a little ahead of the beat, and it has an effect, an urgency. Or, you slip back, the same thing you do with crescendos and de-crescendos you do volume-wise, you do with little pushes and surges in the rhythm when you’re just mathematically precise about what you do. But, maybe I’m just describing a musicians’ precision.”

Emerging onto the music scene, as well as becoming aware of the sheer breadth of the world, in a time of a convoluted evolution of political and social structure, Art Garfunkel has seen the seams of what holds America together. He has toured across the land, having walked across the country as well and has a keen sense of the changing landscape. How does he view the new technology and the inherent anonymity of the computer age, especially in deference to the changing face of the music industry?

“I very happy to say, I don’t quite get it.” he admitted without regret. “It’s a moving target, it’s shifting sands. I don’t have to get it. All I have to do is sing. Can I find a venue to sing? It may not be the record business, but maybe it’s only the stage.”

“I like this motto. It’s a very important guide to living, in my opinion. ‘Never underestimate the massive quantity of human shyness.'” he said, pausing slightly before expounding on the statement. “People’s ability to be shy is massive and it explains so much. The computer world feeds into people who don’t want to be face to face with anybody, and that shyness, that living through your terminal at a distance, more detached from everybody, getting your entertainment with an increased amount of detachment it’s about feeding into shyness. It’s exactly what the community of the human race does not need. How to superficially pretend we’re in touch with each other from a farther distance with more detachment.”

“W.H. Auden has this little short poem, which tries to preach accepting for whatever is…’Try and embrace whatever is going because these are our lives and we love being alive/ Bless what there is for being/Which has to be obeyed, for/What else am I made for?/Agree or disagree?’ Art finished with a flourish. “Short and sweet. That’s what there is for me. If it’s here, if it makes up our world, try and embrace the whole funny, contradictory, ridiculous picture.”

“It’s a tough age. I’m not partaking of it. I’m proud to be old fashioned in many ways…I don’t own a cell phone, I never got with computers. I don’t own one. I don’t know how they work. It’s costing me.” he stated, somewhat defiantly. “I have personnel to help me, but something tells me that I don’t want to learn to communicate in a zippier way. These are the elements that make quality of life so I don’t want to find shortcuts when it comes to the quality of life.”

With the record industry circling their wagons to try and contain their self-inflicted, short sighted losses, it was apparent that this was a whole new species than the artist friendly record companies of the sixties and seventies. To see the progression from the organic structure where art was appreciated to the mechanical behemoth that manufactured music for the masses must be quite a sad scene indeed.

“I’m on the inside of the record business and I’m an artist and I can tell you that royalty statements and everything have gone…disappeared in the last year. The structure of the whole business and getting paid has gone somehow into somebody’s sub-basement in some building and no one can find it. In other words, we lost our record business, we the artists have. The royalty payments, the structure, the whole way the business worked, it checked out in ’07. So we’re in a state of real vigilantism. Rules are gone…who is making up the new rules? What kind of grabbing is going on? These are the questions.”

One of the questions I so dearly wanted to ask, but was afraid to, suddenly came up in conversation so I ventured forth. Was his upcoming tour going to include selections from the Simon and Garfunkel repertoire in its set list?

“I’ll sing Kathy’s Song near the end of the show.” he said, much to my relief. “It’s a beautiful, nostalgic love song. I like say it’s Paul Simon’s number one love song. I’ll do some Simon and Garfunkel stuff because it’s coy to leave it out and I’m an entertainer and I want to give the audience Scarborough Fair and I love doing these things.” he proclaimed, quite animatedly. “I have orchestra charts that enhance them and it’s not like I’ve done them thousands of times and am bored. I’ve done them a hundred times. That’s enough to know how it goes and enough to enjoy it.”

I glanced in panic at the clock. I was only supposed to have interviewed him for fifteen minutes and thirty-five had elapsed. My page of prepared questions had almost been wholly forgotten as I had gotten lost in conversation with one of the most prolific originators in modern memory. Too soon, our conversation ended with a poetical phrase that Art had said earlier, summing up not only the last half-hour, but the essence of our existence as well…”Our lives are love and a continual goodbye.”

As a welcome addendum to the original story, Simon and Garfunkel have announced a singular date where they will be performing. The pair will take the stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on Saturday, April 24th, 2010. Simon, a veteran of the festival, said in a released statement that “Over the years I’ve always enjoyed performing at Jazz Fest. Everyone connected with the Festival, and in particular Quint Davis (director of Jazz Fest), has created an atmosphere that is both musical and enjoyable. I am looking forward to the opportunity to perform with my old friend Art Garfunkel at this year’s Festival.” This will be the first time since they performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th Anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in October of 2009.

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