J.T. Ryder

Top Ten Things I Love About Summer

January 22, 2010 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

Some Like It Hot

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.
My melanoma is hungry after its winter hibernation.
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.
I’ve never lost the tips of my toes to “heatbite”.
Women + Thin T-Shirts + Air Conditioning = Eye Popping Event.
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.
There is no better experience than hitting a swarm of cicadas on a motorcycle at 60 mph.
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.
Watching a bleach blonde’s hair turn green after she’s been in the pool for a while.
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

January 17, 2010 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

Better Start To Work On This List Now

Hopefully find a cure for what’s going to kill me.
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.
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.
A three-way with Jessica Alba and Jessica Tandy. Yes, I know Jessica Tandy is dead.
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.
I want to rack up $100,000 in credit card debt so that I have something to leave to my kids.
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.
To split an infinitive…or to divide by zero…whichever.
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.
To have hot monkey lovin’ with the cast of Planet of the Apes: The Musical!

Droopy Drew Donisi: El Dago Diablo

July 1, 2009 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

“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.”)

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The Dichotomy Of Comedy

April 8, 2009 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

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 50^th 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.

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Top Ten Songs I Want Played At My Funeral

March 6, 2009 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

Compositions For Decomposition

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

The Truth Behind The Eyes

January 21, 2009 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

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

September 1, 2008 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

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 19^th, 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

March 12, 2008 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

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.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-yLfm5HsHc’]

Turn By Turn

November 11, 2007 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

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 24^th, 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 25^th Anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden in October of 2009.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DglHU04rQ’]

Progress of the Past – The Magic of the Ohio Renaissance Festival

October 3, 2007 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

The Magic of the Ohio Renaissance Festival

I parked my car on a rolling hill and then descended into the year 1572. A journey that far back into the village of Willy-Nilly-on-the-Wash was neither as long nor as tiresome as I had expected. The hoots and hollers of youngsters banging about with wooden swords echoed and withdrew into the expectant day. The village was awakening and kitchen wenches scuttled and rushed, unintentionally dusting the ground with their long, gathered skirts as they readied for the day. A chandler called out for me to inspect his fine selection of candles and sundries. Another merchant hailed me to his perfumery, extolling the virtues of his soaps and scents, cataloging the ingredients and their attributes.

I roamed the village from gate to gallows. The festive atmosphere of this crossroads fair was an almost equalizing element for patrons and peasants alike. This was an especially eventful day as Queen Elizabeth was making a tour through the area, called a Progress. The Progress served three important functions. The Queen could walk among her constituents, exerting her authority among the nobles and peasants. It also saved the royal house an enormous amount because the villages and nobility paid all of the costs for the Queen’s extended visits. The third, less talked about reason was that it took the Queen away from the odorous conditions present in London during high summer.

The sound of lutes, flutes, gitterns and guitars resonated and vied for attention. Vendors called out, cajoling and extolling the passers by with the singular quality of their wares. An exotic, tattooed woman worked her muscles into a sinuous sweat turning the round-a-bout for some wide-eyed waifs. All around, there was movement, colour, and curiosity, but I was scheduled to meet up with some acquaintances from the past.

Sir Walter Raleigh was the first to respond to my invitation for an impromptu interview. He strode through the trail of dust created by the grooms leading a string of horses out to graze. As he parted the sunlit haze, I was struck by the shimmering similarities of his entrance to that of a man crossing through the mists of time. His embroidered doublet and brilliant breeches revealed a man of great social stature as the gold buttons of his vest caught the sun, throwing rich reflections onto the dirty faces of the coarsely dressed urchins as they ran past. We took a seat on the rough-hewn bench in front of the Rose and Crown and a bit of irony became evident; the man that brought tobacco back to England was a non-smoker.

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Drake made their arrival a short time later, with bluster and a torrent of familiar, good-natured sniping. They went on for a time, reflecting on past conquests and jibing the others about their shortcomings. Sir Francis reminded Sir Walter that on one of his expeditions, he had to dump his ballast overboard and replace it with silver. Raleigh shot back that at least he hadn’t died of dysentery. The Earl of Leicester cheerfully chimed in that dysentery was such an awful way to go, but not nearly so much as having your head and body part ways under the executioner’s axe, such as Raleigh had. Drake came to Raleigh’s aid pointing out that at least they didn’t utilize the forces of gravity and a sturdy stairwell as a means to divorce their wife. The Earl became somewhat indignant and twirled the waxed ends of his curled mustache, stating that nothing had ever been proven in that particular case.

I had hoped to include Lettice Knolleys in on the conversation, but as she approached our group, the Queen’s retinue, replete with guards, the Privy Chamber, and a number of unofficial court patrons, suddenly appeared. I found it quite odd that Sir Walter Raleigh chanced a shy smile and a hidden wave to Bess Throckmorton, one of Elizabeth’s colloquial court attendants. The mild flirtations were bizarre because, in 15 and 72, Raleigh and Bess were barely in their early adulthood. It was not until far later that they would secretly marry, infuriating the Queen. In 1618, political intrigues between Spain and England conspired to lead Raleigh to the executioner. Bess, being the devoted wife, stored Raleigh’s head in a leather satchel for twenty-nine years until death finally claimed her.

My musings were quickly interrupted by the Queen’s shrill upbraiding of Lettice due to one of Lettice’s entourage imprudently clothing herself in the Queen’s colours. You could see Elizabeth’s thinly masked hatred for Lettice beaming through, entwined with the puerile satisfaction of being able to publicly humiliate her. Lettice bore the abuse, humbly bowing her acquiescence to Elizabeth. After Elizabeth’s guards parted a path for the Queen, Lettice and her maiden’s swept themselves away in a blush of indignation.

The Queen’s tirade put somewhat of a damper on the conversation and everyone soon parted ways; they to the past they chose to repeat, and I to the present that I am compelled to create. The one thing that I am left with, over and above the sights, sounds and experiences, are the people who comprise the crossroads festival. The amount of skill and research and devotion that they have endured to be able to take us all on this ubiquitous journey into the past is almost unfathomable and a debt not easily repaid. To them, huzzah!

Sir Francis Drake is played by Charley Brough, Sir Walter Raleigh is played by Dave Smith, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester is played by Micheal Dean Conley, Lettice Knolley is played by Ame Ahner.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GXnwUKJabo’]

Hilariously Hyper Hahn

July 11, 2007 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

Greg Hahn On The Marines, One Eyed Women and The Bob & Tom Show

Having heard Greg Hahn’s high-velocity rants on the radio and seen his blisteringly bombastic stage performances on video, I fully expected to find that, off stage, he was a quiet, laid back kind of guy. I was wrong. From the moment he answered the phone for our first interview, it was clear that he was just as manic and off stage as he was on. In all sincerity, I had to slow down the recorder to transcribe our interview as it was somewhat akin to listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks on a meth jag. I conversation meandered around, jumping from topic to topic, seemingly at random. I knew that it was going to be an interesting interview when I had mentioned that it took a special type of person to get up in front of an audience, under the glare of the spotlights. I told him that I was really only comfortable dealing with the world from the safety and comfort of my computer.

“Right…it’s a special thing…I mean, you write and I can’t even think about sitting still for that long. It would bore me instantly and I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything…hang on…I gotta plug my phone in…”

…and thus began the interview. One of several conversations that I have pieced together over the years, to give a clearer insight into Greg Hahn’s career and his creations. During our first conversation, I asked Greg if he had always been this way.

“Yeah! I’ve always been ridiculous, you know? Always, ’cause that’s the fun part! Like when you’re in school…the more serious the situation is, the more you want to be a riot. Like in a quiet classroom, you know, or like a funeral or say like a church…I won’t go so far as to say a funeral …but like church. Wherever you’re supposed to be really quiet is like where I wanted to go completely bananas, you know.” Hahn quickly added, somewhat paradoxically, “But then I get put on the spot, like ‘Hey! It’s the funny guy!’ so, like you go to a party and that’s where you’re supposed to be completely over the top and that’s where I would clam up. It’s a weird combination of things.”

Having seen him on stage and spoken with him in person, it was somewhat difficult for me to imagine that he could ever be involved in such a regimented organization such as the Marines. I asked him if his apparent ADHD and penchant for spastic humor ever got him in trouble with the Corps.

“Uh, I don’t know…it was quite ridiculous in the Marine Corps. You know, I had my people shooting their weapons all over the place. I used to blow off stuff at my apartment complex that caused the S.W.A.T. team to come over. You know, that was like the closest I ever came to being in trouble…like I’d bring flash-bangs or artillery simulators home and blow them off. Other than that, things have been pretty smooth.”

Knowing that Hahn had achieved the rank of Captain, I was curious as to whether his antics ever got him bucked down in rank or caused him any other problems in the military.

“No, no. Officers…normally it’s hard to get yourself knocked down a rank. Those guys that are just working their way up, like from like Sergeant to Corpsoral (E-4) or something like that, but once your so high, it’s hard to get knocked down.” Hahn ended that thought by saying, “Either you rank or you get kicked out right away.”

With his military background, I was sure that Hahn had to have taken part in the many USO or other military comedy tours.

“I didn’t do Iraq, but I went to Bosnia and Kosovo…all that stuff. That was a good time. The military stuff kills there…I try to expand on the military stuff and it does real well. But you know, my military career was a long time ago. There are other guys that have had real careers in the military. I was just like four years in…three active duty and one in the reserves. A lot of these guys have been in the military for like ten or twenty years…a whole big career. I touch on it in the act, but it’s not the whole act.” Hahn then jumped subject, detailing some of his pre-Marine life. “I went to college. I had a job. I was a moron in college, so I can like totally relate to people whose max education is high school and they go to college and they drink and I am totally in the same boat with those people.”

During another phone call, almost exactly a year later, I brought up the topic of the military once again as my eldest son had joined the Marines and was set to leave in a short time for boot camp.

“Good for him! Well, he’ll get in the Marine Corps and, I mean, at boot camp, it’ll be…the first week…what a hassle! No sleep! Oh my god! Everything is uncomfortable. He will have…it’s that old cliché, ‘You can’t take that away from him,’ you know?” Actually sounding nostalgic for a moment, Hahn went on to say that, “He’ll have the memory of things he did and what happened and things he saw for his whole life. It’s a good memory. It’s fun. Tell him he’ll tell every girlfriend he ever dates from here on out his Marine Corps experience, what he did in boot camp and what happened and what kid tried to drink his own piss and the rifle range…no, he’s got all kinds of great memories coming.”

I wondered whether much of Hahn’s stage act was comprised of actual experiences that, within the wide open confines of Greg’s imagination, he blew up to totally preposterous proportions, creating a comic character that everyone seems to find universally hilarious. Was it a conscious decision to create a rapid fire monologue out of exaggerated portions of his own life?

“Yeah, stuff I’ve experienced, stuff I’ve done, you know what I mean? I always say, like my whole point is ‘get to the funny part quick’. Like, me as an audience member, like whenever I watched comedy, I would get bored like instantaneously. I don’t like a long set up, myself so my jokes are almost like, a couple of words or a funny noise or a face or whatever. Like, whatever is funny I try to bring it in immediately.” Hahn reflects that, “So, since I started out, I’ve always…it takes a while, it takes a number of years to get people to understand what the hell you’re doing. Because I used to come out on stage and , you know, fall down or flop around and throw prunes and, you know, throw stuff around, and people didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

With the unending physical comedy that his body endures during every performance, I thought that he must have had some accidents and injuries over the course of years.

“No…” he said, quickly adding that, “I have flown onto a full table of beer, though. The table collapsed when I flew off stage and landed on a table…I didn’t get hurt, so it was alright. It was kind of funny, actually…a good way to close a show. ‘Hey, hey! My finale’!’”

As a regular guest not only on The Bob and Tom Show, but also on The Bob and Tom Comedy All-Stars Tours, Greg attributes much of his success to Tom Griswold and Bob Kevoian, the creators and hosts of the show.

“Well, I think The Bob and Tom Show, for me, has made my career. It has totally given it a kick in the you-know-what. It’s really interesting because I was playing in a club in Indianapolis called One Liners, and they were like, ‘Hey, you’re going to do The Bob and Tom Show tomorrow!’ I had heard that Bob and Tom was big, but I’d done a lot of radio and you don’t get overly excited, like, it’s not a career changer. You know, after a while, you just kind of take one day at a time.” Hahn remembers the immediate results that the show had on his career, “So, you do The Bob and Tom Show once and the next thing you know, you show up at a place you’ve never been before, like Wichita, Kansas, and the place is packed! You go rolling up in the parking lot and there’s nowhere to park. That’s when I first learned the power of Bob and Tom, playing Wichita…that place was slammed and I’m like, ‘Holy Smokes!’ and it just got better and better. It’s really something!”

The Bob and Tom Comedy All Star Tour have really become an entity unto themselves, traversing the country, bringing the nation’s top comedians in one headliner laden show.

“Yeah, The Bob and Tom Tour is like a total party. You know, I can just come out and go completely nuts. I don’t have to pace myself or anything…just total nuts, you know? That’s the thing…I come out, explode, then go have a diet Coke backstage. It is truly the world of Jäger-bombs and body shots.” Hahn went on to explain the dynamics of the tours by reiterating that, “It’s just a Bob and Tom party, because you’ve got all these headliners who normally don’t see each other on the club circuit, because we all headline. Our egos are too big. We wouldn’t dare want to open for each other, you know what I mean? But, on The Bob and Tom Tour, it’s all headliners, so…man! The green room is a riot! It is fun, it is fun. You are truly seeing comedians that are having a fun time where, in a club, it might be minor torture because you could have to sit through the opening act and the middle act. Honestly, I’ve never had so much fun doing comedy in all my life!”

I always wondered if the constantly changing line ups would throw some of the comedians off of their groove.

“Not really. I mean, it’s different personnel. You’ve got someone new to goof off with in the green room. But, as far as the show itself, I don’t really sit out there and watch it. We sit in the green room totally goofing off talking about, again, because it’s a meeting of people who don’t normally see each other, so we can talk about challenges on the road, which comedy club has the most horrific condo, which guy tried to rip us off the most and compare notes.” Hanh explains. “Then, when they’re like, ‘Hey! You’re up next!’ I just go out there, sprinting onto the stage, freak out, then race back to the green room. So, I don’t know what’s going on out there. I just know that I go out there and give the audience their money’s worth and make sure that they’re happy that they showed up.”

Along with being one of the most manic and funny men on the comedy circuit, Hahn also has some other special talents. The first of which is his exceptional drumming skills. Had he originally wanted a career in music, perhaps hooking up with a band in high school or college?

“No, man…but I always had a drum set with me, even through college, like in my college dorm, because nothing wraps up a big party night when you’re hitting all the frats then a 3am dorm drum solo. I always had a drum kit and I took lessons in like fourth and fifth grade, and that was it. I did actually play in the jazz band in high school, but they’d only let me play like one song.” Contemplating the possibilites, Hahn said, “Now if I put together a big show, I would put together a band for sure. But the trouble is, I ruin every single song with a gigantic drum solo, so…”

Another of his non-comedic attributes is his wicked reputation as a Ping-Pong master. I was curious if this was something that he developed a skill for while he was in the military, much like Forrest Gump.

“No, I played as a kid. As a kid, I lived across the street from the guy that was like one of the top players in Florida and he taught me how to play. And it’s not like I’m a tournament player, but any punk that’s in the audience or like when I was in college…I mean, any street player I can beat, or normally I can beat. I’m sure that there’s some fat guy wearing a sweat band that’s got a Ping-Pong table in his garage and belongs to the Ping-Pong Club that could be trouble and could probably do me in, but I don’t run into that. I’m a comedian, so I think I’m unbeatable!” Then the gloves come off when Hahn starts trash talking. “That’s like Daniel Tosh and these other punks that think they’re good, and they show up and I have to talk smack like ‘Are you right handed? Are you sure you’re not playing with the weak hand?’”

We ended one of our conversations with what has to be one of the weirder road stories that I have heard. Not the weirdest…but definitely outside the norm.

“When I first started out, I used to throw stuff out into the audience and then there was this lady one night, who kept opening this umbrella in the front row while I’m doing the show, right?”

I suggested that perhaps the woman was confused and thought she was at a Gallagher show.

“No, I wasn’t even throwing anything. I guess she just thought it was funny. She was drunk and thought it was funny to, out of nowhere, just open her umbrella up in the front row. So all I’d see was this big umbrella open up. I happened to have had a large glass of ice water up on stage, and I thought, ‘Man, that would be great that the next time she opens that umbrella, I’ll spin around and grab this huge glass of ice water and chuck it against that umbrella. Oh it’ll be a riot! It’ll be a riot!!’ So I’m doing my show and BOOM, the umbrella opens up and I spin around and grab the ice water and fling it at her and as I’m throwing it, she closes the umbrella, the ice flies over her head and nails the woman behind her.” The story goes from bad to bizarre as Hahn recounts that, “All I could hear was the woman behind her scream, ‘My eye!’…and it’s not just her eye….it’s her good eye. She’s got a real eye and a glass eye and I nailed her in the real eye. Like, I mean, a nightmare was facing me that I couldn’t possibly imagine. So anyway, the show was over and I had to sit with her and buy her drinks…well, her and the people she was with….and luckily the eye cleared up and she was alright and the club invited me back. That was a rough one, man. It’s like one of the things you learn when you’re starting out. It’s like, ‘O.K. That’s it for chucking things into the crowd.’No, I wasn’t even throwing anything. I guess she just thought it was funny. She was drunk and thought it was funny to, out of nowhere, just open her umbrella up in the front row. So all I’d see was this big umbrella open up. I happened to have had a large glass of ice water up on stage, and I thought, ‘Man, that would be great that the next time she opens that umbrella, I’ll spin around and grab this huge glass of ice water and chuck it against that umbrella. Oh it’ll be a riot! It’ll be a riot!!’ So I’m doing my show and BOOM, the umbrella opens up and I spin around and grab the ice water and fling it at her and as I’m throwing it, she closes the umbrella, the ice flies over her head and nails the woman behind her. All I could hear was the woman behind her scream, ‘My eye!’…and it’s not just her eye….it’s her good eye. She’s got a real eye and a glass eye and I nailed her in the real eye. Like, I mean, a nightmare was facing me that I couldn’t possibly imagine. So anyway, the show was over and I had to sit with her and buy her drinks…well, her and the people she was with….and luckily the eye cleared up and she was alright and the club invited me back. That was a rough one, man. It’s like one of the things you learn when you’re starting out. It’s like, ‘O.K. That’s it for chucking things into the crowd.’”

At the conclusion of our last conversation, Hahn extended his thanks and best wishes to my son as he left for Marine Corps boot camp.

“Well, thanks a lot for the interview and tell your son he’ll love the Corps and tell him to bring his golf clubs. That’s what they always told me; ‘Bring your golf clubs!’” Hahn paused for the briefest of moments before adding, “I don’t know what that means.”

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD0WROU9D7Q’]

Renaissance Rescinded in Santa Clara: The Orphaned Arts District Of Dayton

June 27, 2007 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

“The architecture of our future is not only unfinished; the scaffolding has hardly gone up”

~George Lamming

Standing amidst the broken plate glass shards on the northeast corner of North Main St. and Santa Clara Ave., you can look across the street and see the fading promise of a once vibrant art scene reduced to a few tattered awnings stretched over abandoned storefronts. What could have possibly happened to take a profitable, progressive and thriving arts community that was flourishing in the nineties disappear, leaving us with just panorama of mostly empty buildings and memories less than decade later?

The 1900 block of N. Main St. was developed in the 1800’s with an architectural integrity that spoke of affluence. Business and residential development flourished well into the 20th century, but was marred by a sudden decline starting in the 1960’s. The seventies brought yet another sharp decline that mirrored the steady change in demographics of nearby urban neighborhoods. Property owners and businesses became increasingly absentee and the area fell into disrepair.

In the early nineties, Joe Dierkers and the partnership that comprised The Third Realty Co. acquired most of the commercial buildings that was soon to become the heart of the Santa Clara arts district. They were unsure at first as to what direction the area should take, but that issue was soon resolved when Joe attended an event where Jeff Rutledge was a guest speaker. In the course of several conversations, the two agreed that the area was a perfect site to create a center for the artistic community. They modeled their vision on the greatly successful Short North arts and retail center that sits just north of downtown Columbus. The Color Purple Decorating Service, owned by James Hankins, was already located on Santa Clara Ave. when Jeff moved Rutledge Gallery from it’s Front Street location directly onto N. Main St., becoming an anchor for the area. The renaissance of the Santa Clara area began.

Jeff Rutledge remembers the area as it was when he first moved there. “At the time there were mostly empty buildings . Nothing bright or cheerful, no identity, no direction. I could envision what this area could be, though, having lived in Oakland and Mendocino, California. and the north side of Chicago, seeing what urban gentrification and neighborhood revivals that were started by artists, musicians, and restaurants, and risk taking entrepreneurs could achieve.”

Other artisans and small retailer soon followed and within a short time, the district boasted over forty shops, giving birth to the Santa Clara United Business Association (SCUBA).

“The formation of SCUBA was grassroots…organic, democratic, and totally voluntary in our own self interest to gain influence with the city.” Jeff Rutledge reflected.

The area quickly became an unofficial arts district and in 1993, the City of Dayton designated the Santa Clara area as a “Town Center.” This program, now defunct, opened up city resources, as had been done for the Oregon District and the Belmont Business District in the past. The resources were earmarked for marketing, promotion and research for the burgeoning art district and hopes were high that the partnership between the district and the city would flourish as it had in the Oregon District.

Steve Nutt, who was the Dayton City Planner at the time and very active in the developing scene says “the ‘Town Center’ designation was made by a staff recommendation that was approved by the city commission. The ‘Town Center’ was made by geographical location and targeted those business districts. There was never really a contract made because there was no real entity to make an agreement with. It was more of a working agreement wherein the city worked with the business district…it was an informal partnership with the city and the business district.” Steve had left the area over a year before the ‘Town Center’ project finally shut down. He works as Director Strategic Development for CityWide Development now.

The ‘Town Center designation was comprised of several components that applied to every ‘Town Center’ locale; façade grants, incentives for new businesses, such as free rent for the first month or two and promotional and marketing funds. The money was made available to the districts on a first come, first serve basis and available through an application process. One of the first initiatives that were taken was to unify the district through the installation of matching storefront awnings and a linked lighting scheme. Neon lights were to be installed along the district giving the area it’s own distinctive flair. The first attempt at this ended somewhat anti-climatically. The bid was granted to a contractor who was apparently wholly unprepared for the task. Wiring insulation was sub-standard, causing a fire on one of the buildings and just outright inoperable on others.

Parking for the newly christened arts district and ‘Town Center’ was established when Joe Dierkers offered the city two houses that his partnership owned.

“I donated two buildings and the city tore them down to provide a parking lot.” he remembers, “They (the city) were supposed to acquire the, third (house) but that never materialized.”

Joe Dierkers kept the integrity of the area in the forefront with his ability to deal with potential tenants on an individual basis. He would scale the rent for those who planned to open an arts based business, knowing that they would be unable to pay a higher lease and also that another artisan establishment would add to the overall ambience of the area. He also turned away some prospective retailers that wanted to open businesses that did not fit in with the district’s sweeping vision. This business acumen paid off when in 1996, the area was at around 93% occupancy and, by Joe’s accounts, rose to 99% by 1999.

Things started to fray around the edges when a local branch of National City Bank decided to close its branch at the corner of Ridge Ave. and N. Main St.

Joe Dierkers says that “the businesses in the area felt like having a neighborhood bank was a stabilizing influence. We went to the City Council to oppose the closure, but we weren’t even allowed to voice our concerns or make our presentation. We felt that there was a lack of commitment from National City to the inner city.”

Around 1996, the local businesses began to feel as if the support from the city was being slowly withdrawn.

“The focus of the city’s efforts went elsewhere, which is not a criticism. There were times when there could have been some support, but there almost seemed to be an abandonment.” says Joe Dierkers. “The city made an effort in the beginning. They installed the awnings, lighting, parking lots and improved the sidewalks. They started a community based policing program. I even provided an office for them to use, rent-free. We had a community-based officer who really got to know the business owners and the neighborhoods. She got rid of the panhandlers, who were one of the main problems in the area at the time. A year later, they (the city) switched from supporting it to giving it lip service. The community officers were pulled off and placed elsewhere. I took back the office that I had let them use because nobody was ever there.” In an almost despondent tone, Joe finished by stating that, “In retrospect, the support probably went away much quicker then we realized, but at the time, it seemed like a slow distancing.”

Jeff Rutledge remembers the slow retreat of support as, “…ending very quietly and with no warning and no explanations, like a thief in the night. They didn’t want to admit that they were changing directions. It was rude and very unprofessional and sneaky. They didn’t want to talk or explain it to us. That was the killing blow and we lost momentum and morale. I don’t trust the city anymore.”

Jim McCarthy, the owner of ‘Q’ located at 1966 N. Main St. reflects that, “The City had a good thing going when they were encouraging small businesses to move into the district and made funding available to assist the businesses with signage, awnings, and other amenities that made for a more attractive, walk-able business district. But then all of that funding dried up…”

There were other issues that the area was dealing with besides the slow withdrawal of city support. The residential neighborhood itself was changing radically. There were more and more abandoned properties, absentee landlords and a pervasively negative element moving in. Violent crimes and crimes against the properties became more of a day to day issue for the local businesses. Our very own paper once resided in the corner building at Santa Clara Ave. and N. Main St., but were forced to move from the area do to the increase in criminal activity.

According to the current publisher of the Dayton City Paper, Kerry Farley, “The reason we left the district was pretty simple. Three incidents of theft… an office load of computers stolen each time in less than two years. Police quite simply told us it was the work of local crack addicts. (The) insurance company simply refused to allow us to continue filing these claims as, at some point, it becomes sheer irresponsibility on our part to continue staying there.”

Jim McCarthy explains that, “…the “usual suspects” of any area that is struggling with high poverty rates crept in; including prostitution, petty crime, vandalism, and drug trafficking.”

Jim Haskins, the owner of The Color Purple sums up the overall feeling with, “What ultimately caused the complete demise within the area was the crime and the decline of the residential neighborhoods.”

Currently, the ORION Solution Project is targeting the Santa Clara, Riverdale and Wolf Creek/Old Dayton View neighborhoods. The program is being met with well earned praise and support from the local communities. The ORION Solution has allocated more police officers to identified problem areas and initiated walking patrols for the officers. They are boarding and securing the abandoned properties and have developed youth mentoring and skill building programs. In deference to all that is being done by this project, one has to ask why the community based policing program initiated and effectively proven in the early days of the Santa Clara Arts District was abandoned. From all accounts, it was a program that worked and had the endorsement of the local businesses and neighbors.

There are other programs that various city offices and development groups are working on in adjacent neighborhoods. There was a recent survey and identification of historical properties in the Five Oaks area. There is the Great Miami Blvd. Connector which is proposed to create a business corridor along the lower section of N. Main St. Dayton Public Schools plans to invest 20M in a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school at the site of the old Julienne High school, which has just been recently added to the National Historical Register. While all of these projects and plans are fantastic news, the spillover effect may not even be felt in the Santa Clara area.

Joe Dierkers related this story to me, which seems to sum up the propensity for the city to take up a project, only to abandon it in midstream in favor of a new project. There was a store owned by Mel Smith located on W. Fairview Ave. Business had been slow for Mel lately and Joe offered him a large storefront in the Santa Clara area. Mel’s Fine Furniture and Interior Design’s business picked up substantially. Shortly thereafter, the city, in an effort to bolster a shopping center development on N. Gettysburg, offered Mel certain incentives to move his established business there.

“They (the city) paid for the move and made him some type of deal concerning the rent, but he was unable to maintain his business in (that market) and soon went out of business. Now it seemed that the city was not just ignoring us, but working aggressively against us.”

With the recent coverage of Dayton being ranked 84th in America as a desirable place to live in the latest edition of Cities Ranked & Rated, there are a few questions that enter my mind. With the most outstanding ratings being in the “arts & culture” area, I wonder if the city is planning to capitalize on this fact. They could start an arts district, replete with galleries, restaurants, and unique boutiques. I know just the place.

Shock Treatment

June 20, 2007 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

Wiley’s Welcomes America’s Greatest Storyteller

I prepared for my upcoming interview with comedic storyteller Ron Shock in the same manner that I approached all of my subjects. I researched reviews of his performances from across the country. I listened to all of the stage material of his that I could find. I read all of the somewhat vitriolic rants on his web blog. I collated and compressed all of my thoughts down into a series of poignant, thought provoking questions, took a deep breath and dialed his telephone number. As soon as I heard his raspy, whiskey soaked voice answer the phone and he launched unceremoniously into a review of his day, I did what any professional interviewer would do; I threw my notes right the fuck out. I realized instantly that there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to be able to force this interview to follow any semblance of order.

Ron immediately put me at ease with his laid back, conversational tone; the hallmark of a true storyteller. He makes you feel as if you were sitting on the back porch, listening to stories being spun by your favorite grandfather. Not the one who used to whack you with his cane and tell you that you’d never amount to anything, just like your father. No, not him. The other one; the nice one. Ron Shock would reminded you of that grandfather, spinning stories about his life, making them all seem so funny and fanciful. Well, maybe “grandfather” is not the right depiction to use. Maybe a grandfather after he’s smoked quite a bit of “medicinal marijuana” for his “glaucoma.” A cross between Garrison Keillor and Ken Kesey, really.

Our hour-long conversation ranged hither and yon, touching on topic after topic, such as politics, poker, religion and bowel movements, shifting between these subjects seamlessly. Now I realized why the man, one of the Original Texas Outlaws who sprang from the same scene as Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks and Brett Butler, was known as The Greatest American Storyteller.

J.T.: You’re performing at Wiley’s Comedy Club on June 21st through the 24th. You wrote to me saying that you really liked playing that club. Is it the area’s ambiance? The type of crowds?

Shock: You know what it is? The owner is a comic. The previous owner, Wiley himself, while not a comic, loved comedy and there is that love of comedy and Wiley’s isn’t like other clubs because they’re (the other clubs) are in it for the money. Wiley’s is actually in it for the comedy.

J.T.: Well, I’ll ask the most obvious question that you’ve probably been asked a billion times, ‘how did you get into comedy?’

Shock: I had a little consulting firm at the time, but it pretty much ran itself. The service I provided was done by computer and it was easy for me to have time off. I went to college. I’d take six hours a week out of my not-so-busy-fucking-schedule. Just to take courses that interested me and I didn’t know anything about the theater, so I took ‘Introduction to Theater.’ Well, Hayden Rorke, who played Col. Bellows on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’, was friend of my professor. He comes on a day when we had to do a skit that we had written ourselves. I performed my skit and afterwards, he said ‘That was pretty funny! Let’s go have lunch.’ We had lunch and he asked me what I was doing in college at my age. I told him that I had been a success in business and had made money and now I was bored beyond belief. He told me ‘You ought to do stand up comedy.’ The following Tuesday, I went to a local comedy club and it was like a light shone on me, like ‘This is what you’re supposed to do.’ I went on stage that Sunday, amateur night…and I bombed. Horribly. A fight breaks out between the comics and spills into the room while I’m on stage. It can’t get any worse. Monday morning, I put my business up for sale and I’ve been a stand-up comic ever since.

J.T.: How would you describe your show to the uninitiated? Is it a political or controversial type of show?

Shock: No, I don’t do political stuff much. I will go after certain controversial figures, I don’t go after groups, I name names…individuals…like Oral Roberts or Pat Robertson. I’ll take something ludicrous that they’ve said and from there go into a rant from there. My show has no point. I make people laugh. That’s what I do. There are things that I feel very deeply about in life, but I can’t make them funny, and I don’t want to preach without making it funny. My calling seems to be as a stand-up comic, not as a comedic philosopher. So, no…I don’t have a point, other than there’s a lot of funny shot out there if you can start to look at it from a funny point of view. I do a lot of long stories, I mean, I’ve led a very interesting life.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayt2YNgKpBs’]

Tonight’s Memories

June 13, 2007 By J.T. Ryder Leave a Comment

Ed McMahon’s Memories of the Tonight Show

Whether it was after an egg fight with Dom DeLuise or standing amidst the wreckage of a skit that had gone horribly awry, Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson remained true to themselves, and to each other. One would look to the other and say, “Two grown men”, while the other would complete the second part of their inside joke by replying, “Graduates of major universities.” A little phrase that displayed the depth of a friendship that sustained and carried them through forty-six years of varying levels of fame. Along the way, an intimate unspoken admiration was firmly cemented between these two men, making them the most recognizable, admired, emulated, parodied and well beloved duos in comedic history.

Philadelphia already recognized Ed McMahon’s rising star as early as 1952, when he had thirteen shows on the air. Having served in the Marine Corp in World War Two, Ed was once again called into military service to serve in Korea, thus interrupting his burgeoning television career. By the time he made it back stateside, all thirteen of his shows had been canceled and he was forced to start from scratch, scheduling audition after audition from a Penn station phone booth. Fate intervened one night when he was invited to a party at Dick Clark’s apartment and, after conversing with someone named Gordon, was foisted into the role of ‘entertainer’ for the evening. After telling a few jokes, Dick Clark’s producer took notice of him and when an announcer’s position suddenly opened up for the game show Who Do You Trust?, Ed was first in line. Ed’s did not think that his interview with the shows star went well at all. Apparently the shows star, Johnny Carson, thought otherwise.

J.T.: Now, I read your book Here’s Johnny (Rutledge Hill Press – 2005) and the first thing I’d like to say is it was really refreshing to read a memoir that didn’t turn into some nasty, tabloid style tell all book.

McMahon: I would never do that. I would never, ever do that…at gunpoint I wouldn’t do that.

J.T.: Now, my only critique of the book is that the anecdotes didn’t seem to go far enough. It was like ‘…and then what happened?’…and it was off to another story. Now, is your series, Ed McMahon’s Memories of The Tonight Show, an extension of the book?

McMahon: Yes. In other words, both things in my mind are tributes to Johnny. My idea with the book was, everybody wants to hear the ‘Heeeere’s…’, you know, J.T. …I get that all the time, all over the country. ‘Will you say hello to my mom?’ ‘Well, what’s your mom’s name?’ So anyway, I’ll do a ‘Heeeere’s Mary!’ or whatever it is…

J.T.: So you’re like the most recorded cell phone answering machine.

McMahon: (Laughs) Yeah, that’s right! I thought the book should be, not the ‘Heeeere’s Johnny’ but ‘Here’s Johnny’. Everybody wanted to know what he’s like, you know, what’s Johnny all about. So, that was my idea. So then, with Memories of the Tonight Show, it’s just another tribute. So, it’s some of the book, but it’s more like a night club show.

J.T.: Is it more of a conversational theater type show or is there a multi-media aspect to it?

McMahon: Oh sure, I have clips that people have never seen. Like an Aunt Blabby skit that fell apart one night. I have things like that and I have silly things that we did, like the thing I call ‘The Tie Fight’. One night, we got involved with something, and all of a sudden, we’re trying to pull each other’s ties off, you know. Reflecting, that’s reflecting the fact that we were pals, you know. People wonder are they really friends? A lot of the couplings in our business, they were not pals. Like Laurel and Hardy were not pals. The Marx brothers feuded all the time. You know, we were buddies. If we had met in the Marine Corp, we’d have gravitated towards each other because we liked the same things and we laughed at the same things. So there was a camaraderie that’s explained and shown in a clip where it’s just so silly, like two kids kicking a can down the street. There’s this humor and the feeling that you know what the other guy is going to do. That’s pretty good if you have a coupling like that.

J.T.: Your relationship with Johnny was definitely unique and has never come close to being duplicated, as far as mutual respect. It seems that many these comedic teams allow their egos to destroy what they have.

McMahon: Right!

J.T.: With your other projects, did any of them ever come close to interfering with your relationship with Johnny?

McMahon: No. You know what I did? I was very smart. What I did was, I always went in and took everything by him. When I got that film Fun With Dick and Jane, with Jane Fonda and George Segal, that was a big moment for me. Well, before that happened, I went to him. I would go to him and run everything by and say, ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about Star Search?’ You know, other people didn’t do that and got in a lot of trouble.

J.T.: Now, going way back, when you were paired with Johnny on the game show Who Do You Trust? in 1957, do you think that you both would have made it as big had The Tonight Show not been available as your vehicle?

McMahon: I think so, because I was doing other shows in Philadelphia. My attitude was, I just thought that Who Do You Trust? was fine. That was a big thing to me, a network show and so forth. If it hadn’t have worked, I would have gone back to Philadelphia or I’d keep plugging in New York, and do something else, you know. I don’t think there was any question…you know, we both had talent and it was unique that we found each other. When I say in my motivational speeches, ‘I ran into a guy named Johnny Carson.’ Well, that old phrase, ‘hitch your wagon to a star’…I hooked my wagon to a star.

J.T.: Later on, when you would do various tour across the country, performing at state fairs and such, would you ever arrive in some backwater dump and just look at each other and say, ‘Why are we doing this?’

McMahon: (Laughs) That’s a good question! You’ve done your homework! Anyway, we always had a great spot. We’d do like the Ohio State Fair, we’d play the New York State Fair. We always geared what we were doing right to the audience. In other words if we were in a town where there was a lot of oil drilling, Johnny would be an oil rigger and I would be interviewing him. He’d be Wildcat Sam, and I’d have the clipboard, and then we’d have to joke. But we would tailor it to the locale, so that helped us, you know. Even if we hit any…we never really hit any bad spots, but if you hit a bad spot, it was so right on that the audience was with us. Let’s say your in Houston, Texas or you’re in a smaller town like Milford, Texas where oil rigging is a big thing, you know, we were right on. Regardless of what else happened, we had that. We had preparation.

J.T.: When you toured did you ever do any of the USO shows or spots at the military bases?

McMahon: No, but I’m very military. I was in two wars. I was in the Marine Corp. for, between active duty and retired duty, twenty-three years and I came out of the Corp a Colonel, so I was very active in the Marine Corp, but we never…I did some USO shows, but we never did any together.

J.T.: How is your program Operation DVD doing? Is it garnering support from the movie distribution industry?

McMahon: This program accomplishes two things: the troops are entertained and they know that citizens at home care and support them. The program collects new and used DVDs and distributes them to the soldiers stationed overseas. They have collected approximately 250,000 DVDs in the year the program has been running. My attitude is that, no matter what you think about the war, it doesn’t make any difference; young men are fighting it, so you’ve got to support them.

J.T.: I was never in the military, but I have been in the quasi-law enforcement arena and a lot of people would look at this and say, ‘Are people just sitting around in Iraq watching DVDs all day?’ and they don’t understand that that type of life is ninety percent tedium and ten percent sheer terror.

McMahon: Yeah and the fact that you can’t play baseball, you can’t play soccer, you can’t play basketball because you’re a target. People just don’t understand that. My attitude is that, and I said this while I was doing publicity for this, no matter what you think about the war, it doesn’t make any difference; young men are fighting it, so you’ve got to support them. We’re in it no matter what and you’ve got to support them.

America was home and witness to the most enduring comedic coupling of our time, and for this, we are fortunate. The snippets of scenes showing Johnny with a marmoset on top of his head, the endless parade of guests who’s career were launched from that Burbank stage, the booming laughter of Ed falling under the spell of his friend; all of these memories are magical. Yet, that is what they are now; collective memories. Shortly after midnight on June 23rd, 2009, Ed McMahon passed away peacefully in his sleep. Although the ‘Tonight Show’ spanned decades and created it’s own culture of comedy, for all of us, the multi-colored curtain has closed too soon, but at least we can take comfort in knowing that two lifelong friends have been reunited.

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J.T. Ryder

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