Tuesday, May 06, 2003
I recently had the opportunity to have a nice long chat with myself. The result? A series of interviews between my various characters. Here is the first of many!
CLARK FROGLEY INTERVIEWS FRANCISCO GUGLIONI
Clark Frogley is the District Attorney for the Twelfth Circuit Court of the state of Mississippi. He has successfully prosecuted over 350 cases during his 50 year tenure as D.A., and this is his first interview for 'I Am A Very Important Man...'. Francisco Guglioni is the creator and host of the internationally renown show, GIANT TUESDAY NIGHT OF AMAZING INVENTIONS AND ALSO THERE IS A GAME!!! He recently sat down with Mr. Frogley following a day in court concerning a law suit against GTNOAIAATIAG!!! on behalf of the people of Mississippi with regards to an invention called The Constantly Randomly Teleporting Toilet. Mr. Frogley agreed to limit the scope of his questions to personal and entertainment-related topics, and to not ask Mr. Guglioni anything about the CRTT case. They sat down in a Starbucks:
Mr. Guglioni, first I would like to thank you for taking the time out from your busy schedule in order to answer a few questions for the benefit of the few poor pathetic souls who sporadically peruse this particular blog. How are you enjoying your Frappa...your uh. frapadoo..uh, your coffee drink there?
Mmm. It is quite good, thank you for asking!
Yes, of course. Well, I'm just a simple man. I like my coffee like I like my um...coffee. Hot and frothy! Ahem. Um. Alright, let's get down to the nittiest and the grittiest, shall we? Why don't we start with the uh...YOU ARE A FOREIGNER!
Was that even a question?
So you don't deny it! Ah...HA!
Well, I am indeed from a country that is not this country, if that's what you're getting at.
Oh I believe that is exactly what I'm getting at, said the spider to the foreigner. Where exactly are you from, Mr. Guglioni?
I am from a country called Boliviguay.
Oh yes, that's right. Well, by all means, Mr. Guglioni, please regail us with the oh so cute basic facts about your little country there. In case one of our readers has been deaf, retarded, or dead for the past few years.
Boliviguay is an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, polka-dot-bikini of a country in between Bolivia and Paraguay. You won't find it on any map. Unless I have gotten to the map first! With a Sharpie, for instance. True story.
Oh how utterly charming, Mr. Guglioni. I suppose the clever little factoids don't end there, do they? DO THEY?!
Heh, well no. The national language in Boliviguay is English. But with a Spanish accent.
So right now you are speaking Boliviguayan?
Boliviguese, yes.
Oh how charmingly quirky! GO ON!
The...the government in Boliviguay is an Extravaganzocracy, which means that the entire country is run via constant extravaganzas! Virtually every citizen is the host or hostess of their own show. That's why I brought my show here to the States, so I could differentiate it, separate it from the pack.
Well, I'm just a simple man Mr. Guglioni. But to me this extra-vagrancy sounds a might bit like Communism. Or perhaps Superhitlerism.
No, no. It just means we put on a lot of shows. For example, I highly recommend trying to get a speeding ticket in Boliviguay. The show that the cops put on when they're writing you the ticket is well worth the cost of the ticket itself. If you are smart, you'll get a speeding ticket on a Wednesday, when they are half price. I still have the Playbill from my first speeding ticket. True story.
Mmm. Well, Karl Marx is dead my friend, so don't spout any of your homo crap down 'round these parts. You can play games all you want, but at some point the good people of Mississippi will realize you're John Ritter, and not Jack Tripper.
Riiiiight.
Anecdote!
Well. One time on the old, televised show in Boliviguay, we had Australian wildlife expert Nigel Whitewater as a guest. He always brings amazing animals on the show with him. One time he brought the rare and beautiful Caterpillar-Humping Eagle. At the time, I still had a moustache, which the eagle mistook for a caterp...
Aigh! Dear sweet Lord, your face was raptor-raped. I'm just a simple man. The only experience of my own recollection that could possibly come close was when I was a young boy, and my father made me play the ole Halloween game 'Bobbing For Agitated Roosters'. To this day, I have an irrational fear of sticking my face into a barrel full of frightened, jostled roosters.
True story?
Okay, what's with that? That "True Story" stuff? Is that what you would call a um..you know, one of those uh "Well I'm a wild and crazy guy", you know, when the drugged-up fellas on the television repeat stuff for comedic "You Look Mahvelous" you know?
A catch phrase? Yes, I suppose you could say 'True Story' is my catch phrase.
Well, I'm just a simple man, the only thing I know how to catch is a rainbow trout. So then, Mr. Guglioni, this brings us to your parents.
It does?
Your father was a door-to-door plantain salesman.
True story. My father -
A PLANTAIN IS NOT UNLIKE A BANANA!
Riiiight. And my father would attempt to sell them door-to-door. The problem was, plantains are the single most plentiful food in Boliviguay. They are growing in everyone's lawn, in rows upon rows on the hillsides, they line the streets, during severe storms, sometimes it rains plantains. The plantain is Boliviguay’s National Bird, due to a clerical error. They are everywhere. And my father would try to sell them door-to-door.
So you grew up in squalor!
Not really. My father was a great salesman. And my mother worked as –
Squalor! I remember those days of cardboard sandwiches and plywood shoes. We had to subsist on hideous, clawed river scorpions!
River scorpions? What are those?
Oh, I believe people call them crawfish nowadays! Oh the poverty! We had to eat tons of freshly steamed, lightly spiced crawfish! Often with nothing but a large side of coleslaw or freedom-fried potatoes. And our choice of cornbread or garlic toast. We'd have to choke it all down with my father's homemade pilsner. And during the winter months, his seasonal ale. Tough times!
That sounds delicious!
Don't patronize me. My father’s microbrews never placed any higher than second in the regional Mississippi Beer-Off. Rough, rough times.
Well. My mother also worked. She was a waitress at a dinner theatre. Which is to say, she was a waitress, singer, actress, dancer. True story. An evening of dinner theatre or cabaret in Boliviguay is the performance equivalent of one of those Russian dolls. There would be a show on stage, plus the wait staff would also be performing as part of their customer service. Plus, many of the customers would also be performing. Often, they would be there with a small camera crew doing a remote piece for their own show. If the show taking place on stage was ABOUT dinner theater? Well, then perhaps an MC Escher print would best represent the shows within shows within shows taking place. It is no wonder my mother drank so much.
I rest my case!
What?
Thank you for your time, Mr. Guglioni. I see by the clock that it is time for us to head back to the courtroom. It was a pleasure learning about your foreign ways.
It was my pleasure, Mr. Frogley. May I plug something?
Certainly!
Giant Tuesday Night Of Amazing Inventions And Also There Is A Game, every Tuesday night at 8pm from May 13th through July 29th at the St. Marks Theater!
Look! A toilet!
Oops. It’s gone again. Now THAT'S what I call a case of the runs!
posted by Andres at 1:49 PM
Thursday, May 01, 2003
In my last post I made a rather cavalier, ill-informed, and certainly mean-spirited comment about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome being nothing more than a cover-up for parents who have SMOTHERED THEIR OWN BABIES TO DEATH!! I can not prove this. I have no information to back this theory. I have done no research, and I can not offer up even the slightest piece of logical guesswork to even remotely support my incredibly cynical suspicion that Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is merely a sick, evil euphemism for SMOTHERING A BABY TO DEATH WITH A PILLOW OR PERHAPS ITS OWN FAVORITE STUFFED TOY!! In fact, I feel quite guilty for making that uneducated statement, and for using all capital letters that have been both italicized and bolded when I write things such as "THAT'S MORE BEER MONEY FOR THE TWO OF US, CLETUS, HE TWEREN'T'VE 'MOUNTED TO MUCH NO HOW!!" Which is a completely made-up quote in which I have made the parents of a SIDS victim sound like retarded alcoholic hick murderers. WHO HAVE SMOTHERED THEIR OWN BABY!! TO DEATH!! Oops. Did it again. Sorry about that. Anyhow, as a means of apologizing to anyone who might have been offended by my off-the-cuff slur, or who God forbid may have even lost (smothered their own) child to SIDS, I would like to offer this olive branch in the form of a list of hilarious alternate names for the horrible, incredibly real (wacka wacka!) phenomenon:
PMSIDS: Pre-Meditated Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Pillow-Assisted Post-Birth Abortion (4th through 9th trimesters)
Smotheritis
Keep That Chicken Quiet Syndrome
The 400 Mornings After Pill(ow)
Pee-ka-!
Step #3 Towards Being Able To Afford A Customized Harley Davidson
An Of Mice And Men Moment
When A Parent Intentionally Kills Their Own Baby And Then Pretends It Was Some Sort Of Mysterious And Unexplainable Nighttime Respiratory Disorder That Actually Killed The Baby Yeah Right And I've Got Two Dicks
I should probably stop here. As I mentioned up top, I have absolutely NO PROOF whatsoever that SIDS isn't a real, tragic, terrible phenomenon. Rather than a cover up for. Parentswho'vesmotheredtheirownbabies. I simply felt very cynical tonight, and decided to be a little dark. At least I turned my bad mood into a shitty comedy piece instead of taking it out...
...on the baby. Okay. Next time, CLARK interviews FRANCISCO!
posted by Andres at 11:40 PM
Some random marathon-related thoughts. Someday I plan on writing in complete sentences again...
The "Race Expo" consisted of a crappy, soggy tent in the Holiday Inn parking lot.
The goody bag given to each participant contained:
1 bottle of Pantene conditioner
1 box of Hamburger Helper
1 box of Tuna Helper
1 box of Betty Crocker powdered mashed potatoes
One dude ran the marathon in a tuxedo.
They sure knew me well at this race - everywhere I looked, they were handing out vaseline! Though I kept getting horrified looks. At around mile 17 I finally came. It shot me backwards to mile 16. HEY-O!
The name I wrote on the back of my jersey - 'FLASH!'
At around the 8 mile mark, some random woman shouted "You're almost there!" as I walked past. Little did she know, I was still 9 miles away from being "there". Winkety dinkety!
One of the children's charities the race was benefiting was "Suddenly Unwanted Babies That Were Secretly Smothered To Death By Their Crazy Parents" or something like that. Actually, I think they called it Sudden Unexplainable Infant Death. Whatever. All of the runners from that group sure looked sheepish, like they had gotten away with something.