FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| MR. SMUTTY This one's about me. At the end of the day (in the dark of the night), after I've rescued all the orphans, after I've fought off the advances of grateful nuns (my hands being forced underneath habits & along fishnet curves, as boozy breath whispers in my ear: "I just want to thank you"), after I've polished my boots & ironed my cape & packed tomorrow's lunch - after all this (& much more) is done, that's when the sadness sets in. I sit alone and stare out the window. Sure I cry, but I'm usually bone-dry by dawn, just in time for the woodland creatures to gather at my backdoor (I gave 'em all horsey-rides one morning, and now they expect it). When I just can't shake the blues, that's when I phone up the straight-shootinest guy I know: Mr. Dressup Like the other night, for ex. I was bummed out after a quick survey of past Mr. Smutty's revealed a shocking descent into vulgarity. Over the past two months, I've averaged a whopping 113 "fucks" per article, & that doesn't even begin to account for the numerous post-Mailerisms: "fug," "frigfug," "fuggity-fug-fug," "fuggerton," et-effin'-cetera. So I speed-dialed Mr. D, but pronto. "I've let #$%@ become a real crutch," I said. "D'ya think obscenity has gone too far?" "Yeah, I do," said Mr. Dressup, "and I was in the army, where every other word was the famous PH-word. I saw a movie the other day; it was Good Will, uh... uh -" "Hunting?" I suggested. (Yes, I'm that quick.) "Yeah. And it was a terrific show. But I've known people like these guys who grew up in South Boston, and it [the ol' f-f-f] really was overdone. After a while you sorta get saturated with it, y'know, and you say, 'Aww geez, can't somebody just say damn for a change?' I'd say, on average, that Hollywood movie people have the foulest mouths outside of the American Army." "Agreed," I said. "Say, about the army: did you ever see any battle?" (Note: Mr. D started life south o' the 49th.) "Uhmmmm... no," he said. "Only battles w/ my conscience. I was drafted, but by the time I went overseas to the Philippines, the official war was over. So it was just sorta a vacation, w/ small pay." This struck a chord w/ me, the idea of compensating for my tendency to swear like a blue-balled sailor by devoting my entire life (not just most of it) to Doing Good. So I asked about the correlation b'tween Mr. Dressup's wartime conscience and his chosen profession as Everykid's best friend. (Hangin' w/ Casey & Finnegan as penance for battlefield atrocities, etc.) "No no no, it wasn't that at all. I was going to be funny and say, '...battles w/ my conscience concerning some of the Filipino girls.'" Boing! Mr. Dressup always peps me right up, and this was no exception. He was right; I was getting too dour. Feeling the weight of the world lifting, I fired off a series of questions about Mr. D's upcoming, adult-oriented "Tales From The Tickle Trunk" lecture. "Do you say fuck?" "No." "How 'bout all the bodily function stuff: poo, pee...." "Uh, yeah. Just the S-word. And that's only in the context of what a little kid said to me one time." Mr. D. sez he doesn't get "really dirty" in "Tales From The Tickle Trunk," but he's got a load of swell anecdotes from his TV days. "Years ago," he said by way of laying a preview on me, "when Judith [Lawrence, Mr. D's puppeteer] was doing Casey and Finnegan, she'd start off a rehearsal by having Casey & Finnegan come up, and Casey would say, 'What's that Finnegan? Oh, Mr. Dressup had too much medicine and we shouldn't talk loud?' Stuff like that." Mr. Dressup is probably the Nicest Guy On Earth, and I'm lucky to have his shoulder on which to blubber. Sometimes our conversations get downright weird ("I really get ticked off at the car-crash movies when every car explodes. Statistically, probably not one out of 500 automobiles will explode into flames on impact - just look at the [unexploded] wrecks all over the place"), and it's unsettling (& oddly thrilling) to hear Mr. Dressup say words like "Uzi" and "gushing bits of blood and bones," but man can he ever snap me outta a phunk. (Mr. Dressup brings his "Tales From The Tickle Trunk" to Max Cafe & Bar at the University of Calgary on Monday February 2 at 8 p.m.) |