| Mr. Smutty and his deceptively innocent Boy Scout face debuted on February 27, 1997 – and the rest, as they say, is history.
MAKIN’ HEADLINES
· Spice up yer grief: Turn that frown into a boner, young man
· Wham! Bam! Thank you, hand! Acceptable alternatives: "Stand by your hand" and "Bail me out before you go-go"
· Shaving Ryan’s Privates
· Intern of the screw – Hey Monica: sucks to be you
· Iran The Walrus
· Plato’s re-pube lick: Diff’rent strokes makes for e’sy jokes
· Mystery meat: Cafeteria gives student the finger
QUOTABLE QUOTES
· In the column "Sex and drugs: Mom ’n’ Dad come see what yer dimwitted loinfruit rented – for FREE," Mr. Smutty discovers the Community Services section of the video store, and finds an animated film about puberty: "Raunchy beyond belief, What’s Happening to Me? is wall to wall sex. Pubic hairs spring up before our very eyes, a kid pops a boner on a diving board (sproing! sproing! sproing! BOING-O!)...."
· When Ginger Spice leaves the Spice Girls, Mr. Smutty offers some insightful analysis: "Reports of infighting aside, it sounds like Ginger (a cleaner-turned-nudie-turned-Turkish-quizshow-host-turned-Spice-Girl) (funny, she doesn’t look Turkish) is a victim of the times. Sociologists predict that over that course of a lifetime, the average GenX’r will switch occupations a whopping 81 times."
· "I drink some kerosene, I drink a lager drink. I drink some methanol, I drink a vodka drink. I sing the songs that remind me of Tunisia, I sing the songs that remind me of the tear gas."
· On January 28, 1999, Mr. Smutty attended the Promise Keepers event at the Stampede Corral: "The joint smelled. Maybe iT was the lingering pup whiz from when the SuperDogs performed there. Maybe it was the hundreds of godly men eating godly concession stand nachos. Maybe it was (in the words of the preacher man on stage) ‘tostesterone’ (sic)."
· On Oct. 4, 2001, after writing about September 11, Mr. Smutty ends his column with: "Next week: Sorry about that, my timing was a bit off. Must be the ear infection. So, uh, can we laugh about it now?"
FAMILIAR FACES
Some of the characters who’ve appeared in Mr. Smutty illustrations looked suspiciously familiar, such as Billy from the Family Circus, Hamburglar and Grimace, Mr. Peanut, Charlie Brown, Red Meat, Jack in the Box, etc.
STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
· Mr. Smutty’s sympathy for a former Calgary Flames player ran out following a certain drunk-driving incident involving a Hummer, followed by the news the player had paid himself $40,000 for a fund-raising cross-country rollerskate – which was fodder for more than one column. Finally, on September 30, 1999, Mr. Smutty writes about going to the Saddledome to spend a day as an "extra" on the set of the The Sheldon Kennedy Story, a made-for-TV movie: "Viewer alert: if you see some guy... leap to his feet, mouth something which might be construed as obscene, and then giggle awkwardly – all delivered w/ self-conscious, half-hearted vim/vigour – well, that’s me."
· In back-to-back columns, Mr. Smutty talked to Mr. Dressup, who he calls "the straight-shootenest guy I know," and then Jim Rose, who he describes as the "freakish ringleader" of The Jim Rose Show circus/freak show.
· In October 1998, Mr. Smutty interviewed Rick "The Dinger" Bell, a Calgary Sun columnist who was running for mayor in the municipal election. "I stopped reading the Calgary Sun cover-to-cover because I suspected the editorial-equating-vegetarians-w/-Nazis (and endless fillings of "the bible says don’t be gay" letters) were giving me cancer, but I always check out superstar columnist Rick ‘The Dinger’ Bell."
· When Hooters came to town, Mr. Smutty joined his pal John Gilchrist, CBC restaurant critic, and the two went for lunch. "Mr. Gilchrist strapped me into my car-seat and off we went.... I’ve never seen so many guys packed into a room since the Promise Keepers."
· On September 14, 2000, Mr. Smutty writes about being turned away from the opening gala of the Toronto International Film Festival, which was featuring waydown-town, a film he co-wrote: "Later, I return to press my generic mug against the chain-link fence, a single ‘sad clown’ tear rolling down my apple cheek. Thru the fence, I spy my co-writer (a.k.a. the director, a.k.a. media darlin’) leading a conga line of Big Name Celebrities...."
UNHAPPY COINCIDENCE
On September 2, 1999, Mr. Smutty wrote: "In Nairobi last week, a Cessna crashed into a two-storey house. Nobody in the house was hurt. On board the plane, however, a German man was killed and an Irish priest, A dutchman, a Thai and a Tanzanian were badly injured. I know in my heart o’ hearts there’s a joke in there somewhere, but do you think I can ferret it out?"
A reader didn’t see a joke there either and wrote a letter to complain – it turned out his cousin was the Dutchman, the pilot.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
When Mr. Smutty wrote his last column on September 5, 2002, his final words were... (see page 58). |
