Thanks!

We have so many things to be thankful for this year.  When Your Pals FtH look back on the year past, and think about all of the talented and funny haha people who played with us, we are just bursting with thanks.  We are also thankful for some of the fine talent we already have lined up for our annual Foz the Hook’s War on Christmas Pageant.  Those hilarious comics and singers and what have you include, but are not necessarily limited to Kristen Clifford, Krystal Lafianza Pitzen, Bill Bullock, Rachel Ortiz, and Meredith Kachel.

We are all thankful that Leah Raffanti agreed to marry Patrick Stonehouse, and then actually did.  Everybody has been rather giddy over that the past week, and again everyone here at FozBlog sends our congratulations out to the happy couple. 

Also, Your Old Pal Foz is thankful for all sorts of things today.  Reflection does that, you know.  Once you start thinking of all the great good fortunes in your daily life, you naturally think back to all of the things you have to be thankful for in the past.

I am thankful for my good ole Mom and Dad, and my sibs. 

I am thankful for that first time FozBro threw a football at my groin, and taught me the true meaning of comic timing.

I am thankful for that exposed rebar and crushed concrete slab that broke my fall when I was 11, and my bike was careening uncontrollably down that cliff by the construction site.  What might have happened if I had missed it and plunged into that soft pile of sand at the bottom of the hill?  I shudder to think.

I am thankful for all the young ladies on the high school cheerleading squad who taught a featherweight, chicken-legged, piano player the true meaning of shame and disgrace.

I am thankful for that nasty bottle of Peppermint Schnapps that was passed my way in the backyard of the freshman house party. 

I am thankful to GrandpaFoz for taking me to those East Sunset Boulevard crushed velvet dives, and for trying to buy me all of his favorite middle aged hookers.  Most young men just read Charles Bukowski stories!

I am thankful for condoms.

And I am thankful that today is Wednesday, which means that tonight is Cole’s Thanksgiving Turkey Coma Open Mic, starring Sweet Sonia Denis and Mad Adam Burke and Angry Uncle Kenny Witzgall!   It’s the most thankful open mic in town, so get there by 8:30 to See Foz the Hook’s 9:00 set!  The Thanksgiving funny business starts at 9:30.

Nightmare Scenario

Last week we had a soft opening for this week's Hurricane Sandy Frankenshow, Foz the Hook's Nightmare Scenarios!

The Nightmare Scenarios work like this:  Real live (not dead) comics get up on stage at Cole's and tell the true story of a real nightmare they have had at some point.  It has to be real, and not made up, or we will know.  We are FtH.  While they are telling the story a team of interrogators asks them questions about the nightmare, and they have to answer.  At the end of the nightmare, after having spilled their guts about the darkest recesses of their souls, they stand there on stage while the whole audience judges them.  It's hilarious! 

In case that seems a little harsh to readers who might be new to FtH's unique brand of psychopathy, let me say that the first storyteller to go last week was Your Old Pal Foz himself.  I don't have time to relate the dream I told in prose, so I will just tell it in hashtags:

#universalconsciousness #highschool #SMELancers #Reagan #overseasADVENTURES #Beirut #Israselitanks #?Christian?militias #whiteroom #bench #nakedmen #labcoats&clipboards #dorkface #glandpinch #drnutsackflick #singletear #otheroom #grossmassacre #wailingmothers #eveningnews #Sabra #Shantila  #WorldBook #Creeeepy 

Then everybody judged me.  I have to say, it was a little bit liberating.  You have a strange dream, and you think to yourself, "Am I crazy?  Is there really something wrong with me?"  Then you tell your friends about it and they say "Yes.  You are not right.  There is definitely something wrong with you.  You might want to think about going away and hiding and never being seen talking to me ever again." And then you can think "Whew.  I thought so."

Tonight, for Halloween, we add two new non-Foz victims to the slab!  Be at Cole's tonight at 8:45 (not 9:00) to see FtH's Nightmare Scenarios, wherein FtH plays live music to Nosferatu (1922 version) for about 15 minutes, and then You watch Bill Bullock and Rebecca O'Neal tell crazy stories of their craziest dreams.

Then, after that, jokes.  You know.

Poison Valentines - Part Deux!

Good morning, my lovelorn cuties!

The day you have been waiting for has arrived!  Can you stand the anticipation?  Tonight is the night!  Tonight it is really going to happen for you!  It is your turn to shine, my little heartbroken lonely-hearts. 

Are you going to meet someone special at Cole’s tonight?  Make that connection you have been craving?  Find that spark that brings light to your life?

Of course not.

Something much better will happen.  You will see Foz the Hook’s Poison Valentines Pageant!  It is the long-anticipated bombshell song-and-dance (no dancing) extravaganza that will jump-start your aching hearts, and then leave you awash in disgrace and self-recrimination. 

She left you?  Yeh, it’s probably because you’re a loser.  You’re the one who had to spend the rent money on Madden ’12, and she wasn’t some kind of video game dork-loving Lana Del Rey either (More on that in a later post). 

He had sex with you on the first date and never called again?  You told your little “joke” about having daddy issues, didn’t you?  Yep.  No use over-analyzing it.  You can’t take that one back.

That is why Foz the Hook created the Poison Valentine Pageant, and invited all of your best comedy friends to play along.

See Wild Bill Bullock, the Sax Man of Notre Dame.  His smoldering alto lines will drive you wild!

See The Duchess, Krystal Lafianza Pitzen, whose Booze-Flooze act stole your heart last Christmas!

See Rachel Taylor, The Audrey Hepburn of haggis chefs!

See Natalie Jose, the Patsy Cline of Patsy Cline tribute bands!  Her sizzling sideways glance will pitch you into cataracts of woozy wishings.  Wishings that, lets face it, will remain just that.  Come on.  Her and you?  She’s a classy lady, Cole’s.

Maria*.

So, meet us at Cole’s tonight at 9:00, order up a double anesthetic from Coleman Brice at the bar, and join Your Pals FtH, for the Poison Valentines Pageant!  See you there!

Maria Wojciechowski broke up with you, Cole’s.  She found a paying job in the suburbs, and will be giving her new sugar-room all sorts of her hilarious sweet stuff while you’re stuck in Logan Square with the likes of us.   Why do I have to be the one to tell you these things, Cole’s?  You’re a FREE show.  How did you ever get it through your numb skull that you could attract and hold on to a beautiful woman like Maria Wojo.  What is it with you, anyway?

Where Art Comes From

As you know, Your Pals in FtH are impresarios of the arts.  At various times we have represented local geniuses in the areas of photography, music, comedy, and international security consulting. 

Well, a few weeks ago Old Foz was warming up for a show with a little Martini (twist of course), and thinking about love, when it hit him that the thing we needed for the huge Foz the Hook’s Poison Valentines Pageant was a poster.  A poster!  Yes!  If we had a poster, people might know that we were doing a show.  Our poster could even tell them when and where the show might be, such as “at Coles,” or “Wednesday night, February 8, before Cole’s Comedy Open Mic,” or even list featured performers, like “Rachel Taylor, Bill Bullock, etc, etc.” 

All we needed was an artist with a hand for drawing to make the poster.  Rats!  Where on earth will we find an artist at Cole’s?

That’s when we found out about Meredith Kachel.

You know Meredith.  She made the award-winning* video to Cameron Esposito’s world famous Lesbian Person Rant.  (What do you mean “Which one?” , THIS ONE!).

Anyway, a drink or two later and Meredith was absolutely in to drawing a poster for the show.  I can’t show you the poster yet, but I will soon.  In the meantime I have included Meredith’s take on Alexander Gardner’s photograph of President Abraham Lincoln, taken in Washington, D.C., on 8 November, 1863 – commonly known as The Gettysburg Lincoln. 

Sweet, huh?

Anyway, tonight Meredith and I will talk about the hot new poster, and as soon as I see it, I will share it with you, Internet.

Where will Meredith and I be tonight?  Why, we’ll be with you, at Cole’s Comedy Open Mic with Cameron Esposito and Adam Burke and Foz the Hook, and You!  We play at 9:00, and the comics make jokes at 9:30.

* Meredith’s video won the Foz’s Favorite Video For the Time Being award for 2011.

Altomania!

Heyo, Hep Cats!

Tonight Your Sweet Daddy-Ohs, FtH, are cooking up a hot set of cool Jazz licks for Cole's Hippy-Dippy Comedy Open Mic.  It will be a Be-Bop experience in the back room of Cole's as Foz joins Patrick "Sassy" Stonedhouse, and "Philly Joe" Larry Drennen in welcoming the acerbic alto stylings of Bill "He also plays the saxophone and he's pretty darn good" Bullock.

You will want to break out your best beret and grow a quick goatee by 9 tonight, as Foz the Hook rips through a jagged cutting session that will leave you jacked up like hot daddy sweet shoe sweat shop smack-soaked hip-doodle*.  You know what I mean, Babyyyyy!

Right after your Jazz-Smack-Pushers, FtH, lay down some sweet lines, your hip-slipped Lady-Momma comic queen, Cameron Esposito will split your side mullet down the middle with JOKES that would make you laugh if you were not already wallowing in the heroine haze of Billy Bull's sweet sax sounds. Check out Billy's awesome publicity pic (above) with his classic 1950's alto (in the 50's trumpets were called saxophones - I can't explain it now), and his then-girlfriend, Marilyn Monroe (in the 50's young women whose cheeks were surgically attached to a horn player's forearm were all called Marilyn Monroe - Again, I don't have time to explain it).

Unless, of course, Smack-Daddy Adam Burke, the poet word-smith of Logan Square blows your mind with brain musings milked from his brain mule, and served delicious through his comedy needle.

After that there's an open mic.

So come on down to Coleman Brice's laugh den for $2 PBR's and more funny for you, my babies!

*Hip-Doodle was a Jazz term meaning "sounds stupid but doesn't mean anything."  They said it a lot in the 50's.  Ask your Grandpa!  I can't teach you every cultural reference of the mid-twentieth century!