Bitter Tears and Blackout Diaries!

Well, that was fun, but it was also sad.  Good ole Rhea Butcher did her swansong at Cole’s last night and everybody had a swell time. 

Rhea later told Foz that she’d never had a theme song before – FtH always played her up with a bad-and-wrong rendition of Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn Theme – and I must confess to tearing-up a bit at the knowledge that I had the privilege of playing such a solemn and pleasurable role in a young lady blooming from the innocent blush of girlhood to full womanhood.   What comedian doesn’t remember the thrill of her first theme song?  Years hence will she turn silently from her adoring fans – for just a moment – and let her mind race back to that thrilling first experience under the gentle hands of an older Olde Foz (and Patrick and Larry)?  Will a fragile tear course down her sweet face even as her shiny new L.A. backup band pauses and reverently permits her mind to take her back to that first-and-forever experience when the windows blew open, the drapes snapped in the breeze and the maniacal railings of faux-brass and kazoos wafted in on the warm Chicago evening air?  We can only hope so.

But time waits for no one, little Fozlings.  This Saturday evening, your new favorite country music singer, Colonel Foz, will return to Blackout Diaries with Sean Flannery.  This is episode 17 of the amazing monthly recitation of the crimes and humiliations that result from our love-love relationship with our first love, sweet sweet booze.  Who will be on the bill besides Good Old Sean and Your Pard, Colonel Foz?  Only the incredible Mikey Manker; the unbelievable Candy Lawrence; the irreproachable Anne Root; the unattainable Puterbaughz; and the incomparable Matteo Lane!  Tickets cost $10.  Get them from This Guy.  Buy early!  Stay late!  $2 Blatz!  Don’t make me explain why that’s a great deal.  Just get to The Beat Kitchen on Saturday night at about 9, and begin this month’s adventures in blackout!

See you there!  Well, not actually, we’ll all be pretty blind drunk.  $2 Blatz!

Separation Anxiety Part Two

The new school year is coming, and before long thousands of young parents, and much younger kindergartners, will face that painful moment when Mom goes away (Mom in this case for the purpose of argument; I know a few womanly gents who drop their kids off at school too), and she doesn’t come back anytime soon.  Baby is left at the mercy of twenty or so equally terrified peers and a horrified Montessori grad on her first day of work.  This is a big day.  This is the day all of the children begin the long, twelve-year, process of culling the herd, and measuring the weak for their therapist’s couch.  It’s the first day of school, and separation anxiety is in the air.

So it goes for Your Pals in FtH.  Less than a year after we gave up our darling Cameron Esposito to the glittering golden apple that is Los Angeles, our new favorite ladyhost of Kole’s Kickass Komedy open mic (I hope that abbreviation takes hold) is also leaving, and also leaving for LA, and even leaving for an area that is in pretty close proximity to Cameron.  Maybe they’ll see each other?

Tonight we will cry bittersweet tears as Rhea Butcher, The Butcher of Akron, gives her swansong as host of the Cole’s open mic.  If you haven’t been to the mic lately, tonight will be a good show.  Come out and send Rhea off with a big, fat, kiss, or a cool and appropriate hand shake – If you don’t know which of those is right for you I don’t think I can help you.

Good bye, Rhea!  We will miss you and follow your good deeds with cheers!

Get Blacked Out Again

You know how Foz the Hook plays at Cole’s each Wednesday night at 9:00 before the Cole’s Comedy Open Mic, hosted by Adam Burke or Rhea Butcher or the voluble Kenny Witzgall?  You know how that goes?  Well, it’s going to be like that tonight – just like any other Wednesday night.  It’s going to be totally hilarious.

In other news, this Saturday night you have a unique opportunity to get blackout drunk and wake up in the pokey!  Why?  Because Sean Flannery’s Blackout Diaries, Volume 15, returns to the Beat Kitchen!  Sean’s recruited a batch of the most debased degenerates ever to crawl into a bottle, and they’re all going to spill their guts, so to speak.  I think you’re going to see the Puterbaugh Sisterz, and I think you’re going to see James Fritz, and of course you’re going to see Colonel Foz, who returns for his second monthly engagement at this classy joint.

The Colonel came up with new material for this one, and I’m going to give you a sneak peak.  That’s what you get in exchange for reading FozBlog!

"I seen it all, friends!  Toured with everyone from Willie and Loretta to Gramm and Emmie Lou; everyone from Couger to Mellencamp.  Did blow outta Janice’s belly button, and from the adorable dimple just above Jagger’s ass.  This one time, we all went down to Montreaux …  Frank Zappa and the Mothers had the best place around…"

[Play one verse and chorus of Smoke on the Water…]

"Crazy days I seen, people.  But I tell you, of all my regrets piled up by 40 years of dissipation, the flare gun regrets are the worst.  I mean, in those days, when Frank Zappa called you a stupid piece of shit, it meant something!"

(Hat tip to Cheezeburger.com for the awesome fire pic.)

That’s the least of what you will see if you go to the Blackout Diaries on Saturday Night, July 28, at 9:30, at the Beat Kitchen.  Seating is limited so buy your tickets in advance here!

See you there.

The Legend of the Pants

It is all about The Pants.  The pants answer most of your Foz-related questions.  I bring this up because Your Pals in FtH get a lot of questions regarding our biographies, relationship and immigration status, and credit score.  We can see why you’d want to know.  After some mature consideration I thought it best to come clean about at least one crucial psychological source of our best material.  Something that explains most everything.

It was the 1970’s, the heyday of American fashion, and FozMom was determined that her boy would be in the avant garde of fashion.  Now, J. C. Penney had American flag tank tops, and they had lime green leisure suites with hand-painted polyester shirts with coyotes and cacti on them.  I had all of these – although I should say that the lime green leisure suit was reserved for special occasions like FozGranny’s funeral or FozPop’s subsequent trial.

But one bright beautiful day in 1976(?) FozMom brought home these striped beauties in robin-egg blue and crimson.  I quickly matched them with my existing prison-stripe pull-over, and BINGO!, I had a new farming suit! 

 

At the time FozSis and I ran a commune in the Flint Hills where the Peace Children came for refuge after getting evicted from the desert commune featured in Billy Jack.  I am pleased to say that we sold those stinkers back to The Fuzz for a handy profit.  You can see the pants at my Facebook page (linked above), and you can see them here (pictured with FozDad) on The Day I caught a Huge Fish (later post).

They were good pants.  I wish I still had them.  I wish I still had that commune.  I wish I hadn’t sold the Flower Children to The Fuzz.  I wish Tom Laughlin would stop bugging FozSis and I about making Billy Jack 2012.  I wish I still had that one tin soldier.

Regrets?  I’ve had a few, but I mostly regret that I don’t have those pants any more.

Anyway, you can’t know my credit score, but you can know what made Foz the Hook the way we are.  Soon Patrick and Larry will guest post about their favorite pants.

The GoodGawd Open Mic at Cole’s Returns tonight.  FtH plays at 9:00, and The Hosts, Adam Burke, Rhea Butcher, and Kenny Witzgall run the list at 9:30.

Be there for another great show!

Abe > Ike > McCarthy > Dahmer > Walker. The Connection!

When I was a kid I was unaware of the now generally understood fact that President Abraham Lincoln purged the young Republic of Vampires during the Civil War and even before.  He did, as we now know, actually dispatch a number of them personally by decapitation. 

Received History, the kind of narratives that The White Man spins to kids in school, failed for many years to reveal this – at least when I was a kid.  The reason for this was deeply rooted in the Cold War, and there is really too much confusion there to go into it deeply.  Let’s just say that Ike had a lot more on his plate to deal with than golf games and The House Un-American Activities Committee.  Also, you can’t blame Lincoln for the 1956 public decapitation of HUAC Chairman Joe McCarthy in a Racine Bordello.  But somebody was President of the United States then, and vampire killings in The Cheese State decreased significantly between the death of McCarthy and the election of Governor Scott Walker in 2010 (and Walker, as we all know, cannot account for his whereabouts during the period 1988-1991 when the patsy, Jeffrey Dahmer was allegedly killing and eating a bunch of people in Milwaukee).  Ike was up to something.  I’m just saying.

What was the point I was making?  Oh, yes!  Jeffrey Dahmer and Scott Walker.  Fer crying out loud, just look at them side-by-side!  They were both in Milwaukee for a while, they both killed and ate a bunch of people, and they were both, according to Wikipedia, Governor of Wisconsin [citation needed].  What more evidence do you need?

Which brings us to Cole’s Comedy Open Mic.  It starts at 9:00 tonight with FtH: Vampire Hunters, and continues with a great list of comics at 9:30.  Adam Burke will host, unless Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin ties him naked to a bed and drills holes in his skull while he is still alive and pours hydrochloric acid into the holes in order to ensure that Adam will remain young and sexy for his perpetual sexual exploitation.  In that event, Kenny Witzgall or Rhea Butcher will host.

The Mayor Gets Some

This is the FozBlog wherein we say “Happy Birthday, Coleman Brice,” the impresario of rock and roll and funny and funny rock and roll in Logan Square.

Coleman founded Cole’s away back in 1967 when he took over a little storefront pool hall on Milwaukee Avenue called Dogs and Irishmen Keep Out!  I think that was the name.  That was what the sign said. 

A year later, at the famous demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention Coleman over-served Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Mayor got a little aggressive with the ladies.  Nevertheless, he managed to pick up Ann Margaret and Yoko for a threesome.  That guy was some mayor.

After that, all of the cops and all of the demonstrators came by and got drunk and sang With Drunk Astronauts along with Foz the Hook.  Neither Larry nor Patrick were alive yet, but they played OK.

So be at Cole’s tonight for the Big Old Comedy Open Mic featuring Adam Burke and/or Kenny Witzgall and/or Rhea Butcher, plus all of the comedians in Chicago.

Hey! Adam could not have ever played this room if Cole had not taken it over, and the open mic would have just been Kenny telling belligerent jokes in Polish while Rhea feverishly studied a Polish-English phrase book.

Foz the Hook (with a fully-grown rhythm section) starts the mayhem at 9:00, and the comics start complaining about their genitals at 9:30.

You’re there already, right?