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.

Where is Patrick?

It has been two weeks!  Two weeks it has been since Patrick Stonehouse played drums with FtH.  It’s been so long since Patrick made the Wednesday night gig at Cole’s, where we, Your Pals in FtH, drive you wild with enthusiastic spasms of laughing, that I have almost forgotten what Patrick looks like.

Fortunately, I remembered that Patrick came to the Fourth of July Cole’s Hundred-two Degree Christmas Party last July 4^th.  I took pictures of that event because it included a primer on how foreigners play football.  After going through several fine pictures, I found this picture of Patrick Stonehouse relaxing with a non-alcoholic beverage after a scalding game of Not Football. 

Patrick has looked better.  In fact Leah Raffanti insists that this is actually a picture of Adam Burke, but since the subject is drinking a non-alcoholic drink, it couldn’t be Adam.

If you have any questions, ask Adam Burke tonight at the Cole’s Comedy Open Mic with Adam Burke and Kenny Witzgall and Sonia Denis.  You’ll go so crazy you’ll never drink a non-alcoholic beverage during a game of Football during a 102 degree Christmas party again!

It starts at nine.  Your pals might be broke, so bring extra beer money for us.

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? 

Poison Valentines Number 1

Don’t you just love Love, my lovelies?

Are you like Foz, who falls in love with love?  But, you see, falling in love with love, I have been told, is falling for make believe (Is it too soon to make pop culture jokes about The Boys From Syracuse?)  

My point is that Your Old Pal, Foz has suffered  enough of heartache to know what Love is all about.  It is a disease more exquisite in its terminal form than in its cure.  Poetic, huh?  Meaningless too!  Well, this is a post about love.

In a couple of weeks Your Favorite Band, Foz he Hook, will debut our second in a series of holiday pageants at Cole’s.  In honor of Saint Valentine we will be presenting Foz the Hook’s Poison Valentine Pageant, on Wednesday night, February 8, at 8:45 – that’s just before Cole’s Heart-Breaking Comedy Open Mic Featuring Cameron Esposito and Adam Burke. 

Come out for FtH’s fabulous show featuring special guests Natalie Jose (as Julia Roberts), Krystal Lafianza Pitzen (as Billie Holiday), Rachel Taylor (as Doris Day), Maria Wojciechowski (as Ingrid Bergman) and Bill Bullock (as the Sax Man).  It will be a salute to the greatest failed love affairs in Hollywood history, as Foz acts out great break-up scenes with the loveliest ladies in Chicago comedy.

More on that later.

But tonight I want you to come to Cole’s for the regular Cole’s Unspeakable Comedy Open Mic, featuring Kenny Witzgall, who is pinch hitting for Cameron and Adam because they are, uh, HEADLINING AT ZANIES!   

We wish Cameron and Adam all the luck in the world at their big show tonight.  We won’t be there.  We’ll be playing for you!  At Cole’s!  Like Always!  Because it never changes!  Yay!  For that!

Oh, isn't comedy just like Love?  Just force a smile, and try to tell yourself that everything will work out this time.