Uncle Sal and the Protean Performer (Episode 180)

Giacomo climbed into the Dodge Dart and said, "Thanks for driving to this burlesque and roller derby event. I can't believe you've never gone before."

"Yeah, I know. Two of the things I like most in life. Guess it always snuck up on me before, but this time I knew I had to leave my calendar open for it." Uncle Sal reached into the pocket of his tangerine guayabera shirt and removed two strips of dried meat. "Rabbit jerky?"

Giacomo reached for one and said, "Never had rabbit jerky before." He took a bite and washed it down with a sip of his energy drink. "Pretty good."

"Hey, I ever tell ya about the time I managed a guy who was an emcee for burlesque events?"

"No, I'm sure I never heard this one."

"Cyril 'Hunky' Hunkerton. One of the funniest guys I ever met, but he was so much more than just a comedian. He was almost like a one-man variety show. Well, I'd been managing him for a while when sump'n came along that was right up his alley. It was a variety show like ya never saw before. Jugglers, comedians, a live band, bellydancers, you name it." Uncle Sal took a gulp from his cup of iced tea. "Was run by an Englishman name of Lindsey Pennyfeather. Well, I went to see this Pennyfeather and let him know about his new employee. I sat down and told him I had a guy that was a knife-thrower, tightwire-walker, comedian, emcee. I ain't kiddin' ya, it took me fifteen minutes just to run down everything Hunky could do."

Giacomo told Uncle Sal to turn right at the next light.

"I got done with all of that, tellin' him I gotta variety show's dream, and he can have the guy for the right price. You know what he did?"

"No. What?"

"He just looked at me and said, 'That's all splendid, but can your Hunky do the bogs?'"

This episode featured:
Saul Brothers as Giacomo
Rufus Tomaszewski as Uncle Sal
and
Jellybean Merengue as the rabbit jerky.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "I'm sorry, I'm on my wine break."

Uncle Sal and the Factotum's Fish Fry (Episode 179)

At the Salvador Deli, Uncle Sal sat under a child's red wagon whose cargo was a stuffed muskrat with a monocle. He ordered a Melting Clock and a hot pastrami on toasted rye with extra mustard and a large pickle on the side. Uncle Sal slid a toothpick behind his ear and said, "Hey Giacomo! How ya been? Ya goin' to that tattoo convention this weekend?"

After a long sip of his Melting Clock, Giacomo shook his head no.

"No? Why not? I thought you loved seein' all them beautiful women with tattoos up to the neck."

"I do. And last year, the bands they had playing were awesome, but something came up."

"Sump'n came up? It must be pretty good if you're going to skip the tattoo deal."

"It is. Hey, you should come too. My friend Ya Wu is having a fish fry. He's the kind of guy that can barter for just about anything."

Uncle Sal received his drink and stirred it with a swizzle stick in the shape of a giraffe's neck. "Boy, they sure know howta make a drink here."

"They sure do. So, Ya Wu, he's always doing odd jobs for people. You know, he cleans their gutters, fixes garbage disposals. Things like that. The reason people always go to him is because he never charges money. He sometimes works for meals, or maybe he'll see something in the house that he likes and he'll find a way to barter for it. Like this one guy had a picture of Gerald Ford playing golf with the basketball coach from the university where Ya went. Well, Ya set that picture as the cost before he ever got to work in that house. Recently, this guy Rod Rigglevyk contacted Wu. Rod works at this seafood restaurant, so he always gets good fish. Plus, his cousin works for a beer distributor, so he always gets great beer."

Giacomo speared a deep-fried pickle with his fork and popped it in his mouth. "Ross took Ya down in the cellar where there was a leak. While he was down there, Ya saw a case of German doppelbock. He was just about to ask for that when Ross took him to the freezer and showed him some nice filets of sole he had received. Well, that settled it. Ya wasn't going to settle for just the beer. He set his price as the case of dopplebock and half of the fish. Really, you should come along. It's going to be amazing."

"Boy, that does sound good. I love a good fish fry, and the beer sounds great. We should be thankful that Rod gave bock and sole to Wu."

This episode featured:
Ray Sturgeon as Uncle Sal
Gino "Sockeye" Lapaglia as Giacomo
and
Jellybean Merengue as the giraffe swizzle stick.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "What do you need a psychiatrist for? Everyone knows you're crazy."

Uncle Sal and the Challenging Choirmaster (Episode 178)

Inside A Boy Named Sushi, Uncle Sal slid into a booth across from Sister Mary Evelyn. Just by the expression on her face, he could see he was going to need some liquid help. Before she could launch into anything, he ordered a hot sake. "What's wrong? You look like you just found out your pet was kidnapped."

Mary Evelyn sighed and said, "It's the new choir director Anthony Slate. Sal, he's really great, but a lot of the members of the choir have complained about him."

A waiter arrived at the table. Uncle Sal put in his order for eel, longneck clam, and red snapper, then removed the chopsticks from the pocket of his gecko-print guayabera shirt.

"If he's so good, why are they complaining about him?"

"He's a good singer. I mean, when he sings, it just stirs up all sorts of things inside me. His voice is truly a gift. Seriously Sal, he sounds a bit like Tony Bennett. The trouble is that he's too demanding. Everyone in the choir of course volunteers to be there. They do it because they like to sing and be a part of the church. But Anthony has been holding practices more frequently. And they're longer too. In the middle of the week, he's holding practices that last for two hours. That's pretty tough for people that are working eight hours a day."

Uncle Sal reached for the soy sauce and wasabi. He spooned enough wasabi onto his saucer to clear anyone's nasal passages for a week. He poured a small lake of soy sauce on top of it and mixed it with his chopsticks. He licked the chopsticks and was satisfied that he had gotten the mixture right on the first try.

"And he's giving them more complex parts, asking them to sing things that aren't really in their range. It's like he thinks he's dealing with professional musicians. Our choir is good. Frankly, I think it's the best in town. But they're not professionals. I understand that Anthony is only trying to make it better, and he would know how with his classical training. I hope they don't complain so much that he decides to leave, but goodness gracious, Slate galls the choir."

This episode featured:
Pedro "Pipes" Hamelin as Uncle Sal
Chantal Tenor as Sister Mary Evelyn
Hiroshi Soprano as the waiter
and
Jellybean Merengue as the chopsticks.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "The trouble with mornings is that they come when you're not awake."

Uncle Sal and the Polluted Prank (Episode 177)

Uncle Sal sat across from Alice in the Root Hog or Diner. He hadn't even ordered his Bloody Mary when Alice said, "Did you see the story about the vandalism at the high school?"

Uncle Sal shook his head and slipped three raw sugar packets into the pocket of his burnt orange guayabera shirt.

"It's a terrible story. A bunch of kids got together and just went crazy on this school. They broke windows, tore up the football field, even cut down some tree branches on the school campus."

Uncle Sal caught the attention of his favorite waitress Amelie and asked for his usual, which included a bacon and pepper jack omelet with extra crispy bacon and rye toast, and of course an extra-spicy Bloody Mary. "Dang shame. Whatever happened to harmless pranks like we used to pull in high school." He took a pull from his flask. "When I was a senior, a bunch of the other football players and I came up with a great one. Our rival was LaQuay High. Now, LaQuay has this big piece of granite right outside the stadium. All the players on their team touch the rock before they run onto the field. You know, just one of those sports superstitions."

Amelie delivered Uncle Sal's Bloody Mary. He tipped some vodka from his flask and stirred the drink with the celery. "Perfect. anyway, like I was sayin', we came up with a doozy. We decided we were gonna coat that dang LaQuay rock with tobacco juice."

Alice winced.

"Ya shoulda seen it. some of the guys like Buffalo Bennett, saved up their tobacco juice for a month. Ya never smelled anything so foul, I bet. Well, the night before the game, we take all our tobacco juice and we go dump it on that big hunk of granite. That ol' thing was dripping with spit. Those LaQuay players were in for a big surprise when they went to touch the rock before the game. Well, after we covered the whole thing with the old stuff, we decided to leave some fresh juice on it. So we passed around a big pouch of tobacco and we just kept spittin' on that thing. Until the cops showed up, anyway."

"The cops? Really?"

"Yeah. Turns out someone lives near the stadium saw us loitering near the school and called the cops."

"But what did they do?"

"They didn't do nothin'. I mean, what could they do? We were just a buncha kids standin' and spittin' on the rock of LaQuay."

This episode featured:
Otis "Red" Greene as Uncle Sal
Rowena Sohl as Alice
Rachel N. Branson as Amelie
and
Jellybean Merengue as one of the sugar packets.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "With all due respect, sir, I just spent 18 hours locked in a jail cell, on no formal charges, getting pulverized by drunken bigots!"

Buckeyes 31, Razorbacks 26

Ah, nothing like a comfortable win. And that was nothing like a comfortable win.
The Good
Defense
Cam Heyward and Dexter Larimore were both great in the first half. Ryan Mallett was clearly rattled whenever he had to move in the pocket. Mallett completed only slightly more than half of his passes, so the defense was doing something right. I've made Chimdi Chekwa a target for criticism so many times in his time at OSU. However, I have to say it was a shame that he got injured. The play where he was injured was the best play I've ever seen from him. And of course, there was Solomon Thomas, who sealed the game. That was amazing.
Offense
I missed the first drive, but I heard on the radio that the Buckeyes were going with a no-huddle offense. Wow! And they were having success with it. Double wow! I frankly had no idea the Buckeyes were capable of such a thing. Terrelle Pryor had a lot of success running the ball. He had some success throwing the ball too, thanks in part to receivers who bailed him out on some poor throws. For instance, Dane Sanzenbacher's TD reception. Obviously, it was not an ideal pass, but Sanzenbacher still made the grab because that is what he does. I feel pretty comfortable saying that no other receiver on the team would have made that catch.
I was amazed to see some throws to the tight end in the first half. That tight end screen (run to both Reid Fragel for 44 yards and Jake Stoneburner) was astounding. I have never seen the Buckeyes run that play before last night. Herron had some good runs in the first quarter. If I remember right, he had 40+ yards in the first quarter. Everything was going great. The offense clicked. The defense made Ryan Mallett look very ordinary. The Buckeyes had an 18-point lead at halftime. Which brings us to...
The Bad
We all know that getting a big lead against a good team is the worst thing that can happen with the Buckeyes. This is a team that will not go out and finish the other team like Stanford did to Virginia Tech (a lot can be learned from that game). No, this team will sit on that lead and just hope the defense is good enough to keep the opponent out of the end zone. In the second half, the creativity was gone, and it was replaced with predictable Tressel-ball. Just look at the play-by-play summary of the second half. There sure were a lot of run plays to the right side of the line on first down.
And the defense was not much better. It seemed like every time Knile Davis got the ball, he picked up at least 8 yards. And while Mallett's completion percentage wasn't great, his receivers sure did rack up some yardage.
The Ugly
The second half was essentially Murphy's Law for the Buckeyes. A fumble on 4th and 1, where Boom Herron would have made a first down...if only he had remembered to take the ball with him. That blocked punt was unbelievable. The defender made a great effort, but how on earth do you let the punt get blocked in that situation? HOLY COW!
And let's not forget the refs in this section. The most egregious non-call of the night came in the second half when Pryor threw the ball to Corey Brown. The defender just launched himself and took Corey Brown out. How is that not pass interference? The safety was questionable. I don't think there is too much question that Herron's forward progress was stopped outside of the end zone.
Schwinderjection
Terrelle Pryor should get a late Christmas gift (no, not a tattoo) for Dane Sanzenbacher. Dane bailed out TP twice: recovering that fumble in the end zone, and catching a lousy pass for a touchdown.
Under the Radar player of the game
The entire offense was under the radar for all of the second half, but none of them gets the award. The players of the game are on the defensive side of the ball. Cam Heyward had 3.5 tackles for loss, Dexter Larimore had 2 sacks, and of course Solomon Thomas with the great interception to preservethe win for the Buckeyes.

Uncle Sal and the Freaky Film (Episode 176)

Inside Rock Around the Cocktails, Giacomo and his new girlfriend Rufaro slid into a booth across from Uncle Sal and Alice. Rufaro wore a magenta crop top and pants so tight that Uncle Sal and Alice wondered if she was getting any circulation to her ankles. Uncle Sal sipped his Dobble Haddock and said, "How ya been Giacomo? Ain't seen ya in a couple weeks."

"I've been pretty well. Rufaro and I just saw the new movie by Elvis Hurd."

"How was it?"

"It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen." The waitress came to the table and Giacomo ordered two snakebites. "I mean, you wouldn't believe this movie. The main character is a blind dwarf detective who is trying to take down a cockfighting ring. His assistant is a guy who is probably six-four, 220, and likes to wear a tutu. He also gets help from a call girl with an eyepatch and a luchador."

Uncle Sal put a chip into the bowl of artichoke dip and grimaced when some fell onto his maroon guayabera shirt.

"Well, this detective doesn't really have any evidence of this cockfighting ring. Somehow, it all comes tom him in mescal-induced hallucinations. And the recurring guide in his hallucinations is a philosophical ocelot."

Rufaro wiped her lipstick off with a cocktail napkin and sipped her snakebite. "And then about halfway through the movie, it becomes this zombie story. It's like a totally different movie."

"Oh, and the zombies have a taste for human chitlins. I mean, they don't just go for the intestines first, they actually make chitlins out of human intestines. I'm telling you, it was two hours of pure confusion. I had never seen one of his movies before and I don't think I'll see any more of them. Weird stuff."

Uncle Sal said, "I'm not sure why you're surprised. Everybody knows that the Hurd is absurd."

This episode featured:
Screamin' Octopus Hawkins as Giacomo
Strangella LaFork as Rufaro
Obelix Platypusconi as Uncle Sal
Lucinda L'odd as Alice
and
Jellybean Merengue as the bowl of artichoke dip.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever."