My Role in the Elmo Scandal

The other night around 11:20 I started getting messages through Facebook that people thought they had seen me on the news in Baltimore. It turns out, while doing a story on the Kevin Clash allegations, WJZ 13 used file footage of an event at Port Discovery children's museum including a shot of myself working with Elmo & Clash. We don't get Channel 13 where I live, but I just found the story online so I thought I'd share. Look for the very large fat guy in a purple shirt talking to an audience with Elmo. That was back in 1999, and perhaps about 100 pounds heavier...

WWoB Office Update

We've been doing pretty good with the steady stream of new content here at WW0B, but as we enter the last few days of Summer Vacation some of the paperwork has backed up our systems. In other words, I've just been so busy trying to squeeze in as much fun as a I can! Last Sunday I had an awesome time at the Ke$ha concert at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, VA. We had super awesome 3rd row seats (Thanks to my friend Matt) and we just danced and screamed and had a real good time. Ke$ha put on a real fun show with tons of glitter being shot at the audience from various contraptions. The whole experience was just a huge super fun party. I had a blast!



The next day, we loaded up the Family Truckster and headed out to Knoebels Amusement Park in Elysburg, PA. They bill themselves as the Largest Free Admission Amusement Park in the Country. The park is just brimming with character. It's a collection of old traditional amusement park rides along side all of the new standards in theme park thrills. They have a few stand-out attractions like their Haunted Mansion which is constantly rated the best dark house ride in America. It's a really good ride! They also have two world class roller coasters which I was able to tuck under my belt of 2011 rides. The Phoenix is a great classic out-and-back woodie with ridiculous amounts of airtime. It's the first coaster to be taken apart at one park and put back together at another. The process has since become quite common in theme parks. Both my kids conquered this large coaster and they both loved it, although only Tanner would go with Daddy for a second ride.



Their other great coaster is a behemoth dark wood coaster called Twister, which is based on the design of the classic Mr. Twister at Elitch Gardens in Denver. It's a crazy good ride with twists, turns and unbelievable speed! Fantastic ride!





Then of course Tuesday we had the earthquake. Not really a big deal, except it kinda shook everybody up for the rest of the day. I think the oddity of having an earthquake that big on the East Coast just set the stage for the pandemonium that was to become Hurricane Irene. We're pretty far inland so I wasn't too worried about the storm.





It started to get dark and windy around 4:00pm, some steady by light rain followed. By 9 it was beating down pretty hard and the winds were fairly extreme. We were having Elias' birthday party which into the night morphed into a Hurricane Party! Elias had a good turn out for his party and our hurricane party was a success that went well into the night.



Otherwise, we're just getting into the swing of the new school year. We took Joey back to college on Sunday, Monday we spent the last day of Summer Vaca at Dutch Wonderland and Tuesday Elias started 3rd grade and Tanner began his 13 years of schooling with his first day of Kindergarten.

Las Vegas Was Awesome Because We Got To Meet Holly Madison

When my wife suggested we visit Las Vegas this year my only request was that we go see Peepshow staring Holly Madison at the Planet Hollywood Casino and Hotel. As you may know, Holly was one of the Girls Next Door - one of recent favorite shows that I'm sort of fanatical about. She now stars in another reality show Holly's World which is all about her adventures working on Peepshow in Las Vegas. As much as I loved Girls Next Door for it's behind the scenes look at the inner workings of the Playboy Mansion, I'm as equally intrigued with Holly's World and it's glimpse into life in Las Vegas. So I was excited to see the show and visit some of the places where Holly and her friends hang out on the show. Stepping into the Planet Hollywood casino was like walking onto the set of Holly's World. There are so many spots that I've seen on TV a hundred times, it was pretty exciting for a TV lovin' fella like myself!

So we had tickets to see Peepshow Thursday night. It turns out that my brother flew in to town on Thursday morning for an event he was attending. We hooked up Thursday morning and hung out for a little bit, including walking over to Planet Hollywood to pick up my actual tickets for the evening's show. Short story shorter: we get up to the ticket counter, my brother whips out his credit card and scores my wife and I two VIP Package upgrades which include a meet & greet with Holly after the show along with pictures and a champagne toast. Needless to say, that was SUPER AWESOME of him to do for us. My wife and I were both super excited to meet her! She was very nice and friendly and took her time talking to everyone.

Here's the three of us!

You may remember a while ago I posted about my brother meeting Holly's Girls Next Door co-star Kendra.

In case you were wondering, Peepshow was fantastic! It's a high energy singing and dancing show with a very loose story frame. Holly plays an over worked and lonely girl who falls asleep one night and wakes up in a fairy tale land. All the different nursery rhyme characters try to help her find a man - they somehow do this by dancing and stripping. It's all done very tastefully. It's basically a modern version of burlesque striptease - which is an art form not just girls gyrating to rap music for $1 dollar bills.

We saw some other shows in Vegas too...

....Here's Jen and I with our official name tags in the hopes of being called on stage for The Price is Right Live! at Bally's. I've always thought this show sounded like a neat idea. It's basically a live version of the TV show, with a fresh batch of audience members plucked out of the audience for each round in Contestant's Row. All-in-all 50 people get a chance to win something! We didn't get called down, but our friends both won 1,000 Casino Comp. Credits in an instant win game they did between TPIR games. The show was alot of fun and they did give away some nice cash prizes and some dude won a Washer & Dryer set. There was a car and a trip in the Showcase Showdown, but nobody won!

We also went to Brad Garrett's Comedy Club at the Tropicana where Brad himself was performing for a few days. You probably best know Brad Garrett as Robert, Ray's brother on Everybody Loves Raymond. Apparently, he's not in town all that often so the house was packed to see him. We just lucked into being there when he was there. He put on a great show, he actually MC'ed an entire evening of comedy which consisted of a complete set by him and then long sets in between comedian Geechy Guy and hypnotist Mark Sweet. There was another comedian who came up briefly as well. We were in there for about two hours before it was done. A great night of comedy.

I also gotta give a shoutout to Tix 4 Tonight, a service that lets you score same day tickets to most of Vegas' hottest shows at a fraction of their face value. We used the service for all three shows I've mentioned here, plus the four we saw last time in Vegas - and we always have great experiences with them. Great seats, fantastic prices and the staff is incredibly knowledgeable. They seem to know everything about every single show in town. They must be doing a good business because they seem to have twice the locations they did when I was in Vegas two years ago. Even though there are frequently long lines at their sidewalk booths, I suggest their "hidden" location behind the giant Coke bottle. We never waited in a line there while I could see the line out on the sidewalk from where I was standing buying tickets. I can't recommend them high enough. They take the extravagant price of a night on the town and make it affordable that you can go see a show every night you're in town.

Movie or Crayon

Years ago when I worked for the Crayola company I hosted a game show for a company event. I recently found the note cards for a game in the show that must have been sitting in a sports coat pocket for seven years! Anywho, the game was called Movie or Crayon and I thought I'd share it with you. It's pretty simple: I read off a list of names and contestants had to guess if they were movie titles or Crayola crayon colors. Sound fun? Here's the list and I'll post the answers in the comments section...

1. Tickle Me Pink


2. Pretty In Pink


3. Banana Mania


4. Wild Strawberry


5. TimberWolf


6. Soylent Green


7. Bittersweet


8. Outer Space


9. Blue Lagoon


10. Burnt Sienna


11. White Fang


12. Men in Black


13. Pink Panther


14. Carnation Pink

Feel free to print this out and play it at parties!

Rip-Off Rehash

Today we're sharing a published comic strip that I had a hand in producing way back in my college days of the mid-90's. I ran this comic years ago when I started this blog, but I like to dig out old holiday stuff and reuse it so here it is again. Cleverly titled, Mr. Ed's Far Side Rip-Off this one shot comic deal ran in the late October 1994 issue of my school's bi-weekly newspaper. Basically, I wrote the joke and a buddy of mine created the artwork. At the time, there were so many professionally produced comic strips obviously ripping off the style and pacing of Gary Larson's masterpiece The Far Side I just wanted to do a comic that was completely obvious. Those other comics always had names like The Other View or Flip Side or something lame like that, so we just called it Far Side Rip-Off. I added Mr. Ed to the title thinking it would somehow be an extension of my wacky radio morning show that I did on the college radio station at the time. I'm sure nobody got the connection between Mr. Ed & The Wacky Wake Up Show and Mr. Ed's Far Side Rip-Off, but I liked to think of myself as somewhat of a media mini-mogul back in the day. Sadly, this was the only strip that ever ran in the Rip-Off series. We were just 11 strips shy of getting our own calendar.

Too Much Snow!

Brush With Greatness

Personal anecdote time!

I thought this might make for an interesting subject: famous people I've met...or at least caught a glimpse of! Seeing a celebrity in a performance doesn't really count, like going to a concert or a show. Basically, you've got your celebrity encounters where you actually come face to face with someone and exchange words and/or you've got your Famous Person sightings, perhaps seeing a celebrity while you're out and about. Here's my list of both types...

...starting with my biggest and most thrilling one. In fact, I've already done an entire post about my meeting with my favorite singer, Debbie Gibson, at a CD signing in Washington D.C. back in 1995. Obviously, that was pretty exciting for me. I've been a huge fan of Debbie's since freshman year of high school. But let's move on...


One of my favorite filmmakers is Baltimore native John Waters. He made two of my all-time favorite movies, Cry Baby and Serial Mom. In 1996, I was standing in line to buy a movie ticket at the Charles Theatre in downtown B'mo and the friend I was with noticed and whispered to me that John Waters was standing behind us in line. I knew if I didn't at least turn around and say something I would spend the next several weeks regretting it. So I turned around and introduced myself and told him how much of a fan I was of Cry-Baby and how it got me interested in writing my own stuff. The only thing I actually remember was I said, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'd kick myself if I passed up this opportunity to tell you how much I've enjoyed your work." And he said, "Well, we wouldn't want you to kick yourself...would we?" Classic.


My other big, exciting Brush With Greatness was the time I not only met, but also got to work with Muppeteer Kevin Clash. At the time, I worked at the kids museum in Baltimore and we had a very large Sesame Street exhibit one summer. The museum had booked Kevin Clash to come and perform his most popular character, Elmo, to an audience one afternoon. Everyone at the museum knew how much of a Muppets/Sesame Street fan I was and so they kindly selected me to write a short script for Elmo to perform. The script even included me introducing and interacting with Elmo a bit...a very big thrill, indeed. Of course before the audience arrived I got to chat with Mr. Clash and ask him all sorts of nerdy questions about Muppets. He even video taped a short segment for my cable-access show with me. Pretty cool...no, very cool!


When I worked at the museum, we also had a few other celebrities drop by for one reason or another. Before the museum's grand opening, there was a media day where Rosie O'Donnell (who was in the middle of her run as host of her popular afternoon talk show) visited one Sunday afternoon for photo ops with some of the shinny new exhibits. I didn't actually talk to Rosie, but I was part of her security detail...which pretty much just involved holding a walkie-talkie and making sure too many people didn't crowd around her. We also had talk show host Montel Williams host a benefit at the museum. He taped a few segments for his show there but again I didn't talk to him.


However, on another occasion we had Maury Povich and his wife Connie Chung as MC's for some gala event that was going on there. Before the event, we were standing around waiting for things to get going and I was joking around with one of my co-workers. I was telling a (slightly off-color) joke and didn't realize that Maury was taking a quick walk-through of the museum before the event. As I was telling the joke, he happened to walk up the stairs behind me and overheard me telling the joke. I thought for sure my job at the museum was finished, but instead Maury Povich laughed and then leaned over to me and told me a joke that was WAY worse than anything I had just muttered. That was pretty cool.

At another point in the museum's infancy, Michael J. Fox was supposed to stop by for some photo ops. He ended up canceling at the last minute and sending some girl from the cast of Spin City in his place. Thanks. Also, one day when I wasn't working Antonio Banderas just showed up as a paying customer. He was apparently very nice and talked to everyone and answered all sorts of questions. I missed the whole thing. Of course I also missed the whole major film production set up across the street while his wife Melanie Griffith filmed an entire action scene for the movie Cecil B. Demented.

I have two minor Walt Disney World celebrity sightings. One time while in line for a Dole Whip in Adventureland, Harry Hamlin and his family were in line behind us. Thrilling, eh!? Another visit, I was in Downtown Disney and saw 1996 Olympic Gold Medalist Kerri Strug getting out of a van to do some shopping. I know...jealous, right?

When I worked at Hersheypark's Guest Services department, WWE wrestler Nick Foley (a.k.a. Mankind) came up to our window for some comp. tickets he had on hold. This just gets more exciting, doesn't it!?

When they were filming the comedy For Richer or Poorer staring Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley in Baltimore I was totally excited because one night we stumbled upon where they were filming. They had turned the outside of some crappy old building in downtown Baltimore into the flashy facade of a Vegas casino. I went to the area everyday hoping to catch a glimpse of filming. After a couple of days of snooping around, I witnessed some honest to goodness Hollywood filmmaking. Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld) was shooting a scene one afternoon. He noticed my friend and I standing around and waved hi to us between takes.

And finally...I was a paid extra on the motion picture extravaganza Thomas and the Magic Railroad. I got paid like $50.00 to stand around on the set all day for something close to 12 hours. Anywho, I ended up sitting next to Mara Wilson on a train (not Thomas) as the train left the station, went about 30 feet, stopped, backed up and then did it all over again - about 13 times.

Leave your Brush With Greatness stories in the comment box. I'm sure they'll make for a great read!

Doggy Doctor

My son Tanner isn't exactly what you'd call cooperative. So, we were a little worried when the doctor ordered some x-rays of the little guy. His uncooperative streak combined with a child's natural fear of hospital equipment was going to result in one ugly afternoon at the x-ray lab. So as we were getting ready to go have the x-rays done and Tanner asked where we were going I told him that we had to take some of his beloved puppies to the vet to have their tummies looked at. "I think one of them swallowed a bone!" I told him. He knew I was only playing, but he was happy to play along. We went and found his puppy carrier toy and we gently placed two puppies inside. Sammy and Sparkles were chosen from among the 40 other toy puppies we have as the patients.

When we arrived at the hospital Tanner was too busy worrying about his puppies to worry too much about himself. Tanner introduced his puppies to the X-ray tech, and she was more than happy to play along. She asked him lots of questions about Sammy and Sparkles and we were actually able to get Tanner's x-rays without too much trouble.

After the x-rays were taken, the tech rearranged the x-ray camera and table and put Tanner's puppies up on the table for their x-rays. We thought she was just playing along and having a little fun with Tanner and then we went in the room where they snap the pictures without getting radiation all over you and she actually took an x-ray of Tanner's two toy puppies! And she even gave him a print out... I just hope that little bit of fun doesn't cost us $200 when the bill comes!