by Scott Gordon December 15, 2008
Those mischievous Gomers went out of their way to give the local press a song and dance about their new Slappy Hour Variety Show, so damned if Decider wasnıt going to see how Fridayıs kickoff at The Frequency measured up. Even before things got started at this happy hour show, local songwriter Sean Michael Dargan was warming up on his bagpipes, outfitted in kilt and all. DB Pedersen, best known in Madison for building music out of loops, throat-singing passages, and animal noises, was hanging around and drinking, which is usually a sign that some mildly disturbing antics are going to go down.
The Gomers proper got the show off to a pleasantly odd start. The first set featured selections like ³I Been Over Dere,² in which Gomers guitarist Stephen Burke re-writes the Johnny Cash hit ³Iıve Been Everywhere² to namedrop a few dozen places in Wisconsin, and ³Forcefield,² an awkward song about people with bad breath. In between, an iPod spewed out equally silly transitional bits, including a Rod Serling-style riff on the birth of Jesus.
After a few songs, the band fired up a projector aimed at a small screen at the back of the stage and played a live soundtrack for the silent Harold Lloyd short Just Neighbors. Keyboardist Dave Adler cut into the slapstick tale of suburban mayhem with some narration here and there: ³Violence is funny so are midgets.² Multi-instrumentalist Biff Blumfumgagnge switched between an electric fiddle and some sort of tiny guitar, using the instruments to emulate everything from a flute to an accordion to a synth. Up in front of the stage, Pedersen stuck two slide whistles in his mouth and also supplied the voices of dogs and chickens.
After another round of songs and another Lloyd short (Are Crooks Dishonest?), the band cleared out. Jonathan Zarov took the stage in black jeans, shoes, shirt, and leather jacket. Zarov is a publicist for the Overture Center and used to be in an improv comedy group that didnıt swear. So imagine the delight when he introduced himself as corrupt Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich and asked, ³Do we have any cocksuckers from the media here?² The word ³fuck² punctuated just about every other sentence as ³Rod² (looking more like a skinny bald guy trying to be Lou Reed) announced he intended to raise money for his defense by auctioning off his mother (another local performer, Jodi Cohen). The kicker? The lucky new owner of ³dear, dear, golden motherfuckinı Ma² would also receive a milkable ³Serbian man-sheep² with the purchase. At this point, Pedersen re-appeared in a red kimono with a couple of bulges in the chest. He pulled it open to reveal two latex gloves, tied to his body and full of cream.
Zarov and Cohen then proceeded to literally milk him into a bucket, as little drips of cream squirted onto the stage and onto Zarovıs black jacket. Pedersen (who has worked on a sheep farm) croaked, gibbered, and bleated out a creepily accurate sheep impression. They poured the bucketıs contents into a little Tupperware container, put the lid on, and passed it around, asking the crowd to shake it until it turned into butter. As the sticky container made its rounds, Rod, Ma, and sheep led the crowd in a chorus of ³Old MacDonald Had A Farm.² One attendee grabbed Deciderıs notebook to jot this down: ³That was just wrong WTF.²
