BULLDOGS AND ALLIGATORS

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Last year, on November 13th, I posted a “Stuffs” installment about the addiction to the television sitcom “Frasier” that my brother Napoleon and I had developed. Not long afterwards, my buddy Ol' Warrior Poet (a.k.a. GreenO), sent me an e-mail in which he informed me that the actor Dan Butler who played Bulldog - the skirt-chasing, supertestosterone-charged sports radio talk show host on “Frasier” - had publicly admitted to being gay. Whoa! Neither I nor my supertestosterone-charged brother Nappy had seen that one a-comin’.

Well, just a week or so ago, I received another e-mail from Ol' Warrior Poet (a.k.a. GreenO) in which he told me he had just seen the actor Dan Butler in another television role. After Ol' WP (a.k.a. Ol' GO) and I exchanged a few e-mails on the subject, it dawned on me that what we’d written to each other might make a pretty decent Blog entry. And so, with Ol' WP’s permission (and Ol' GO’s, too), I’m posting our e-mail remarks below. Rather than post everything fully and in chronological sequence, I’m going to “intercut” our subsequent repartee within the initial e-mail as I go along. I think you’ll be able to follow it just fine . . . unless yer lost already? To Ol' Warrior Poet, I have assigned the color red since I also call him Ol' GreenO. (Makes sense?) My “voice” will remain in black. Got it? And now let’s journey on. That-a-way! Giddyup, y’all:

A quick story...The other day I was at the house of one of my sister's spending some time with the family. After dinner, I was crashing on the couch as my other sister and my eldest niece began watching one of those "made for TV movies" that women like. I believe it was on Lifetime (no shocker there).It turns out the movie was about a gay teenage boy who grows up in a household with a very "devout TV christian" mother (played by Sigourney Weaver, but this ain't no Aliens). Now that I told you the plot, You can probably guess the entire liberal, christian-bashing script.

ME: >>[You give me the impression that you think there’s some kind of agenda being advanced here…]<<
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WP: >>[Sometimes it's just soooo much more obvious than others. This was one of those times.]<<

ME: >>[…Like there’s some sort of master plan behind this sort of TV programming. Next thing I know, you’ll be trying to convince me that there’s some sort of underhanded conspiracy to subvert the U.S. Constitution and replace it with a global government based upon the Marxist Model. You Black people are whacked!]<<
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Long story short, the kid ends up killing himself because of his mother’s inability to accept his lifestyle. The mother then goes on to become the leader of one of those "Parents of Gay Children" groups. The entire thing was so ridiculously filled with anti-christian bias that I almost choked, but I digress..At the boys funeral the minister proceeds to basically tell everyone at the service that he's in hell, burning because of his "gay sin" and subsequent suicide (because you know that's what ministers do at funerals, bash the dead and mentally torture the family).

ME: >>[Of course. It’s happened at every funeral I’ve ever attended. Takes some of the fun out of a funeral, if you ask me.]<<
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WP: >>[heh-heh. : ) ]<<

Poor Sigourney is unable to deal with the guilt of somehow making her son gay, then making him kill himself and burn eternally in hell because of her unacceptance. She stumbles on an "alternative christian" church where she learns that her perspective on homosexuality has been wrong all this time, and the very cool, openly gay pastor shows her this in the Bible.

ME: >>[How come it’s not in MY Bible? What, did I get an edited version? The Reader's Digest Bible? I want the entire Word Of God, damn it! (Note that very important comma there!) ]<<

WP: >>[Weird huh? I couldn't find it in mine either.]<<

ME: >>[I think we got ripped off. (But not in a bad way.) ]<<
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And here's where you come in STM, guess who played the gay pastor? BULLDOG baby! Well at least he's still getting work. How'd Nappy take the news? :)

ME: >>[Oh, our old friend Bob “BULLDOG” Briscoe from “Frasier”? Actor Dan Butler? So, he found a part a little closer to home, eh? Well, good, it probably saved him gas money.]<<
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WP: >>[I haven't seen him in anything since Fraiser, and since we were just talking about him I found it eerily humorous.]<<

ME: >>[When I told my Brother what you had said about Dan Butler being off his leash, out of his doghouse and out of the closet (like, gay), Nappy experienced a few moments of 'Shock And Awww… Sh#t!' But then he said, “You know, now that you mention it, I think I can actually see that a little bit.”]<<
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WP: >>[Everybody always says that when they find out someone's
gay.]<<

ME: >>[Well, not me. I still say it was some darn fine acting. I think Butler should take a lot pride in the performances he gave as Bulldog. Not “Gay Pride”, you know, but just regular pride. He pulled the pink wool over my eyes.

But ya know, in reality, one must always be a tad suspicious about some of those “Gonzo Guys” like Bulldog. We’ve both known the type. When you’ve got a dude who puts on too much of a “macho” production, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Like, is this manly dude perhaps hiding a skeleton in his closet? A skeleton named Bruce?

Along these lines, I’ve always cast an inquisitive eye (not a “queer eye”, just an inquistive eye) at the writer Ernest Hemingway. All that hunting, fishing, and bullfighting stuffs makes me a shade suspicious. You know, like suspicious? It strikes me that he was laying on all that machismo a bit too thick for comfort.]<<
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WP: >>[Ernest Hemingway huh? You know, now that you mention it, I think I can actually see that a little bit. ; ) ]<<

ME: >>[When a guy really is naturally masculine he seems nonchalant about it – not inclined to draw undue attention to the trait. The way MANNY FERNANDEZ is. Remember Manny Fernandez, the defensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins during their glory days?

I have a DVD set titled ‘America’s Game: The Super Bowl Champions - Miami Dolphins Collection 1972/1973.’ There’s a brief segment of footage included which shows Manny Fernandez with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth while - with his bare hands - he’s catching an alligator in a Florida swamp. Ha! Imagine that. But Manny is so casual about it that I didn’t initially notice the cigarette in his mouth. Remember A-DogG from the BigBitch.com days? He’s the one who pointed it out to me after he had rented the discs, and so I immediately watched my DVD again. Had to see it with my own eyes, but – Hokey-Smoke! – he really was smokin’. Oh, that poor alligator’s ego. Talk about adding insult to injury. Most authentic (and humorous) display of “REAL MAN” I’ve ever seen! Just Classic Stuffs, WP! You know, like Classic Stuffs? It reminds me of those lyrics in Jim Croce’s song “Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)”. . .

Yeah, Roy so cool
That racin’ fool,
He don’t know what fear’s about
He do a hundred thirty mile-an-hour
Smilin’ at the camera
With a toothpick in his mouth

Now me, I’d barely have the stones to smoke a cigarette. Forget the alligator!]<<
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WP: >>[Well I was a smoker for almost 10 years. Both the regular and whacky tobacky during my wilder days living and tending bar in NYC, but I ain't an alligator huntin type of guy. I guess that makes me only half the man Manny is/was.]<<

ME: >>[I don’t know nuttin’ ‘bout “wilder days” – I’ve always been a choirboy.

I didn’t know you had tended bar in NYC. I actually graduated from a bartending school in L.A. in preparation for my move to Prescott, Arizona. I knew that finding a decent and respectable job might be difficult at first but figured bartending would keep me “afloat” for awhile. Didn’t learn until after making the move that there are NO decent and respectable jobs in Prescott, nor that the bar owners/managers wouldn’t hire anything but females to tend bar. I could have tried “faking it” but nylons just make my legs break out.

I’ve smoked no more than ten cigarettes in my life, and none since the height of my drinking days (1983). Have never purchased a pack of cigs. I guess this makes me only one-fourth the man that Manny is. He puts the “man” in Manny the way I put the “fun” in funeral.]<<
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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