Oh have we digressed* to speaking of Mr Butz!
He wasn't from Whispers, I think that he was from Cuchifritos or from Hatttie and Hapi Rock, Thursdays!! or even worse (but most fittingly) the ill-fated Hapi's Backdoor (sEE hAPI pHACE nUDE, lIVE ON sTAGE, a Nurse will be on duty) [NOTE TO NYU Performance Studies students: Hattie had an old nurse uniform so she "was the nurse;" in the spirit of a William Castle premiere, I'm a bit of an exhibitionist (I guess), and there was no money, hence no costumes. Otherwise, there was zero artistic insiration involved.]
Mr Butz! was supposed to be a soft scuplture ass puppet that I was going to wear on my head like a hat - - aren't there charachters like that on Family Guy or Family Guy now?
Anyway, it was just some drunken or stoned rambling idea I blurted out to Pookie (Richard Move) and Sandy Sheets one night. Well, Pook could NOT stop bugging me do Mr Butz. Of course he loved the part where MR. Butz smokes a cigar and eats Tootsie Rolls.
I kept insisting that that was a mistaken idea-burst that was best kept in the bottle of Tequila from which it originated . . . but you know what they say about the genie and the bottle . . .
Anyway, I had given already given up my brief career as a soft-scuplture artist, but came up with the idea to just drape a canvas (with a drawing of a man bent-over, pants dropped) over a ladder and a hole-cut out at he pucker-hole - and my lips sticking out. (Lambert {Ebony Jet} drew it!) Voila! Mr. Butz, the talking asshole - oh and in his uncontrolable urge to constantly humiliate and demean me, Pook indeed made me EAT TOOTSIE ROLLS & SMOKE CIGARS - and I think spit out the tootsie rolls . . . whilst I was ensconsed in the MR Butz persona-puppet torture device. Mr. Butz spoked in a very deep scratchy voice and coughed a lot (with fart soundz mixed in with the coughs - of course).
But that was not all -oh, no. He then booked Mr Butz to MC the Jackie Christmas Show (I think it was Christmas, but my memory, Daddy can you remember?)at La MaMa. Not only that, he sat me next to Debbie in the dressing room and tells her, Hapi is going to introduce you, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think this was the first time I had ever met her, and natch, I was living in a dream sitting next to debbie in the dressing room of Ellen Stewart's La MaMa Experimental Theater Club (ETC), (imagine my inner drama-queen screaming with glee) someone pinch me . . . so we are chatting and everything is well in my universe . . . until we get up to the stage and I get into my "costume."
I think Debbie was a bit mortified to see that a cigar smoking, tootsie roll chomping ass-puppet (me) was going to intro her - I think that she was afraid of me after that! But she didn't move away from me in the dress room, she is too nice for that, but Pookie was absolutely thrilled with himself for having humilated me.
Yes, Messy Bonnie the word-stem of the day is "digress," but I digress, yet again.