Pumpkin Bukkake

There's been an alarming number of instances in the last couple weeks where i've been able to slip the word "bukkake" into an otherwise normal conversation. An alarming number. No shit.

All of this talk about bukkake reminded me of the last time that i saw the famous/infamous comedian Gallagher. I put that link to Wikipedia there in case some of you have forgotten, which wouldn't be surprising, really.

Gallagher was an integral part of my formative, teenage years. My parents of course wouldn't allow me to view his routines as a child; but once i'd attained that magical age of 13, all bets were off. The word "teenager" just seems to imply a certain bit of added responsibility, or a greater worldliness, even though i couldn't say i felt any different than i had the day before when i was 12. I imagine that this feeling goes for just about everybody.

So one night, my parents sat me down in front of the TV after my brother had been sent to bed and we watched a number of Gallagher's home videos in a row. These mini marathons continued for the next few nights, and afterward i had consumed all Gallagher material that was officially available on home video (VHS. Remember VHS? I don't.)(At least i try not to.).

Gallagher changed the world for me. Maybe not immediately; but i continued to throw those videos in every now and again over the next several years. My favorite was always We Need A Hero. In fact, some pieces of his monologue still crop up in my speech patterns; i can't tell you how often i've wanted to, when addressing a male friend by his full name (this most often happens with Dan), i want to append, "You need to smell like a man" to it and then soak them with beer. I almost always refrain, since i know that they won't get the reference. But still.

Eventually, Gallagher started touring again and made a stop in Madison. This was sometime near my birthday that year, whatever year it was, and my brother had since aged into the "Gallagher-able" range. Our parents of course bought four tickets.

You may have already deduced that this was well outside of Gallagher's prime. He was already a cantankerous old man, a far cry from the cantankerous young man we all remember from his HBO specials. That first time seeing him, i remember him walking the halls before the show, and my dad walking up and introducing himself to him, and me getting to meet one of my (arguably) idols. He seemed a nice enough fellow at that time; the show hadn't quite sold out so he passed us a couple extra tickets for free and asked us to call some friends up, which we did, and they came out to the show.

Coming to the end of the performance, Gallagher had to admit that he was, in fact, aging, and call up some help from the audience to work his famous Sledge-O-Matic. For those unfamiliar, the Sledge-O-Matic is a comically oversized wooden mallet used to smash items and send their remnants hurtling toward audience members. Usually, the items are food. He's best known for smashing watermelons.

My brother and i both got on stage. I got to hit a "chinese homosexual pie," a pie made out of rice and fruit cocktail. Terrible? Absolutely. Funny? If you'd been there, you'd have (probably) laughed. It's all about context. Anyway.

I seem to think that i saw Gallagher a second time before the final time, but i can't remember for sure. All i know is, that last time that i went to see Gallagher (which shall remain the final time i see Gallagher), he had completely fallen to shit.

Gallagher was probably high as a kite being flown by another kite when he took the stage that evening. When he repeated jokes that were familiar from his previous routines, they felt forced and scripted, and those were the better moments of the performance. He spent most of the two or three hours pacing the stage and walking up and down the aisles of the theater spewing racist stereotypes and generalities and jokes he probably stole from Carlos Mencia (who in turn stole them from Joe Rogan, but who the fuck cares?), going so far as to accuse one darker-skinned member of the audience of being Columbian, and therefore an obvious drug smuggler. I spent most of the show with a polite grin on my face, but hollow disappointment and, eventually, anger in my eyes. As Gallagher himself said in We Need A Hero, "I hate it when my heroes let me down!" It was funny when he said it in 1992. Not so much when i thought it in 2007. I think it was 2007.

Well, when it came time to Sledge-I-Fy some food that could have probably been sent to a starving third world country and caused more smiles and laughter than Gallagher's entire career, i of course made my move toward the stage. When it came my turn to wield that enormous mallet of legend, a pumpkin pie sitting on the desk in front of me, Gallagher up and popped me in the face with a second, hidden pumpkin pie.

I stopped and slowly turned to look at him, a dramatic move ripped from sitcoms everywhere when someone does something shocking and hilarious. I may as well have put those words in quotation marks, but eh. If i'd been in the audience, i probably would have thought that was funny too. He made some smartass remarks about my appearance, what with the pie on the face and such, but i couldn't understand them. I don't think they had monitors on the stage, so he really couldn't hear his own voice. Maybe that's why he spent so much more time in the aisles than on the stage.

Well, being only a pawn in Gallagher's little game and without a microphone of my own, i proceeded to do what i'd come up there for. I wound up with the mallet and let loose on that pumpkin pie.

Now, a Sledge-O-Matic is difficult to aim. It's heavy and it's not well balanced. You've kind of got to pick a general area and just hope for the best. Well, as luck would have it, i hit that pie squarely in (what would have been, from my perspective) the top right quadrant. The result? The pumpkin pie filling shot straight back and to the left, the bulk of it hitting Gallagher himself straight in the fucking face.

I couldn't really see much, all i knew was that the whole audience was laughing. I slowly panned over toward Gallagher and saw what had become of his head, and he was doing the same slow, dramatic turn toward me that i'd done to him moments ago. I laughed as he wiped pumpkin from his eyes. I set the Sledge-O-Matic down and, on my way off the stage, leaned into his microphone and said, "Hey! You kind of look like me now!"

A friend took a picture of my face after the show. I have it saved in a special location and labeled, "Pumpkin Bukkake."