The Amazing Disgrace, Part I

If there is ever a version of "The Amazing Race" where the goal is to get the most Polaroid pictures with quasi-celebrities of the 1980s and early 1990s, then I do believe you are reading the writings of that show's inevitable winner.

(Of course, if such a show were made, the word "amazing" would clearly need to be removed from the show's title, but let's not argue over semantics, OK?)

My never-ending quest to meet every single person who entertained me at the age of 12 brought me back to Bananas Comedy Club in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ, last Saturday. This club, as devoted Sigmaniacs will no doubt recall, was the site of Return to Screech earlier this year, where I paid far too much money and got far too soaked with rain to see and have a picture taken with Dustin "Screech" Diamond of "Saved by the Bell" fame. For the second time in my life. After investing two days on the first attempt (which is, of course, recounted in "Critical, But Stable," still readily purchasable by the link on this page. Buy it now before the bandwagon overcrowds).

But this time was devoted to a performer who predated Screech in the adoring eyes of the young James Sigman. Yessir, thanks to a timely reading of Steppin' Out magazine, I discovered that Michael Winslow, a/k/a that guy in the "Police Academy" movies, would be making an appearance at Bananas, the best comedy club in a hotel on a highway in New Jersey that I've ever been to.

Oh, the hours I spent watching the Police Academy films--the first three on video and four through six in the theater (I do not acknowledge the existence of the direct-to-video seventh installment, "Mission to Moscow"). And though I surely had a fondness for Tim "Sweetchuck" Kazurinsky and his nemesis-turned-friend Bobcat "Zed" Goldthwait, it was Michael Winslow, Officer Larvell Jones, who captured my fancy the most. Guttenberg got all the glory, but the discriminating Police Academy connoisseur knows that Winslow was the king. Who can forget that moment in "Police Academy 2: The First Assignment" when he imitated Lou the Dog's barking, frightening Lieutenant Mauser, whose hands had just been super-glued to his head in the shower, into stepping out of the locker room, naked. What's that you say? You can forget? I have my doubts.

Anyway, look, I liked the majority of the "Police Academy" movies, and in my crazy world, that was reason enough to head out to Hasbrouck Heights in the middle of a steady rain (which gradually developed into a massive downpour) to see Michael Winslow do his thing. And if that makes me less of a person than you (and I'm almost certain it does), then that's OK with me.

Or at least that's what I choose to tell myself.

NEXT: A diner experience that's out of sight.