ISSUE #59 - November, 2005

First off, I want to explain how stoked I am to finally own a show. This is very much a dream come true - as far back as I can remember, I've always fantasized about one day owning a RAE. I figured that it would happen sooner or later, but the prospect of owning a brand new show was definetely beyond any of my expectations. I must admit that, financially, I took quite a gamble trying to gather funds to make this feasible - luckily things worked out quite well.

After making some initial arrangements, the first task was to head down to Creative Engineering to gather and pack up the show. Sounds easy enough right? That's what I thought as well. But once I had arrived and met up with Aaron we started digging for all the show pieces. The size and weight of many of these items reminded me that these shows were never meant to go into someone's home. To complicate matters, items were scattered all across the basement and many were missing parts - apparently having been pillaged somewhere along the line. Also many of the character's masks didn't survive 20 years of Florida heat, which put us on a hunt for latex once we found the barrels of liquid latex in CEI's workshop to be empty. After a bit of research, we learned that the company which supplied CEI with latex had gone out of business. It took some running around and about a dozen phone calls to finally track down a new source.

It was now the second day of packing and we were back to work, trying to get things done as quickly as possible because a hurricane was headed our way. I should probably back up to give everyone a better idea of what was going on at this point. The shipping trailer wasn't going to be dropped off for another day, so at this time we were transporting show pieces onto our 'staging area' which was the ramp that led from the basement of CEI out to the street. I spent most of the day loading the items I could find and carry onto the loading ramp, and waiting to lug the character crates up the ramp until later in the evening when there was more help available. That night Aaron, myself, and Andrew (Looneymagic from the Forum) continued to gather items and take measurements of the crates and larger items so we could put together a diagram of how to pack the truck. The 3 of us pulled a Fatz crate onto the ramp and checked it over to verify it's contents. Everything checked out thankfully, however, the time it took to check it out and measure everything put us behind. By the end of the night we had only 2 crates moved into the staging area - Dook and Fatz.

We decided to call it a night and partake in some relaxing time. Aaron cooked up some pizza that was left over from the night before and Andrew provided some dinner entertainment in the form of live magic tricks. We also got a chance to watch a few shows which was really fun. Aaron cued up several shows from Colander Head Night - I had never seen these shows performed by the RAE, my only knowledge of them was from some very bad audio samples I obtained years ago. So if that wasn't cool enough, Aaron cued up some outtake shows. One of these was an outtake from Magic Night of Dook singing 'Magic Touch' by the Platters, and the other was my favorite Mitzi song of all time 'End of the World' which had an intro skit about Rolfe wanting to compete with Colander Heads by starting a 'Small Appliances Movement'. That was an interesting skit, as I had never heard of it before that night.

That night Aaron allowed me to stay down at CEI (in his old bedroom there) which was interesting. It was one of those surreal moments where, as a fan, you kinda have to step back and think "I'm about to spend the night AT Creative Engineering". A month earlier, that's the last thing in the world I thought I'd ever be doing. But it was very late and I didn't have much time to dwell on it because the ABF loading trailer was ariving in the morning and I had to get to sleep.

It was now day 3 which was Wednesday morning. The truck arrived on schedule and I spent most of the morning putting together the diagram for loading the crates into the truck. As soon as Aaron's morning meeting was over, he showed up at the shop so we could get a good start. The latest news bulletins showed the hurricane on route to Orlando and arriving by the end of the week. The previous night we looked into using the forklift to load the crates which seemed like our best bet. It was leaking hydrolic fluid a bit, but nothing too bad. The battery was also dead, but a quick jump from Aaron's car had it purring like a kitten. So when Aaron showed up, he brought with him a few quarts of hydrolic fluid and we got started. Since the forklift was up and running, we figured we'd just use it to go down and grab each crate and drive it up the ramp out next to the truck. It seemed like a good idea anyway.

Well we got the Dook and Fatz crate up out of the basement easily enough, but the forklift began leaking fluid pretty bad. Enough to where it was leaving streaks on the ramp which were very slick. To make matters worse, the road in front of CEI is made of bricks, and dips down fairly steep where it connects to the sidewalk outside of the building. The small wheels on the forklift kept getting stuck in the rut and we kept having to use scrap pieces of wood to put under the tires for traction everytime it got stuck. Being short on time and unable to turn off the forklift without jump-starting it again, we kept on going. And then it happened. We got stuck. We got stuck bad. The forks were now leaking fluid so bad that it was pooling in the rut, and when Aaron got stuck the last time the wheels were so covered in fluid and grease there was no traction to be found.

So there we were, stuck in the street gutter, spewing fluid all over the place. It became clear that we were going to have to somehow 'tow' the forklift out of the rut and onto the street, which was getting busier by the minute because it was nearing rush hour in downtown Orlando. Aaron connected the towing attachment to the back of his car and we tried a few different types of 'rope' that we could find in a hurry. Conduit didn't work, some scrap wire we found didn't work either. Luckily an employee from a neighboring shop came to help out and provided us with a heavy duty chain which did the trick. We finally got the forklift out onto the street. Just when things seemed like they were going to be okay, we heard a loud clanging noise.

That noise turned out to be the fan smacking into the radiator. To save us from having even further problems, the fanbelt had to be cut to keep the fan from doing that. Which meant that the alternator was no longer keeping the battery charged, and we couldn't keep it running. So Aaron pulled the battery out of his car, connected it to the forklift, and drove it back into the storage yard.... leaving a trail of radiator fluid behind him. Meanwhile I was frantically trying to cover the fluid puddle with dirt before the EPA or a hazmat crew showed up. It was around this time that Andrew came along to help out.

The day had been a total disaster and by the time Andrew showed up, Aaron and I were disgusted and about ready to call it a day. We looked into some options for getting the crates onto the truck without needing a forklift, but that would have required trying to retrofit the ABF provided ramp to make it wide enough for a pallet jack. Finally I decided to just fork out the cost to rent another forklift which could be delivered the next day. Tired and frustrated, we all went inside to have something to eat. It was during our dinner that Duke showed up.

Now Aaron had mentioned the possibility of Duke dropping by during the week, since he was back in town - Hurricane Katrina had destroyed his home down in St. Benard's Parish and he was now staying in Orlando with his ex-wife. I was thrilled with the idea of meeting him since none of us fans have ever seen or heard anything from him. Even Aaron hadn't seen him in about 8 years. Duke sat down with us and shared his tale of having to escape his house in order to survive. Apparently the water rose from ankle high to neck high in about 15 minutes.

I was in awe listening to Duke and Aaron reminisce about old times, and I learned several new things. Jeff Howell wrote 'Goofy Gas', Duke wrote 'In December', and he also wrote 'Child of the Rock' as a way of venting his jealousy about the way Sal was getting all the press and attention among the character voices. It was really fun listening to him talk... because when he did the voice of Dook it wasn't a characterization at all - it's just him being himself. After all these years he still sounds the same, right down to the slight accent and mannerisms.

We all got some autographs and our photo taken with him once we were finished with dinner. Aaron was airing up the show so we could all watch a few shows together and Duke admitted to being dissapointed with his version of Unchained Melody - that it was an early recording and he didn't quite know how to reach down and capture the notes yet. I think this was surprising to all of us, me personally because I've always loved his version of it. Well Aaron had an idea and we all went into his old office where a piano was set up and Aaron starting banging out Unchained Melody like it was nothing. Now I knew that Aaron could play the piano, I just wasn't prepared for him to play it so beautifully from memory. Duke started singing and it was just such an incredible sight to see. I wish that everyone reading this could have been there that night, and I'm really kicking myself for not recharging the battery in my video camera when I had a chance.

Duke hadn't been singing much lately so his voice was a bit rusty and he got a bit frustrated when he wasn't able to reach the high notes, but he still sounded great. By this time the show was aired up and we went in to watch a few shows and I again got the see the 'Magic Touch' skit and show performed. Duke's cameo appearance that night helped save the day from being a total disaster. But there was still a lot of work ahead of us as we bid farewell to Duke, which is probably a good stopping point for this month's issue of the Bulletin. Tune in next month for the second half of this story - it has a happy ending, I promise!

Also there's going to be some changes going on around here at ShowBiz Pizza.com. Actually there's several new changes that are already in the works for 2006. I know I talk about making improvements and updating constantly, but this time I decided to start fresh and begin from the ground up. This is all a result of my trip down to CEI and a new focus on how important this site is to the fan community.

The full explanation of what I'm talking about will be covered in the December issue so be on the lookout for that story as well!