Hey Dummy, Here's Your BM

A BM for Dummies

Yesterday I read somewhere online about the discovery of the dead body of a woman along a river on the East coast. She had recently been reported missing. The body was discovered by a man on an early morning walk with his dog. In speaking to the authorities and the press the witness expressed his shock and disbelief at finding the woman who was partially submerged in water and covered by debris. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing…I thought I was looking at a mannequin until [my dog] ran up to it”. This story caught my eye because of the dummy. The presumed mannequin that is. I have heard this story before and I don’t know if I consider it a testament to the optimistic nature of humankind or the naiveté of our citizens in the belief that there are legions of naked mannequins being dumped along highway underpasses, soggy riverbeds and forest preserves.

I’ve read enough newspaper stories, seen enough Bill Kurtis narrated crime shows and watched enough horror films to know that, along with the standard issue cautions against answering the phone, going into the basement, and helping men in Styrofoam casts find lost pets, the body you are seeing is never a mannequin. Yes it’s a sad commentary on crime in America, however, not once have I heard a lead or read a headline that said “AREA MANNEQUIN REPORTED MISSING”. I have never seen a news conference wherein a department store official pleaded to the cameras “Sportswear needs you! Door buster sales start Friday at 9:00!” or seen flyers describing a blonde woman, 5’7”, size 4, wearing a jumper (really? are those a thing? not many people can pull that off) Last seen standing on her toes and holding a striped towel from House wares. And when you stop to consider the logistics of mannequin removal, transport and disposal there is little wonder.

The first hurdle Andrew McCarthy would face would be acquiring a mannequin. Presumably, as a mannequin predator, he would cruise the local malls and department stores looking for potential victims. Upon finding a vulnerable mannequin, alone, perhaps in an isolated area by the clearance rack full of size 00s, with painted on come hitherance, the actual mechanics of moving Emmy would come into play. During the Christmas season of 2006 I was scolded by a security guard at the Gap for merely trying to remove- and pay for- the last striped Gap scarf in the Chicagoland area which happened to be sported by the storefront window Kim Cattrall. Not a full layer of outerwear…not a festive pair of boxer shorts….a simple cold weather accessory. I can only imagine the repercussions I would have faced from the Blartforce had I tried to make off with the entire ensemble.

So how do you move a mannequin? They aren’t exactly designed for, well, abduction? To get her out of the store you would have to hoist her under your arm like a surfboard or up in the air like the come from behind hero of a sports movie then wrestle your way through double sets of slamming doors. Or you could pull her close and try baby stepping the two-in-one-look-how-in-love-we-are-we-can’t-even-bear-to-be-apart-for-ten seconds revolving door move or lastly, the dreaded automatic timed handicapped door, during which time she will lean heavily against you for support as though she were a sloppy ex-girlfriend who called you to meet for drinks at Houlighans ‘and just catch up’ but during which she downed one too many poma-apple-mocha-Patrone-accino-Jack-tini’s, clutched both your hands in hers and through gulped burps slurred ‘but we were so good once weren’t we?’

Fast forward through all the creepy Lars and the Real Girl stuff and you’ve now got a mannequin sporting the latest in fall fashions (omg! tights are still in?!) to dump. Again, we tackle the issue of manneuverability. It once took my friend Rory and I over half an hour to portage a canoe- with a guide- 100 feet from a van down to the Fox River on a worn dirt trail marked “CANOE ACCESS”. So I don’t know how anyone is getting Kristy Swanson (thanks IMDB!) to the river’s edge. The moral of this story, well the stream of consciousness behind this story, is that the next time you are walking along a river and think you’ve found a Mannequin you’ve most likely found a Weekend at Bernie’s.

Since I am on the topic of dummies I’d like to take advantage of this natural segue way to applaud Comedy Central on its decision to cancel The Jeff Dunham Show. I don’t normally root for failure nor do I approve of sweeping generalizations. However, I make exceptions in certain circumstances and here is one. I cannot stand ventriloquists. I hate dummies. There I said it. It’s on the record. Any future political aspirations dashed. Any ABC Family pilot scripts rejected. Any spokesmodel gigs lost to Brooke Burke. But I feel so much better now for having admitted it. Like Meredith Baxter Birney when she purged after that huge binge scene in Kate’s Secret. I don’t get it. But I do get it. And that’s part of what bugs me. Hang on a second while I scramble my way up to the top of this soapbox……and away we go.

I think the first thing that bugs me about ventriloquism as a form of comedy is that it’s…not…funny. The material is awful. A combination of recycled borscht belt jokes and playground humor wherein the comedian is essentially telling jokes at himself, about himself, by himself. The equivalent of being grabbed by a bigger older comedian who yells “why are you hitting yourself? why are you hitting yourself?”. But then there’s always the innuendo part of the act where the puppet makes a vaguely lascivious comment involving hands, laps and pockets and then makes a clumsy pass at a moderately attractive woman sitting in one of the front rows. Not to mention the obvious “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” display of the dummy’s machinations. We sit there like we’re at Wimbledon looking back and forth from the ventriloquist to the dummy and the whole time we can see the hand up this dummy’s bum. It’s like going to see an action film but instead of cool special effects you are given a green screen, a copy of the script and encouraged to imagine along. Or hearing a mime’s cell phone ringing.

Though I suppose the freshness of the material is on par with the craftsmanship of the actual dummies themselves. I mean, in 1979 I had a doll who could wet a diaper. Madame Tussaud has a wax Howie Mandel so realistic looking I almost open hand slapped it across the face and screamed “bank that Mandel!” And this year a hospital in Europe transplanted an entire HUMAN FACE. So why do all these ventriloquist dolls still look like old timey minstrel show props or puppet projects from “101 Crafts for a Rainy Day”? Forget Locks for Love. I’ll start the Follicles for Folly project if it means this group of yuk yuks will up their game. I could probably get all psychological on this issue and say the primitive appearance of the dummy furthers the distance between the ventriloquist and his prop thereby offering the comedian more freedom to express his creativity and innermost thoughts through the relative anonymity of the doll blah blah thesis blah. But honestly all I want to say is that ventriloquists are all a bunch of dummies.