Martin Delabano: Musings of an Artist

This Thanksgiving holiday was a week of sleeping in which I never do.  My dogs usually get me up by 6:30 AM if I haven’t set an alarm.  I guess with all the cold rainy weather, the dogs decided it was good to sleep in as well.

Thanksgiving was a hard time for my good friend Logan who had just lost his mother.  She was a grand lady and Logan had spent the last two years, dutifully taking care of her.  He was over visiting one night when one of his old friends, Kevin called.  Kevin and his lovely wife Mary then walked over to my house.  Kevin and Mary and their children were visiting his parents who still live in the same house, Kevin grew up in just two blocks over from my house.   Kevin and Mary had visited once before and they are the type of people that you instantly feel at ease with.  It was a fun evening of telling stories and laughing.  Logan certainly needed the distraction.

Mary was egged on to tell her fish story.  It was a shaggy dog story of sorts or more precisely a fish story.  …..about going down to “China Town” and buying a live fish for some Gyotaku fish printing. It was a funny story about walking home on a crowded New York street with this live fish, wrapped in a piece of white paper under her arm.  The fish would occasionally flap it’s tail and hit the person walking next to her.

Kevin of Kevin and Mary is Kevin Hunt, who was once a member of the juggling team, the “Flaming Idiots”. 

The Flaming Idiots
The Flaming Idiots were a comedy juggling troupe of three performers: Jon O’Connor, Rob Williams and Kevin Hunt. Their stage names were Pyro, Gyro, and Walter. They began their act as a busking routine in the early 1980s in Dallas and they performed their last show at the New Victory Theater on Broadway in New York City in 2004. [1] The Flaming Idiots created and produced their show as well as performing it.

They gained early popularity by street performing and developing an act that traveled the Renaissance Faire circuit. Beginning in 2000 and ending in 2004, they performed the show at Zachary Scott Theatre in Austin, Texas, replacing the renaissance-related theme of their show with a vaudeville theme. They used the vaudeville theme in their traveling show on Broadway as well.

The Flaming Idiots performed on Comic Strip Live, Sunday Comics, The Today Show, The Tonight Show and others, but Hunt says, “We always preferred to perform onstage with a live audience.”[2]

From Wikipedia

The Flaming Idiots – straitjacket escape

What an interesting evening……and then Wednesday night comes and again like déjà vu Logan is at my house and again Kevin and Mary call, come over, this time with a bunch of hand made pulled pork tamales wrapped in foil. Again it was a wonderful evening of talking about jugglers, juggling acts, childhood stories, talking about our aging parents and course remembering Logan’s dear mom Mil.