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Who’s the A-Hole, A-Hole?

Tonight marked the grand debut of the sketch comedy team Deli Juices. I may have mentioned — over and over and over — that some chums and I will be descending on ImprovBoston this Saturday night at 9:30pm for Sketch Cagematch (-ATCH!!! -ATCH!! -ATCH!).

Our troupe is called Deli Juices (don’t ask), and features Duke Kris Earle and Sir Winston Kidd, as well as yours truly. And tonight, as a warmup for our Satur-stravaganza, we debuted our material during Time Travel, Kris’ weekly radio romp on WMFO, the voice of Tufts University.

If you missed it — AND WHY IN HELL WOULD YOU MISS IT?!? — you can always check it out in the WMFO archive. I moseyed into the studio around 5:15, Winston joined about 6:15, and the airwaves were Deli Juiced at precisely 6:23.

You may want to give the airwaves a little time to recover before you listen to the radio again. They’ll need a long hot shower, at the very least.

Also, I owe the FCC twenty bucks. Or a first-born child or something. Who knows what’s going to satisfy a bunch of snarky feds?

“It’s just possible that public college-affiliated radio is not perhaps the ideal medium for some of our material.”

Anyway, as we convened in the studio, we reminded each other of the strict and necessary rules while speaking on the air. Mild oaths are all right. Minor swears. Eensy pottymouths. But nothing major. Not the big seven. We’ve got no budget for fines, nor a bunch of real-time *bleepers* to cover our butts. We’re not the Daily Show over here.

For a lot of sketch outfits, this is maybe not a problem. We’re not one of those outfits. We have six sketches in the show. Sketch five is titled — titled, mind you, not “informally known as” or “containing the line”, but actually physically titled — “What the Fuck Are You Looking At?”

Clearly, we were in some trouble here. It’s just possible that public college-affiliated radio is not perhaps the ideal medium for some of our material. In retrospect, I’m saying. It’s possible.

So we went over the rules — no ‘eff‘s, no ‘shi tzus‘, no ‘d-bags‘, ‘a-holes‘ or ‘pusballs‘.

Or rather, only those things, and not the scandalous wash-your-mic-out-wiht-soap words that they replace. We talked it over. We all understood. Sketch five was going to be a problem, sure, but we’d get through it when the time came. And until then, so far as we could remember, we didn’t have a lot of swears to worry about. Fine. We got it. Go time.

Two minutes into sketch one, we’re rolling along fine. I sailed through the middle of a three-sentence line and finished it off, as always, with:

“So I’ve dealt with a lot of assholes.”

I don’t know where it came from. I don’t. I’ve never had an asshole just pop out of the woodwork like that. I plan my assholes, as a rule, and — like most people — I don’t especially enjoy being surprised by a rogue asshole in the middle of an important conversation. Especially not when it’s crawling out of my mouth.

Or into it, for that matter. But that’s another story, probably.

We made it through the rest of the stuff — yes, even sketch five — without further sullying of the public earspace, It wasn’t easy, but we managed. And maybe they even bleeped that gaffe of mine in the archive; I haven’t had a chance to listen yet. I just know it was a rocky start, but the surrounding Medford / Somerville listening area can sleep easier tonight, knowing that the first snippet of on-air potty talk was also our last.

However.

That doesn’t mean we’re taking it easy on Cambridge. That studio there is a private, closed, buy-a-ticket-to-get-in joint. There are no rules on what you can say and not say. So while I thank Kris for his airtime and hospitality, and greatly enjoyed tonight’s rehearsal exercise, I can also tell you this:

There are going to be some assholes flying around Central Square this Saturday evening. And that’s not all. There’s also sketch five. You know the one I’m talking about.

Oh, yeah. Come and see that, kiddos. And leave your *BLEEP*ing *BLEEP* *BLEEP*ers in the *BLEEP*ing nursery, junior.

It’s GO time.