Craig Touts Michael Winslow This Weekend!!!

TKC NOTE: Craig shares his weekend plans with us. Check it:

Man of Ten Thousand Voices
And Noises: Michael Winslow

Yes, we all know that Michael Winslow is the voice and noise guy from all the Police Academy movies that were made over a 2 decade long era. Yes, you can still see Police Academy I through VII almost every week somewhere on cable. Police Academy launched some pretty successful acting careers including Steve Guttenberg; who had just finished shooting a movie called ‘Diner’ with Mickey Rourke when he got the part, comedy icon and legend Bob ‘Bobcat’ Goldthwait; who currently is not only a successful comic but a writer/director and producer as well, and all football fans certainly enjoyed Hall of Fame Defensive End Bubba Smith.

Now here is the strange six degrees of separation between myself, Police Acadamy and these celebrities. Let’s start with Steve Guttenburg, I met him in my acting class in 1981 and he told me about a low budget movie he was about to shoot called ‘Police Academy’. If you remember Steve in the film ‘Diner’ was a little overweight. He dieted hard and hit the weight room and got himself a nice build and from there went on to have a nice career getting top billing in movies like ‘Cocoon’. Steve invited me to the wrap party for Police Academy…to which only five people showed up…of which Steve was the only one who was an actor in the film. I remember it was a Sunday, my girlfriend and I were lying on the beach next to Steve when the film’s director emerged from a nearby condo to tell Steve the movie was ‘a smash hit’ and that it ‘went through the roof even at the drive ins’. Steve told me he only got paid $25,000 and some extras for the original movie, but after that his price tag went way, way up.

I first met ‘Bobcat’ in the early nineties when I hired him to do the original ‘Red Friday’ in addition to headlining the comedy club in Westport. I’ll never forget that I was bragging to Bobcat that we had a Playboy Centerfold as his on-stage partner for the Red Friday event. Bobcat pointed to the young lady pulling a suitcase out of the cab at the hotel, where we met, and said that he had his own playmate. It was his co-star from ‘Happily Ever After’ and girlfriend, Nikki Cox. Nikki went on to star in the hit series ‘Vegas’, and went on to marry actor/comedian Jay Mohr. Bobcat still plays Stanfords, but rarely does stand-up as his current focus is on making movies like ‘God Bless America’.

To say Bubba Smith was a mountain of a man is an understatement. The Baltimore Colt Hall of Fame defensive end and former Superbowl champ passed away recently. Bubba spent the last ten or so years of his life living near me in Brentwood, California. We both met at that big gym in Brentwood which changed names about every five years, but it’s last was ’24 Hour Fitness’. Bubba and I often lifted together. Big Bubba’s best football story has to be his lengthy, yet very convincing theory that the NFL fixed Superbowl III so that the 9 and 5 Jets would defeat his 13 and 1 Colts to make the Superbowl ‘super’. Smith made many believable accusations including his own benching during the second half of the game which he found odd as he was the best player on the Colts defense, and the fact that his coach at the time, Don Shula would leave the jets and become a Superbowl champ with his new team the Miami Dolphins a couple of years later. Smith implied that was Don’s reward for throwing the game. Was it really fixed? Who knows? Bubba did give me a taped interview on the subject which he allowed me to play on Kansas City sports radio a year later. Even though Bubba was big as a house, he was a kind and gentle man and I was sorry for his passing.

Michael Winslow began working at Stanfords when he took the stage at our Metcalf location in the late eighties. I met Michael and had no idea that he and I woud become very close friends over the next 20 years. Michael has probably done somewhere between fifteen and twenty appearances at various Stanford’s locations in Kansas City. In fact his family and my former wife and myself went on a Caribbean cruise on a gorgeous Italian cruise liner. I hate to report that the food was really not that good and I found the large ship beautiful, but boring. Thank the Lord for that casino on the upper deck.

Winslow’s show is more sight and sound than stand-up. He’s much more a modern day Sammy Davis, Jr. than a Damon Wayans. Though he is best known for doing his Jimi Hendrix impression, the singing and the entire band delivered by Winslow himself with a microphone and nothing else, he also does a wicked Led Zeppelin, a Cheech and Chong parody and his Louis Armstrong will bring tears to your eyes. The other most noteworthy part of the show, he shows Star Wars on screen and does all the voices AND sound effect. It is amazing. It is what we call in the comedy business, a show-stopper.

An extra reward for coming to see his show this weekend is also getting to see 17-year old local comic Aaron Branch, who won ‘The Best New Comic in Kansas City’ two years ago and prepares to leave for Chicago and more formal training at Chicago’s famed Second City Improv University. A great clean show.

If you have never seen the magic of Michael Winslow, now’s your chance. To get tickets, call the club at (913)400-7500, but you better hurry, they are going fast.

Follow me on Twitter @KCKingofSting.
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