The great omission of Tom Wopat

On September 9th, 2014, small screen legend Thomas Steven "Tom" Wopat celebrated his 63rd birthday.  Yet in his hometown of Lodi, Wisconsin, there was no celebration.  Not so much as a mention of what surely should be its favorite son.  For in Lodi, there is no roadside marker, no memorial bridge, no sign whatsoever designating it as Wopat's hometown.  In fact, a cursory check of the city's website instead proudly proclaims Lodi as the "Home of Susie the Duck."

Barely esteemed, yet erratic, blogger Bone set out to investigate this, one of the great injustices of our time.  He (almost) contacted Lodi, Wisconsin, Mayor (name redacted).  Their conversation (had it occurred) could have been as follows (but most likely would have gone nothing like this at all).

Judge for yourself.

Mayor: "Mayor (redacted).  May I help you?"

Bone: "So you say."

M: "Excuse me?"

B: "I'm going to ask you a couple of questions to prove that you are indeed the Mayor of Lodi."

M: "....OK?"

B: "Where do the Packers play?"

M: "Lambeau Field."

B: "Wrong.  We were looking for the frozen tundra.  We also would have accepted Green Bay.  Or, Earth. Question two, foreign policy: What is the capital of Uzbekistan?"

M: "Tashkent."

B: "Wow.  I have no idea, but that sounded like you really knew."

B: "Is it or is it not true that Adele works in your office?"  (According to the Lodi website, the City Clerk is Adele "Van Ness.")

M: "...Yes.  But how do you know Ms. Van Ness?"

B: "Van Ness?  I thought her last name was Blue.  Or Violet.  Or something."

M: "Van Ness is her married name."

B: "Adele is married?!?!"

M: "I'm not sure we're talking about the same person."

B:  "Does she sing?"

M: "I hear her singing sometimes when she's in the restroom."

B: "Are you admitting you have surveillance equipment in your employee restrooms?  I believe this violates Code 7.12.cc of the Wisconsin Statute of Limitations.  I can also cite the legal precedent set in the case of Tommy Lasorda v. the state of California."

M: "My secretary said you were with the IRS."

B: "Wow.  Really?  She bought that?"

M: "Excuse me?"

B: "Oh, uh, Mister (redacted), if that really IS your name, is it true that you hate Tom Wopat?"

M: "Why would you say that?"

B: "How else do you explain the fact that there is no historical marker, roadside sign, or other apparatus designating Lodi as the birthplace of Mister Wopat?"

M: "I guess it's just never come up."

B: "Oh, it's never come up, you say?  Yet what HAS come up is a huge-ass sign designating your fair city as the home of Susie.  The duck."

M: "People love Susie."

B: "That's not even a duck name.  Donald.  Daffy.  Howard.  Huey, Dewey, Louie.  These are duck names."

M: "Those are all fictional characters."

B: "Your momma's a fictional character!!!"

M: "Are we about done?"

B: "What about Daisy?"

M: "Daisy?"

B: "Yeah.  Daisy Duck.  Has a nice ring to it."

M: "I don't think so."

B: "Do you even know who Tom Wopat is?"

M: "Of course."

B: "Well allow me to refresh your memory.  According to IMDB, Tom Wopat is, and I quote, a virile, blue-eyed, dark-haired, plaid-shirted rascal on the rough-and-tumble bucolic 80s series 'The Dukes of Hazzard.'  Unquote!  Kinda reminds me of myself, actually."

(silence)

B: "What is it, Mayor (redacted)?  Is it a North-South thing?  Is there still a Civil War raging in your mind?"

M: "That's ludicrous!"

B: "And is it true that you are such a huge John Schneider fan that you have every episode of 'Smallville' recorded on VHS and always preferred Bo to Luke Duke?  Is it? Is it?!?!"

M: ".......Maybe."

B: "Ah-HAAAA!"

M: "Well, Bo did always drive.  And that hood slide was awesome."

B: "Luke could have driven that General Lee just as well as Bo!  OK, maybe not just as well, but he could've gotten them to the Boar's Nest.  Or Cooter's garage.  Or Capitol City.  Wherever they needed to go.  Eventually."

M: "I suppose."

B: "You suppose?  YOU suppose?  Well, look everybody, Mister Big Shot Mayor supposes!  Do you SUPPOSE any of this would be happening if Denver Pyle were still alive???  Do you?  Do you???"

M: "I don't see how that would have affected anything."

B: "....Yeah, OK, probably not.  You do realize 'The Dukes of Hazzard' is not the only thing Tom Wopat has done, right?  He does those AutoTrader commercials.  He was the voice of Wilkins Brother #2 on 'Phineas & Ferb.'  And, AND, he was in the made-for-TV thriller 'Taking Chance' with Kevin Bacon.  That's ONE degree of Kevin Bacon if you're having trouble counting there, Mister Mayor.  So stick that feather in your cheesehead hat and call it macaroni!"

M: "Listen closely.  I'm going to report you to the authorities and...."

B: "What are your thoughts on Coy & Vance?"

M: "If you ever call this office again..."

B: "Thanks for your time!"

M: "You will be incarcerated."

B: "Tell Adele I love her!!!"


"Things got bad and things got worse.  I guess you know the tune.  Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again..."

I thought Channing Tatum was a girl

Travel back with me if you will, to a land before Twitter.  In those dark recesses of 2006, the only way to instantaneously get your virtual thoughts about a major event to the world was by live blogging.

It was a somewhat laborious process, and one that I will demonstrate here for all posterity, by live-blogging tonight's Oscars.

Now, I should preface this by saying I am not a movie person.  In Trivial Pursuit, entertainment/movies is always my final pie piece.  I'll be up like five pie pieces to one, then have to wait and hope to get a question like "What does E.T. stand for" or "What was the sequel to Home Alone called?"

So this will probably be something like if 2 Chainz live-blogged the Country Music Awards, except with less profanity.  Some profanity, just less.

7:37 PM - Getting a late start.  Sorry.

7:39 PM - I have no idea who this host guy is.  Looks kinda like Jon Cryer and Dr. Patrick Drake from General Hospital had a kid.

7:40 PM - OK, that boobs song was stupid.  And I'm a boob fan!

7:44 PM - Has Adele already sung?  Because if so, I may have a tough time sitting through three hours of this.

7:47 PM - Time for our first award of the evening.  Finally!  And it goes to... some guy I've never heard of, not surprisingly.  Kristoff Holtz?  (Bone trivia: One of my favorite songwriters is Kris Kristofferson.)

7:48 PM - Oh, according to Twitter, that should have been Christoph Waltz.  Why was I trying to make him Russian?

7:51 PM - Paul Rudd is announcing something!  I know him!

7:52 PM - Paperman just won something.  I'll let you guess whether or not I've seen that one.  (Bone trivia: Paperboy was one of my favorite Nintendo games.)

7:59 PM - This guy is wearing a kilt!  Not judging, just stating.

8:01 PM - Ooo, I've heard of three of the nominees in this category!  Django Unchained, Skyfall, and Lincoln.  I bet none of them win.

8:01:22 PM - None of them won.

8:02 PM - Just an aside: I don't know anything about movies, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Lincoln was probably a slightly better film than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, if not as historically accurate.

8:04 PM - Another aside: I have never seen a single James Bond movie.  Well, unless you count Austin Powers.

8:07 PM - Life Of Pi?  I haven't the faintest clue what that could be about.  Though it does remind me of my freshman year of college, which I sometimes refer to as Death By Calculus.

8:09 PM - I think I always thought Channing Tatum was a girl!!  Suddenly, I'm totally reevaluating the mental image I have of Dakota Fanning.

8:14 PM - Anna Karenina is just now being made into a movie??  Tolstoy.  There's a tough read.   My brain is hurting just thinking about it.

8:23 PM - Halle Berry!  I liked her in Flintstones.

8:27 PM - Am I the only one thoroughly enjoying all these George Clooney crowd shots?  I think not.  I gotta tell you though, back in the Facts Of Life days, I never saw this coming.  I always thought Nancy McKeon had the brightest star.  Or Charlotte Rae.

8:31 PM - I have no idea who this lady singing is.  Some song about a spider's touch?

8:32 PM - According to Xinh, my resident Gchat movie expert, that is Shirley Bassey.  And just to be sure, I google imaged Shirley Bassey for the first time in my life. Yep, that's her.

8:53 PM - And... we're back!  Sorry.  Had to take a break there.  Actually, I found a site where you can play Paperboy online.  OK, that's a lie.  I simply lost interest.  This show has really gone downhill ever since Kilt Guy. 

8:54 PM - John Travolta!!!  Loved him in Welcome Back, Kotter.  I wonder what in the world he's been up to these last forty years.

8:58 PM - Jennifer Hudson, I've heard of her.  Not really sure what she sings, but wow, what a voice!

9:01 PM - I'm suffering from Adele-.... what's the opposite of fatigue?

9:02 PM - Vigor, according to thesaurus.com.  Adele-vigor?  That doesn't sound right.

9:04 PM - If they're gonna do all this Les Miserables stuff, could they at least do "Master Of The House?"  It's the only one I know. 

9:05 PM - Worst part about live-blogging the Oscars?  Having to italicize all the movie titles.  But I can't not italicize them!  Something very bad would happen.  I'm sure of it.

9:10 PM - OK, they just trotted the talking teddy bear out on stage.  I'm not sure how much longer I can watch this garbage.

9:15 PM - If I ever won an award, a teddy bear and Mark Wahlberg would probably hand it to me.  That'd be my luck.

9:16 PM - We have a tie!  A tie?  What a crock!  Next year, why don't we just give out participation ribbons to all the nominees.

9:17 PM - The teddy bear is gone.  Thank God.  I never thought I'd be so happy to see this Patrick Cryer guy in my life.

9:20 PM - Call it Oscar blogger's intuition, but sometimes I get the feeling you actually have to watch movies to get some of these jokes.

9:21 PM - Just a heads-up, if and when Adele finally sings, I'm probably going to bed.  I know it's only 7:30 in California, but some of us here in the heartland have to go to work in the morning.  Besides, Adele pretty much sings me to sleep every night anyway.  Sometimes gentle sobbing is involved.

9:24 PM - Anne Hathaway!  She was tantalizing in Devil Wears Prada.... I heard.

9:25 PM - Xinh says she probably got her start in The Princess Diaries.  If only it had been The Princess Bride.  I've seen that.

9:28 PM - Is it just me, or are the same six movies nominated for everything?

9:31 PM - Sandra Bullock!  I've seen at least three of her movies!  You cannot say that about very many actresses.  It's a short list.  The only ones that come to mind at present are Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, and the woman who played Adrian in the Rocky movies.

9:34 PM - Jennifer Lawrence?  There are way too many Jennifers for me to keep up with.  Of course, even one would be a challenge.

9:38 PM - Ladies and gentlemen... Adele!!!  That's gonna do it for this year's Oscars.  I'm pretty sure that's all the big awards anyway.  I don't know about you, but I think that went remarkably well considering I've seen exactly one movie that came out in the past year.  Let's have one more token round of applause for our host, the incomparable Patrick Cryer.  He may not have always been funny, but I rather enjoyed his demeanor.

See you next year! 

OK, probably not.

"You take the good / You take the bad / You take them both / And there you have / The facts of life..."