Go Fish! - or - The Whim of the Wheel

Andy "Fish" McElfresh is the King of Over-Delivery. Ask him to build you a tree house, and he makes an airborne Swiss chalet. Ask him to write a song, and suddenly there's a full-length album with cover art and a world tour in the works. I asked him for one story from our collective past for this week's blog, and he submitted three along with ideas for a dozen more.

So, where to start? With the one about the man who covered his body in aluminum? Or the one about the famous person Fish accidentally ignored so he could take a 3-D picture of his dog? Or the one about why (he thinks) Warren Hunke hates his guts?

In the end I chose one with blood, guts, yelling, embarrassment, and the giant spinning wheel of fortune that Fish built for our first annual farewell concert in 1992, twenty years ago this year. That's as good a place to start as any, don't you think? 

Take it away, Fish.

Le Poisson

I know this blog is a forum that refreshes our memories of past greatness, but I would like to take up some space here by revealing a deep, dark secret that some of you may not know.

It was the 1992 Wheel of Fortune concert at the Westside Arts Theatre in NYC. Knowing I had little to contribute musically to the group beyond my usual breathy murmurings in what approximated a baritone, I volunteered to build the Wheel.

Still a newlywed, I didn't have much in the way of tools in our London Terrace apartment, so I turned to the handyman in the Zagat office where I worked. His name is Karol Stein, a Polish ex-pat who had become mentally unbalanced after losing 100 pounds in a 4-month bout in a Krakow tuberculosis ward.

TB, or not TB? That is the congestion.

His wife was Margaret Sophie Stein, a well-known actress at the time, having just starred in Paul Mazursky's "Enemies, A Love Story." However, things between Karol and Margaret weren't going so well, since he had gotten drunk and tried to push Mazursky down a flight of stairs after a screening.

Have a nice trip, Paul.

Karol made me draw up detailed plans of the wheel, and wouldn't let me borrow his jigsaw until he was satisfied that the schematic was structurally viable. Knowing his tendency to hover on the edges of psychotic episodes, I should have just ponied up the cash for a jigsaw, because I knew I would eventually own one. But publishing wasn't the big money world it is now, and his jigsaw was just sitting in his toolbag, right there outside my office. He signed off on the plans, I took the saw, and asked him what he wanted in return. 

"All I want," he said, "is ticket to concert."

Big money! Big money!

So. I made the wheel, returned the saw, and went on with my life, in preparation for the big day. My whole office (except for the Zagats) was turning out for the performance, so I didn¹t see any problems. And then the show started. The first couple of songs went fine, considering the timidness of my own contributions to the music. And the wheel, God bless it, didn¹t break, careen off the stage and kill the Hornors. But by song three, I heard that familiar battle cry, uttered with a thick Polish accent: it was Karol, drunk and furious at who-knows-what. I was convinced he would ruin the concert. All of the blood instantly drained out of my body. 

It took the combined efforts of David Latham, Paul Boocock and Karen Mulligan to haul him out of there before he got in a fist fight. In the lobby, he punched David in the stomach and ran out into the street. They followed him, but let him alone when he started screaming at a cop on horseback. They came back into the concert.

 
Later, when we watched a tape of the concert, I could hear Karol losing his mind after taking down (what turned out to be) a pint flask of vodka.

And to this day, if I am ever called upon to play a character who is instantly paralyzed with embarrassment, all I have to do is think of old Karol and the Wheel. And the blood, (maybe these days, only about half as much) just drains right out.

Thanks, Poisson. I couldn't find Karol's outburst on the video, but I did put together a little montage of your handiwork in action. Check it.

And here's a bonus clip. You may have blocked this out, Fish, but that was also the night we debuted "Concrete and Clay," your  first big solo with the Lemmings. And lest we forget, you and Mark did that arrangement - a much bigger contribution to the group's legacy than, say, a spinning wheel or a deranged Pole.

Finally - here are the other subjects Fish pitched for future blogs: Adventures at Sapporo, My First Salad Bowl at Chez Tey, Vern and the Jambalaya Incident, The Unbearable Lightness of Being at Vicki's Valentine Thing, The Amazing Transcribing Woman, Rehearsal Lyrics,

The Unmentionable Compendium, or Warren Hunke Hates My Guts.

Are you as excited as I am?