Kansas City News Blog

Janet Henry goes full Palin.

​The big news this week is that photogenic real American Sarah Palin has kinda/sorta written a Young Adult book about why everybody should quit their jobs. But books are hard and take time to read! Understanding the dilemma Going Rogue presents to non-elitists, local theater people last night performed the public service of reading Palin's book aloud at the Fishtank Performance Studio at 1715 Wyandotte.

There several dozen Crossroads types packed in a tiny room whose aluminum foil wall-paper suggests either '50s sci-fi or what life is like for a baked potato. A two buck donation was good for a can of Hamms. Organizer Lisa Cordes explained the rules: She'd edited the book down some, but promised "We did try to maintain the spirit, flavor and narrative of the tale." Also, we had to drink any time Palin:

• Mentions Ronald Reagan

• Uses folksy language

• Bashes the media

• Writes "Dang," "Give me a break" or "Bullcrap."

• Refers to any of the following children and/or potpourri flavors: Piper, Trigg, Track, Tripp, Willow or Bristol

Low comedy and much drunkenness ensued.

David Wayne Reed: Elitist

​David Wayne Reed took the first chapter. Fetching with a bit of scruff and his in-character black frames, Reed narrated Palin's account of an Alaska state fair with mounting incredulity. The cutesy, all-American signifiers piled up like chicken shit in a cockfight pit: footlong hotdogs, reindeer sausage, hula hoop contests, Right to Life posters with Palin's own kid's photo on them.

Rush Limbaugh has called Going Rogue the most substantive book on public policy that he's ever read. If by substantive he means "contains the most comparisons of cotton candy to clouds," he's dead on.

Philip Blue Owl Hooser and Heidi Van offered invaluable sound effects, making clear that pretty much everything in the book sounds dirty if you want it to. Of course, with the emphasis Reed slathered on phrases like "fickle polls," he didn't need much help.

Cordes rang a bell each time one of the drinking-game words came up, and such a rowdy good time was had that the chapter's punchline -- the justification for just why she spends page after page recounting a trip to the fair -- somehow surprised me.

You see, as she beamed that day at her kids, state, and cloying examples of rural decency, one of her Blackberries rang. (Yes, one of them, just like in a Rockwell painting.) Come to find out ol' man McCain thinks some of Sarah's gumption is just the thing to shake up Washington, so he asks her to descend to the lower 48 and ruin politics forever!

Gail Bronfman Bunch took over from there. Unlike Reed, Bunch sunk deep into character, reciting Palinisms like "I love meat" in a pinched and wheezy voice worthy of the ex-governor herself. Bunch's chapter contained the night's greatest revelation: Sarah Palin's love affair with the written word. On and on she went about holing up in libraries and poring over C.S. Lewis books. The highlight, for me, was Palin's account of winning a flag-related poetry contest as a young girl: "Mom treated me like the new Emily Dickinson."

​Emily Dickinson? Meaning, Sarah's mother locked herself in her room, and nobody heard of her until well after her death?

Hooser, meanwhile, humped the air at every possible double entendre. Also, someone's dog was running around. The woman sitting next to me pointed out that none of this seemed real.

"It's quite an event," I said.

"No, the book. It's insulting. It's written at a seventh grade level. It's --"

She tried to think of what it was, exactly, but sometimes there are no words. Instead, she grabbed a slice of apple pie whipped up by the Fishtankers.

Next up: Ron Megee, dolled up in an ascot and a ballcap reading "Bison Wrestler." He opened with Palin's account of growing up with parents who forbade even as mild a word as "butt." Instead, they insisted on "bottom."

"I'm a bottom," Megee added.

He also covered Palin's youthful habit of sneaking upstairs to watch Saturday Night Live without her parents' knowledge.

"Forehsadowing!" shouted Heidi Van.

Megee indulged in much improvisation, most of it filthy but somehow sweet -- that's one his chief talents.

Finally, up came Janet Henry in full Palin regalia. She sported the glasses, the lipstick, the 'do, the semi-automatic, and the moose-skin skirt. Henry gave the evening's most committed performance, not once breaking character no matter what madness that book made her spew. She worked the pageant queen angle.

"I played my flute, and I won," she chirped.

"Just like Levi!" Megee shouted.

Then Hooser hollered, a propos of nothing, "Keep government out of Medicare!"

Henry found comedy in Going Rogue's irreconcilable contradictions. Palin brags endlessly about her pagaent success, but also takes great pains to justify entering the pagaents in the first place as a purely pragmatic step, and make it sound like they were no big deal, and pretend her wins -- including "Miss Congeniality" -- were just something amusing that happened.

And then she goes and claims they were also providential. During one pagaent interview segment, the judges asked her about Geraldine Ferraro and if a woman could ever become vice president!

This impressed us.

Someone offstage read the judge's next question: "What do you think are Alaska's best attributes?"

Henry tugged at her neckline and jiggled her cleavage.

After two hours, the Fishtank crew had plowed through fifty pages of wisdom. They took a Hamms break, and then did something Palin herself never would: kept on with the job.

Look for video of all this sometime this afternoon. Or don't, because we might not get around to it.