The Jonny Contest

Ja'Son Fogelson with his prize and the scar that won it for him.

1. Ja’Son Fogelson, who won yesterday’s Jonny Facebook Contest by having the most compelling response to the challenge “Tell something impressive about yourself in one sentence that few other people know.” Ja’Son’s award-winning answer was “I have a scar on my head from a childhood confrontation with Joey Buttafuoco — yes, the Amy Fisher Joey Buttafuoco.” It had everything – intrigue, romance, sex, an All Star cast, and best of all, one of my favorite ingredients of any story: violence against Ja’Son Fogelson. But Fogelson was far from the hands-down winner; there were worthy entries featuring celebrity namedropping (Wade Sheeler, Karen Sheeler, Bro David, Heather McPhee, Jaz Davison), outdoors daring-do (Diana Miller, Consuelo Brennan), physical disabilities (Douglas Boyle) and some really first-class sucking up to Jonny M. (Robin Fogelson, Mae Drake, Courtney Sherman). It wasn’t an easy decision, but the idea of Fogelson being permanently disfigured by a douchebag like Buttafuoco put a smile on my face all afternoon, and for his entry he receives an autographed photograph of myself, suitable for framing. That’s a $159.99 value if ordered from my web site JonMullich.com; it inexplicably goes for as little as seventeen cents on eBay, but there is no certificate of authenticity.

Julia McDowell

2. Julia McDowell. Regrettably, not all of the entries were prizeworthy. Dennis Gersten tried to con me into believing that he shot Garfield, but I read the comic strip every morning and I’ve never noticed a bullet wound on that cat. Laura Boyle somehow thought that her secret craving for anchovies would get attention, apparently not knowing that I recline in a bathtub-full of anchovies every night to try and relieve my rheumatism. But the most outrageous entry was from Ms. McDowell, who tried to get around the one-sentence requirement by delivering a diatribe about the brother of her ex-roommate who hallucinated about bugs that ran on farther than Ja’Son Fogelson being chased down the street by Joey Buttafuoco. It actually wasn’t a bad story, but rules are rules and if I allowed everyone to blather on at the mouth like that, Facebook would run out of bandwidth just from Al the Pal Taylor’s descriptions of his imaginary dog JoJo.

Jane Edith Wilson

3. Jane Edith Wilson, who was my Facebook-assigned Best Friend of the Day (BFD) yesterday. Jane presents Lit Up, the wonderful monthly reading series in which I made an unforgettable appearance earlier this month. The proceeds of the show always go to a charity which Jane introduces at mid-point in the evening, usually after giving her own reading. What fries my potatoes is that Jane has been presenting Lit Up for some time now, but has yet to invite my charity – The Jon Mullich Foundation for the Care and Feeding of Jon Mullich – to come in for its share of the pie. As shocking as it sounds, there are Jon Mullichs out there who watch their adult DVDs on a 42” flatscreen even though there are larger models available, and Jon Mullichs who have to limit their calls to 900 sex chat lines to under two hours because they can’t afford to go any longer even though that’s usually just when the operator really starts to like you and may even tell you her real name if you could only afford to stay on for ten minutes longer. It is the mission of The Jon Mullich Foundation for the Care and Feeding of Jon Mullich to end such unconscionable indignities, but it’s going to require money: the kind of money that only a bunch of loudmouth comedians and writers reading funny streams of consciousness (with one self-important jerk thrown into the mix who tells a tragic story about suicide that depresses the entire audience). So I hope that Jane does the right thing and makes the Foundation the next beneficiary of Lit Up. I can’t think of a better cause.

Me posing for Norman Rockwell.

4. Douglas Boyle who had the gall to suggest that he owned the copyright (or as he put it, “copywrite” – displaying a keen legal mind) of the world famous Jonny caricature because he had it tattooed on his forehead. Let me clue you in on some legal details, Dougerino: the Jonny caricature was commissioned from legendary artist Norman Rockwell in 1975 by Mad Beast International to serve as my official portrait, and became so popular that it was trademarked in 1977 and became the corporate logo of the conglomerate. The only time it has ever been licensed for outside use was in 1999 when the US government was permitted to use it on a postage stamp in my honor. Your personal use of it without the signed authorized permission of Mad Beast International is a clear case of copyright (or “copywrite”, if it makes you happy) infringement, and one of my operative (probably one of the Vulcan ones) will be by this afternoon to tear it off your face.

Larry Zerner in “Friday the 13th Part III”.

5. My old college chum Larry Zerner. In the wake of yesterday’s listing about Crispy Bacon and the horrific avenues that might be taken if a film of his life were to be made, there were some comments about old 3-D movies. Larry is the only person of my acquaintance who has appeared in a 3-D film, having performed in the 1982 classic Friday the 13th Part III (aka Friday the 13th 3-D) in which Larry played a character named Shelly who entertained his soon-to-be-slaughtered chums by juggling anything and everything he could get his hands on which was photographed at a downward angle by the 3-D cameras to achieve the most boring effect imaginable. I am genuinely terrified by Larry in the film; primarily by the sight of the massive Jewfro he sported in the 80s. Larry continues to get fan mail from his appearance while the only correspondence I receive from anything I did in that decade are letters from collection agencies for defaulting on my student loans, and for that I hope Larry burns in hell.