#Movember 18: Welcome Back Kotter sucked

Before I get going, don’t forget to enter the Official Movember Cuff Links Contest. Some of the photos I am seeing as entries thus far are hilarious. We will be out at a fundraising event event tomorrow evening taking photos of mo’s in the wild for entry into the contest. It should be a good time. If you’re into it come on by and dip your upper lip!

While Carol was taking my daily mo’tograph I decided to smile a goofy smile. This is how it came out:

I think it makes me look like Gabe Kaplan from that horrendous old sitcom (that I loved when it was first airing) called “Welcome Back Kotter”. If you don’t remember it, or weren’t even born, here’s the premise:

The show starred comedian Gabe Kaplan as the title character Gabe Kotter, a wise-cracking teacher who returns to his high school alma mater—the fictional James Buchanan High in Brooklyn, New York—to teach an often unruly group of remedial wiseguys known as the “Sweathogs.” The school’s principal was an absentee; the uptight vice principal dismissed them as worthless hoodlums and only expected Kotter to attempt to control them until they inevitably dropped out.

However, Kotter had attended the same remedial classes when he was a student at Buchanan and was a founding member of the Sweathogs. Recognizing that he is those students’ last chance to have a decent enough education to allow them to survive beyond school, he soon befriends them while they learn to recognize and appreciate his commitment to them. This extended to his students often visiting his Bensonhurst apartment, sometimes to the chagrin of his wife, Julie (Marcia Strassman).

Most of the major characters of Welcome Back, Kotter were based on actual people from Kaplan’s teen years as a remedial high school student in Brooklyn. As a stand-up comic, one of Kaplan’s most popular routines was “Holes and Mellow Rolls”, in which he talked in depth about the kids with whom he had attended remedial education classes. The names of three of the four major characters in Holes and Mellow Rolls were changed for the TV series: “Vinnie Barbarino” was inspired by Eddie Lecarri; “Freddie Washington” was inspired by Freddie “Furdy” Peyton; and “Juan Epstein” was partially inspired by Epstein “The Animal”; only “Arnold Horshack’s” name remained unchanged (although on television, it was never mentioned that “by the third grade even the teachers called him Arnold Horseshit”). [source]

Part of the shtick every week was for Mr. Kotter to tell his wife a really corny joke. Here’s a particularly racist one I am better Gabe Kaplan wishes he could take back:

Wow! Nice one. That actually made me squirm.

I told you the show sucked.

More information and how to donate to Movember: Movember 2009 Info