[Chicago Slices raw: Aaron Freeman one man play]

AARON FREEMAN: performing "Disguised as an Adult," his one man play.

00:00Copy video clip URL B-roll inside a theater of a cartoon mural of Aaron Freeman’s face. Stagehands fraternize and set up for a show.

00:48Copy video clip URL B-roll in the theater. The audience members talk amongst themselves. They are seated at tables with candles.

02:29Copy video clip URL B-roll. Close up of Freeman’s cartoon portrait on the wall.

02:38Copy video clip URL House lights go down and then back up. The show begins.

03:02Copy video clip URL Margaret Bell, the pianist, appears on stage and plays the opening number which includes Chop Sticks and theme songs from 1960s TV shows such as The Addams Family and The Andy Griffith Show.

05:19Copy video clip URL Freeman enters the room through the audience, chatting in a friendly manner and claiming this is not the start of the show. He observes the various fashions being worn and scans the audience to see which of the ethnic races are represented. He introduces the stage manager, Chuck, who has an exchange with Freeman about driving on the Kennedy Expressway, a poor joke. Freeman again announces that this is not the start of the show and introduces the music director, pianist Bell. The stage manager appears on stage to change batteries in Bell’s microphone. Bell tells her joke. A duck walks into a pharmacy and asks for a condom. The pharmacist asks if he’d like to put that on his bill. The duck replies, “No, I’m not that kind of a duck.”

09:37Copy video clip URL Freeman continues warming up the audience, jokes around. He encourages the audience to drink more. “The more you drink the funnier I seem.” He says the show is about to start and it will be erudite and intellectual.

10:22Copy video clip URL The show begins. Freeman says he is disguised as a grown up. He’s not actually had to become an adult, he merely has to behave like a grown up without actually having to be an adult. He tells humorous anecdote about pretending to be an adult in a business meeting: you just need to sit at a conference table in a suit, spout big words.

11:25Copy video clip URL He talks rapidly and humorously about the nature of God, who God is, the theology in the Star Wars movies. The Force, Freeman argues, is like duct tape. It has a light side and a dark side and it holds everything in the universe together.

13:27Copy video clip URL Video drop outs. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman talks about the crux of The Big Bang Theory and how an astrophysicist, for someone religious, was like looking at the face of God. Freeman goes into a song about beholding the face of God.

14:30Copy video clip URL He describes himself as a survivor of Catholicism and talks about converting from Catholicism to Judaism. He says he hopes God is a woman because he feels a female God would be more lenient than a man.

15:48Copy video clip URL Freeman talks about Goddess Ishtar. He talks about an ancient Iranian religion called Zoroastrianism. They believe that God’s name is Mazda. He jokes about how even in the 7th century Japanese auto engineering was revered.

17:03Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman talks about his affection for Goddesses and his twin daughters named Artemis and Diana, the Roman and Greek names for the Goddess of the Hunt, protector of children and “killer of men who piss her off.” He notes that by day he is a talk show host. He gets to ask really smart people really dumb questions. He talks about how an alderman has put up a barricade dividing Chicago and Evanston to “protect Chicago from the shoppers of Evanston.” He humorously argues that if Chicago keeps Evanston shoppers out, Evanston might not come into Chicago to the bars and restaurants then the people in Old Town would have to vomit on their own lawns.

21:44Copy video clip URL Freeman leafs through the Chicago Tribune. Reads the headline: Yeltin calls Thatcher an “old bag.”

22:32Copy video clip URL Video drop outs. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman continues about the Tribune headline and how the Russians don’t have the idea of the political insult down like the Brits, illustrating this with an anecdote about a debate between Parliament members Benjamin Disraeli and Gladstone. When Gladstone accused Disraeli of being a scoundrel and swore he would be hung at the gallows or dead from some venereal disease, Disraeli replied that would be because he either embraced Gladstone politics or his mistress. He notes a similarly humorous exchange in Congress recently.

24:33Copy video clip URL Freeman talks about an event in Chicago when Nelson Mandela visited and how many leaders complimented Mandela on his humanitarian and political effort while Mayor Daley complimented Mandela on his suit.

25:40Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman reads a story of a baby stolen from a county hospital. The mother had asked the thief, an acquaintance of the mother, to hold the baby while she went to restroom. Freeman expounds on how the father was in the room too and how men never are trusted to hold a baby. He argues that men are good with babies, we just have a more relaxed attitude about it and goes on to give funny examples.

26:48Copy video clip URL Freeman reads an article about a recent filibuster on national service plan.

28:49Copy video clip URL He reads article an article on Senate approving a new Surgeon General and how Joycelyn Elders resembles Oprah Winfrey and Don Rickles.

30:18Copy video clip URL Freeman talks about men’s resistance to condoms and how disease has taken the fun out of casual sex and free love.

31:14Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman talks about a new experimental vaccine for HIV, but it only works on heterosexuals.

31:31Copy video clip URL He talks about a lawsuit over gays in the military and rants about Jessie Helms and his anger against lesbians. As a straight man he relates to lesbians because he doesn’t want to make it with men either. He talks about the new Vanity Fair cover featuring KD Lang and Cindy Crawford and how it is ruining Crawford’s chances of being a Pepsi spokeswoman.

33:44Copy video clip URL Freeman talks about whether or not gays in military is a civil rights issue. This leads to thoughts on feminism and sex with women leading him to think that the only politically correct thing to do was become gay. But then he realized he was not gay, but gave it his best shot.

36:42Copy video clip URL Freeman rants that gays have been in the military for a long time and homosexual conduct has been around in the military for a long time, but that’s not what gets you kicked out. It’s simply admitting that you are gay. He goes on to rant about how the military only prohibits someone talking about being gay and not performing homosexual conduct.

37:33Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman goes on to say that when homosexual conduct is discovered in the military it is dismissed as “deprivation or emergency homosexuality.”

38:37Copy video clip URL He talks about the eleventh member of a terrorist cell arrested for a plan to detonate a bomb in the Lincoln Tunnel. He rants on how Muslim extremists manage to recruit suicide bombers and keep a headquarters in New Jersey. He turns it into a mock game show on Jersey public access.

42:47Copy video clip URL Freeman sings a parody of Sinatra’s New York, New York with a satirical suicide bomb attack theme.

43:15Copy video clip URL Video drop. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman continues singing a parody of New York, New York.

44:03Copy video clip URL Freeman talks about sign language and the “fun” signs and how some ends replace phrases. He signs  while singing a song about setting free the spirit of the wild things.

46:56Copy video clip URL Video drop outs. Stop/re-start digitizing.

47:47Copy video clip URL Freeman talks more about theology, his family’s Catholicism and his conversion to Judaism. He says Judaism does not require you to believe in a personal God, but there’s a lot you have to do. He sees God as metaphorical. God is the name he gives to all the things he doesn’t understand, like the French and Jerry Lewis. “God knows what this deal is!”

51:04Copy video clip URL He talks about taking Judaism classes. He notes Catholicism and Judaism are both guilt-based religions. He’s learned that Judaism is an African religion. Moses was born in Africa,”yet he looked like Charlton Heston.”

52:36Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. He talks about converting his name to a Hebrew name: Aaron Freeman. He rants on funny things found in reading the Catholic Bible. He recounts a story about walking down North Avenue and coming across a white guy with long dreadlocks. He asks him about Rasta. He talks about what he learned the religion says to do if a man fears his wife has been unfaithful: he brings her to the priest and the priest makes her drink poison. If she’s guilty she’ll die. If she was faithful, she will live.

57:00Copy video clip URL He talks about all the dirty parts of the Bible. King Solomon: 700 wives, 400 concubines. He asks how many couples are in the audience and how many are in love. He comments that when we know and love someone we feel we have a license to improve them to make them more like ourself. He observes that in the beginning of a relationship the person appears to be perfect. The reason they appear perfect is because you are forgiving of their faults.

59:45Copy video clip URL He talks about how America is in love with Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL). He says we didn’t care whether or not she was qualified, just that she was a black woman. He rants on why she’s not qualified and the welfare fraud she was accused of.

01:01:05Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. He talks about a certain love we have for politicians that changes over time. And the difficulty in telling someone for the first time that we love them..

01:02:13Copy video clip URL Freeman comments on the many ways to say I love you. In German it sounds like an order. In Chinese it sounds cute. In Zulu language, which has no modifiers, one must say I love you louder with more intensity to express how much love they have. In Japanese “I love you” is said as a long sentence.

01:04:14Copy video clip URL Freeman notes the racist remarks made by the Japanese Prime Minister and goes on to talk about the hunt for General Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

01:06:26Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman acts out how he believes General Adid will be captured by Jessie Jackson.

01:10:05Copy video clip URL Freeman comments on how much he loves Chicago and talks about “Daley” being a generic term for political leader. He rants about Richard Daley and talk about why he likes Richard M. Daley and his efforts to bring casinos to Illinois.

01:14:12Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman continues to rant about bringing casinos to Illinois and the comical back-and-forth between the mayor and the governor.

01:14:40Copy video clip URL Freeman rants about the trouble finding a replacement for city clerk and comically rants about the city ousting Walter Kozubowski and his ghost payroller fraud.

01:16:15Copy video clip URL He talks about Hillary Clinton and her hair and how whenever Hillary changed her name Bill Clinton would lose various Governor elections.

01:18:22Copy video clip URL He talks about the officers convicted in the Rodney King beating.

01:18:38Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. He continues commenting on the King beating. He notes this would not happen in Chicago because Chicago police officers don’t have the energy to beat someone that long.

01:20:03Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. Freeman talks about his interactions with the Chicago police. He talks about Edmond Burke, who believed government should be the instrument of God’s will on Earth. This leads to a commentary about what it means to do God’s will on Earth. He asks how does a police officer resolve such issues with himself.

01:21:52Copy video clip URL In a one-man sketch Freeman portrays an Italian-American police officer going to a priest for help with a problem. The officer recounts something he recently experienced. The officer said he wanted to do something meaningful in life and volunteered to go to Somalia. He did and was directing traffic. He noticed an old woman collapse and drove her to a nearby village for help.

01:26:40Copy video clip URL Video drop out. Stop/re-start digitizing. As they drive, the old woman says she is very important to the village and she’s the only one who knows what to say. The village was filled with destitute people. A well had been taken over by the bad guys, surrounding it with automatic weapons. A woman trying to get water for her baby is attacked by the men. The man crawls off to the side to try and get a shot at the bad guys. The old woman looks up to the sky and chants. And the beaten girl rises then floats and stands on air. Wings spread from her back and flies. The people shout. The woman repeats her chant and all the destitute people sprout wings and fly. Suddenly the bad guys point their weapons about her. The old woman laughed and said don’t you know who we are? We are the magical ones. The ones you have told all the stories about. Then she sprouts wings and flies. The bad guys are in tears. The angels flew away. The officer watches them fly away. But, father, the thing I need to know from you is what I do with these wings!?

01:31:08Copy video clip URL Freeman jokes about various Pagan Gods and sings a song about the face of God. He ends the song by pointing mirrors at the audience so they can see themselves.

01:35:40Copy video clip URL End of show. Audience applauds and Freeman gives closing remarks.

01:38:09Copy video clip URL END