Still Nude After All These Years

As you know, tonight is the “really big shoe” celebrating Nude Hippo’s 15th anniversary. You can check it out at 9 pm on the NBC Chicago Nonstop channel (Comcast 341, RCN 50, WOW! 130 and DTV 5.2). There’s already a fun trailer on line, featuring the lovely Amy Zanglin, at Nude Hippo dot com. I have been involved, on and off, with Nude Hippo almost since it began. I had even taken some time to do a video on the joys of being a gay person who loves square dancing for the greater glory of all things Hippo. Considering that I’m straight, don’t like square dancing and am about as socially sensitive as an injured porcupine, I was the obvious choice to host that segment. You would think that gay square dancing is a very obscure niche that the episode would have been roundly ignored. BOOOOOO! It ended up being noted here where I am stuck between two oiled, half naked, men and Liza Minelli. She’s not obscure.

On October 19, 2010 I was again coerced into joining the merry band of miscreants that make up Nude Hippo. I had this to say about that then.

A long time ago, in a land that was pretty close to where I’m sitting now, I got coerced into joining the troupe that made up The Big Fat Nude Hippo Show of its day. That incarnation was akin to Ed Sullivan on acid. A bizarre mix of comedy, live music, cooking demonstrations, celebrity interviews and occasional poetry, the show was as addictive as it was uneven.

During that time I was conned into participating in a second Lossano production called You Think!?!  A round-table discussion show where the panelists had a wide variety of experiences to draw from but none of which seemed relevant to the topics at hand. My participation in that show came to a gleeful conclusion when I was parked aboard a fire boat at 6:00 AM on a Sunday and not allowed to have coffee. My commentaries were so profane that Tony was forced to take the least offensive thing I’d  said, “Damn Skippy!,” and edit it over the majority of the show.

The result was this lovely homage to the English language; “I Damn  Skippy want Damn Skippy some Damn Skippy Damn Skippy coffee right Damn Skippy now!” I believe that Tony Lossano still uses that episode as a training video on what not to do to people at 6:00 AM.

Nevertheless, time marched on, the Hippo Show matured, I didn’t and we all went our separate ways.

Even so, I’ve stayed friends with some of the cast through the years and have managed not to offend them too often.

As Tony will be the first to point out, my life has been different than yours. I’ve spent almost 30 years in the entertainment industry and have worked on hundreds of projects in that time. Some famous, some infamous and some just godawful. It’s the nature of the beast.

I was trying to think of a way to make that point cleanly when I noticed the recent post of the slumber party / pillow fight. It was cute, safe and nice. There were cheese puffs and a chick flick involved. Moms the world over would have approved.

Back when I was a younger man I wandered into a couple of young ladies having a slumber party / pillow fight in a cheap hotel. About an hour or so later, when the police arrived, I was able to utter (what became) a rather infamous line; “Of course I’m naked! Look at them!” The police officer, to her credit, was able to get out “You’ll just have to, please, keep it down…” – a command I was clearly incapable of obeying at that particular moment – before she burst out laughing.

No cheese puffs were involved. But, as noted above, my life’s been different than yours.

I also can’t see any moms approving of that particular Kodak moment.

So, I’ll be bringing you my peculiar take on news from around the world, occasional updates on what’s going on in my life and, if I get it right, stuff that makes you think.

It seems that, in some cases, I have succeeded. Barely a month after I started I wrote an article about sexy plumbers. Within a day it was part of a press release that was being quoted by numerous media sources around the world. That led to a bizarre litany on Word Press that chronicled anything I wrote on their blogs.

Some people have focused on a variety of different things in select posts. Topsy.com was fascinated with an article I wrote about a man who was jailed for accidentally having sex with a horse. Because, as everyone knows, these things do happen from time to time. One minute you’re picking up some milk at the local Quickie Mart and the next you’re riding a horse in a wholly unusual way. Certainly giving a new meaning to the phrase “bare back riding.” And, I would be woefully remiss if I didn’t point ot that Veengle has a complete video history of all things Hippo. Scrolling through their collection I found some stuff that isn’t available anywhere else. Which is kind of creepy when you think about it.

But I doubt that it’s anywhere near as creepy as the posts at Unitedsat Sateliski (click to enter, it’s worth it). You probably know them by their catchy blog motto; Dobrodošli na UNITEDSAT satelitski forum, uživajte s nama i budite aktivni u postanju kako bi dobili pravo pristupa svim forumima i podforumima. Molimo Vas da prvo pročitate pravila foruma ovdje i vodič kroz forum ovdje. Pozdrav!

Catchier than ebola, ain’t it?

I think the best proof of how Nude Hippo has inpacted my life can be found at Yatedo. When you search for Bill McCormick you get 41 results. I am four of those. Three of the four are Hippo related.

My point is that my work with Nude Hippo has given me the chance to reach people the world over in a way that I never could otherwise. And, just in case you don’t read Russian but are fluent in Japanese, you can head over to Rob Pongi’s, very fun, site. It’s also in English. Just in case you’re not as cosmopolitan as you think.

I guess I’ll just have to live with the fact that I am going to be a Nude Hippo for the rest of my life.

If my mom was alive she would be so proud.

She would especially like the weekly radio show I do with Ryan Gatenby on WBIG (1280 AM). Mostly because my articles are too long and about ten minutes a week was about all of me she could take.

Anyway, in honor of the anniversary I’m going to post some behind the scenes footage of a regular old Nude Hippo photo shoot. The stuff you finally see online in and the “mainstream” media is Photoshopped by Tony Lossano.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.