[the Writing of Kuypers]    [JanetKuypers.com]    [Bio]    [Poems]    [Prose]

My Afternoon with Jerry Springer Janet Kuypers, 05/05/09     So I heard that the Jerry Springer Show, which has been recording from their studio in Chicago for 18 years, was going to move its studios to Connecticut recently.     Now I know, who really cares, right? But I thought, hey, as tacky as this is, the Jerry Springer Show is an icon of sorts to Chicago (and if you wanted something more tasteful, go to Oprah down the street). And I suppose I have seen a few episodes over the years (and they have been getting more and more tacky over thee years, with the addition of a stripper pole and women in the studio audience wanting to show their breasts to earn Mardi-Gras-styled “Jerry Springer beads” so they can have morals as low as the guests on stage), but I thought that if the Jerry Springer Show was leaving Chicago, I should see if we can get tickets to go.     So on the week of our 9-year wedding anniversary, my husband got free tickets for us to see the show. And because I had to, I brought my collection books and my epic novel to the studio, to hopefully be able to give them to Jerry Springer. I figured that I have extra copies, and people like Rush Limbaugh and the Ayn Rand Institute and the Libertarian Party Library have a copy of my epic novel The Key To Believing, and performance artist Laurie Anderson and actor William Peterson (best known from SCI) have my poetry collection book Oeuvre, my prose collection book Exaro Versus and my poetry collection book L’arte, so, why not let other famous people have copies of my books when I have copies to give them?     We got into the line outside the studio doors, me with my books in a small box (some people brought a book to read, but I read my books after writing them), and as finally walked to the studio doors, I asked an user there if there was any place I could leave my books to give to Jerry Springer. The woman told me to just hold onto them, because Mr. Springer comes out and talks to the studio audience before the show and answers questions, so I could give me books to him then.      Well, cool. I was only able to talk to Laurie Anderson at length (because from past performance of hers I had given her those books as well as my first book Hope Chest in the Attic and a Scars Publications collection book, I believe it was Blister and Burn), so it will be cool to be able to give my books to Jerry Springer in person, and explain why I am giving him the books.     Todd Schultz (the Unit Manager for the Jerry Springer Show) came out first to explain all of the technical details of how the audience is supposed to react during the show (yes, even though it is an impromptu interview with a bunch of unstable people, the audience has to be properly cued on how to appropriately make noise). We were given hand signals of when to cheer, when to applaud, when to all thrust our fists up in the air and yell “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry” in unison, and (of course) when to pipe down (you know, so Jerry can ask all of hisinsightful questions). Eventually Jerry Springer came out, and started what in some respects seemed like a one-man comedy routine, with jokes about his bad luck in relationships (fitting, of course, for the Jerry Springer Show). He even made jokes about the fact that Osama Bin Laden (because you have to incorporate political issues into the comedy routine) should appear on the Jerry Springer Show, because he is such an unstable man with issues (who is perfect for what the Jerry Springer Show is looking for, I suppose).     Then again, maybe having Osama Bin Laden appear on the Jerry Springer Show would be a worse punishment than what a lot of other people would do to him.     When Jerry Springer asked if anyone had questions, I raised my hand and was the first to talk. I told him that because he has entertained people for so many years, I (as a publisher and book writer) wanted to give him a gift of a few books. He was very thankful, and as he took the books he asked what the books were of, and I said there was a novel and collection books of poetry, prose and art. That’s when Jerry made the joke upon seeing the art book L’arte by saying something a little dirtier than “co-ed pictures”, but then thanked me again for the gift.     Another person there asked for confirmation if the studio production was moving to Connecticut, and Jerry said that it was, though it was not his decision. Apparently, NBC was moving a lot of its talk shows (you know, not only the Jerry Springer Show, but also shows even like Montel’s) to Connecticut (probably for tax reasons). Jerry said that he enjoyed Chicago and wished they weren’t moving, but the choice was not his.     And of anyone is interested, Jerry Springer is regularly asked about running for political office, and someone in the audience asked him about that as well. Jerry said he has thought about the idea, but the only place he would run is in Ohio (in 1977, he ran as a Democrat and was elected mayor of Cincinnati from 1977 to 1978 by the largest margin in city history). People in the audience then even jokingly suggested he could beat Daley if he ran for Mayor of Chicago, (wonderful, one strange man for another, great idea guys).     Jerry also apologized for the red in his eyeball, apparently his eyeball was completely reddened, even though there was noting really physically wrong with his eye (he just apologized to us in the audience for it looking so funny, since it would be red like this for probably another three weeks). He even checked for the recording of the show, and the camera could never pick up any redness in his eye, so the show was ready to start.     As Jerry left the stage to get ready for the show, Todd came back out and told us to be cued for 40 seconds of maddening applause for the beginning of the show, and to see Jerry Springer walk around the upstairs balcony of the stage (which was surprisingly small, compared to seeing it on a television screen, I always thought the stage was larger) and slide down in the fire pole to get to the main stage (which he did, and I was really surprised to see him to that).     We were seated in the center of the second tier of seats, which gave us pretty mich a perfect view of everything. The first guests were introduced (after all of our appropriate loud applause and Jerry chanting, of course), and a married woman told us a story about her lesbian sister, who had a steady partner, and they wanted to have children. So they apparently came to the agreement that the married woman would “help” her husband release his load, then they would (no lie) heat the semen in a microwave (to make it warm for the woman? Well, that would probably kill the semen, but we won’t get into that), and then use (again, no lie) a turkey baster to attempt to inseminate the married woman’s sister’s partner. And to make the story more interesting (because a turkey baster for inseminating your lesbian sister’s girlfriend with your husband’s semen isn’t interesting enough), since the turkey baster (Thanksgiving should be fun at this house) was too painful for the lesbian’s girlfriend, the woman decided to have sex with the husband twice to try to get pregnant. (And they did a test at the Jerry Springer Show, and the woman didn’t get pregnant form the sex with the woman’s husband.)     The husband’s explanation was that he wanted to see if he could turn a lesbian straight by having sex with her. (Sounds like a real winner of a husband you’ve got there, lady.) His attempts at turn a lesbian straight didn’t work, and the two sisters now have to settle their anger and mend their broken trust (which will take longer than the recording of a Jerry Springer episode to figure out).     The second story was about a man (which a nice gold grill, by the way) who told the story of his girlfriend who was not often around, and her cousin, who originally needed a ride to her hotel when she came into town to visit, made the moves of this man, and they ended up having sex (he explained to Jerry that he couldn’t help it, it was his hormones, he just couldn’t help it). Then he explained that after they had sex, he gave her $100 (what? What for? She wasn’t a hooker, as far as I know), but then she left. Later she came back into town, was texting him a lot, and they ended up having sex again (apparently he really has a lot of hormones he has to wrestle with). His girlfriend comes out, a good-looking curvy thin woman, completely disgusted with him. She complains that they never have sex enough together, so she can’t believe he has any problems with his “hormones,” and he has even done this before, so she doesn’t know if she could ever forgive him.     Then the cousin comes out, who is about twice the size of either of them, saying that she was only trying to get money from him because she has two kids she has to raise. And she realized that (according to the woman’s cousin who slept with him twice) that the “two minutes” of sex for his money was all show on the man’s part (that he would have a single $50 dollar bill wrapped around a bunch of ones to make it look to other like he had more money). “You still came back, for two minutes,” the man said (which was funny to hear). So for story number two, instead of two sisters, two cousins will have to decide if they can mend their relationships.     And you know, the third dysfunctional family story wasn’t nearly as interesting as the first two – it was about a woman who met a man in prison (they passed notes to each other with a kite from cell to cell, and then they both got out of prison at the same time, but after she got pregnant within three months he started sleeping with her sister, who claimed to like him before her prison sister knew him, blah blah blah). With these three stories, it’s easy to remember the turkey baster story, and we even had a comment ready for my husband to say at the end of the show about the man with the gold grill having sex with a woman twice his girlfriend’s size. But at the pre-ordained “commercial break” time, Todd explained that they needed a good 20 questions from people, and that a lot of women can’t ask for Jerry Beads, because they only give away one or two per show (oh darn, so a ton of women won’t be getting naked for this show, what is a girl to do). I even brought an old set of my own Mardi Gras beads along (that I got from not stripping, thank you) to potentially give to Jerry (since he gives away bead but never gets any), but I didn’t wear them around my neck (because people would assume that I would want to strip for everyone then, and I’m sorry, I like my morals too much and didn’t want to give them away like that). So... Since my husband had the question, I kept my Mardi Gras beads wrapped around my wrist as he asked why, when the man with the grill’s girlfriend looked so tight, why did he go for a woman twice his girlfriend’s size? My husband finished his question with the comment, “All us men have hormones, but we don’t go out to hear any whore moan.”     So who knows, maybe because I was next to my husband for the network television airing, maybe I will somehow appear on television again (though I don’t know how much credence saying your were on television during the Jerry Springer Show is, but what the hey, it’s more television exposure than my Nashville Tennessee, Urbana Illinois, Lake county Illinois and Chicago Illinois appearances, I’ll take what I can get).           I asked my husband after the show (and the requisite breast exhibition) was over if he felt self-conscious about looking at women flashing their breasts with me sitting right next to him. He said no and that he really didn’t look much (okay, he could have been lying, but I have no idea), and then he told me that while we were waiting to get into the studio, he looked over all of the women in line and tried to guess which ones would lift their shirts. He assumed that only the ugly women would, and he said he even looked over the woman waiting in line, and thought, “Okay, that’s an ugly woman, she might lift her shirt. Um, not the next one, but the next one’s an ugly woman, she might lift her shirt.” (Yes, he said he was looking over the women to see which ones, by how ugly he thought they were, would lift their shirts and expose their breasts to a room full of strangers and a television camera). And looking at the three women, two of them fit his description of “ugly” (the third had small breasts, oh sorry, that was just my comment, how crass of me).     But I suppose it was a fun time, and it’s good that I got to see the Jerry Springer Show before it finally left Chicago. I mean, it has so been anchored in Chicago for so many years (hey, they’ll have to eliminate the Chicago skyline images from their Jerry Springer Show black-and-white logo I recently saw if they move to Connecticut). But in the meantime, I will be calling every Friday until I find out when the show we saw (and were sort-of on) airs (I think it airs at noon on WPWR in Chicago), so I can laugh at us being somewhat involved with this insane show before it left Chicago. Copyright © 2009 Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.