Happy Birthday, Jimmy Wilsey!

[Joel Terry]

I'd like to personally wish a "Happy Birthday" to a man we've all come to know, love, respect, and cherish--Mr. James Calvin Wilsey. *big round of applause*

James Calvin Wilsey--or as his mother calls him, "Cap'n Beezle" (origin unknown)--was born on July 12, 1970, in the backseat of a Greyhound bus rolling down Highway 41.

Growing up in the small rural town of Ed, Kentucky, "Cap'n Beezle" took up several interests, such as farmer's daughters ogling, organized shuckin' 'n' jivin', and Bible repair. When he was 12, he received a Jackson Soloist and joined a local heavy metal barbershop quartet named "The Old-Time G-Spot Dandies," in which he honed his chops, both as a lead guitarist and a G-spot dandy; needless to say, women came from near and far, literally and figuratively, to see Jimmy.

In high school, Jimmy skipped class quite often because of his late-night gig as the house band guitarist at the Howe D. Doody A-Drankin' 'N' A-Fightin' Supper Club, located in the seedier side of Ed. Jimmy nonetheless graduated at the top of his class, earning a 3.99999999 grade point average. (He would have had a coveted 4.00 had he not constantly dangled his participles right under the nose of his English grammar teacher, Mrs. Gert Shrike, who was later found guilty of murdering her husband with a belt sander after he shifted tenses in a single adverbial clause.)

Jimmy left Ed to attend college at Cal State Fullerton, where he majored in quantum physical education. On fall Saturdays, he was Cal State's beloved costumed football team mascot, Tuffy the Titan, and on Saturday nights, if he wasn't making it with Dr. Belinda Unggh, the professor of his Teacher/Student Relations and Ethics class, he usually sat around the dormitory lobby eating a pear and reading a TV Guide. Finding a good place to show off and hone his guitar licks for a paying crowd was tough; luckily, perseverance paid off when a Marin County twenty-something's AMC Gremlin's engine block cracked, causing the accelerator to stick, which sent the vehicle crashing through the lobby. That hapless Marin County twenty-something's name behine the wheel? Chris Isaak.

After hooking up with Isaak's klezmer band, OSAHYSH (which stood for "Oy, Such A Headache You Should Have"), Jimmy felt he was going nowhere fast, until one day, as he and Isaak sat in Jimmy's off-campus student flophouse room eating corn chips and making up new vulgar words with Scrabble tiles, Jimmy was tuning a B-string he had broken at the previous night's gig on "Hava Nagila." Chris began singing the nonsensical line, "No, I-I-I-I don't wanna Paul Lynde shrub--the squirrel's baloney phone'll take your harp" over Jimmy's constant detuning and retuning of the B-string. Soon a bell went off between them--it was Jimmy's alarm clock set for 3:00 PM, which signaled their favorite afternoon television programs--back-to-back episodes of The Jeffersons and Good Times--had come on.

Later, after supper, Jimmy and Chris began fleshing out their early noodling, eventually finishing the composition and recording it on James' 4-track Tascam recorder, entitled "Wicker Shame."

Around 10:00 the same night, Jimmy and Chris went to the Student Union on campus for another bag of corn chips when they were stopped by a surly Cal State football coaching assistant and bully who demanded that James and Chris give him money so he could buy a root beer and bag of sour cream 'n' chive pork rinds. When they refused, fisticuffs ensued, scattering several dozen of the bully's cassette tapes from his half-zipped book bag. The cassettes had various comments inked on them, such as "WTF is this? Redneck jazz?" "This rawks!" and "I'll pass--tell Mo to give it to Mutt." The big bully threw Chris into recycling bin, and scrambled to collect his tapes, as if they were gold doubloons. James asked, "What's the deal-ee-o?" and the bully snarled, "My best friend's uncle is the head of Warner Bros., and he'll slaughter me if I don't get all of these band demos to him." Immediately, James had the idea to quickly and furtively write "A No. 1 Hit!" on the cassette of "Wicker Shame" he had put in his pocket after he and Chris' demo session.

The bully thanked them by paying them back their money, and told them his name was "Erik...Erik Jacobsen."

Within a month, James and Chris found themselves with a freshly minted contract with Warner Bros. Records and playing "Wicker Shame" rewritten by a Warner staff writer as "Wicked Games" on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. It was 1989.

Stardom came within the next couple of years for Chris and James and their band, Silvertone. "Wicked Game" was indeed a Number One hit on the charts, and the album, Heart Shaped World, had gone multi-platinum. Then things went downhill soon after.

In 1993, on the tour supporting the follow-up Silvertone album, San Francisco Days, a tour bus prank signaled the beginning of the end: Chris shaved off James' eyebrows as he slept. Two days later, before a gig in St. Louis, a penciled-in eyebrowed James replaced Chris' hair pomade with Vicks Vap-O-Rub, causing Chris to suffer frostbite on his scalp. After a couple of dates of having to play with a humiliating battery-heated turban on his head, Chris ranted at Silvertone's manager, Orgram "The Duke of Hooey" Harnlinsheckerson, demanding that either he go or James go. Not one to stand around waiting for a decision, James left Silvertone to pursue his new love: Skee-Ball.

James eventually became a fan-favorite all-star in the Greater North American Skee-Ball League, racking up an all-time scoring record of 115,236 tickets which he redeemed for 56,880 stuffed animals of various sizes and shapes. On September 16, 1996, at the Idaho State Fair in Boise, James went to pull his string of tickets from the ticket dispense slot when he suffered a career-ending paper cut to his middle finger--the very finger he relied on to deliver his famous "Comet Vomit" roll, which always landed in the 50-point hole. Afterward, as he packed up his Skee-Ball gear for the last time, Jimmy uttered one of the most famous quotes in the history of sports to the throng of newspaper and television reporters from around the globe: "Man, I hate paper cuts, don't you?"

Jimmy took his cut finger, took on the assumed name "Kwai Chang Caine" for purposes of anonymity, and began a three-year trek around the American Southwest in a quest to find his half-brother, Danny. He found himself in a skirmish with small-town roughnecks every Saturday night from 8:00 to 9:00 Eastern/9:00 to 10:00 Pacific, with commercial breaks every 15 minutes.

Eventually, Jimmy got married, started a family, and drifted into the TDPRI one day in 2005, thinking it was a website for "Today's Daily Police Report International," from which he hoped he would find information on Danny's whereabouts. How fortunate for us that he made that mistake.

And so I want to wish my greatest Skee-Ball influence and friend a Happy 37th Birthday, and may he find every joy life has to offer, as well as his half-brother, Danny.

Joel

[Scotland]

Have a Wicked birthday Jimmy.

[WickedGTR]

I am now using this as my official bio.

I think I'll go back a few years and use this as my official picture too....


Thanks Joel!

Jw

[Lost_N_Austin]

Have a Great Day Jimmy.

Just reading this Post made mine.

BTW Joel, anybody can Cut-and-Paste Biographies from Wikapedia

L_N_A

[getbent]

I thought Cal State Fullerton only played foosball...

Happy Birthday Senor Wilsey

[Arlo]

Happy Birthday Jimmy!

I wish you the best bro you are a gentleman and scholar! I don't care what Joel says about you I think you a great guy!

By the way that was a great story Joel

Happy Birthday JW!!

[CancerLeoCam]

--

[maestrovert]

Hava Happy James !

[TJNY]

Happy birthday Mr. Wilsey. A toast to your continued health and happiness.



p.s. - Joel has far too much time on his hands!!

[Tele295]

Many happy returns, Jimmy

[bowman]

Happy B-day, WGTR.
And Joel, that bio was better than anything I've ever seen on the Biography Channel on tv.

[Tedecaster]

I'm hoping that 37 is the new "29".

Otherwise, unless I can't subtract, JW was a mere child of 17 when I bought my first C.I. record. How depressing.

Happy Birthday Jimmy!

[ludwig]

happy birthday jimmy,

and great bio by joel(i'd get him to do mine...but i'm sure he'd just make it up! )

[popthree]

wicked gift !

nice one Joel

happy birthday Mr. Wilsey

[WickedGTR]

Otherwise, unless I can't subtract, JW was a mere child of 17 when I bought my first C.I. record. How depressing.

It's a wild guess, but I think Joel may have fudged a couple of facts....

I was 20 years old when my band the Avengers opened the last Sex Pistols how, 30 years ago, if that gives you a clue. Still working on the 'act your age' deal'-- it's not working out so far....

Anyway thanks again to all of my friends at the TDPRI, always the best place to hang out when you are supposed to be getting work done-

Jimmy W

[Paul in Colorado]

Happy B-Day, Jimmy!
I remember picking up those first two Silvertone albums in Missoula, MT while touring with Trapezoid. Ah, those were the days!

By the way, Joel, Stockton isn't in Marin County. Other then that, I think you got everything in the bio right.

[MandyMarie]

Well, I can't write nothin' up like Joel...I can just tell ya the test turned out positive.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Jimmy boy! I love ya like a sparkle tag and I hope this is the best birthday yet, darlin'!

[Skully]

Happy Birthday! You don't look a day over... uh... Just have a good one, man.

[Big Tony]

Have a happy one!

/ Tony

[OutlawSteph1975]

Happy Birthday Jimmy!

[Twangmeister]

Dude bro, you haven't changed a bit.

Just to correct a factoid in the bio, Cal Poly Pomona's agricultural studies program gave Jimmy the opportunity to develop a better brand of bull$h!t.

Happy BD, Sir James. I need to wheedle on down the freeway and buy youse a cold one soon.