HUMOR: The Advance Is DOGE-ing Drew ...
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By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
Though Elon Musk and ‘Big Balls’ no longer appear to carry any sway with the Trump administration after the biggest break up since Jeff Fatt left the Wiggles (he was the Purple Wiggle who slept a lot), my editors at the FXBG Advance did find that some of the methods employed by DOGE did have merit and recently asked me to submit a list of my accomplishments for the first six months of 2025 to justify my position within the organization. (Helpful Reader Alert: I do not recommend putting anything with ‘Big Balls’ into your search engine. Especially if you mistakenly leave the E off of DOGE. I cannot unsee those images.)
My future biographers will certainly debate the best six months of my lifetime with plenty of options to choose from (I anticipate a two-volume biography and HBO miniseries). There was an especially good run from May of 1988 until November of 1988 when I played in the high school district tennis tournament with my doubles partner Doug, graduated 41st out of a class of 241 from Exeter Senior High School, matriculated at Mary Washington College, and bought a poster of the singer Kate Bush in a leotard titled “Wuthering Heights” which became formative in my choice to become an English major. (My legal counsel has suggested I also mention my marriage in 2001 as a career highlight along with the births of both of my children even if the youngest one was a pain in the ass for the first couple of years.)
But I feel that there have been some landmark achievements in the first six months of 2025, and I share them for the edification of my editors (in no particular order except my editors did ask that I list the FXBG Advance ad on local radio station 95.9 first):
Radio Personality: Starting July 8th, The FXBG Advance is running radio advertisements on SuperHits station 95.9. I am mentioned by name in the radio spot which means 95.9 instantly becomes my favorite radio station since WHFS left the airwaves in 2005. My father was the editor of the Reading Eagle newspaper in Pennsylvania and often did spots on the local radio station, Y102. It was not uncommon to hear my father’s booming voice come out of the radio at assorted times throughout the day and night. There were a few times in my teenage years when my father’s voice crept into the evening night with the same effect as Phil Rizzuto in Meatloaf’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights”. (Also, if you choose to subscribe to the FXBG Advance for the low, low price of $80.00 per year during this period they might decide to run the ad longer which means I’ll get even more airplay.)
Lyricist and Conceptual Artist for Award-Nominated Band: The Pennsylvania-based Celtic band Salt Hill released its first album in 2025 and the song “Past Tense” is on this smashing debut. “Past Tense” is my song. Sure, my cousin Shawn did a lot of the heavy lifting like making it rhyme, putting it to music, and singing it, but ultimately there would be no song “Past Tense” without me, and the world would be a lesser place. CDs are available at: www.salthilltheband.com but apparently the really cool kids have music streaming services and if you pull it up on your music streaming service the band as well as the lyricist and conceptual artist see residuals. So do that.
Second Place in a Microbrewery Logo-Naming Contest: A few months ago, Laudenbach Brewing in Stafford (45 Centreport Parkway, Suite 101) held a contest to name its logo which is a very cool logo of a horse rearing up on its hind legs and within the outline of the horse are elements of local landscape and history. The only thing the logo is missing is an artist’s rendering of beertender extraordinaire, Dale Scott, but apparently there were Name Image and Likeness conflicts with Liberty University where Dale was once the manager on the men’s soccer team before they became good. The logo contest was to name, essentially, the horse. My logo offering was ‘Mr. Cled’ which galloped to the finals of the logo contest. Cled’s Red Ale is one of the best flavors on tap at Laudenbach and was named for the owner’s wife. So, ‘Mr. Cled’ checked a number of boxes including an homage to the owner’s lovely wife as well as to the greatest talking horse of all-time. (And if you are about to argue that Bree from the Chronicles of Narnia was a greater talking horse than Mister Ed please recognize that this is a debate for another day and C.S. Lewis was not going to get me onto the medal podium at a hip microbrewery.) Unfortunately, the selection of the winning logo name was done by patrons on a random Saturday where I was not permitted to present my Power Point on the merits of ‘Mr. Cled’. The winning logo name was ‘Hufffmeister Von Gallop’ which is exactly what one would expect from a bunch of beer-swilling beer hall denizens with no respect for early 1960s television. Apparently it was not even close.
Very Funny Humorist: Abigail Spanberger, Democratic candidate for Virginia Governor, recently visited Fredericksburg on her world-famous bus tour. Spanberger’s campaign graciously allowed the Advance reporters two questions which was more than any other media outlet (the TV reporter doesn’t count). After I introduced myself, Ms. Spanberger responded that she had read my column and thought I was “very funny”. There is a chance that Spanberger becomes the first woman governor in Virginia’s history and, if so, the first woman governor in the history of Virginia will have found me “very funny” which I intend to splash across the covers of both my memoir as well as my first collection of columns. I also believe that college deans will choose this seminal moment as the cliffhanger to end Section 101 of Introduction to Drew Gallagher, The Funny Formative Years, before launching into second semester Section 102 of Drew Gallagher, The Very Funny Governor and White House Cabinet Years. Coming soon to a curriculum near you.
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