Earlier this month MTV comedian Tom Green came to Muncie, Indiana, and then his show was cancelled before the visit could be aired. If you are unfamiliar with his work, you can visit his homepage and purchase some of his works at Amazon.
It all started when Ball State alumni Andy Bell, Joe Whetsel, Jason Harris, and senior telecommunications major David Plough entered a video into the "Why Should Tom and Glenn Come to Our Town" competition. Then Tom's visit was postponed when he contracted the flu, but the Muncie coordinators of the event did not inform the public of this fact. Soon the event was rescheduled for a few days later when Tom had recovered from the flu. On September 16th, Tom and Glenn showed up for their scheduled appearance at the Dill Street Bar and Grill, where there was a lot of jell-o wrestling involving midgets. Tom and Glenn also paid a visit to the events coordinators.
The next day (September 17th), Tom and Glenn were given a parade in their honor, met the mayor of Muncie (who was booed by the crowd, even though he had helped to make Tom's visit possible), and received a key to the city. About 3000 people showed up to the event, and Tom was extremely positive about Muncie. Strangely, Munsonians were not quite as positive about his visit. There was one complaint, and these poll results are puzzling.
Then, less than one week later, MTV announced that the Tom Green Show would be cancelled due to declining ratings. This was very bad news to us in Muncie, since it meant that not only would our fair city not get its 15 minutes of fame on national television, but we would never even get to see the footage that was shot here.
Joe Whetsel, one of the trio of Munsonians who spearheaded the effort to get Tom and Glenn to come to Muncie, staged a rally to protest the fact that after all this effort, Tom's visit to Muncie would never be televised. I happen to know Joe, and he is notorious for sending out unsolicited e-mail to anyone dumb enough to give him their e-mail address (like me). Here are the two e-mail announcements he sent out concerning the rally:
E-mail #1
Subject: Tom Green Rally at Frog Baby & Video of Troma support on TRL.
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 19:20:14 -0500
Tommorrow, Friday Sept. 9\26, there will be a rally in support of The New Tom Green Show at Ball State University's frog baby fountain. Participants are asked to wear something green in support of Tom Green, but you are welcome even if you don't own anything green. Signs are also welcome. The person with the most flamboyant outfit/sign will receive authentic jello-soaked wrestling long johns with shorts, as seen at Dill Street Bar & Grill's tag team midget wrestling event. If possible, the Indy news stations will cover the short event.Troma films supported Tom Green on TRL this past Wednesday. Troma is in support of "any jalapeno peppers on our cultural pizza". Tom Green and Troma are some of those jalapeno peppers and not just the plain stuff. The following footage includes the sign from the official Muncie Tom Green float sent UPS to New York.
Click on or cut and paste the 1st link into your web address browser.
You must have Windows Media Player 9.
If you do not have Windows Media Player 9, please visit the 2nd link to
download it for free.
Choose the appropriate version you need such as Windows XP, Windows 98, etc.#1.
http://www.bsu.edu/web/jrwhetsel/TomGreenOnTRL.wmv
#2.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=4
-Joe Whetsel & Andy Bell
E-mail #2
Subject: I forgot to list the Tom Green Rally time!!! 5p.m.
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 20:40:42 -0500 AT 5 p.m.
Tommorrow, Friday Sept. 9\26, there will be a rally in support of The New Tom Green Show at Ball State University's frog baby fountain. Participants are asked to wear something green in support of Tom Green, but you are welcome even if you don't own anything green. Signs are also welcome. The
person with the most flamboyant outfit/sign will receive authentic jello-soaked wrestling long johns with shorts, as seen at Dill Street Bar & Grill's tag team midget wrestling event. If possible, the Indy news
stations will cover the short event.