Kinky Friedman Comes on to Promote Play About Kinky Friedman, and Talk Some More About Kinky Friedman

But for receiving just 13 percent of the vote, Kinky Friedman would have been identified this morning not as a singer, author, and Imus’s longtime pal, but as the Governor of Texas.
 
Not one to dwell on the past, Kinky is savoring the present and promoting Becoming Kinky: The World According to Kinky Friedman, a musical based on his life that will make its world premiere at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck in Houston, Texas on Monday.
 
“It features three Kinkys: a young Kinky, a middle-aged, and an older Kinky,” he explained. “It features Little Jewford as Little Jewford, and I certainly hope he doesn’t get bad reviews because he didn’t capture the character.”
 
Kinky believes the show’s writer and director Ted Swindley, who also wrote the hit musical Always…Patsy Klein, has struck gold again with Becoming Kinky, and he encouraged people to come on down to Texas, “where the men are men, and the emus are nervous,” for the grand opening.
 
To Imus, the best news about Becoming Kinky is that, well, Kinky’s not in it.
 
A fan as well as a friend of the I-Man’s, Kinky noted the use of the word “pecker” on this show last week. “If you can use the word pecker, then you can play Mojo Nixon’s song, ‘Tie My Pecker to My Leg,’” he said. Apparently, good news was just leaking out of Kinky this morning.
 
He recently wrote a piece for Texas Monthly magazine about how “real cowboys don’t tweet,” in which Imus is mentioned prominently as one of Kinky’s two high-tech friends (the other isWillie Nelson) who have disparaged him for being low-tech, or rather, no-tech.
 
“I don’t tweet because I have an alcoholic, drug addict personality,” Imus, who unfortunately does e-mail, said. “And I just can’t afford to.”
 
Kinky will be in New York on May 9, as part of his Springtime for Kinky tour that will feature Little Jewford, Washington Ratso, and some other person named Chinga Chavin. Though Kinky acknowledged Chavin was “the all time worst guest” on Imus in the Morning, the guy does have one redeeming quality.
 
“He wrote ‘A-hole from El Paso,’” Imus said. “There’s a real Cole Porter for you.”
 
While he’s in the Northeast, Kinky will appear at a Levon Helm Midnight Ramble on May 14, and Imus suggested Kinky attend a showing of Million Dollar Quartet on Broadway while he’s in town; that is, if he can stop thinking about himself for two minutes.
 
“That’s impossible,” Kinky said, proving why he and Imus are a match made in self-involved heaven.
 
-Julie Kanfer