JOE McGINNISS

I can’t confirm the details yet, but it’s like…sooo likely that I’ll sign a deal this week with the VOYEUR division of F! ENTERTAINMENT to star in a fall reality show to be called:

JOE McGINNISS’s MASSACHUSETTS

So, Bristol and Levi:  watch your  backs!

The show will be both patriotic and inspirational (not to mention self-aggrandizing,) as cameras follow me around the state I live in when I’m not in Alaska, and I stage a series of utterly artificial events designed to simulate “reality” for those who have not yet made the distinction between real life and televised entertainment.

The following list of episodes is tentative, preliminary and subject to change, but here’s how the show is shaping up so far:

1)  “GRANDPA GRIZZLY” The premiere will show me in my natural habitat, coexisting–at the edge of the unforgiving wilderness–with my (not unforgiving) multi-generational family, even as I have to cope with the invasion of privacy posed by new neighbors who demand that I build a high fence to discourage them from peering at me while I putter in my garden (in my tank top, no less!) and frolic in my private “swimming hole”:

2)  “CLAM GULCH” Did you ever wonder what goes into making great Massachusetts fried clams, besides grease?   Follow along as I lead an expedition to the Clam Box in Ipswich  to find the answer.   Watch the grandkids take turns on the shelling line as Grandpa Grizzly bellies up to the deep fat fryer.

3)  ‘HE’S A GREAT SHOT!” No better way (except for self-induced vomiting) to get over a fried clam binge than by opening up with both barrels on defenseless stuffed animals.   That’s what I do in this episode, filmed on location at the Flag at Half Mast amusement park in West Persimmon.   Tension runs high as the wee ones try to outshoot Grandpa Grizzly in order to win the last pink teddy bear.

4)  “WHAT NEWSPAPERS DO YOU READ?”

It’s ambush time as I charge out of the high grass surrounding Harvard Square to ask the effete liberal intellectuals what newspapers and magazines they get their news and opinions from.  I don’t want to spoil the suspense, but can you say Mechanix Illustrated?

5)  “KNOW YOUR ENEMY” Our whole gang piles into the Subaru Forester for the road trip to Methuen, an all-too-neglected and derided community in the northeastern corner of our great state.  As Grandpa Grizzly, I’ll be bringing my seven grandchildren to meet all five of the Level Three Sex Offenders currently residing in Methuen, just so the kids will be able to know how worried to be if a new neighbor moves into the house next door.

6) “FIFTEEN-TWO, FIFTEEN-FOUR” Nothing captures the competitive spirit of Bay State residents quite like the annual Knights of Columbus Fr. Edmund W. Croke Council No. 4982 cribbage tournament held each year in Wilmington.  Watch me try to outpeg some of the Commonwealth’s craftiest cribbers in a no holds barred competition that makes Texas Holdem look like Old Maid.

7)     “THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS:  THE REAL STORY”

Not many events in American history have received worse treatment in the lamestream liberal media than this courageous attempt by residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to free their communities from the spell of witchcraft in 1692-93.   It’s time the truth was told:  there were witches afoot in Essex, Sussex and Middlesex counties, and the Salem trials broke their satanic stranglehold and paved the way for the Puritan Work Ethic that has made this country the great nation it is today.

With special guest appearance by Rev. Thomas Muthee

8)   “THE MUSEUM OF BAD ART”

It’s back in the Forester for Grandpa Grizzly and the gang (“Seat belts fastened, kids:  you’re not in Alaska!”) as we drive to Dedham for a visit to the Massachusetts Museum of Bad Art, located in the basement of the Dedham Community Theater.   Since 1995, MOBA has been displaying some of the most horrific images ever put on canvas, such as this new acquisition, titled “Sarah and Piper”:

But watch me upset the applecart when I ask the museum’s curator, “What gives you the right to call it bad?  Suppose I like it?”

9)  “THANKSGIVING SPECIAL”

No more fitting way to wrap up the season than with an intimate look inside the McGinniss family as it gears up for the annual Pilgrim Pig-Out that first occurred in Plymouth in 1621.

Each year, I try to give the grandkids a glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak, at some of Thanksgiving’s unsung heroes.  This year, we visit Cape Cod cranberry magnate Warren Smith, who first gained fame when he admitted to Wally Ballou in a Times Square interview  26 Wally Ballou – the Cranberry Man In Times Square that he’d never realized cranberries could be used to make juice or sauce.

Grandpa Grizzly and the gang will sample plenty of both.   I’ll also interview some of the very thankful migrant workers Smith now employs in his bogs as they express gratitude for being able to work for less than half the pay Smith used to offer locals.

So that’s how Season One is shaping up so far.  Naturally, I’ll keep you updated here, of course, about both the show and The Rogue.