Stephen Himes

That is Steve with his hero, Al Franken. Steve doesn't just admire Al Franken because he got to play Paul Tsongas in an "Saturday Night Live" sketch, but because he's a comedian who "tells it like it is" — which means that whenever he wants to make a boisterous claim he can't properly back up, he just hides behind his comedy and calls it "satire." A brilliant racket that Steve wishes he could dip his hand in. Like a giant pumpkin pie.

When not flailing away at movies for the fine folks at Flak, Steve morphs into some mysterious, multi-headed boogeyman known as "Mr. Himes" at a small southwest Missouri high school, where he spends his time convincing children that "y'all" isn't actually a word, but if it were, it would probably be the equivalent of "vosotros" in Castillian Spanish.

He actually lived for three years literally across the street from the international headquarters of the Assembly of God church, housing the sanctuary where Jimmy Swaggart confessed to infidelity on national television. Steve has always been confused about why Jimmy traveled all the way to New Orleans to get nookie — there are plenty of hookers right here in the neighborhood, a few of which Steve has seen from his porch walking the parking lot of the complex after hours.

When Steve was able to escape the mean ghetto streets of north Springfield, he moved to an apartment which requires him to drive past the "Ashcroft Center" on the campus of Evangel University, alma mater of both Mr. Ashcroft and Benny Hinn's wife. Evangel's sports teams are nicknamed "The Crusaders." In fact, the whole Southwest Missouri area is just creepy. Especially the billboards for Yakov and Shoji. Steve admits to having seen Tony Orlando in Branson, but insists that the tickets were won in a radio contest in which he was able to karoke more of "We Didn't Start the Fire" completely from memory than any other contestant. Thank you, Dennis' Place.

In researching this bio, Steve clicked on all the female names at the left of the screen to see who was cute and who wasn't. He was impressed by a few, very impressed by one in particular, but he will never reveal who. Even though Steve stumbled on this by accident, he did want to say that Bob Cook is pretty hot. His dream is to someday answer Bernard Pivot's questionnaire with James Lipton, but since that won't happen, he would just like to go on the record and say that is favorite curse word is "chickenshit motherfucker."

— Stephen Himes (stephenhimes@hotmail.com)