Kids are so smart.
Take Jamie Wedow, 14, of Warrenville, older brother to Lindsey, 6;
Phillip, 3; and Ryan, 1. Their dad, Mark, 39, has an unusual job. He`s a jack- of-all-arts kind of guy-musician, makeup and costume artist, cartoonist, actor, ventriloquist, magician.
But, does Jamie think his dad`s work is weird? Keep in mind his father bakes foam rubber latex head masks in the oven (”Ah, the wafting smell of cooking tires,” says wife Kelly).
Wedow entertains suit `n` tie types at corporate lunches, shopping center events, schools, libraries and charity functions in made-from-scratch getups that run a goofy gamut from a giant bunny with a lisp (E. Bunny Furrington) to a mega-ugly, Halloween drooly goon (Malice) whom his mother, Dorothy, took one look at and screeched, ”That`s your grandfather.”
”He`s cool,” said Jamie, Wedow`s son from a previous marriage and who has been known to appear as The Singing Clam, sidekick to dad as Seaweed Sam. Cool? What`s a guy, conservatively bred on an acre-plus country homesite in Warrenville, doing in local taverns, winning costume contests in his
”First Alien Elvis Impersonator” ensemble?
He has a real part-time job, as a civil engineering technician-a surveyor. He`s an accomplished musician on rhythm guitar, trumpet and keyboards, not to mention the ukelele.
He`s the responsible, oldest child, one of five born to Dorothy and Robert Wedow, who still live in Warrenville. His dad spent 35 years repairing phone lines for Ma Bell and claims he only influenced Mark`s future with a little papier-mache fun. ”We mixed some goo up and made little masks together when he was 5,” said Robert Wedow.
He`s married to a nice, radiologic technologist who works in Central Du Page Hospital, Winfield.
Kelly said, ”We were married in the Little Chapel of the West in Las Vegas 10 years ago and it`s been blissful since, if you don`t count the heads in the oven.”
Wedow`s 9-year-old nephew Alan Hackert said, ”He`s smart. He`s really nice. And, most of all he`s really good at figuring things out instead of complaining all over the place.”
A smart boy himself, Alan, of Warrenville, has spent ”lots of hours”
performing as Santa Claus` (a.k.a. Wedow`s) 100-year-old elf Benny.
One thing Wedow seems good at figuring out is how to help people have fun. He said, ”I can`t help it. I was born to boogie, man; or maybe I was born the bogyman.”
He does it anywhere kids can be found (parties, schools, library events)
with a story-telling series that includes ”Santa`s Magic Door,” ”Search for the Golden Key” and ”The Lost Treasure of Pinkleg the Pirate,” among others. Each one combines magic, song and group goofiness as Wedow flips his wigs to play multiple roles.
He gives demonstrations, with Bela Lugosi glee, on how he conjures full-head masks (to top off hand-sewn costumes) from a cauldron of icky stuff such as algenate rubber, plaster bandages, Styrofoam and clay.
He does it anywhere adults gather. A master of disguise, he emcees anything from a recent corporate gala in a posh downtown penthouse to holiday happenings in local shopping malls such as Hinsdale Lake Commons in Willowbrook, Westridge Court in Naperville and Townes Crossings in Oswego.
(”You know-I`m Mrs. Claus or the Easter Bunny`s cousin. I`m rarely the main event.”)
Wedow said, ”I like to see people enjoy themselves; I`ll try anything to get them to interact with whatever character I am. I really become the character and I enhance the costume with electronic gizmos invented to startle and amaze.”
It works. Take monster Malice, who visits during autumn weekends at Sonny Acres Farm Market in West Chicago. He`s an ugly curmudgeon with a kind heart and a yen to be a ballerina. He totes a caged, winged monkey/boy puppet with a spring-loaded jaw, whose name used to be Bartholomew until some witches turned him into Tagora-but that`s another story.
When Malice tells kids, ”Now, don`t put your fingers in the cage,” you can guess what happens. Interaction guaranteed.
It seems some grownups think he`s cool, too.
Bob Felton, festival coordinator at Sonny Acres, said, ”Mark is a terrific storyteller. His costuming is superb. He really gets into his characters, and even adults are drawn in.”
Karen Guerra, marketing director at Yorktown Shopping Center, Lombard, knows Wedow is a crowd pleaser. She calls him for special events performances ”with just an idea for an event . . . and he runs with it to create something unique.”
Take Luigi Spumoni and his pet monkey Choo Chee, who recently toddled around during the shopping center`s Baby Olympics event.
Although a number of future athletes broadjumped into their moms` laps when approached by other costumed characters who worked the crowd, Luigi and Choo Chee had `em rolling on the floor, tickling Choo Chee and climbing Luigi as if he were a talking jungle gym.
”Mark isn`t doing a job when he works. He`s involved. He genuinely cares about the people he performs for,” said Joanna Hildt of Hildt & Associates, whose Bloomingdale marketing and advertising firm hires Wedow for special events.
Case in point: When Santa Claus visited Marklund Children`s Home in Bloomingdale, ”Tots who usually show little or limited reaction to stimuli were wiggling and smiling, responding with whatever way they had to show delight,” Hildt said.
Judy Somerlot, teacher and librarian at C.A. Johnson School, Wheaton/
Warrenville District 200, seconds that emotional response that Wedow has a knack for getting out of audiences.
She said, ”Fourth graders, the kids Mark entertained near Halloween by showing them how he makes his masks, don`t have lengthy attention spans. I really didn`t know what to expect, but Mark (whose daughter Lindsey attends the school) had volunteered his time.
”The students, which included two special education classes, were mesmerized. I mean sit-down, don`t-miss-anything mesmerized.
”He flitted from one thing to another, passing things around, having the kids try masks on, basically being more of a kid than the kids. They were really involved.”
That`s what Wedow lives for. That`s the burn he goes for-to fire imagination. He does it with a little goose to the grownup side, a rib-jibe to the kid inside. Adults who know him call it variously ”Peter-Pan quality,”
”a child-like sense of play,” or, as Rick Lukow, friend and president of Party People Enterprises Inc., a creative-event coordinating firm in Glendale Heights, said, ”Mark just has a natural-given talent for being crazy.”
Kids understand that.
They understand the sense behind the silliness, the mind behind the mischief.
Wedow is a comic genie with a genius for rubbing people the right way, for jiggling an inner joy stick that jolts downer demons like depression and despair.
He has battled a few of his own.
Kelly said, ”Our youngest son Ryan was born with a breathing problem. He spent his first 39 days in Children`s Memorial Hospital, Chicago, on a heart- lung bypass machine. During his first 14 days he was kept immobile. We couldn`t even hold him. He`s fine now, happy and scrappy.”
Wedow said, ”There were children in the ward with Ryan who died. The technology that saved Ryan is only about five years old. We are so lucky we have him to cherish. Kids gotta be cherished.”
Kids sense that. Maybe that`s why Jamie and Alan are content to spend hours and hours in Wedow`s kitchen, where Wedow helps them complete new characters they have invented.
Jamie said, ”I did one creature. I don`t know what it is. It`s big and green. People say it`s like Yoda (from `Star Wars`). I must disagree. It`s more gremlin-y. I`m half-way through another one. It`s cool. I call it underground elf. You know, instead of a happy little perky elf, this is a dark one, bluey-black skin and white hair.”
Alan is working on one, too, that`s ”more scary than a lizard. I took two days just to put the clay on one side of the back of his head.”
Why go to all that trouble?
Alan said, ”See, when you put the mask-part on, at first it feels real sticky; then it starts to get kind of cozy in there.
”You want to scratch and when you touch it, it`s like part of you and you feel like it, the elf or lizard or whatever. You become that other thing.”
Isn`t that weird?
Alan said, ”No, it`s fun.”
Wedow is working, too, turning the silly-putty plans in his head into the stuff dreams are made of. He wants to breathe more life into his costumes via more mechanical special effects. He also is getting into animatronics-creating mechanical creatures that incorporate special-effects technology, evolved offspring of the Disney-World variety.
Wedow said, ”They will do remarkable, as yet undetermined feats. I foresee a time when every family will want one.”
Don`t tell the kids.
