"Hi everyone! Vic Masters here again. To insure that each Vic Masters show you see is completely different than the one before, I always change the song list and practice what I like to call 'prop rotation.' This selection below constitutes some of the ones that get taken out of storage time and time again. Some of the greatest ones have actually proven useful away from the stage."
1. Hands-Free Bright Eyes Worklights Flashlight
"I'm quite a dweeb when it comes to opening the hood of a car and assessing what's wrong with the engine. But I feel like a real grease monkey whenever I strap on these babies which I picked up at a Checker Auto Parts store. Most of 'em don't carry this but I found a store where my man behind the counter, Rich, proved on the ball. He back-ordered dozen of these. They're great for backstage when I'm furiously looking around for misplaced props. I keep it in my glove compartment and they've already come in handy when I had to change a flat tire late at night on a deserted road. They're also great for hiking after sundown and terrifying stray cats out of their minds.
Price $8.98."
2. Mama Mia's Hand Tinted Portrait
"I never do a show without this photo handy but not because I love my mama. I'm not sure whose mammy this is but since my own mother forbid me to go into show business, this thrift shopped matriarch provides me with all the onstage encouragement I need. She's been through some rough shows-note the tell-tale bloodstains on her brow and the scotched-tape frame. I even subjected her to our violent salute to The Jerry Springer Show! What kinda rotten son am I?"
3 Stretch-O Boxing Arm
"Actually, I don't know what this thing is really called. It was manufactured in Taiwan and can punch a guys lights out from two arm lengths away! The best thing about it is the warning on the package, written in very bad English:
'1. THIS BOXING IS NOT SUGGESTED TO GIVE CHILDREN WHO ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 6.
2. THE BOXING IS POWERFUL ENOUGH PLS DO NOT TRY TO BOX AT CHILDREN'S BODY.'
Price $8.98."
4. Outdoor Noel Candle
"This prop never goes out of season for me. I use it whenever I perform a torch song, which is every show. Even so, I must concede that its manufacturers designed a faulty product. Quite often, the light bulb hits against the plastic and makes a very noxious smell. Once at McDuffy's (that same violent salute to Jerry Springer Show) we put a wig on top of it and its delicate fibres began smoldering. A good prop but only when used safely. Price $9.98."
5. Vic Masters' Simpatico Doll
"This prop dates back to when I was still being billed as the Morose One. It's a customized-to-look-like-me revamp of a Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame doll that was sold at Burger King for a limited time. The unrelenting pathos audiences bestow on me just after laying eyes on this doll is genuine and heartfelt. Especially when I stick it full of pins. Note: some fan stole it and sent me a photo of it perched atop the sign for the San Diego Zoo"
Price $2.99 with a jumbo fries.
6. Dancing Skeleton
This was a gift to me by my friend Tom Travers who's appeared on numerous Cabaret Revoltaire shows as a priest or a bouncer. People are pretty put off by death and don't need to be constantly reminded of it. But it's quite another thing to bring out a 2 foot paper mache skelton and let 'im dance. This constitutes the only time I was ever offered cold hard currency on the spot to relinquish a prop!"
Price $???
7. Lite-Up Devil Horns
"This here's my THIRD pair of Lite-Ups to date. I've never had much luck with this temperamental prop. It never seems to work more than once before shorting out. Like a TV evangelist, it keeps on going bad. Used in tandem with a hellish pitchfork, a rubber snake and some evil sounding music. Once while performing "Twice Nightly" the combination of music, props and these light-up horns frightened some poor spectator at Nita's out of her friggin' mind."
Price $3.99
8. Clown Alley's Silver Tinsel Angel
Halo
"In the interest of equal time, we included this saintly piece of property into the show. This was first used at the Trunk Federation CD release party where I got killed and came back to life to sing -what else-'That's Life'."
Price $3.99
9. The Bill Cosby Mask
"A homemade prop, possibly the scariest prop I have. Also used at the Trunk Federation CD release party when I dueted with them on "Jello". If you sneak up on a child wearing the Coz's smiling face and tell them that gelatin is made from horses' hooves, well, you can just imagine the years of irreversible psychological damage."
10. The Ten Commandments
"One of the original great props. Much more effective than if Moses came down from the mountain with just a scrap of paper. And still he had skeptics. 'Sure, Moses parted the Red Sea and led us to escape slavery-but what has he really done for us lately?' So sorta said the Edgar G. Robinson character in The Ten Commandments movie. Unlike Moses' granite stationary, these babies will never break and they get used nearly every single show for just that right melodramatic moment! Unlike God's law, Vic Master's Ten Commandments of Cabaret Revoltaire aren't so easy to break. Like: 'I am your Vic, thou shalt not put strange saloon singers before me.' You know. That sorta thing."
11. The Kissing Booth
"One of the more popular songs in our show has been Kissing Booth and the inherent drama of the song (a man erects a kissing booth and puckers up to every femme fatale until his one true love returns to him) necessitated that we build our own booth. As it stands now, wobbly, that is, the kissing booth needs a total facelift but I can't figure out whether people like it BECAUSE it falls over so much. Note in the bottom left hand corner we fixed it so Ava Gardener is about to kiss Nancy Sinatra!"
12. Sparking M-16 Assault Rifle
With Real Sound
"RAT-A-TAT!TAT-TAT-TAT screams the bloody red packaging of this plastic rifle which I purchased at Rawhide's but can probably be found at a 99 cent store. It's real sound resembles not so much the brutality of battle but rather the clatter of castanettes. Maybe they should've put Carmen Miranda on the package instead of Rambo. It's great for cha-cha-cha numbers but not cha-cha-children because of its numerous swallowable small parts that fall off rather too frequently for my taste."
Suggested retail price:$2.99