"It's like comparing apples and oranges. Reno's two major gay clubs tend to have a lot of wrinkled, dried-apple type fellas, and Miami is a bowl of tight, juicy, 19-year-old oranges, ready for squeezing and juicing." – Lt. Jim Dangle of "Reno 911!: Miami" on the south Florida gay scene
Jim Dangle, the fruity dimwitted lieutenant who's in charge of a screwball squad, didn't just set off homeland security's "orange alert" with his steamy legs while in Florida filming "Reno 911! Miami."
"They're literally orange 'cause I bought this discount Canadian bronzer that it turns out doesn't work so good," Dangle (the alter ego of Thomas Lennon) says at Westland's Firing Line Indoor Gun Range and Gun Shop promoting his vehicle due Feb. 23 with fellow comrades Deputy Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenney-Silver of "The Ellen Show") and Deputy Travis Junior (Robert Ben Garant).
Dangle's picked up some pointers from his tanning accident. First, shell out more loot when adding color.
"Don't go cheap," Dangle insists.
Second, get a pal to lather it on in hard-to-reach places to avoid looking like a zebra. "Plus, applying bronzer with a sexy friend pretty much guarantees that you'll have an erection during the application, which is a plus! I learned this the hard way. When applying with a softy, strange rings can appear."
Apples and oranges
The intense color must've faded (though we can't say the same for the rings) because upon his stop in metro Detroit – clad in hotpants and sunglasses – the only intensity Dangle unleashed from his legs – including his upper thighs and ass – were due to the firmness of them. Dangle's fitness tip: lunges, lunges and more lunges.
"If you can do one more lunge, you haven't done enough lunges," he pleads. "If you wake up in the middle of the night and it feels like both of your butt cheeks have been bitten by rattlesnakes – yes, young Jedi – you have now done enough lunges."
In Miami, Dangle did cardio when he "dropped it like it was hot" on the dance floor at Mango's, one of several local gay bars he shook it at during his 90 minutes of downtime. He noticed that the gay crowds in South Beach are nothing like Reno's.
"It's like comparing apples and oranges," he says. "Reno's two major gay clubs tend to have a lot of wrinkled, dried-apple type fellas, and Miami is a bowl of tight, juicy, 19-year-old oranges, ready for squeezing and juicing. It's like Dorothy landing in Oz down there – only the munchkins are tight Latino party boys in banana hammocks."
Under-covers love
Lt. Dangle crosses one leg over the other and rests his black-gloved hands on his knee. Those trademark blue ass-suffocating shorts thankfully keep all intact, but Dangle regrets – of all things on a nipple-raising morning – not wearing his Spanx, which control some of his problem areas.
"I'm not trying to win some fashion award," he insists, referring to his Magnum P.I.-inspired shorts. "If I was trying to win a fashion award, I would probably dress in a different way."
Fashion award or not, the so-gay getup has lured viewers to the Comedy Central COPS' satirical comedy, now in its fourth season. Not to mention they've become a man-magnet for one of Dangle's co-workers: Wiegel. The two have a love-hate relationship.
"She loves me; I hate her," he says.
Somehow, the emotionally unstable, heavily medicated hypochondriac (and schizophrenic, as Dangle points out) lost a few (thousand) braincells. Also, she could benefit from a Gaydar 101 class. Dangle blames her issues on her upbringing.
"I was chained to the stove," she reveals, "but that was for safety."
Wiegel thought she was living with her uncle, until it surfaced that there was, indeed, no blood bond. The man was a family friend who Wiegel had to call uncle. During certain holidays, she'd be encouraged – and often forced – to sit on his lap.
"He said it was home schooling," Junior intercepts, turning to Wiegel. "But you learned some really fucked up shit."
Dangle adds, "The paint in the home … had a lot of lead in it. She would chip it off the wall and eat it like Fritos."
The short of it: Wiegel is clueless that Dangle's gay. The film makes that clear in a scene where she tries to get in his pants – or what's left of them. "She's got about eight parts of her brain that don't talk to each other. They're not on speaking terms," Dangle insists.
The 'nimrod' plan
Putting their life on the line (sort of) gives Dangle and the rest of the Reno Sheriff's Department an expected adrenaline rush. Or an adrenaline boner, as Junior puts it.
"You're working with a constant both mental boner and physical boner," Dangle adds, "or at least a three-quarter semi."
Dangle's right. The Reno Sheriff's Department, like a semi-erection, isn't all there. They're ill equipped and hesitant when trying to save a man from an alligator, they fall into – literally – whale trouble at a topless beach and kill more lives than they save.
But, as Dangle reassures, 30 percent of the time they're doing right even if the film makes them look like "nimrods." Dangle even has a crime-fighting solution.
"If you really want to get your crime rate down, start making things legal that didn't used to be – prostitution, gambling," he advises. "If we made crystal methamphetamines legal, we would drop our crime rate in half. On paper, we'd be the safest city in America."
"Reno 911!: Miami"
In theaters Feb. 23
Rated R
