PORKY’S REVISTED

Art imitates life. Or is it the other way around? Eight years after John Belushi and his cronies acted out the sophomoric pranks of a beer-swilling fraternity, a real-life organization called the International Society of Typical Males has taken up the macho torch in Dallas. And what they couldn’t glean from Animal House, they picked up from Porky’s.

“Basically, we’re egotistical pigs and we believe that it’s okay to be that way,” says Michael Davian, the ISTM head honcho. “We want to get backto the way things used to be before the woman’s movement.”

For the ISTM, toga parties are not passe1, nor are fashion statements such as hamster heads, bear suits, or initiation parties in which new members are “roasted” Dean Martin-style as they are inducted into the “wonderful macho world of manhood.”

This revered state involves activities like the “Battle of the Buns,” in which members take to a stage in bikinis and allow an audience of female fans to decide who has the finest-looking fenny. Usually, however, the group stages competitions with the fair-er sex in physical contests like mud-wrestling and spaghetti-wrestling.

“We just get crazy,” says Davian. “When people first hear about us, they may think it’s kind of rude, but it’s really just good clean fun, and all the money we make goes to charity” ISTM proceeds benefit charities such as Child Find and The March of Dimes.

More than 300 local men have rediscovered the joys of chauvinism since February, when Davian, a twenty-four-year-old Xerox employee, was transferred to the company’s Las Colinas location from Long Beach, California. The world headquarters of the ISTM came with him.

No matter where members live, says Davian, they are “the types of guys who would never admit in front of a woman to being too drunk to drive, and who always have an excuse ready even when they haven’t been accused of anything yet.”

The term “sexist pigs” really seems to apply to Typical Males, who take pleasure in nicknames like “Squealer,” “Soowee,” and “Grunt,” given upon initiation. And the club’s national newsletter, titled Porky, commonly cites such mottos as “We Oink Softly, But Carry a Big Ham.” Editor Davian claims that he has more than 1,000 male subscribers nationwide.

Davian says that an “alter ego” to the ISTM is in the works. Dubbed the Broad Squad, the new club will provide organized female competition at future fundraising events.

ISTM’s address is P.O. Box 160847, Irving, Texas.