Flesh we can.
Nick Offerman glided across the stage in a proud circle with the leather strap of his acoustic guitar slung against his bare chest.
A red-and-white striped shirt, with blue and white spangled star accents, waved from his hand behind him.
Offerman, the great and mustached Mr. Ron Swanson, spoke to a full Koger Center for the Arts Feb. 5, 2013, in a Carolina Productions performance.
“Oh, hello,” Offerman said.
The “Parks and Recreation” personality and real-life woodworker — of hobbit pipes, canoes and, one day, an arc — schooled the crowd on his tips to successful living. It was a program he dubbed “American Ham: My Tentatives for Prosperity.”
His expertise, talent and authority to preach on such matters came from two things: his time in “theater plays” and three weeks having “born-again-Christian sex” at a Wisconsin Bible camp.
Offerman is married to Megan Mullally, or Tammy 2 on “Parks and Recreation.” He’s been married for 10 years, and he loves his wife.
“The answer to your question is I have a terrific personality,” Offerman said. “That’s a new joke I just thought of.”
He apologized for not eating bath salts, and instead he revealed a marriage full of HGTV, books and jigsaw puzzles, which he works while doing a “s---load of cocaine.” It’s all about the sky pieces.
“Cerulean blue fields — I find them calming when I’m using amphetamines,” Offerman said.
The key to a good marriage, and not sleeping with the dog walker, is card making. There are just five steps to that small-scale success: Take a piece of paper out of your printer, fold it in half, draw a heart on it with a red crayon, open it up and write, “I love you.”
“You will get so kissed,” Offerman said.
If you attach a piece of nature, a small pebble or blade of grass, “you’re going on a nice ride to the land of coitus,” he continued.
Then, the musical portion of the evening began. Offerman broke into his set with a few well-crafted ditties about handkerchiefs, Pontius Pilate and “horsey heaven.”
His closing number was the “Parks and Rec” dedication to Li’l Sebastian, the Pawnee miniature horse that was “5,000 Candles in the Wind.”
He repositioned himself on stage left so that half of the audience could have a better view of his “package.” It needed to be moved from behind the mic stand, to reveal more than the “low-hanging areas.”
“Drink it in, as it were,” he said.
Offerman then took the pulpit and flooded the audience with a Sunday School lesson of biblical hits and misses and a fine-tuned moral compass.
Leviticus, in particular, was a miss.
Women “with their flowers upon them,” also known as menstruating, are sent away to the town of Menses and only forgiven if they bring two turtles to the priest of the temple.
“It leads me to suspect that some of the dudes who wrote the Bible were a--holes,” Offerman said.
He shared his distaste for three key people: Rush Limbaugh, Adolf Hitler and “Parks” character Jerry Gergich. But still, he insisted they all deserve respect. He harped on “please” and “thank you” and advocated for gay marriage.
“Meanwhile, vegetarians are marrying, having f--king children, riding our buses, drinking from our water fountains — making a mockery of the sanctity of eating animal flesh,” he said.
His list of life advice continued to work through expected Ron Swanson tips, like eating red meat, and a few other, more eccentric tidbits.
Always carry a handkerchief. It serves as a pouch to gather acorns or bear teeth and can be used to plug a hole in a dike in Holland while you get some apple pancakes.
“Because that s--- is delicious,” he said.
Offerman’s handkerchief of the evening was a salmon color with tiny white bunnies.
He appealed to those in the audience who were “looking for a mate.” The females of our 20-something generation can either be really fast at texting and master the art of “Angry Birds,” or they can knit their own dress, he said. A yarn dress.
“They may as well be building a nest from straw,” Offerman said. “It’s sexy.”
And it all wove its way back to religion.
Offerman told a rather explicit tale of his four-year relationship with a woman as born-again Christians. He urged all students who had not experienced such a tryst to leave and run to the nearest Christian youth center.
Of the many stories, one included a game of “Jesus hammer toss” in Wisconsin. Word is, one of his hammers is still going.
Also, you know what you can grow with horse manure? Psilocybin mushrooms. It’s just another life fact from Uncle Ron.
“I look forward to an army of knitters marching out of here,” Offerman said.