Best-Selling Humorist.
That we’re unimaginative, slow-talking, suspicious of change, needlessly deferential, insular, xenophobic, and enjoy sex with our socks on, when we enjoy sex at all.
At least we know how to drive in a half inch of snow. Way to go, Oregon! You bring back memories of “Toonces, the Driving Cat.”
Due to the ongoing WGA strike, the desperate networks are dusting off the moldering nuggets lying around their vaults and rushing them to air. How else to explain the relaunch of last spring’s failed sitcom starring Paul Wolfowitz (first shown here at HuffPo last May)?
Scene opens in the Georgetown townhouse of PAUL WOLFOWITZ and his girlfriend SHAHA RIZA. It is morning. Wolfowitz enters living room from kitchen, straightening his tie, holding a briefcase. Shaha follows after him dutifully, holding his cup of coffee for him.
SHAHA: There’s nothing wrong about a man your age changing jobs every six months, dear. It’s called trading up.
WOLFIE: It’s my first day. I just want to make a good impression with the other guys on the International Security Advisory Board.
SHAHA: Don’t worry, Wolfie. Your reputation is way ahead of you. Besides, the first day on the job always gives you jitters.
Enter WOLFIE’s no-account brother LARRY from kitchen, in a ratty bathrobe, eating a large sweet roll. Audience goes wild.
LARRY: With all the jobs you’ve had and lost, I’d think you’d be used to it by now.
WOLFIE: That means a lot, coming from the top mattress-tester in the country.
LARRY: Where were you working last time?
WOLFIE: (putting on overcoat) The American Enterprise Institute.
LARRY: Didn’t they make those old cheesy monster movies, like It Conquered the World?
WOLFIE: No, they didn’t make cheesy monster movies! it was a think tank.
LARRY: Hey, I was in a think tank once.
SHAHA: No, Larry, you were in a drunk tank.
LARRY: The difference being…..?
Wild audience laughter.
WOLFIE: I don’t have time for this. I’m going to be late.
SHAHA: Here’s your coffee, dear, I know you’re going to knock ‘em dead!
WOLFIE: (with pained expression) No, dear, the International Security Advisory Board is supposed to STOP people from being knocked dead.
SHAHA: (trying for positive spin) Well, you work best when you’re confounding people’s expectations, dear. (gives him kiss on cheek)
LARRY: I’ll say. Who’d’ve bet that the guy who drove the country into Iraq could ever get a job with the government again? I know I wouldn’t.
WOLFIE gives his brother a dirty look and exits.
SHAHA: Why’d you have to say that?
LARRY: It was the truth. I bet against him getting hired again, at 3 to 2. Who could lose a bet like that?
SHAHA: Oh, Larry!
LARRY: Yeah. Too bad. By the way, you’ll have to find a new place to hide your “mad money”. Someplace where no one ever goes.
SHAHA: (crosses arms angrily) You got a suggestion?
LARRY: (beat) Your IUD?
Dissolve. New scene begins in a wood-paneled conference room in the State Department. Various members of the ISAB are getting ready to take their seats. The CHAIRMAN sits at the head.
CHAIRMAN: If everyone’s ready, we’ll get started.
The members all sit. One chair is conspicuously empty.
COMMITTEE MEMBER: It looks like we’re short one.
CHAIRMAN: (hastily) Never mind, let’s just get this going before….
Wolfie barges through door, with splashing coffee cup and briefcase.
WOLFIE: WHEW! Wait a minute! Ha ha! Here I am! (Starts to get settled at table) What a disaster. I went to the wrong building.
CHAIRMAN: (sighs dejectedly) Well, since you managed to find the room anyway, let’s begin. (sotto voce) When is faulty intelligence ever going to work FOR us?
COMMITTEE MEMBER: Say, aren’t you Paul Wolfowitz?
WOLFIE: (proud to be recognized) Yes.
COMMITTEE MEMBER: And you got appointed to the International Secutiry Advisory Board?
WOLFIE: Uh-huh.
COMMITTEE MEMBER: You know what we do here, right?
WOLFIE: (growing uncomfortable) Yeah.
COMMITTEE MEMBER: That we sort of…that is to say…we try ….how can I put this? We try to stop wars from happening?
WOLFIE: YES!!
COMMITTEE MEMBER: So, who’d you have to sleep with to get this job?
WOLFIE: Please! It’s who I slept with who cost me my LAST job!
Audience laughter.
Quick cut back to the townhouse. SHAHA and LARRY are huddled around the telephone on the table.
SHAHA: I don’t know about this.
LARRY: Believe me, this will work. You want to boost Wolfie’s confidence, right? All you have to do is call the meeting on the speaker phone and pretend you’re Condi Rice. Mention his name, give him a couple of “How ya doin’s?” and hang up. Piece of cake.
SHAHA: Isn’t there a law against pretending to be the Secretary of State?
LARRY: If there was, there’s others they’d come after before you.
Quick cut to the board room.
COMMITTEE MEMBER: (to WOLFIE) May I borrow a pen?
WOLFIE: Certainly. (He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a huge fistful of identical pens.)
COMMITTEE MEMBER: (reads inscription on pen) “Official Property of the World Bank.”
WOLFIE: (sheepishly) Part of my severance package, heh.
The speaker phone near the chairman turns on.
MALE VOICE: I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but I have Secretary Rice on the phone.
CHAIRMAN: By all means, put her on.
SECRETARY’S VOICE: Good morning, everyone.
ALL: Good morning, Madame Secretary.
SECRETARY’S VOICE: I just wanted to call and wish all of you on the International Security Advisory board the best of luck in advising … on security….in an international way.
CHAIRMAN: (somewhat confused) Thank you.
SECRETARY’S VOICE: Through all your efforts, our dangerous world will be made a better one…without …so much danger.
Quick cut to the townhouse, with SHAHA bending close to the speakerphone, and LARRY next to her. She’s very nervous speaking off the cuff.
SHAHA: I especially would like to welcome Paul Wolfowitz to the committee. Your international work for this administration, while costing many lives, will ultimately save many lives because, if there’s anyone who knows about the spread of global conflict, it’s you.
LARRY: Ask him if he can get us some pens from there.
SHAHA: That’s about all I have to say, I guess….
Quick cut to boardroom.
SECRETARY’S VOICE: …so I’ll get back to doing the diplomacy thing around here. Gotta call Israel or something, I bet.
LARRY’S VOICE: Ask about the free pens!
SECRETARY’S VOICE: Be quiet, Larry! I’ll just take the last chance to say thank you for your service, and good luck.
CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Madame Secretary.
SECRETARY’S VOICE: And good luck to you, Wolfie sweetums. Kiss Kiss!
Speakerphone hangs up. There is an uncomfortable silence in the room, as Wolfie tries to sink down in his seat.
CHAIRMAN: Well, at least we learned one thing.
WOLFIE: What’s that?
CHAIRMAN: The Secretary isn’t a lesbian.
Wolfie tries to sink down further in his chair, closes his eyes in pain.
Music up. Audience applauds. Roll credits.
Had a very busy, typically Christmas-season kind of weekend. Hope you did too. Decorating, skating, sledding, shopping, party-going, and a glorious service of “Lessons and Carols” downtown at church, where I got to watch my progeny make use of their talents to the greater glory. I’ll admit I was a little misty-eyed at the end of the service, although that might be traced back to the hearty dinner I enjoyed of a pizza slice and a Manhattan.
But more than fun and games were on the menu. With my two young nephews in the house for a sleepover, I felt the need — no, the compulsion — to raise their cultural awareness and overall quality of character. I’m like John Dewey that way. So I made them sit down and watch “A Night at the Opera.”
Oh, they were hesitant at first. They know better than to believe Uncle Jim when he tells them that something will make them better people. But once we all made it to the contract scene (“The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part”), they were fast within my clutches.
Just as you can tell a lot about a person if his favorite kind of movie is a Western (and I’m not being sexist there–among fans of the Western movie, I can’t think of any I’ve met who weren’t men or didn’t wish they were), you can split Marx Brothers fans into two camps depending on their favorite film.
Many people stand by “Duck Soup” as the quintessential Marx movie, and they may have a point. It’s hilarious, chaotic, acerbic. It’s reportedly most true to their vaudeville routines. It has Zeppo, but that shouldn’t be held against it (it was his last picture, and he became his brothers’ agent after that). It’s also slapdash, weirdly paced, and as a movie, frankly unsatisfying. To me, it’s the “fanboy favorite” among Marx Bros. fans, the one that lets people get on their nerd horse and pontificate about it being “pure”. (Like anyone is alive today who can compare their vaudeville routines with their pictures.)
For my money, “A Night at the Opera” is a much funnier and more enjoyable movie. Producer Irving Thalberg insisted on many changes in this picture, including a strong script, a love interest, a point in the plot when everyone’s fortunes are scraping bottom, and identifiable villains for the boys to attack. Purists may scoff at its slickness, but it made a lot of money, and Groucho himself told Dick Cavett on his show that it, along with “A Day at the Races”, were the best movies they’d ever made. When you think about it, if Thalberg hadn’t made his pitch to Chico at a bridge game about the movie, their film careers may have become even more spotty, or ceased altogether. The world might have had only five Marx Brothers movies–pure or not–if “A Night at the Opera” hadn’t been made, but instead we have 13, of varying quality but fun nevertheless. In the worst case scenario, they might have faded into obscurity like the Ritz Brothers or Weber & Fields, and never made it to the 1950s and television.
I like nothing better than wallowing in an old B&W movie (if Turner Classic Movies wasn’t offered by my cable company, I’d be bitching a lot more every month when paying the bill), and this is one of the best. And for better and worse, it exposed me to opera, though I still yearn for someone to lean over from the balcony and growl “Boogie, boogie, boogie” during “Il Travatore”. Otto and Henk, as well as my own kids, wallowed with me. And for the months ahead, our conversations will be peppered with phrases like “And two hard-boiled eggs”, “He’s got insomnia, he’s trying to sleep it off” and “Well, watermelons are out of season.” And I will feel good about the future of our country.
Great minds think alike. So do giddy, juvenile minds with too much time on their hands. So when inspired by a bizarre news item from the United Kingdom (what would we ever do without them?), the emails started flying among the stalwart members of my writers group, the Hungerdungers.
This blog entry may not be for the faint of heart. Then again, if you can handle the facts in the news item, you’ll be able to handle the rest.
First, the news item:
Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: “That’s yours.”
Monti admitted wounding and was jailed for two-and-a-half years.
The rest of the details, and Ms. Monti’s self assessment that she’s “in no way a violent person” can be found here at the BBC.
When faced with the idea of violent gonad attacks, the Hungerdungers did what any red-blooded scribes would do, and started a-rhymin’. I’ll omit the names of the individual writers, so as not to embarrass them professionally, although a certain daily newspaper in a large Midwestern city, one that is trying to sell a baseball team it owns, might want to keep a closer eye on its employees.
There once was a fellow named Conrad.*
A young lady ripped off his gonad.
His pair now a single,
It sure didn’t tingle.
Wherefore his testicular nomad?(*name changed to enhance the limerick)
A lady and man were in thrall
Till the dude went and ended it all,
So to get the guy back,
The broad yanked on his sack.
You could say she was having a ballHe screamed as she tore at his kit.
He knew he’d have trouble to sit.
She’d reached way down south,
Popped the thing in her mouth.
Swallow? No, this time she spit.Oh caution, if you are a vegan!
Beware ye of testicle snaggin’!
For its slang name is meat.
There’s no need to repeat…
Else they’ll ask you, dear veg, “How’s it hangin’?”
As one of the Hungerdungers pointed out, this could go on nad infinitum.
Some years ago, an insider to the Bush administration writing in Vanity Fair described the whole bunch as “Mayberry Machiavellis” because of their crimped worldviews, smalltown smugness and cocksure manipulation of everyone (including each other). Here’s a new wrinkle to enhance the reference: the fact that their world is so small that the White House keeps going back to the same people who have clearly and indisputably shown their incompetence already. Case in point, Newsweek is reporting Paul Wolfowitz is being considered for a spot on the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board, which advises the Sec’y of State on WMDs, arms control, non-proliferation and all those cool things. Now, granted, Wolfowitz does have a lot of experience in arms control, but it’s obvious experience doesn’t always translate into knowledge. Ask the late Evel Knievel about that.
I just have pictures of Pat Butram in my head, reaching into his truck and saying, “Yer lookin’ for a security advis’r? Then today is yer lucky day. B’cuz today, in addition to being Jestice of the Peace f’r this county, an’ a bona feeday tango instructor, Ah’m also a registrar’d Int’rnashunal Arms Cornsultant, available immediately f’r hire. Five dollars, please.”
And we are all expected to be Eddie Albert, with a slow burn.
(I know I’m combining the Andy Griffith monde with Green Acres-Petticoat Junction-Beverly Hillbillies, but hey, the point is still valid. Plus, it gave me the excuse to find a pic of Pat Butram online.)
Sid Yiddish, Bardball scribe and slam poet extraordinaire, had been following my rants about the latest craze, Cornhole aka Baggo aka Tailgate Toss aka “I have $90 burning a hole in my pocket and need to buy something with my team’s logo on it immediately”. On a trip to perform in Bloomington, Indiana, Sid saw the sign below on campus and snapped a pic for me.
Too bad “cornhole” doesn’t mean what it once did. What a gay old time it could have been on campus.
Congratulations to Barry Bonds, for making liars of all the naysayers who thought his head would explode like an overripe grapefruit before he was snagged in the steroid investigation. To salute him, I present a hastily written, vulgar limerick:
If Barry needed any incitement
To confess, now here’s his indictment.
Else, to prison he’ll go
To be someone’s ho,
Where anal rape’s the daily excitement.
Look for more limericks as they become available, at BARDBALL.COM.
Two weeks ago, a friend asked me to tag along to an event at the Harris Theater downtown. An evening of political satire, he said, “made me the natural choice to come along.” It was a joint appearance by the Second City and “Kal”, the editorial cartoonist for The Economist. An intriguing combination like this could not be passed over.
The evening turned out to be a bit of a mish-mash, though its heart was in the right place. The actors from Second City did their best to add some theatricality to what otherwise would be a panel discussion. On the massive stage at the Harris, though, many of their attempts at political humor (Hillary hiring an assassin for Obama, then getting lectured on why no one likes her, eg.) were unconvincing and hollow. Maybe they needed the intimacy of the old cabaret space. Then again, the actors were undoubtedly touring company players and not as skilled at characterization and impersonation as they thought they were.
The panel discussion was interesting, if brief. I don’t remember much of what was said between WBEZ’s Gabriel Spitzer, Kirk Hanley and Matt Hovde of Second City, and Kal, aka Kevin Kallaugher. Kal was the most engaging person on stage, the most passionate–as it should be, since this was an evening to salute him. After explaining how he thought his cartoon is another type of magazine column (and thus is driven by the idea and the outrage, and not the gag), Kal showed us the evolution of a complete cartoon. Quite fascinating to go from idea to doodle to scribble to ink. (To see a gallery of his work for the magazine, go here.)
Later he led the entire audience in a group exercise in creating our own cartoon of the Venal Dubya, on space provided inside our programs. We started with the nose, then the lines around the mouth, the seagull shape of the upper lip, the ears, the beady eyes, the overgrown eyebrows, and the furrowed brow (“as many lines as possible,” Kal encouraged).
Here’s what I came up with. Looks like I won’t be putting Edward Sorel out of work anytime soon.
Whatever the artistic outcome, everyone was quite pleased to be led along the path of creation by Kal. He also showed himself to be at least as skillful in improv comedy as the Second City-ers later, as a screen came down above the stage and an electronic image of Dubya appeared, taking questions from the audience like it was a press conference. The electronic image was controlled offstage by a head rig worn by Kal, who answered all the questions with his best impersonation of a defensive, shit-headed, arrogant Texan wannabe. ( I just discovered it online, if you want to see it.) It was very entertaining, though the huge caricature head gave me dizzy spells as I waited for its heft to snap the neck of the cartoon president. If only, oh, if only….
So today’s our 16th wedding anniversary, and all is fair in Garnerlandia. We’ll be going out to dinner with friends tonight and keeping things a little more lo-key than last year’s trip to San Fran (which seems so long ago as to never have happened). It’s been a very busy and hard-working fall, mostly b/c of my wife’s grad school toil, but all in all, as nice as a sunny morning before the sugar maples have lost their leaves.
After the kids headed off to school, I walked over to Jewel’s and bought my wife a nice pot of mums, yellow with a trace of red all the way around the petals. For some reason, the variety is called “Rage.” “Rage Chrysanthemums.” Somewhat harsh, but who knows what lurks in the hearts of plant breeders?
My wife comes back from chauffeur duty to school and hands me a purchase she’s made.
Mouse poison and traps.
My gift: Rage chrysanthemums.
Her gift: Mouse poison.
Is there something I’ve been missing lately?
As I was walking the dog this morning, a rather sun-burnt old fellow stopped me in the alley and asked, “Ya wanna hear something funny?”
Me and my buddy were going to go to see that western movie, “3:10 to Yuma” up at the Davis. But y’know, they don’t let you go in there in the middle of the movie no more. We needed a way to kill time, so we went over to Welles Park to take a nap.
My buddy has this bottle of…of…of booze that he’s usin’ f’r a pillow. When the cops come by, they tell us, “Hey, you can’t have an open bottle of liquor in the park. What are you guys doin’ here?”
My buddy says, “We’re waitin’ for ‘3:10 to Yuma’.”
And the cop says, “Well, you just got yourself the ‘4:45 to Belmont and Western’.”
True story. At least, my part of it was.
Don’t you just love pro team fight songs? More specifically, don’t you love the songs for your hometown teams and find those for other teams absolutely horrifying?
Then check out Zulkey.com today, where the irrepressible Miss Claire has put together a mix tape of all the fight songs she could find. Disco, heavy metal, dixieland, mambo–it’s all there. She even found a song for the minor league Lansing Lugnuts. Minor in stature, only, but big in spirit. I’m sure the people of Lansing just dance the night away with “Go Nuts!”
Most of the nation no longer has regional beers, local department stores, or non-chain restaurants, but at least we can still enjoy some pep for the local team!
Last week saw the end of the first phase of a mob trial that has captivated Chicago throughout the summer. A jury returned guilty verdicts on every count of murder, extortion and racketeering against four aging mafia hoods and a former Chicago cop. Some say this trial—the culmination of “Operation: Family Secrets”—will be the last “old school” mafia trial this city will ever see. (For you out-of-towners who want to know more on the Chicago Outfit and the “Family Secrets” trial, check out Trib columnist John Kass.)
Although the charges are ugly (among them, 18 murder charges), some aspects of the trial have had high entertainment value. For starters, reporters have felt compelled to describe what the elderly defendants were wearing on the witness stand. With the white suits, yellow ties, black shirts, and the rest of it, it’s impossible to keep pictures of Paulie Walnuts out of your head.
One of the most interesting elements was the defense put forward by three of the reputed crooks. Taped conversations recorded them speaking in a convoluted code with their friends in prison. When asked what they meant by the code, the defendants have said they were just playing along to impress their associates and relatives. Along with being mobbed up, they’ve also denied they understood the code, even though the conversations were lengthy.
“I gave him lip service,” former cop Anthony Doyle said from the witness stand. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. I don’t wanna look like a chumbalone, an idiot, stupid.”
(Note to self: start using “chumbalone” frequently in conversation and while cursing out other drivers.)
Could this peer-pressure defense—“I just wanted to look like one of the guys”—be used successfully in any other pariahs currently in the news?
Senator Larry Craig: “I heard sleazy anonymous hook-up in the airport john were all the rage with commuters, like having an Admiral’s Club membership. Just because I’m trendy doesn’t mean I’m gay. And I pleaded guilty because the prosecutors said it was the best solution. But I take it all back. I still want to serve the people of Idaho, who need a strong senator who can stand up to pressure and think for himself. Unless I’m talked out of it again. What do you think?”
Alberto Gonzales: “I only pretended to have terrible memory lapses when I testified before Congress. So many other aides ‘couldn’t recollect’ when they testified, I thought it would be bad manners to actually remember what I’d done. Hell, does anyone really think I’m THAT absent-minded?”
Nuri al-Maliki: “I didn’t want to go on vacation for the entire month of August, but everyone in the Iraqi Parliament seemed to have their plans already set up and I didn’t want any of them to lose their deposits. They told me the break would make the people think we knew what we were doing. More pictures of us on the golf course equals more confidence in the government.”
Michael Vick: “If a guy asks you whether or not you’ve got a ‘dog rape machine’ at home, what are you gonna do, act like you don’t know what he’s talking about?”
OJ Simpson: “My buddies just said they wanted to ‘raid the mini-bar’. I never bothered to ask why we needed guns for that, or needed to kick down the door. And there on the bed, was all my stuff! You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Gosh golly.”
You say you don’t like clowns? Well, that puts you in good company, as in THE KLAN!!!!
Saturday May 26th the VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK group attempted to host a hate rally to try to take advantage of the brutal murder of a white couple for media and recruitment purposes.
Unfortunately for them the 100th ARA (Anti Racist Action) clown block came and handed them their asses by making them appear like the asses they were….
“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.
“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.
Check out the whole story at Asheville Indiemedia.org.
And to all the joeys out there…Keep On Honking!
Via Cynical-C blog.
Last night I had a very interesting time down at the Hideout. Three writers from the golden age of the National Lampoon were there at that charming little dive by the Streets & San Garage to talk about that groundbreaking era of comedy. (The fliers called it a historic gathering, and for comedy geeks it probably was.) Anne Beatts, Chris Miller and Brian McConnachie were gathered to talk about the embryonic stages of the 1970s comedy revolution, hosted by Josh Karp, who wrote a book a few years ago about the magazine.
I went alone, b/c I couldn’t think of anyone who would want to tag along. Of course, I wouldn’t be the only guy there alone—out of the 100+ in attendance, I think the biggest group I saw was about four. There were a lot of solitary middle-aged guys there who remember the first time they were truly shocked by something funny on the page. Like the guy with the loud shirt and bad breath next to me, who somehow bonded with me and had to tell me repeatedly which of the NatLamp magazines, books and records he had in his basement somewhere. There were also a fair number of folks in their 20s and 30s who were listening and learning.
Not wishing to appear too much of a fanboy, I didn’t bring anything along for the writers to sign. Maybe I should have. Then again, it would be very difficult to get my hands on the old magazines that featured their writing, buried in the basement somewhere as they are. PJ O’Rourke signed my copy of the 1964 High School Yearbook Parody some years back, but these three didn’t really contribute to it, so that didn’t seem right.
Anyway, humor was in the air. Which means that everyone aside from Beatts, Miller and McConnachie was trying to be as funny as the writers were. So it goes. The moderator, such as he was, gave each writer 30-40 minutes to talk or read stories on their own, which made for a slow start. Anne Beatts was the first to speak, and while she certainly has the professional credits, I’ve never found her to be excessively funny. Or let me say, her byline in the NatLamp was not one that I raced to read. Kenney, O’Donoghue, O’Rourke, Miller, Hendra, Beard, McConnachie, Kelly—roughly in that order—were the names I looked for. Last night, she read a long story about getting noticed enough to contribute to the magazine, wanting to cheat with O’Donoghue while her boyfriend was in Europe, and dropping acid on the day that Jim Morrison died. It was a memoir, obviously, so she didn’t bother to make it funny, but the constant “I said-he said” and the lionizing tone of it made it a chore to listen to. What would O’Donoghue say to all the attempts to lionize him last night? Something obscene and hilarious, no doubt, ablaze like a Viking ship.
McConnachie looked like a bemused professor, and was very funny and concise in his comments. He came from an advertising background but had been gently fired, as was done in those days, and gravitated to the NatLamp offices because that seemed like the place to be. He was never as manic as everyone else there, but he said the others kept him around as a potential ally for any of the internecine duels that would flare up. He said he often hung out in the offices where John Belushi and many ex-pat Chicagoans were working on the “NatLamp Radio Hour” and the various stage projects being worked on. When these people moved on to “Saturday Night Live”, he said “the air seemed to go out of the offices” and the business of humor became a lot more tedious. McConnachie brought along a rare treat last night: an audiotape of a song from an off-Broadway musical idea called “Moby!” It featured John Belushi as Capt. Ahab, lamenting his fate as he sang, “I’m the loneliest man at sea.” Completely hilarious, and well sung besides. The panel agreed that Belushi was an intensely smart man and a great judge of talent, and his death shook up a lot of comedians. “When Doug Kenney fell off his mountain in Hawaii,” McConnachie said, “it was like a bolt of lightning from heaven. When Belushi died, it was just stupid.”
He then read a short story he said was written specifically with Chicago in mind, with a title something like “Father Ding-Dong of the Nincompoops,” about a prizefighter who becomes a priest but can’t learn to stop swinging when he hears a bell. It was one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long time. I should go back to read his old material, which the 15-year-old me dismissed, because I’m sure I missed a lot.
Finally Chris Miller got to speak. He still has a full head of hair and a rakish laugh and smile, but there’s a gut attached to his skinny frame that looks like he’s a suicide bomber strapped up for work. He told the longest stories of the three, but also the funniest, and read an old NatLamp story called “Conversation Piece,” about having sex with an eager telephone receiver. Seeing a man at retirement age, reading with gusto a filthy, filthy, hilarious story—it gladdened the heart of many a juvenile person there that night. His graphic and absurd stories about his fraternity days seemed to irk Beatts and embarrass McConnachie, but I was glad to hear about a man who wore a pumpkin and nothing else to go trick-or-treating at Dartmouth.
The Q&A session was too short and could’ve used more fireworks, but that was the fault of the moderator. A few things I remember:
• Humorists who inspired them: All the writers mentioned Thurber. Miller mentioned Harvey Kurtzman at the first MAD Magazine, and Al Feldstein. McC mentioned someone named EF Benson, whom I should look up. And they all acknowledged a debt to Terry Southern, Bruce Jay Friedman, and Philip Roth. Miller said Portnoy’s Complaint made him realize that if a respected novelist could write what he did, Miller could write about ANYTHING.
• PJ O’Rourke: They said his politics were not right-wing at the beginning, but when he became managing editor at the publisher’s insistence, he became a tyrant. McC said O’Rourke made some of the writers nervous with the way he seemed to watch them and want to be like them, sort of a stylistic vampire. It got to the point where they would tell him the happy hour meeting place was Bar X while it really was Bar Y. McC got a huge laugh by describing O’Rourke as a guy in a gorilla mask, in which the human eyes don’t match up with the eyeholes and tip off the fact that someone may not be who them seem. I was glad, though, that Miller defended O’Rourke, that for all his non-anarchic tendencies, he always brought his game, and was very, very funny.
• Comedy today: In the 1970s, these people fell into comedy because their regular careers had collapsed (or else they had sabotaged them, as Miller had by sprinkling marijuana on his soup at an ad lunch). Now, Beatts says she sees people in her classes at USC “who can’t decide whether to go into Dad’s plumbing business or write for a sitcom.” They all agreed that the expansion of the comedy business has diluted the talent pool. She also complained that most of today’s comedy doesn’t have a point of view and a passion and anger behind it.
• Right-wing comedy: Miller summed up the problem with right-wing “comedy” very well: “They pick on the weak and powerless, on people who can’t fight back. That’s not what comedy is.”
The session ended after 2.5 hours, when that night’s band began wheeling in their equipment. I ducked into the men’s room, and when I came out, all three writers were gone. Which is just as well. As I said, I wasn’t in too much of a fanboy mood, but still I might’ve ventured to gush a bit and embarrassed myself. Still trying to figure out how the trio got together, and what they were ultimately on the road trying to flog.
I can’t begin to disagree with her analysis.
Via Cynical-C blog.