Tuesday, March 18, 2003

It was last week, I

It was last week, I think, that my dad’s stupid old joke about shampoo came up in a comment or something.  I can’t even think about finding it again now, but it’s gotten me thinking for the past several days about the “jokes” my dad likes to make.  They’re really not all jokes - they’re just stuff he says because he wants people to laugh and he knows if he repeats any of these phrases enough times someone will just offer up a pity giggle to get him to stop.  These are pretty terrible, even stupid - and the man’s definitely one of the sharpest thinkers and smartest people I’ve ever met.  But that doesn’t stop him from endlessly repeating the following attempts at humor:

* Calling the kitchen spatula the “flatula.”
* If you are drinking tea he will ask you if you’ve heard of the indian who drank so much tea he drowned in his tepee.
* Apropos of almost anything, he’ll repeat an old spoonerism blooper from the 30s, when a guy named Eddie Peabody was a famous banjo player (fame followed the banjo in those days I guess) and a radio announcer introduced him by saying “Ladies and gentlemen, Eddie Playbody will now pee for you.” In all honesty, when I first heard this I laughed so hard for so long that my jaw started shaking - but I was about 12 at the time, and I’ve heard it a whole bunch of times since then.
* “Sic transit gloria money - Gloria comes across for money.”
* “Don’t use shampoo - use real poo.” Again, this was funny the first three thousand times I heard it, but after that two month period in the mid-70s was over I stopped laughing quite so hard. 
* Referring to someone in an old picture that shows them at a young age as “shortly before his bar mitzvah.” This is a special favorite for photos of negro league ball players and prominent episcopalians. 
* A little nursery rhyme that he taught me at a tender age: “Ding dong dell / pussy down a well / who threw her in / little shitty kid.” Actually this one still kind of makes me giggle but he didn’t say it very often either.  I think he got in trouble for teaching me a dirty word.  But now you can say “pussy” on tv, if you’re on the animal channel.
* If you say you don’t care for “X” - anything, like tripe or the president’s environmental policy or the NRA, he’ll respond by saying “That’s too bad, (X) speaks very highly of you...”
* If he’s talking about football, he’ll steer the conversation to Vinny Testaverde and use an old-school sports announcer voice to repeatedly call him “Vinny Greenballs.”
* “Beans, beans, fruit musicale; the more you eat, the more you (never sure if he says “smell” or “smile” here, he does this one in an execrable french accent).
* Calling a pina colada a “penis colossus.”
* The punchline to a lengthy joke about a man hit in the ass by a car that concludes, “rectum hell, it killed him.”
* “His face was flushed, but his broad shoulders saved him.”

There are a few dozen more that aren’t surfacing in my memory right now but I think that’ll do for the present.  I wouldn’t want to incapacitate you with laughter.  Or become an object of pity - though I may be useful as a cautionary tale.