"You got a pig that good, you eat him real slow".
Divine, Donald and Ivana Trump: Funny AND not funny simultaneously
(Author's note: some facts, context and timelines were bent or broken in their remembering. If you are a stickler for accuracy make your own blog.)
With apologies to Mitch Albom. I never finished your book, but I stole your idea
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(Don't stop me if you've heard this one already.)
Schrödinger's cat, a flask of poison and 10 Uranium atoms walk into a bar. The bartender says, "what is this, some kind of thought experiment critiquing the strange nature of quantum entanglement, a classic paradox of ''reductio ad absurdum"?
(both funny AND not funny simultaneously)
*A Priest, a Rabbi and a Muslim imam walked into a bar....and the bartender said, "Is this some kind of joke?"
*A Priest, a RABBIT and a Muslim imam walk into a bar. The Rabbit says, 'hey I think I may be a typo'.
*A dyslexic man walks into a bra…
*Three Irishmen ‘DONT’ walk into a bar..... hey don’t laugh it could happen.
"He Had A Hat"!
Micheal J. Fox, Cranius Maximus Hennessy
and Muhammed Ali walk into a bar.
Yes, Messrs. Fox, Hennessy and Ali indeed all walk into a bar. Three guys with Parkinson's all just happen to be out for cocktails simultaneously. The bar was McSorley's Irish Pub, down in the Village in New York City. They had just come from a big Parkinson's conference uptown. Mr. Hennessy made sure he used his adaptive transport chair to be safe and make sure his PT wouldn't be angry with him. Mr. Ali, being an observant Muslim, did not order a drink. Plus he's been dead since 2016. But he remembered what his neurologist said about staying hydrated, and ordered a club soda with a lime. Mr. Fox ordered a 'Dirty Vodka Martini. 'Shaken', not stirred. Of course. "Shaken"?! By the way, why does Micheal J. Fox make the best milkshakes? ...Because he uses only the finest ingredients! You insensitive bastard, you were thinking because the Parkie's and the shaky hands. Come on!
Okay, unlike the Schrodinger's Cat reference, this story does NOT sound like it is going to be funny. What are the odds?
But, hey, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm usually a really funny guy. I've always got a witty retort for about any occasion. I've got a clever ''bon mot'' ready at every opportunity. Sarcasm and mockery are my ''love language''. I live for making light, making fun of anything and everything. How did it come to pass, you may ask yourself, that I became such a master of comedy, repartee and story telling (above paragraph not withstanding)?
Well to explore this question I'd like to share a dream I recently had. A very vivid and enlightening dream. In the dream I go to Heaven and encounter five members of my family, and, through these encounters learn valuable insights into the nature of humor. I had given it some thought and I figured the metaphor of dreaming of going to heaven
was sufficient instead of having to die in a carnival ride accident and have to go to Heaven.
(Like in Mr. Albom's book. Kind of morbid don't you think Mitch?).
. I figured I'd just 'dream' I'd met my 'ghosted' loved ones. No need for bloodshed. And, you know, since the metaphor has already been established, why don't I just TELL you about the five members of my family that I WOULD have met in Heaven, and who would have imparted great wisdom regarding mirth and merriment, jokes and humor and the like. They're pretty interesting characters in their own right. I'll just tell you about them when they were here on earth. Funny bastards all, no disrespect intended to my dear Italian Grandmother Nanny Rosa with the ''bastard'' thing...
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"Oh, I've GOT gambling money".
I am not the best person to be keeping track of family history. I have pretty great memories of what I assume was a happy childhood. Having life long ADHD, I have conveniently forgotten a lot of the details of my life. I have sort of an impressionistic account of young me, family and friends or important life events. I was busy, you know, "Squirrel"!, being ADHD. Now my sister would be a better source of accurate information. But for the purpose of the story, here are my impressions.
It's Turtles all the way down"!
So the first person I meet in Heaven is my old Great Uncle Mattie Matz. Mattie was married to my grandmother's sister Pat. My grandmother on my dad's side. I don't know a lot about Uncle Mattie except that I accidentally knocked one of his front teeth out. He was playing with me, getting the hyper kid all hyped up, and was tickling me. It must have been a good tickle because in my thrashing about I head butted him and he lost a chomper. Hey, he knew better. Anyway, I do also know that he was Jewish. And my family on dad's side, at least, was pretty much all Catholic, by association anyway, being Irish or Italian/American. I don't remember this seeming like anything but a positive factor, to me anyway. Mattie had an old Jewish guy, show biz kind of persona, like from the old vaudeville jokes/skits. You know, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall"?--"Practice, my boy, practice". Or "He had a hat"! Everybody seemed to love Mattie. What I loved about him was that he always made time to interact with us kids. Maybe it was the case that he was a sensitive guy and wanted to make sure that the kids felt like part of the family gathering. Or you know, it may have been that in us kids he saw a comic foil, a source of a straight man to help work the gag on the other adults in the room. In particular, with me he had a perfect foil, being a kid easily wound up, with a good imagination, and willing to show off for the grown ups. As I look
back and remember it, one of the things he used to do at parties or family visits, was work up the old Abbot and Costello bit, "Who's on First", with me being the highly agitated Lou Costello. I wasn't familiar with the bit from TV or the movies, and didn't even know who Abbot and Costello were. But Mattie was such a good comedian and I such an apt sucker, he would have me so wound up, much to the delight of the other adults there, I would shout, "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT! WHO IS ON FIRST"?! He had me in a fever just like Lou Costello in the famous bit. We brought the house down every time. Losing a tooth. A small price to pay. My Great Uncle Mattie Matz.
"Now THAT'S how you wave a towel, schmuck"!
"La da da da dum da, your Sister Rose is dead, your sister Rose is Dead"...
In some ways my little old Italian grandmother didn't look the part. Her family was from Abruzzi, a region of Italy where everyone looked kinda like they were from the Alps, fair hair, fair skin etc. But, fitting the stereotype, she was about 4 foot 11 and charmingly stout. As my Uncle Frank once observed, "It'd be easier to jump over her than to run around her". Or, again fitting the Italiano stereotype, if she heard you wisecracking like that to her, you'd be running ''away'' from her. Feisty, she was. And also blessed with a wicked sense of humor. With a jagged tongue and a quick wit that would leave a beginner crouching in the corner, licking their wounds after a good dressing down. Her humor came in some part because she was such a tough customer, it became funny. Though a man'd be a fool too laugh too hard, and she took it the wrong way, and then she'd be giving you the business end...
There was much anger in her comedy. Like Carlin. Or Pryor.
Nanny came over to America on a boat from Italy, inside her Italian
mom's placenta. By the time we met, she had become a dangerously funny, frequently feared, but much loved matriarch of our family. Though I was always proud that I was of Irish, Scottish, Swedish and Italian descent, my Nanny Rosa had all my cousins, and my sister and me convinced that we were 80% Italian and 20% of all the other stuff. She schooled us on all things Italian including colorful admonitions you could cast on someone who had just cut you off in traffic. Friendly corrective epithets like "Madone, what a Mamaluke"! "Who taught you to drive? Tu madre e putana"! Ah yes the colorful romantic language of the Mediterranean. Imagine my mom's surprise when driving me to the park one day, and A guy cuts us off at a light. I shout out the window, loudly but innocently, "Ah ya muddah ass"!
My little Guinea Nanny used to be a master (mistress?) of 'throwing shade' as the kids say. Her and her little MAFIA sewing circle of vigilante Nonnas used to say the meanest things, and they'd say it right to a person's face. But more mean and effective than that were the diabolical things they'd say behind that same person's backs, laying them wide open. But as long as they ended their insult with a little something like "bless her soul" or ''the poor dear'' there was no foul called. Her and her Goombadi Grandmas would have nicknames for each other, and not always the most flattering nicknames either. There was this one lady Nanny called ''Ruspache'' which in Italian meant "big fat toad. Or this other lady who was often referred to as ''La Musishke"(sp?) or something like that, which meant ''Roasted Goat". There was a "la mustache'', or something like that, an obvious reference to her unfortunate, un-ladylike lip hair. There was another nickname which meant something like ''the Radish". I think Nanny referred to that lady's husband, who apparently she outweighed by a good hundred pounds, as ''Cornuto"(apparently a ''cuckold'', ''horns on his head'', his wife inferred to be unfaithful). Another old lady was called ''Ball Eyes"! "Ball Eyes''?! By her friends and family. She was somebody's Gammy for God's sake! It was a Thyroid condition! So what the women looked the spitting image of Rodney Dangerfield. Ball Eyes?!...
Which reminds me of the time, as the story is to me by my Uncle Frank, when a call comes into my Nanny and Paba's home in Pittsfield Maine. Frank is there, so he picks up. On the other end of the line is an old lady's voice, cryptic and grave. It is my Nanny's friend known as "Il Rospo", ''the Toad''. She announces to Frank, serious as a heart attack, like something out of the Godfather...."Francis Anthony, tell your mother that .. that...."La Musishe's" sister ''Ball Eyes" is dead".
And don't even get me started on the Red Sox. Me, my Nanny and Paba used to share a passion for following the ''Auld Towne team. Well it was mostly Paba and me. But being from Boston and being Italian, Nanny found it hard to resist the drama, the fury and the passion play that is involved being a suffering BoSox fan. IN THOSE DAYS. Yes, this was before 2004. Back when I was a kid, THOSE Red Sox, they always got your hopes up. They always lost in the end. They always just almost convinced you that, quite possibly, this time they would, this time, pull off a miraculous victory. But then they would blow it in the end. Usually in ridiculously dramatic fashion. And that was in May! Never mind when they would actually make it to the playoffs. In October, their painful losses became more epic and more traumatizing. So to a reactionary old gal like my Nanny, there would be a volcanic eruption of Vesuvian anger when "Pesky held the ball"!, or "It got past Buckner"!
Forget `about "Bucky F****'n Dent".
So one lazy August day I was over at Nanny and Paba's place, and the Sox were on. They were always on the radio at my grandparent'a house if they were playing. But that day they were on TV. Curt Gowdy was on the call, as I remember. It was a close game. But not a particularly meaningful one. They were out of the hunt that year, falling prey once again to the lousy New York Yankees. It may have even been the Yankees they were playing that day, actually. In any case, my Nanny Rosa had had quite enough. Bob Montgomery was at bat. He was the Sox back up catcher to "Pudge" Fisk. The Sox were behind and already had a couple of squandered rallies and it was getting late in the game. "Monty" was getting behind in the count and he wasn't looking good. Sure enough a big lazy curve ball drops in for a strike. Monty was taking all the way. He strikes out to end the inning, and kills the rally. As he walks toward the dugout and Curt Gowdy gets us ready for a commercial break, my stout, bandy legged, adorable little fireplug of a grandmother hurls an angry, surprisingly vulgar stream of curses at poor Bob. She holds up her right hand toward the screen and forms her fingers into a claw shape. Her line of curses turn into straight Italian, and she scrunches her face up like there was something in her eye. She was giving Bob Montgomery the ''Malocchio". The ''Evil Eye"! The frigging "Evil Eye"! To one of our own guys even. My grandmother Emily Louise "Rosa" Hennessy (married an Irishman) slung an old Medeterranian curse at one of our own. Imagine what she would have done to an enemy.
The Malocchio can cause bad luck, headaches or sickness.
Nanny Rosa had had enough.
I told you not to get me started on the Red Sox.
*******
"4 balls''!? "Walk proudly Yaz"!
"Well, the sex is about the same, but the dishes are really starting to pile up".
Bubbles is out of prison. He wants your number".
"Gordy, this is the rink manager.There are no fish there".
"That's not a Pig, that's a Duck".
"I know. I was talking to the Duck"!
*******
"Well for one thing your stance is way too wide".
I hadn't seen Dad in a while. So it was good to bump into him, you know in Heaven. I had had my worries with these next three guys, but was happy to see them there in Heaven.
I guess their reputation didn't harm them much.
Which is good for me. I pretty much got my sense of humor from Dad, for better or worse. Better, mostly I'd say. I mean, obviously I heard all his jokes hanging out with him, riding around doing errands etc. But somehow I also inherited my comedy sensibilities, when to crack wise, what jokes not to tell and when, When to push the limits of good taste, when to not push it. I definitely learned from him to never ask to be stopped if someone has heard ''one'' before. That's how jokes get legendary. Retold so many times they are etched in our brains. Dad came from the holy trinity of sources for all jokes. The Comedic Triumvirate of punchlines: Prisoners, guys in the army, and truck drivers. All jokes originate from these guys .You know why? Time on their hands. Lot's of time standing or sitting around and odd ideas come to you. I bet Dad alone, on one of his Chicago trips came up with a good 20% of that years corny jokes. I also learned from the big guy the art of self deprecation. How to employ self deprecating humor. To make yourself the butt of jokes in order to make people like you. Not to sound calculating. Because, with me, there are usually plenty of reasons to make fun of and mock myself. I've got some serious mixed up stuff going on in that cranius giganticus up there. But also if you're going to poke fun at other groups in your all your joviality, make sure you save a couple of pokes for yourself. One of many great things there are about being Irish, and Italian, is that no-one can appropriate the privilege of making you feel badly about being Irish or Italian. Nobody makes more fun of themselves than the Italian or the Irish. You know why? Because we are just that awesome. Nothing is a more epic punchline that being pure Irish or 100% I-TAL-ian.
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Now these next three guys who I bump into on my imaginary, somnambulent, post corporeal jaunt through the afterlife are members of what I like to call the "56 Club".They were part of a select group who in their lives down here on Earth never made it past 56 spins around the Sun. Whether through bad luck, bad habits, or bad timing they never got a 57th birthday. Actually my Uncle JJ, who I'll get to in a minute, lived a long life. 91 years....But it was an anomaly. He was the king of bad luck, bad habits and bad timing. If there was anyone who pushed his luck to the point of cashing out early at 56 it was the ol' Pad, J.J. McMullin. But, fortunately, he happened to be born in Cape Breton Nova Scotia, Canada. New Waterford to be specific. There is not a group of people more indestructible than a Caper. The only thing that gets them in the end is the cancer. Don't worry, there were plenty of coal mines up there to even things up. And God should rest his giant tremendously strong soul, JJ's son Neally Boy joined the 56 Club along with another funny bastard, Hugh J. Flye, Super Genius. But these funny bastards must wait for another story, another day. This day in heaven I visited Big John, Uncle Frank Hennessy, and the old Ranger, Uncle JJ McMullin. Pancho, Lefty and the ol' Pad you could call them. From back when they were young men, they were like Dumas' Three Musketeers, three d'Artagnans, only much cooler, the life of more parties, kickers of more asses, more flirtatious with more babes and much funnier than any three amigos like Chevy Chase, Martin Short or Steve Martin. They were legends to the next batch of young guns who figured they themselves to be the lives of parties, flirters of babes and kickers of ass. But Dad, Frank and JJ were legends. Not the legends we thought we wanted. Or the legends our moms wanted. Not legends who's example would keep us out of trouble or out of jail for the weekend. But they were the legends we needed. Warts and all.
What in particular, Uncle Frankme taught me was invention. He was an idea man. He'd come up with the funkiest of ideas that were either sheer transcendent genius, or ideas that were so stupid nobody would touch them. But the added beauty was that he actually followed through on making ideas happen. Making the infinitely F****ng ridiculous actually doable, and eventually entirely F*****ng likely. Some examples which highlight not only his flair for big ideas, but also his planning skills and construction skills:
1. Built a giant room sized Centrifuge, powered by a lawn mower engine. The driver would sit in a seat adjacent to the motor, accelerate the engine which spun the apparatus so the faster
the engine went, the faster the driver spun around. Until they passed out and fell off.
2. Human Catapult. And it worked. How do we know? Because Frank had such charisma and persuasion that someone volunteered to be catapulted. Scratched up but survived, since you asked.
3.Attached a working propeller to the front of the company van while on a job down near Washington DC. When a local cop pulled him over and was asking him if a spinning propeller wasn't a bit dangerous, Frank explained that if anyone was close enough to be in front of the van and its spinning propeller blades, they'd be pretty much screwed anyway. The laughing cop walked away, unable to find a single law against it.
4. Carved out of wood down by his charming lakeside bungalow in Maine, a half dozen X-rated kinetic 'Whirligigs
5.Kept a pet Pig on a Construction job site in Newton MA.
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Now JJ McMullin was about the funniest guy in any group out there. Also would be the toughest and craziest bastard in any group. By far. Usually. But in this case, the group he was in included Pancho and Lefty. My dad and his little brother, who had been competing and fighting each other since they were infants. So as tough and funny and legendary as JJ could have been, and was, he could never rest on his laurels. He had to take it up a notch. There would be no Jewish wedding when he was not the champion chair dancer. Or a wedding where he would not get into a fight with the best man, for that matter. No open mic would he bypass nor any dirty joke would he leave untold. If being the life of the party was the '86 Boston Celtics, Dad might have been Larry Legend, Frank would be Kevin McHale or "Chief", but JJ was Bill Walton. In '86 the Celts were pretty great. But without Big Red as then 6th man, they wouldn't have been ''dominant''.
And Pancho,Lefty and the ol' Pad were dominant
Funniest bastards ever
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My dog has no nose!
How does he smell?!
AWEFUL!
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