Oh my god I'm slow. I just got a joke I first heard around 1979. It's a line from the Firesign Theatre's High School Madness. Just a little while ago I was making a sandwich for lunch and these lines popped into my head:
Mom: Well, you boys fight it out amongst yourselves.
Dad: OK, mother.
[Dad and Porgy fight]
After Porgy gives up and asks if he can eat his breakfast, Dad says, "only if you stay out of trouble, boy. Your shenanigans could cost me this election." To which Porgy replies, while stuffing his face with cereal, "oh c'mon, Dad. No Irishman could stop you from getting to be dog killer this time. You're a natural!" Because his mouth was full of food, I was never sure about the words "Irishman" or "dog killer". But now I know the Irishman part is right, because that's the joke I didn't get until now, 30 years later. Porgy thought "shenanigan" was the name of some Irish guy, like Flanigan. I probably didn't need to explain that because everybody else got it the first time.
Also on that compilation album are classics like the Bear Whiz Beer commercial, which you can hear all of in the 30–second clip, Beat the Reaper, and one of my favorites, Ralph Spoilsport Motors.
And speaking of long periods between punchlines, this is for Brent, courtesy of Mike Rube:
…princess?
Although I think I already said that a bunch of years ago.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
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3 comments:
I guess I never knew what that line was about the irishman, so I didn't get it either. Actually I meant to say: If you did not know by now I was not going to tell you. Yea, that is it.
School?
you can wait here in the sitting room or sit here in the waiting room..
There's another angle to that joke. It's a reference to the rivalry between Kennedy and Nixon. Kennedy, an Irishman, prevented Nixon from getting to be Dog Killer in the 1960 election. In 1968 Dick had no such problem.
Heh, thanks for chiming in 3.5 years later. :) But what does "dog killer" refer to?
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