This one’s easy.
‘Cause I am telling another guy’s story.
Because it’s a good one. Also because
it exemplifies how, although a certain joke can be eminently serviceable, the
comedically “gifted” can often provide an even better version of it. And
the icing on the cake, or the cherry on top of the sundae – pick the cliché of
your choice – is that the story in question is true. Or at least the person who related it said it
was.
The originator of this story is a (now departed) veteran comedy
writer named Jack Douglas, who told it during one of his numerous appearances
on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show, Jack Paar
predating Johnny Carson who predated Jay Leno who predated Jimmy Fallon as the Tonight Show’s full-time ringmaster. I actually saw Douglas tell this story.
Which makes me (no news to regular readers) quite ohhhhhld.
Though highly respected by the cogniscenti – he wrote for some of the biggest comedians of the day,
including Bob Hope and Red Skelton – he also wrote a series of memoirs,
including one I read and greatly
enjoyed entitled My Brother Is An Only
Child – the inevitably dark and droll Jack Douglas was not inordinately
famous.
Nevertheless, unlike today, where guests only appear on talk
shows to plug their latest endeavor, many of the early invitees to the Tonight Show appeared simply because
they were interesting.
"Is that true, Uncle Earl?"
Hard to believe, but it is.
"Wow! That would make talk shows worth watching!"
Tell me about it.
The story Douglas related took place during the late 1950’s,
at a time when the compact and economical German Volkswagen “Beetle” – or “Bug”
as some called it – was emerging as a challenger to Detroit’s gargantuan gas guzzlers.
The situation involves a “Practical Joke”, a genre of
laugh-inducement I am generally less than enamored of because I identify too
empathically with its targeted victim. That’s
just the goodhearted kind of sweet potato I am.
I cannot help myself.
As the story goes, Jack Douglas had this next-door neighbor
who had recently purchased a compact Volkswagen “Beetle”, and from then on, all
he would ever talk about, to the distress of anyone unfortunate enough to be
within earshot, was the remarkable upgrade in his gas mileage.
People are getting the standard 15 to 18 miles per gallon;
this guy’s getting close to thirty. He could
barely remember the last time he filled up at a gas station. It was incredible. The car was virtually driving on air!
According to Mr. Douglas –and sympathizers identifying with
his having to put with this compact car-owning blowhard, the audience’s
laughter suggesting there was many of them – this Bozo was asking for it.
Now, what would be the appropriate practical joke in this
situation?
The standard
version would be to sneak over to the “Beetle” owner’s house at night and siphon
gasoline out of his gas tank, perplexing the man with his suddenly reduced gas
mileage and, more importantly, shutting the guy up.
Douglas, however, as they say in the comedy fraternity, went
diabolically “the other way.”
Every night for a week, as he told it, a posse of co-conspirators
would sneak over to the “Bug” owner’s house, carrying a five-gallon can… and add gas to his gas tank. Now, instead of boasting about getting close
to thirty miles to the gallon, he was
crowing that he was miraculously getting ninety!
A week later, the conspirators stopped pouring gas into his tank, confounding the “Beetle’s” owner
when his gas mileage “plummeted” to thirty.
Do you see what he did there?
Instead of merely eliminating the source of the “Bug” owner’s
excitement (by siphoning gas out),
Douglas induced him into making ridiculous proclamations about his new car getting
ninety miles to the gallon, and then humiliated him even further with the
confession that his car’s mileage had subsequently fallen by two-thirds.
A person with reliable comedic instincts can easily skewer
an annoying idiot with a retributive subterfuge.
A person with superior
comedic instincts can knock it right out of the park.
Which, by the way, is what always distinguishes mediocre
comedy from the “Top-‘O-The-Line.”
It’s the “reliable” versus the “sublime.”
4 comments:
I have read several of Jack Douglas's books, including "Never Trust A Naked Bus Driver".
One of my favorite things that he wrote was a description of someone: "He was a shell of his former self. In fact, when you held him up to your ear, you could hear the ocean".
What a great story! Cheers.
Without investigating beyond Amazon, I see that at least 2 of Mr. Douglas' books are selling in the 100s of dollars, used. Not bad!
The only two Douglas books to read are "My Brother Is An Only Child", and "Never Trust A Naked Bus Driver". The other books are stories about he and his Eurasian family (he married a Japanese woman) living in the wild.
There not nearly as enjoyable.
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