"He was a little off, I think is the term. He never hurt nobody, but
he used to wander alot. He used to run up to a groundhog in May and say
"It's the first of February!" He had a funny sense of humor. One
day he said to me, Maudie, I'm gonna fly...I said I believe ya can, Maynard,
I've seen ya do alot of wild things. We went up to Willard's Bluff...he
Scotch taped a hundred forty six pigeons to his arms..."
At this, the audience is so broken up Winters can't continue for a full
thirty seconds.
"He said "I know I can do it Maudie, I know I can." I said
"Don't repeat yourself, just do it..." He was airborne for a good
twenty seconds. Then some kid came from outta nowhere, threw a bag of popcorn
in the stone quarry and he bashed his brains out."
On his album "Crank Calls" you get some of the actual phone
messages Jonny's left for friends. Like: "This is your dear friend
and talent, former star Jonathan Winters. Brighter side, two words: who
cares. You know, we're only visitors. Bye bye, and remember the Prince of
Darkness is with us 24 hours a day regardless of light. The Prince of Darkness
can deal with it..."
CRUDELY TENUTA
Very few comedians ever dare to tell a comic truth. Except maybe that the
soap in a hotel room is small. And what is their reward? Television shows
like "Everybody Loves Raymond." Some years ago, a female comedian
named Joan Rivers decided to try and be a little outrageous and abrasive.
She ended up spurned by Johnny Carson, hounded out of comedy and into jewelry
sales, and when her husband committed suicide, the press laughed about
it and one writer made her cry with the viciousness of his insinuations
about their life together. That man, Mr. Ben Stein (writing under an assumed
name) has since been rewarded with his own show on "Comedy Central."
And so it is not surprising that Judy Tenuta has not been given her own
sitcom over and over again as Tom Arnold has, or been cast in movie after
movie as Whoopi Goldberg has. But the book says that her records are often
quite amusing and offensive. On her "Buy This, Pigs" record,
she speaks to the misbegotten: "You know what scares me?" she
asks. "When you're forced to be nice to some paranoid schizophrenic
- JUST BECAUSE SHE LIVES IN YOUR BODY!" Some have criticized her for
spitting her gum out at ringsiders and telling them to dive for it, or for
making men wear her clothing on stage, or for declaring that if Chapman
had aimed a little to the side and shot Yoko he would've been a hero. But
she will find no criticism HERE.
UNDERTAKER'S LILY
Lily Tomlin is quite the dark comedienne. Even her "Laugh-In"
characters were hideous, from the Elaine May-inspired "Ernestine"
to that poster girl for crib death, Edith Ann. The Goldmine book applauds
her album "Appearing Nitely" as being full of childhood traumas
about growing up in the 50's, many recited with chilly precision:
"My hair has been pin-curled, frizzy on the ends, parted on the side,
and held in place by a red plastic two lovebirds on a stick beret. A vinegar
rinse gives it red highlights and it bounces as I walk...My new school bag
slung across my chest bangs between my elbow and my waist. Inside my new
Cinderella pencil box, with its own built-in sharpener. No interrupting
walks to the window sill. And something I have always wanted a big new art
gum erasers with all the corners still sharp. I should feel alot better
than I do..."
Her one-liners are exercises in alienation: "Does your mind feel more
and more like teflon, nothing sticks to it?"
EMOPHILIA
Queasy man-child Emo Philips has a number of unpleasant routines on his
first album for Epic. He made a stir as early as 1985, but few could stand
this stir-crazy but original comic:
"I was in the park today, minding my own business, staring at people,
trying to make their brains explode. You know. And I saw this old woman
digging for food through a garbage can. I don't know about you folks. I
have a lot of love for old women going through garbage cans. They saved
my life so many times as a baby. And I thought, if I can't score with her...hehhhhh.
Oh, women, you can't live with 'em, you can't get 'em to dress up in a skimpy
little Nazi costume...beat you with a warm squash..."
BITE OF THE PYTHON
There are many choices for favorite disgusting Monty Python routine. Fortunately,
according to the Goldmine book, most of them are on one record, "Monty
Python's Flying Circus" (PYE 12116)
Highlights include Eric Idle's sex obsessed "Nudge Nudge" routine,
Terry Jones describing a box of disgustingly-filled candies (such delicacies
as lark's vomit), Michael Palin's cheerful transvestite song about lumberjacks
and...yes...
Cleese: "It's passed on! This parrot is no more! It's ceased to be!
It has expired! This...is a late parrot..if you hadn't nailed it to the
perch it would be pushing up the daisies...it is...an ex-parrot!"
Palin: "It's just stunned."
HEARTACHE ALA NEWHART
While Bob Newhart seems to have acquired a reputation for being an inoffensive
fellow, it simply is not so. The Goldmine book takes pains to point out
examples of this man's deceptively dark brand of satire. As his various
albums are annotated, one comes across a few very startling examples of
black comedy.
"The Retirement Party" is about an accountant who, slightly
drunk, tells the gathered office workers, "I don't suppose it occurred
to any of you that I had to get half-stoned every morning to come to this
crummy job..." But Newhart's darkest humor appears on "Ledge Pyschology."
He plays a cop using a new theory on potential suicides: tease don't sympatize.
"Thinking of jumping?" he nonchalantly asks the man on the ledge.
"Your first time is it?"
BIZARRE DULL MAN
Jackie Vernon was a bleak, offbeat comedian who stood around telling bizarre
stories of tour guides lost in quicksand, watermelons as pets for the lonely,
and how someone he knew "ended his life by dying." He was an influence
on Steven Wright, and was "the dull man" before Rodney Dangerfield
overtook him as the guy who got "no respect."
Any of his albums will have a somber, strange bunch of gags. Like these
from his Jubilee release: "I walked by a funeral parlor the other day.
It had a sign in the window: "Closed because of a birth in the family."
Someone sent me a weird gift for my birthday: a bowling ball with a thumb
in it...just this afternoon I saw a cross-eyed woman tell a bow-legged man
to go straight home."
REINER & BROOKS
A surprising choice? You don't think of them as dark, do you. That's because
Mel Brooks has a way of burlesquing the unbearable. But if you read some
of the material instead of hearing Brooks say it, it offers a very uncomfortable
look at human nature and the human experience.
The 2000 Year Old Man admits "Everything we do is based on fear"
and describes how comedy is someone walking into an open sewer manhole and
dying. How about this bit of vaudeville?
"How did you feel about Joan or Arc being burnt at the stake?"
"Terrible."
Pretty sad, actually, to hear the 2000 Year Old Man describe this as one
of his problems: "I have 42,000 children. And not one comes to visit
me!"
Don't forget Brooks as the "Two Hour Old Baby," either:
"What is it that makes a mother queasy or a little nauseous in the
first two or three months of her pregnancy?"
"...I think it's psychological. I think the moment they realize that
there's a living creature in them - they puke...it's a frightening thing..."
ILL WILLS
As one flips through the Goldmine Comedy Record Price Guide, one encounters
a variety of performers, famous and infamous. Will Jordan was a contemporary
of Lenny Bruce and Mel Brooks. It has been said that both Lenny and Mel
were influenced by Will, who used to do bizarrely sick routines about Hitler.
The book describes the grim joys to be found on Jordan's lone album for
Jubilee.
Will Rogers has an undeserved reputation for being a completely nice guy.
All that "I never met a man I didn't like" stuff. Actually he
was capable of some very stinging satire, some very chilling observations,
and a grinning amount of black humor. Dig up one of his old 78's for example,
and you'll find lines like this:
"Now folks, all I know is what little news I read every day in the
paper. I see where another wife out on Long Island in New York shot her
husband. Season opened a month earlier this year. Prohibition caused all
this. There's just as many husbands shot at in the old days, but women were
missin'. Prohibition has improved their marksmanship 90%. Never a day passes
in New York without some innocent bystander being shot. You just stand around
this town long enough and be innocent and somebody's gonna shoot ya..."
THE LAST OF ROMAN
Murray Roman's masterpiece of sick comedy was to title an album "Blind
Man's Movie" and issue it with a completely black front and back cover,
and a black gatefold.
His albums are more hip than dark, as he tried unsuccessfully to be the
Lenny Bruce of the late 60's. But the late Mr. Roman often had a dark, telling
line or two. From his first switched-on comedy album (he liked to collage
rock music between the bits) there's this little gem: "Hey, why doncha
call the police department at three o'clock in the morning and speak to
them in German. If they answer in German, you got 'em, babe..."
It was Roman, by the way, not Carlin, who first thought up the idea of
a drugged out version of Snow White: "Get high one day and read it.
Sleepy would be a downer freak, into Seconals, droppin' up all day. Dopey
would be a grass smoker...Sneezy was a coke sniffer. Grumpy was a speed
freak. Happy was an acid head: "I love you, I love you." Bashful
was a juicer. And Doc was the connection. Dig where that is. And Snow White...was
their fantasy!"
APPALLING PAULSEN
A place must be made for the recently deceased Pat Paulsen, who must have
undergone a lot of misery in Mexico while seeking a cure for brain cancer
and his many other ills.
Paulsen's glum persona made for a lot of laughs. He was a pioneer in comedy
that involved bleakness, haplessness and lame angst. Before Steve Martin
tried the patience of audiences, there was Paulsen doing non-humor via "finger
shadows" like "wrist with fist attached." He offered one-liners,
like this one about his school days: "I took biology two years in a
row just to eat the specimens." He wrote the classic Smothers Brothers
song about falling into a vat of chocolate, and a love song about his date
one memorable evening. It's on his "Ice House" record: "And
we settled back to watch the show, and you settled back too far. Tipped
over the girl's glass in back of you. She didn't like it and give you a
punch in the kidney. So I turned around and put my finger in her nose. Then
I couldn't get it out. So we left together. Walking down the street hand
in nose..."
STARK AND DARK: NICHOLS & MAY
Nichols and May were noted for their chilling, intellectual satires. Usually
Elaine played the cold, calculating female to Mike's neurotic and hapless
male. Elaine was the one selling a mourner an overpriced funeral service,
or becoming the voice of authority and as an unfeeling phone operator cutting
a man off from the rest of the world.
According to the Goldmine book, the highlight of their "Evening of
Nichols and May" album is "Mother and Son," a relentless
look at the complete breakdown of a guilty, adult male into an obedient,
utterly dependent child. Space technician Nichols has failed to call home,
and he knows that supervising a rocket's blast off is no excuse:
"I didn't have a second," he apologizes to his mother, "I
could cut my throat. I was so busy."
His mother seizes on the guilt and rubs it in his face: "I sat by
that phone all day Friday, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday...your father
said to me, "Phyllis, eat something, you'll faint." I said, "No,
Harry, no, I don't want my mouth to be full when my son calls me."
The call degenerates quickly into a tug of war between the independent
son and the clinging, controlling mother. "Is it so hard to pick up
a phone and call your mommy?"
The son's thin shell of adulthood flakes away. He crumbles, promising in
a suddenly wavering and baby-like voice to call his mother: "I promise...I
love you Mommy." "Goodbye, baby..."
And so, we leave the world of sick comedians and dark routines. More could
be mentioned, but it wouldn't be "fair use." It would be downright
unfair to not give you the grim satisfaction of discovering all the other
unusual and offbeat comedians in the Goldmine book, from those you might
not recall as being too sick (Don Adams and Shelley Berman) to those who
became martyrs for the cause (Sam Kinison and Lenny Bruce). Plus composers
of musical mayhem such as Mr. Tom Lehrer. Turn out a candle, curse the darkness,
and play some of these records.