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Professional Humor
Below is a growing list of excerpts and links to relevant humor
presented by some of today's greatest talents, including popular
humorists, comedians, satirists, cartoonists, and others.
We're hungry for more, so please send us some we can add to the
collection.*
| * New items will be added at the top,
as they become available |
| Flashback . . . Everett,
Washington in 1967, Garrison Keillor, Red Green |
|
War Story, Red Green |
| Bits & Pieces, various sources |
| Baccalaureate Speech, 2001, Princeton
University, Garrison Keillor |
| The Turn Toward 55, Garrison Keillor |
| Guy Noir, Garrison Keillor |
| People Weren't Subtle In Jr. High School,
Garrison Keillor |
| Once In A Lifetime, Lyrics,
The Talking Heads |
| Flashback . . . Everett,
Washington in 1967 |
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Where the women are strong,
The men are good looking,
And all the children are above average.
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Garrison Keillor |
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And men, remember,
If the women don't find you handsome,
They should at least find you handy.
I'm pulling for you,
We're all in this together.
I'm a man,
but I can change,
if I have to,
I guess.
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Transl.
"If all else fails, play dead."
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Red Green |
| Garrison Keillor's High
School Reunions |
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"God, adolescence is brutal.
Nothing afterwards is nearly so hard.
Nothing, nothing what so ever.
I go back to high school reunions.
It's like people from a shipwreck getting together
celebrating being alive, you know?"
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| |
Garrison Keillor |
War Story
I was in a war. Oh yeah, the big one: the Gasoline Price War
of '69. I had lied about my age so I could get a job pumping gas at Lloyd's
Texaco. Then all "shell" broke loose. The Dutchman dropped his price by a
nickel. We had to fight back, so we took the big hit and dropped our price
down six cents. The war was on. Why, we started handing out hot dogs and
balloons just to keep the customers. By the end of August, the entire
station was under siege--people parking their cars outside, firing off their
horns, screaming for free tumblers, and nobody to hold them off except me
and one-legged Lloyd. But we did it, and we won, and it made a man out of
me. And I guess that explains the stain on my pants.
Red Green
Bits & Pieces
"It was long ago, and far away . . . And it was so much
better than it is today . . . "
Meat Loaf, Paradise by the Dashboard Light,
Bat Out of Hell album
"We're aging disgracefully, and proud of it."
KZOK, Classic Rock, FM 102.5, Seattle
|
GARRISON KEILLOR’S
BACCALAUREATE SPEECH
PRINCETON
UNIVERSITY
Unofficial
Transcript (August 7, 2001)
|
|
 It’s
good to be here on this perfect day, in the company of a lot of very
smart people, and the folks who brought them up, and from whom they
inherited their good looks, and a good deal of their intelligence.
It’s a great honor to come and speak at your Baccalaureate,
especially as I know that Princeton does not invite many comedians
to do this. Princeton probably has enough experience with comedy
among incoming freshmen to know not to give one of those people a
microphone at a solemn and dignified event. Most colleges prefer a
standard commencement speaker, who is eminent in a sort of vague
statesman-like way, so that nobody is particularly mad at him, and
who will talk about the commitment to excellence. But the message of
a comedian is closer to that of the Gospel's, that down deep, life
is a mess, but it’s a beautiful mess if you don’t take yourself too
seriously, which you shouldn’t, because we’re not so different as we
pretend to be.
There is a lot of human nature in everybody. I learned this in
church. I didn’t grow up attending inter-faith services like this
one, in which you have readings from different religious traditions,
and in which you sing hymns about the fields and the forests. I grew
up in a church where they painted vivid pictures of the jaws of hell
opening up and swallowing you for your sins, and where the preacher
did not stand up on this high rostrum, but walked up and down the
aisles looking for converts, and shaking his Bible at them. These
were the people who put the “fun” into Fundamentalism. And we boys
were always made to sit down front, where we could get the full
impact of him.
It was the summer and the goldenrod was heavy in the air, as was
the ragweed, and I was becoming emotional over that, and the
preacher saw me weeping, and he said, “Here’s one who’s under
conviction of sin, right down here.” And he came for me. I remember
his shirt was wet, and his hair was pasted to his head. He reached
out his hand and I took it, and he pulled me towards him, and I
tripped and I fell into his arms. And when I came into his arms, I
could smell the whiskey on his breath. It was an amazing discovery
for a boy at the age of 12, to realize that the preacher himself had
his own contradictions, and today was not one of his winning days,
but he was still in the game. He held me close to him, and he prayed
to God that I would be spared punishment for my sins. To have a
drunken man pray for your soul is a mysterious privilege that a
person never, ever forgets. All of the good people sitting in back
were not aware of this, but he was a sinner too, and that’s what
gave him the authority to preach. And the man who speaks
passionately about the pursuit of excellence, is a man who is deeply
aware of his own mediocrity.
I am in the field of comedy, the same as most of you, and in our
field, excellence is an illusive quality. There are no long-term
goals. You’re only trying to have some immediate effect on the
situation. I got into comedy when I was a kid. I was one of those
really quiet kids. They weren’t sure if I was an introspective
genius, or if I was hard of hearing. And one day, I was sitting in
the school cafeteria across the table from our class intellect,
Leonard Larson, the guy who always corrected you if you
mispronounced words. The guy who was committed to excellence, at
least on the part of others. He was a tough critic, who made you pay
a big price for a mistake. He came from parents who had gone to
college, so he picked up a big vocabulary around the dinner table,
and also a very nice set of handy opinions about things. I had a
large vocabulary that I got from reading books, so I was never quite
sure about pronunciation. “Epitome,” for example, was a word I
didn’t use for years. Or “suave” or “hors d'oeuvres,” “charisma,” or
“inchoate.” I sat across from Leonard as he ate his tapioca pudding,
and I told him a stupid joke, one that involved mucus, and yet, as
dumb as it was, the timing was perfect. He was just swallowing when
it hit him, and I made Leonard Larson, our class intellect, exhale
tapioca through both nostrils. I have never had this effect on
anyone before. And it was a big experience, to see a great intellect
turn red and yak up tapioca. Two long noodles of it, I thought he
was going to blow his entire lunch. I was thinking cerebral
hemorrhage, and to me, at that point, comedy started to seem like a
noble thing. Destructive, yes. Humiliating, yes, but not in a bad
way. A good line of work for somebody who is not that smart.
A writer doesn’t have to be smart, as long as he knows to steal
from the right people. Like Mark Twain -- you steal from him long
enough and people will start comparing you to him. So… I’m not the
one to talk to you about the pursuit of excellence. Obviously,
you’ve done that already. I’m here to offer an alternative. I think
you should all go out and have a beautiful life that includes
adventure and romance, and some failure and some misery, and
certainly some remorse. And have this beautiful life without regard
to how it measures up to other people’s adventures and romances, and
their miseries and their remorse.
We need to talk about the pursuit of failure, I think. A person
who does not know failure is a person with a poor sense of reality.
A person who goes through his 20s and 30s racking up one prize after
another, getting the great job and the beautiful size 4 wife, and
the starter mansion, and the two beautiful, gifted children with the
Celtic names, is a man who is headed for a gigantic mid-life crisis
in which he runs away with a waitress named Misty, and perms his
hair, and becomes a 45-year-old singer/songwriter. You don’t want to
do that. A mid-life crisis in which you feel that, in spite of
appearances, your life is meaningless and you’re a big fat failure,
and nobody really likes you. If you could, I think you should try
having your mid-life crisis right now, when you’re smarter, and when
you’re stronger -- and not have it 20 years from now, when it’s
going to be a big embarrassment to everybody. It’s amazing how much
you can learn if you’re lucky enough to get into trouble when you’re
young. I recommend it to you.
|
I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and, as President
Shapiro said, that is the hometown of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and in
St. Paul when we think of Princeton, we think of Fitzgerald. My
house is in his old neighborhood. And in the spring, we get a
certain number of high school students who are wandering around
looking for his place, who have read the Great Gatsby in English,
and were moved by it. The novel is 75-years old, but Fitzgerald
managed to get down on paper a certain kind of pure yearning that
high school readers recognize as their own. Some of these high
school students ask me if I knew Fitzgerald myself, and I tell them
only slightly. We went to different schools. But every day on my
walk, I pass a big frame house on Summit Avenue, with a veranda on
two sides of it that used to belong to a woman named Porterfield,
who ran it as a boarding house. And, in the summer of 1919
Fitzgerald, at the age of 23, liked to sit on that veranda with his
friends, John Briggs and Don Stewart, and smoke, and talk about the
novel he was writing, and the girl in Montgomery, Alabama, whom he
hoped to marry.
He had gone off to Princeton with a beautiful picture in his mind
of a gothic campus, and himself as a campus hero, winning all of the
prizes. He spent much of his time at Princeton coughing [GK is
coughing, had water and continues coughing]. He was slightly
tubercular, as I am, but he spent his time writing for the Triangle
Club, and acting in their shows, and his grades were poor, and he
had to leave school. He enlisted in the army, hoping to go to Europe
and get in the war, and redeem himself. But the war ended before he
could. His novel had been turned down twice, and the girl had broken
off the engagement. He was living in a tiny third-floor apartment
with his parents, in St. Paul, with his alcoholic father and his
spooky mother. And he spent every day in a little room, where he had
pinned the chapters of his novel to the curtains, and where he was
busy writing new material, and cutting out big swaths of other
material, and reshaping the whole thing. Everyone knows how this
story turned out, how the novel was published, and the girl married
him, and he became a famous writer of the twenties. But, when I
think of Fitzgerald, I like to think of him sitting on that veranda,
at the age 23, a Princeton dropout, so broke he had to borrow pocket
money from his friends, and yet, so full of courage and passion,
with an indomitable spirit, looking forward to the next day and the
next month and the years to come, and all of the love and glory in
the world that he knew would be his. The spirit of youth, which is
so palpable here in this room.
Dear graduates, I am not one of those Baccalaureate orators who
takes you down a series of rhetorical corridors called “dare to
dream,” or “the commitment to quality,” meanwhile your brains are
taking a short holiday, and then you go to the parking lot, and you
find the Chevy, and you think, quality, okay, but what am I going to
do for revenue? Oh, brave young navigators, setting your course
toward tomorrow, speak kindly to your parents, and perhaps you could
borrow two or three grand, and have yourself a beautiful summer,
lighting candles against the darkness, and marching to a different
drummer – in Madrid, Paris, St. Petersburg, Machu Picchu, learning
what the open road has to teach you, and enjoying one last,
innocent, romantic journey before becoming internists or patent
attorneys, so that when you’re my age, what we call pre-senility,
you would remember that summer of glorious irresponsibility, and the
music and voices and the sights and the smells of barrooms and city
parks and cheap hotels, and your peregrinations, pedestrian and
vehicular, and beautiful people you’ve met, and the one person in
particular who made your heart pound that night along the Seine, as
you kissed as you might never, ever kiss again, but then you kissed
again, and then one thing led to another, and you had an experience
you won’t share with your father and mother.
Use common sense, yes, but press on for love and glory. Today’s
grievous mistake is tomorrow’s humorous story. Don’t grow old, as a
person whose memoirs will consist of stories from the TV shows you
never missed. Live your life, so as your last days come nigh, your
adventures are the envy of other alumni.
We can’t all be Aristotle or St. Thomas or Erasmus or Socrates.
Some of us, due to the law of averages, might be Mediocrities. But
we can all live boldly, with great esprit and panache, and sometimes
throw whites and colored into the same wash, or buy the expensive
wine, the kind with corks, never mind the cost. And walk into
strange cities, and have the good sense to get lost. Oh, you are
brave, and there is no other choice but courage. What choice has the
flower but to blossom? Who would celebrate and honor you? Oh, I
would. I would raise a monument made of Christmas lights, and all
the pennants and plywood. Even if I met you as a delivery person,
for Ray’s Original Pizza, I’d be impressed, like when “A body meets
a body coming through the Rye,” or coming through the trees. You can
recognize quality, even if it smells of onions and cheese.
I believe in impulse, in all that is green, believe in the
foolish vision that comes out true. Believe, that all that is
essential is unseen, and today, we all believe in you. Whether rich
or poor, sick or healthy, in whatever instance, in a place of your
heart, you will always be Princetonians, and that my dears, is the
whole story. It was a pleasure to attend your Baccalaureate. Thank
you.
June 3, 2001
Princeton University
|
THE
TURN TOWARD 55
by Garrison
Keillor
(GK: Garrison Keillor;
SS: Susan Scott: TR: Tim Russell, TK:Tom Keith)
(SOAPY ORGAN)
TR: They were young, they
had big dreams, there was so much they wanted to do, and then...
GK:
They turned 55. (STING)
SS:
Here it is, honey. "Stephen Foster High Class of '65 Reunion." Why in
the world is there a flyswatter on our school insignia? I don't remember
that.
TR:
It's a banjo.
SS:
Oh. Right. Well, let's go in.
TR:
I'm afraid, Lainie. Afraid of what I'll see.
SS:
Oh, Chip.
TR:
I mean it. I haven't seen these people in almost forty years. The aging,
the decay. The bad hair, the false teeth. Girls I lusted after, with
ropy necks and liver spots.
SS:
Well, we're all in the same boat, Chip. Put on your name tag and let's
go. (DOOR OPEN, CROWD AMBIENCE, FOOTSTEPS)
TR:
Hi--------- hi there ----------- good to see you. ------- How you doin?
(SOTTO VOCE) Lainie, I don't recognize a single person. Nobody. Are you
sure this isn't a chapter meeting of the A.A.R.P.? Who's that guy? And
why is he wearing a gun?
SS:
That's the security guard.
TR:
Look. Is that Bob Vogel? The star of the football team? He looks like he
swallowed a basketball. I'm going to start tossing back some whiskies.
Where's the bar?
SS:
Over there. By the potted palm. (STEPS AWAY)
(SS starts
humming to MUSIC)
GK:
Lainie-----
SS:
Who's this- .
GK:
Don't turn around just yet. I want to imagine you as you were.
SS:
Hey, get your hands off my eyes.
GK:
Don't peek. I want you to guess. Who is it?.
SS:
I haven't the faintest----
GK:
I'll give you a clue. We necked one night under the bleachers.
SS:
Under the bleachers. Tommy Anderson?
GK:
It was very passionate.
SS:
Larry Bleckner?
GK:
We ripped each other's clothes half off.
SS:
Hank Crowley? Danny Carson?
GK:
No.
SS:
Alan Deutchman? Bobby Dorfler? Sid Dukiman? Ernie Dalrimple? Fred
Dorlenberg? Tony Ellefson?
GK:
It's… Carl.
SS:
Carl….
GK:
Carl Ottlinger.
SS:
Oh. Carl …?
GK:
Ottlinger. You can look now.
SS:
GASPS, SOUND OF GLASS DROPPING AND BREAKING) Good Lord!
GK:
Surprised?
SS:
Your face! You-
GK:
I've had plastic surgery, Lainie. Because, you see, I never got over
you. Thirty-two years later and I still get out our yearbook every night
and look at the picture of you in French club, choir, you in the picture
of the girls field hockey team. Second row, third from the left. I still
find that picture almost unbearably exciting. About a year ago, I quit
my job as an urban planner and I bought a gun and I knocked over a
series of banks in South Dakota and I took the money, about a half
million dollars, and went to a great clinic in Switzerland and I had the
surgeons make me look exactly like the guy you chose instead of me. Your
husband, Chip. As he appeared in his graduation picture.
SS:
It's amazing. You are Chip. You're him. At eighteen. His eyes, his
mouth, his chin, his-----
GK:
I want to be young for you, Lainie……
SS:
Carl----
GK:
Call me Chip.
TR:
(APPROACHING) Hey honey, what do you say we go out on the terrace. I ran
into someone----- (TWO DRINKS DROP TO THE FLOOR) Leapin lizards!
GK:
Hi, old-timer.
SS:
Chip, this is Carl Ottlinger-
TR:
Is that a mask?
GK:
No. I'm taking your wife, Pops.
TR:
What? Lainie???? Why are you holding hands with him?
SS:
He's so handsome. Just like you were.
TR:
Hold on just a minute-
GK:
Hands off, Pops. Don't make me get rough. I'm taking Lainie to
Switzerland. There's a great surgeon there. Enjoy your cribbage games.
SS:
It's not like I'm leaving you, Chip. It's more like I'm rediscovering
you…..
GK:
Let's go, baby.
TR:
Lainie??????
SS:
Bye, honey. Don't forget to take your pills, they're in the kitchen, by
the sink. (ORGAN)
GK:
That's later tonight, on "The Turn Toward Fifty Five" ----
TR:
They were romantic idealists, and the world was all theirs, and then
suddenly--------
GK:
They turned 55. (STING)
GUY NOIR
by Garrison
Keillor
(GK: Garrison Keillor; TK: Tom Keith; AF: Al
Franken; RB: Roy Blount)
(MUSIC)
GK:
It's
Christmas Day, good tidings to you
Wherever, whoever you are,
I'm
in my office on the twelfth floor
And my name.... Guy Noir.
Christmas Day here in the city that knows how to keep its secrets, and
here I am with a new Millennium just ahead and I'm no closer to finding
the answers to life's persistent questions than I was when I was
thirteen, sitting in Mr. Hawley's math class ---
AF:
Someday you people are going to wish you'd paid more attention to
algebra and things like the multiplication of fractions because, take my
word for it, the world is becoming more and more complex every year. By
the year 2000, we'll be living in a totally different world --- we'll be
living in domes and wearing disposable clothing and our meals will come
in the form of tablets and we'll drive solar-powered cars that fly,
steered by gyroscopes. A person who doesn't know math will be utterly
lost in the world of 2000, take my word for it. (BRIDGE)
GK:
That was forty years ago, back when we referred to it as "The Year
2000". And now here it is. I ran into Mr. Hawley a couple years ago. At
the airport. At a frozen yoghurt stand. He was behind the counter.
AF: What can I get for you, mister?
GK: I'd
like the Double Dutch.
AF: You want the Tropical Hula or
the Chocolate Whammy?
GK: You don't recognize me, do you.
AF: No, I don't.
GK: I was in your math class,
Mr. Hawley. Years ago.
AF: Really. I retired in '89. Took
early retirement. Got into the yoghurt business.
GK: Maybe
you remember me. I was the guy with the pack of Luckies tucked into the
sleeve of my T-shirt. I was a greaser. Got a D in your class.
AF: I remember you. Noir, right? Sure. You sat in the back of the
room and read girlie magazines. Didn't you wind up in some sort of
correctional institution?
GK: No, I started my own company
and recently sold it for six-hundred million dollars, Mr. Hawley.
AF: Ha!
GK: It's true. And I've just donated a
new wing to my old high school. The Guy Noir Math & Science Learning
Center.
AF: Hard to believe.
GK: Hope you'll
come and be my guest for the dedication. I'll send you a plane ticket.
AF: You were the guy who put the tack on my chair, weren't
you.
GK: Well, I---
AF: It still hurts when
I sit.
GK: I'm sorry.
AF: You were the one
who put itching powder in my pants. The one who let the air out of my
tires.
GK: You were a very important person to me, Mr.
Hawley. God bless you for all you did for others.
AF: When
is the dedication?
GK: Soon, Mr. Hawley. Soon. (MUSIC)
The women ask, "Who's the man in the hat
Smoking that lovely
cigar?
Who is that man who is looking at me?
Could it be....Guy
Noir?"
The Twentieth Century is passing
The youth we used to
know
And the beautiful women we took in our arms
In Paris so long
ago.
RB: (QUIETLY, CALMLY) You were in Paris once. Twelve
years ago. It was January. Your hotel was near the Musee d'Orsay. You
were sick with the flu. You stayed in bed for three days. You were
alone. No beautiful women around.
GK: I prefer my version.
Who are you, mister?
RB: I'm Al. I'm your angel, Guy.
GK: My angel! You look more like my doorman.
RB:
A similar line of work in many ways.
GK: I thought angels
were supposed to be beautiful.
RB: I am. You don't think
so?
GK: I mean, with Botticellian faces and long golden
hair....
RB: You don't like my hair this way?
GK: It's fine. So you're the one who watches over me and keeps me
out of trouble?
RB: I do my best.
GK: I wish
you'd done a better job. So --- what brings you here? You're not the
Spirit of Christmas Future, are you? You're not going to show me my
tombstone?
RB: Nope. Just came by to wish you a happy New
Year.
GK: Thank you ---- you're wishing me a happy new
year?
RB: That's right.
GK: You don't know
if it will be or not?
RB: I do know, yes.
GK:
So will it be?
RB: Do you really want to know?
GK: You mean it's going to be bad?
RB: I didn't say
that.
GK: I know, but did you mean that?
RB:
Do you want to know the future?
GK: Do you think I'd enjoy
knowing it?
RB: You might.
GK: Tell me
something, Al. Is there going to be a time in the next year when I'm
going to think to myself, "Darn, I wish I'd worked harder in math."
RB: No. That's not going to happen.
GK: Thanks,
Al. (MUSIC)
The Twentieth Century is passing
Our youth, our
dreams of romance,
And the beautiful women we took in our arms
At
the VFW dance.
You've got to be brave, you got to be cool,
And
believe in your lucky star.
And if you need help from an older guy,
Call on me....Guy Noir. (PHONE RING. PICK UP) Yeah? Noir here.
TK (ON PHONE): Is this Guy Noir?
GK: That's me,
pal. What can I do for you?
TK (ON PHONE): Just feeling a
little nervous about New Year's Eve. You know. Y2K and terrorism and
everything.
GK: Uh huh. Where are you?
TK (ON
PHONE): At home.
GK: Right, but---
TK (ON
PHONE): I live in a dome and drive a solar-powered flying car and if
my computer crashes, I don't know how I'm going to purchase more
disposable clothing and meal tablets.
GK: Well, go to a
church that has a soup kitchen and get supper and maybe they'll give you
some clothes too.
TK (ON PHONE): How do I get there if the
gyroscope on my car goes on the fritz?
GK: Walk.
TK (ON PHONE): Walk?
GK: Walk.
TK (ON
PHONE): Okay. Thanks.
GK: May I ask you a question,
sir?
TK (ON PHONE): Sure. What is it?
GK:
Were you good at math?
TK (ON PHONE): Me? I teach math.
I'm a mathematician.
GK: Thank you, sir. (MUSIC)
It's not what you know, it's what you dare
To dream that takes you
far.
Happy 2000 and Auld Lang Syne
From me....Guy Noir.
PEOPLE WEREN'T SUBTLE
IN JR. HIGH SCHOOL
AT LEAST NOT IN 1954*
by Garrison
Keillor
* Nor were
they very subtle in 1961-64, when most EHS 1967 Alumni attended junior
high school.
Garrison Keillor (SINGS):
Please don't take me
back to that old gang of mine
Back in the days of way back when
Once was enough for
Auld Lang Syne
I
don't ever want to be young again.
I thank you, dear Lord, for the blessings you've brought
And I pray that your will may be done.
Make me sick, make me poor,
make it cold, make it hot,
But Lord do not make me be young.
There was a boy who came to the show last night, John — he's in the
seventh grade — and I said, How's that working out for you? Okay, he
said. What could he say? His mother was standing there. He couldn't tell
me what he really felt about seventh grade. (CRY OF ANGUISH, SOBBING)
Seventh grade is a hellhole. And I just want you seventh graders to know
that it does get better. It gets worse for awhile — eighth grade is
worse, and ninth, and ten through twelve are no picnic, and then there's
college, which means indebtedness. You kids will graduate from college
with about four million dollars of debt, and you'll have to work in the
mines (CLINK OF PICKAXE, TR FOREMAN: Hey pick up the pace there—
Susan Scott: Please, sir. We're liberal arts majors—
Tim Russell: Dig that rock, lady. Otherwise, you go to the cotton
plantation.
(BANJO)
GK: Down in Mississippi,
thousands of college graduates are working off their debts picking
cotton, in 110 degree heat.
(HUMMING UNDER)
TR (CRUEL
OVERSEER): Hurry up. (WHIP) Pick that cotton! (WHIP) Stop that
humming. (WHIP)
GK: That's what you children have to look
forward to in the near future. Also of course the polar ice cap is going
to melt (CRACKING, CRIES OF ALARM) and polar bears are going to come
live with us (BEAR) and they're not going to be in a good mood (CROSS
BEAR) and the hurricanes are going to be awful (EMERGENCY SIREN) and
people are going to pretty much move away from the coasts and into
Kansas and Nebraska. Omaha is going to grow to around ten million in the
next twenty years. BUT— there is a good side to growing older too. And
one is that you can eat what you want with whomever you want to eat it
with. This is a real benefit of grown up life.
I remember
seventh grade. I remember walking into the lunch room and going down the
cafeteria line where they put the slop on your plate (SERIES OF SLOPS) —
the instant potatoes, the creamed corn, the spaghetti, the chow mein,
the tapioca pudding — and then walk around the room trying to find
someone who I could sit next to. Elaine—?
SS: Yeah?
GK: Could I sit there?
SS: You?
GK:
It'd just be for a few minutes while I eat my lunch.
SS:
Christine is sitting there.
GK: Where is she?
SS: She's coming.
GK: But there are four seats.
SS: She's bringing some people with her.
GK:
How about if I just sit there until they come and then I'll vacate
immediately, I promise?
SS: Sit over there by him.
(FOOTSTEPS)
GK: Sheldon.
TR (TEENAGER,
FRENCH): — then: This is the French immersion table. You can't sit
here unless you speak French.
GK: We don't have French
immersion, Sheldon. That doesn't come in until the nineties, this is
1954, for crying out loud.
TR: (TEENAGER, SPEAKING
FRENCH) (FOOTSTEPS)
GK: Butch?
Fred Newman:
(BIG DEEP INCOMPREHENSIBLE VOICE)
GK: Never mind.
(FOOTSTEPS) Who to sit next to at lunch? You walk into the cafeteria and
all these faces turn and look and then they immediately look away and
you can see people putting coats on the chairs next to them. Even though
it's May and they don't need coats.They don't want you sitting there.
TR (TEEN): I'm saving this seat—
GK: For
who?
TR (TEEN): Not for you. You smell bad, you know
that? You stink. And you're ugly. You look like road kill.
GK: People weren't subtle in junior high school. Not in 1954. We
hadn't had sensitivity training.
TR (TEEN): What you use
for deodorant? Huh? Pine-Sol? Jeeze. Hey, look at that. You took extra
carrots? Carrots!!! HEY LOOK! HE TOOK EXTRA CARROTS!!! How about we call
you Bunny? Huh. Hey— everybody— look at Bunny. (CRUEL LAUGHTER)
GK: That's what seventh grade was like. It was torture on a daily
basis. A prison camp. Of course sometimes it was okay. Sometimes it was
better than okay.
SS: You can sit by me...
GK:
I can?
SS: Yes. I was hoping you would. Have a seat.
GK: Is this some sort of cruel joke?
SS: No.
GK: You're not going to jerk the chair out from under me
as I sit down so that I'd land on the floor and be an object of general
ridicule?
SS: No. I'd never do a thing like that. I'm a
Christian.
GK: Well, I've known Christians who would do
that and do do that, so— (HE SITS, CHAIR CREAKS) Thank you.
SS: I've always wanted you to sit next to me.
GK: You
have?
SS: All year. All year I've sat in the library and
watched the books that you took out and I took them out later and read
them too. When you went to the blackboard and did algebra problems, I
always felt you were doing it for me. And when you led our class in the
Pledge of Allegiance and— when I pledged my allegiance, it wasn't only
to the flag of the United States of America or to the republic for which
it stands, it was to you
GK: I don't know what to say.
SS: I know we should wait. We're only thirteen. And yet—
GK: What are you saying?
SS: I want to
have your children.
GK: Okay.
SS: We'll
drop out of school and skip going to college and that way we won't ever
have to work on a cotton plantation in Mississippi.
GK:
We'll grow old together. Someday we'll be twenty and twenty-five.
SS: Thirty.
GK: We'll home school our
children. No lunchrooms for them.
SS: And at night you
and I will go to restaurants. We'll sit next to each other and order
whatever we want.
GK: Sounds like a plan. (BIG THEME) And
that's what you have to look forward to, children. You'll have your own
car someday (CAR START, REV) and you'll be able to get in it and drive
away from all the people who never wanted to sit next to you (CAR RACE
AWAY) and you'll go wherever you want to go and stay as long as you
like. You'll be free. Don't go to college. This is how it ends up.
(CHANT OF WORK GANG, CLINK OF PICKAXE. WHIP.
TR: Pull
harder! Stop dawdling! Swing those hammers! Bust up that rock!) Be free.
Be happy. Have faith. The phone will ring. (RING) (PICK UP)
FN: Hey. You want to have lunch?
GK: Sure. When?
FN: How about today?
GK: Kind of busy today,
but— let me move a few things around— how about 12:30?
FN:
Great. Where?
GK: There's a little place that serves slop
not far from here.
FN: The Slop Shop?
GK:
That's it.
FN: See you there. Twelve thirty.
GK: And that's one of the beauties of adult life. You have to suffer
through a lot of useless math classes to get there, you have to endure
the cruelty of classmates and the lack of decent transportation, and, as
I say, someday the polar bears are going to be living among us in Omaha,
Nebraska, but— you can eat lunch and sit next to whoever you like.
Honest. (BRIDGE)
TR (ANNC): Number 23 in our series of 47
programs, "The Advantages of Adulthood" — join us next time when we talk
about "Owning Your Own Stuff and Staying Up All Night If You Want".
BAND PLAYOFF
Once In A Lifetime
by The
Talking Heads
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may
find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find
yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may
ask yourself-well...how did I get here?
Letting the days go
by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing
underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a
lifetime/water flowing underground.
And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large
automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful
house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the
days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the
moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
Same
as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as
it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it
ever was...same as it ever was...
Water dissolving...and water
removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water
at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the
ocean!
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue
again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water
underground.
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue
again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing
underground.
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful
house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may
tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?
Letting the days go
by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing
underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the
rocks and stones/there is water underground.
Letting the days go
by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing
underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a
lifetime/water flowing underground.
Same as it ever was...same as
it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it
ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it
ever was...
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