Legend has it that comedian Chico Marx (above with his brother Groucho in the “South Carolina” scene from The Marx Brothers GO WEST) was backstage after a live performance, kissing on a showgirl smoochie smooo — as was his wont, ladies and gentlemen. But on this particular evening, his wife Miriam had come to see the show and saw this.
“What are you doing?” asked Mrs. Marx.
“What?” said Chico.
“Kissing that woman!”
“Oh, I wasn’t kissing her,” explained Chico. “I was just whispering in her mouth.”
Smooth smoocher, eh?
On the other hand I’ve heard, “sometimes a conversation needs a kiss just to shut up a minute.”
Many have tried it and gotten away with it. Artisanal conversation, it’s called in certain hipster clubs. Then again, as my friend Flash Rosenberg defines artisanal: “Art is anal.”
How about trying this one: “Words can be weapons and comedy our kiss!”
And speaking of contact comedy, check out Flash Rosenberg’s cover for a new cartoon book by John Towsen, Ph.D, “How Many Surrealists Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb? or, Why did the Intellectual Cross the Road and Walk into a Bar?
In 2014, the average American adult spent four times longer watching TV than socializing and communicating.
The American Time Use Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics, NY Times January 10 2016
Wow. That’s a drag. Let me be the last to wish you Happy 2016. Let’s get out there and conversate!
Depending upon where you are living, or where you suddenly find yourself arrested (See weblog entry: NOW THAT YOU’VE BEEN ARRESTED), learning how to give toasts in a different language can be crucial. Any folk journalist knows — well, this one; I’ve been arrested in Athens, Minneapolis and elsewhere — you are more likely to impress captors by coming off as erudite, perhaps even as someone appearing exotic or full of intrigue. This sometimes can also get one free drinks.
Herewith a few starter tongues to try out:
Cherefa! Turkish for in your honor
Genatseet! Armenia to your health
Gon Bai! Drain your cup in China
Jeveli! means long life in Croatian
Krasivaya! is Beautiful to Russians
Salum! is the Farsi for shalom/salaam/peace
Sastimos! in Romani for good health
Saud! Portuguese
Spakoini Noche! is Good night
And Zie Gezundt!Yiddish, works for so many things
Toasts in Many Countries! Let’s talk soon shall we?
GREMIO: What! this gentleman will out-talk us all.
PETRUCHIO: Hortensio, to what end are all these words? The Taming of the Shrew
Welcome back Sports Fans!
With the NFL playoffs underway this weekend, let’s talk sports!
Women may love to talk, but guys never shut up. Listen to talk radio. Sports talk radio. Or notice while watching a sports telecast: they’re just out to out muscle each other. But wouldn’t it be more entertaining and instructive if instead of just talking to fill dead air, they spoke at a clever level of conversation?
Baseball is the greatest conversation topic ever. Civil War author Bruce Catton
Sure is! The statistical depths and storytelling alone make for endless summers and off-seasons of excellent, lingo-filled confabs. And George Carlin’s comparison of Football and Baseball — “stadium” vs. “park,” “spearing, piling on” vs. “the sacrifice,” “a sustained ground attack” vs. “going home” — is one of the finest examinations of the language we use when discussing sports. Here it is, literally:
Back in the mid-1970s, every Sunday night in Middletown USA, Bob Glasspiegel hosted a conversational sports show on WESU 88.1 FM. He called it, “Jock Talk.” Think of the Algonquin Roundtable only with sports wits batting it around the bases.
I think this is the appeal of your better podcasts, which reach funny and informative levels of give and take by the practice of sharply-shaped words leading to good interviews = good conversation. [SEE LINKS PAGE FOR SOME PODCASTS]
As part of the WESU’s “Jock Talk” active listenership, I was asked to do color commentary on some basketball broadcasts with the aforementioned announcer Bob Glasspiegel. We were having a conversation on the air about the relative merits of “streaking” naked during halftime (college males randomly ran wild and nude across campuses during a certain dull point in the ‘70s; something left over from the freedoms fought for by the cultural revolutions of the ’60s.). I made some remark and suddenly our play-by-play guy punched me.
Luckily it was radio. But I was so startled, I fearfully refrained from offering any decent conversation the rest of the game. (Or “tilt” as they were called back east where Wesleyan University plays its games) At another game when someone streaked across the b-ball court — okay, my dorm mate, but he was very drunk and it was the ’70s — I had to interview him before and after the event. Not easy, as he was one of those guys, as a coach remarked later, who “wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful.” Years later, while doing similar color commentary on NYU broadcasts (“Go Violets!”), I got into a physical fight with the mascot from the opposing team. (A “Judge” from Brandeis, was it?)
DCDS JV Basketball 1970
Anyway, the above experiences are rendered as this folk journalist’s way of saying: good conversation need not always lead to such results. It’s up to you. You can be the catalyst for everyone else’s creative convos. Perhaps you’ll help today’s podcasts usher in a new golden age of storytelling, who knows?
Back Pocket Banter
Have you ever called a talk show on the radio? How about C-Span on TV?
What did you discuss?
Was it like a real conversation or did you just state your opinion and hang up?
What kind of podcast would you like to be part of?
Activity
Call a talk show or sports show on radio or TV.
Bonus
Michael O’Donohue, one of the original SNL writers, told a story of going to a baseball game with a blind friend and describing the action to him as it progressed inning by inning. Late in the game, “Thwack!” – a fly ball to left field and it is going to be a home run. At that point O’Donohue pulls out a souvenir baseball he brought to the game. While continuing the play-by-play: “It’s a long fly ball to deep left back back back…” he suddenly slams the souvenir ball into the stomach of his blind companion. “Home Run!!!”
“[Mychal] Thompson watches players walk into arenas today with their oversized headphones and wonders if they even bother talking to each other anymore as they did back in his day. Casual conversations aren’t the only thing Thompson misses.” Ben Bolch on the former Laker basketball player, LA Times, December 24 2013
ADD Jock Talk: this video creates dialogue where there was none. Certainly nothing like this!
the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not
able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more
than I invent or is invented on me: I am not only
witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other
men.
Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV Part II
Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country.
Stephano in The Tempest
Is it true you run a chain of brothels from coast to coast?
Groucho Marx in West Virginia to a hotel clerk
Brecher & Marx in 1937 or 8
Standing around at a New Year’s Eve celebration, sitting at a dinner party, cornered in a club stuck with someone with a story that you have zero interest in.
How did/do you handle it?
How about when somebody is just jaw-jacking about anything, but in a way that no matter how meandering still achieves a certain story-like wonderful roundness? And it is being fed to you in a way that you get?
You’re not in the Twilight Zone. Rather, you’ve just stepped inside a conversation containing witcraft.
This is where allasudden you feel “a flash of lightening” — this, according to musician/actor/humorist and raconteur Oscar Levant (ask your great grandmother or her new boyfriend) — how he described verbal humor. In one of his memoirs – he wrote at least three— called, “The Unimportance of Being Oscar,” Levant says that when Groucho Marx and S.J. Perelman were asked who was the fastest wit around, this is what they told English critic, Kenneth Tynan: “George S. Kaufman, Oscar Levant and screenwriter Irving Brecher.”
This was 1954. Kaufman and Perelman wrote movies for the Marx Brothers in the 1930s. And so did Brecher. I spent six years with Irv “the Nerve” (as Harpo Marx called him) in the 2000s as we worked on his memoirs, detailing his friendships with and writings for Groucho, Harpo and Chico, Milton Berle, Jack Benny and George Burns, among others. Hanging out with Irv, I bore witness (never bored!) to his comedic gifts and takes and I’ve considered him my droll model ever since. Look, how rapt:
Brecher in conversation after screening one of his Marx Bros movies in 2005
Witcraft. Irving Brecher proved a master at this, meaning he was funny as hell in magically getting out of conversations that he found dull or annoying or that asked him for money like those talking snake oil salesmen/TV pitchmen and blowhards out of all proportions.
Remember Jerry Seinfeld’s surefire way of dismissing them?
(JERRY ANSWERS PHONE; IT’S A GUY WHO WANTS HIM TO SWITCH LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE SERVICES)
SEINFELD: Oh gee I can’t talk now, why don’t you give me your home number and I’ll call you later?
CALLER: I’m sorry we’re not allowed to do that.
SEINFELD: I guess you don’t want people calling you at home.
Likewise, Brecher was a superbly skilled athlete making plays in the game of life.
One time visiting, I arrived at his apartment on Wilshire in Westwood right as he appeared in the middle of an important phone call. He waved me into his study with one finger on his lips, leaned into the black landline from his favorite chair, and this is what I heard:
“Before I give you the number,” Irv was saying, “I want to be sure. What’s the price of that record offer again?”
Out of the speakerphone came a male telemarketer’s voice: “It’s 19.95, sir.”
“That’s the full price then?” asked Irv.
“Plus 4.95, shipping and handling,” said the voice.
“I thought you said 19.95,” Irv barked back. “Are you taking advantage of me because I’m 92 and don’t hear too well?”
“No sir,” the voice said. “The cds are 19.95, and then 4.95 for shipping and handling.”
“That’s a little too much.”
“It was printed right on the TV screen, sir.”
“Maybe it’s printed, but I didn’t see that shipping and handling. My eyes are so bad that this morning when I woke up, I couldn’t find my hearing aid.”
“So the total would be 24.90,” the voice pushed on, missing the gag.
“I’ll tell you what,” Irv said. “I’ll just take the shipping and handling.”
A pause. Then the voice said: “What?”
“Just bill me for the shipping and handling,” explained Irv. “Don’t send the albums. I can’t afford it.”
“You want us to bill you for shipping and handling? Without the cds? Uh,” the voice wavered. “We’ve never done that before.”
“Well, I’d rather not deal with pioneers.” Irv said. “So if you’ll excuse me.”
He pushed the button that disconnected the call and looked up.
“Pretty good, huh?” he said.
Now this was no performance put on by a master of merriment for my amusement—Irv was amusing himself. “People call them pranks,” he said. “But it’s more than that. It’s quiet outrage.”
I understood he could get mad at being bothered.
“But,” I asked. “Why don’t you just get caller i.d.?”
Said Brecher: “I’d just as soon talk to them and screw them around.”
Chico and Harpo wonder who is this guy dressed up as Groucho. It’s Irv, AKA “Brecho!”
THIS JUST IN~!
I just read in Dick Cavett’s recent book Brief Encounters (Henry Holt, 2014) where Groucho was on the phone and fired back with this wittily crafted line: “Extension 4-8-2, eh? 4-8-2. Sounds like a cannibal story.”
Activity
As kids, we used to call pranks like what Irv pulled, “phony phone calls.”
“Hello? Is your refrigerator running? Ya better go catch it!”
“Do you have Dr. Pepper in a can? Well, let him out!”
Try these at home, sure. But Brecher’s way was wicked, a nasty mastering of the deadpan. He admired Jack E. Leonard, Fred Allen’s antically addled quippage. Livewire ire, ridiculing societal conventions. The same anti-establishment attitude Irv wrote into the characters Groucho played: J. Cheever Loophole in “At the Circus” and S. Quentin Quale in “Go West.” (They even leap out of their movies and speak directly to the audience.)
Groucho’s wordplay would rip and snort through anything to do with sex and death. “Lulu Belle,” he greets a floozy in Go West’s version of Mos Eisley’s Cantina, “I didn’t recognize you standing up.”
Harpo with a gun at the bar while his brothers look on in GO WEST saloon
Back Pocket Banter
Do you spend time with people who bore you? Why? And how do you get out of such conversations?
Can you learn something from a dull person about yourself?
Who is your most boring relative? Do you get stuck with them for long periods at family gatherings, or hide in avoidance?
If you could, who would you give a “greatest buffoon” award to?
Do you repeatedly use catch phrases in conversation, or hear other people start sentences with, “At any rate,” “To make a long story short,” “To tell you the truth,” “In other words,” etc?
Bonus Activity
Watch “My Dinner With Andre” a movie containing some of the greatest back-and-forth you ever eavesdropped into, with director Andre Gregory and writer Wallace Shawn. Enlightening stories told by two delightful and delighted friends— all of it happening in an emptying New York restaurant, featuring an ancient waiter seemingly waiting for Godot.
Bonus Back Pocket Banter
Interrupt a boring confab with a swift kick to the midsection. (Kidding!) Better to say, “Excuse me, have we met before?” And then walk away.
Wear a button that says: “You Should Get To Know Me.” This worked surprisingly well during Freshman Orientation for my college friend David Schreff, who now consults w/ Fortune 500 companies and taught the Jimmy Carter White House administration how to speed-read.
As a surefire final try: “I’m sorry but I have to go to the bathroom now that you’ve made me so excited about your_______.” (Whatever that person was droning about)
When All Else Fails: As Catherine Blythe writes with resignation, “Be kind to the bore (one day he could be you)” (pg. 142)
Irv Brecher made the English language funny – what’s better than that? And one of the funniest and timeless of conversations is called, “The Two Thousand Year Old Man,” with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.
Reporter: What language did you speak two thousand years ago?
Two Thousand Year Old Man: Uhh…basically, Rock. Rock talk.
Reporter: What’s that –
Two Thousand Year Old Man: Uhh…hey put that rock down. Don’t throw that rock at me!
For conversation, weather is a gift. Ross McCammon in “Works Well With Others”
Now that we’ve got some weather (El Nino slamming southern California), how do we talk about it? Some tips perhaps, from a folk journalist confabbing about this fabulous storm system rolling out of the Pacific seas?
Mark Twain is often cited for, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” But this disputes that attribution: http://www.twainquotes.com/Weather.html
I got into one conversation while out looking for a rainbow after a break in the action this afternoon. A UPS delivery man told me after I complained about the weather and its aftermath, “You’ll only see a rainbow when God is talking to you.”
“Well,” I replied, “what about if I see a double rainbow?”
“That’s when God brings along one of his angels.”
* * *
Now, check out this story about a man making El Nino breakfast in an underpass, in a column today by the great LA TIMES writer, Steve Lopez:
As members of the MMMS used to say — ‘NUFF SAID! (MMMS, for those unaffiliated with Stan Lee and his fellow comic book creators, was the “Merry Marvel Marching Society” which included MMMS buttons for kids like me who had subscriptions – ! – to Spidey, X-Men, FF, and DD.)
That’s my rap/let’s talk soon!
Link to chat with the author of “Works Well With Others,” Ross McCammon:
