Fifty Boners

I’m going to jump right in with Louis Untermeyer’s definition of the word boner with a lot more urgency than he likely felt way back in 1946, when the Treasury of Laughter was published:

A boner is a howler, a misprint, a right word in the wrong place (or vice versa), a slight error in association that turns a simple fact into a side-splitting absurdity.

There. Now that that is out of the way, I can get this out of the way as well:

So, on to the boners which were circulating in the pre-Internet days prior to 1946:

• Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.
• Magna Charta said the King was not to order taxis without the consent of Parliament.
• They gave William IV a lovely funeral. It took six men to carry the beer.
• A metaphor is a thing you shout through.
• Ibid was a famous Latin poet.
• A Senator is half horse and half man.
• Acrimony is what a man gives his divorced wife.
• Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
• Three shots rang out. Two of the servants fell dead, the other went through his hat.
• During the Napoleonic Wars crowned heads were trembling in their shoes.

And that’s all she wrote.

[Recycled] Howlers from the Press

Once in a while, I get one of those forwarded e-mails that bear the funny headlines, the hilarious typos, the kinds of things that are often associated with Richard Lederer or Jay Leno.

They’re older than you think.

Bear in mind that The Treasury of Laughter was published in 1946. See if any of these sound familiar:

Closely allied is the blunder is the obituary of a war casualty which paid a tribute to the “bottle-scarred” veteran. When friends of the deceased wrote outraged letters of protest, the paper corrected itself: “Last week, we spoke of a certain veteran as ‘bottle-scarred,’ We are deeply mortified and we apologize. We meant to say ‘battle-scared.’”

CRIMINAL JURY DISMISSED: HAMM FAILS TO IDENTIFY YEGGS

MADDENED STEER INJURED FARMER WITH AX

“The fatal accident occurred at the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street just as the dead man attempted to cross.”

“Why go elsewhere to be cheated? You can come to us to do the job.”

Have newspapers or other publications – has not this very blog – made more modern errors? I don’t mind getting the e-mails. Just update them. Please.

Who Is Jim Wheeler, and Why Does He Need New Pants?

One of Abraham Lincoln’s lesser-known moments.

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes.

Apparently, I missed a significant rite of passage by not having Linden Bateman as a history teacher at Bonneville High.

The man, I’m told, abhors plastic. And loves Abraham Lincoln. So much so, he forces his students to memorize the Gettysburg Address and, I don’t know, sculpt a bust of Lincoln out of wax. Not plastic.

I had mostly loser teachers for history in high school, so maybe having Mr. Bateman wouldn’t have been that bad.

I’m sure he would have known of Carl Sanburg’s “Lincoln, the Laughing President.” What follows, per Sandburg, are jokes in Joe miller’s Jests, a book Lincoln carried around as a lawyer and, we can assume, as president:

An Irishman going to be hanged begged that the rope might be tied under his arms instead of round his neck, for said Pat, “I am so remarkably ticklish in the throat that if tied there I will certainly kill myself with laughing.”

Lieutenant Connolly, an Irishman in the service of the United States during the American war, chanced to take three Hessian prisoners himself, without any assistance. Being asked by the commander-in-chief how he had taken them – “I surrounded them” was the answer.

I have a hard time imagining a modern president daring to tell any kind of joke because you know somewhere someone would be offended by it as soon as those faithful messengers of the media scooped the turd up off the ground and hand-delivered it to the offendee. (To see such turds delivered, go here, or, indeed, to any of the national news networks, newspapers, et cetera.)


The rest of Sandberg’s essay, I must confess, confuses me. He tells a few tales of Lincoln but they’re not particularly funny. Here’s an example:

He was the man who had started a little circle of people to giggling one morning in Judge Davis’ courtroom, and the judge spluttered out: “I am not going to stand this any longer, Mr. Lincoln. You’re always disturbing this court with your tomfoolery.” The fine was $5.00, for disorderly conduct. Lincoln sat with his hand over his mouth trying to keep his face straight. Later the judge called Lawrence Weldon to him and Weldon whispered into his ear what it was that Lincoln had told. Then the judge giggled. Getting his face straight, he announced, “The clerk may remit Mr. Lincoln’s fine.”

Get ready, folks, here comes the punchline:

The joke had to do with “taking up a subscription to buy Jim Wheeler a new pair of pants.”

Whooo! That’s a rib-tickler. Wait. Who’s Jim Wheeler? The Internet is silent on the subject. The reason for the mirth behind this story is lost, apparently, as far as the Intertubes are concerned. Maybe Mr. Bateman would know.

Jewish Logic

Here's the best bit from a collection Louis Untermeyer calls “Jewish Logic”:

Count Esterhazy was organizing an expedition to the Near East and beyond. He had engaged most of the helpers, but he needed a general factotum for the long journey. Knowing the position was hard to fill, he advertised for a seasoned traveler who spoke the languages of the Near East, a fearless swordsman, an intrepid rider, etcetera. The advertisement was worded to attract only the right man – and there were no applicants. After a week, the butler announced that a small and shabby looking fellow had come in response to the ad.

“He doesn’t sound very promising,” said Count Esterhazy, “but show him up.”

The man proved to be even less prepossessing than the butler’s description. But clothes do not always make the man, and the Count began by asking, “You like to travel?”

“Me?” said the little man. “I hate traveling. Boats make me seasick. And trains are worse.”

“But you are a linguist,” continued the Count. “I presume you speak Arabian, Persian, Turkish, Hindustani – ”

“Who? Me?” gasped the candidate. “I talk nothing but Yiddish.”

“Your swordsmanship?” inquired the Count.

“What do you mean, swordsmanship? What should I do with a sword?”

“And as a horseman?”

“I hate horses. I wouldn’t go near one.”

“But,” said the Count, “What did you come here for?”

“I saw your ad,” said the little man, “and I just came to tell that on me you shouldn’t depend.”

Call this passive-aggressive or what have you, it’s just hilarious. Wasting all the Count’s time, just to deliver the zinger: “Can’t depend on me.” Mr. Warmth would certainly understand the appeal in that.

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes.

This kind of humor just harks back to an era that, in many ways, is better than ours. Not everything was good, mind you -- that's the one thing that most people misinterpret with era nostalgia: they forget (and so do sometimes the nostalgists) to say they'd take the good of yesterday and combine it with the good of today in the hopes that the added good would displace the bad.

If only it were so. Sigh.

Insanity Defense

These days, at least according to the Internet, about the only things you can make fun of and get away with it are Mormons and fatties. Heck, given what’s happened in Japan recently with the earthquake and tsunami, you can’t make jokes of any sort – especially if you’re a talking duck – or write shows that have nuclear power as a plotline.


So imagine the uproar today if some of these Treasury of Laughter jokes, filed under the header “The Lunatic Fringe” ever got out. They’d be coming to take me away, ha ha.

Two patients of the asylum were looking over the wall, watching the gardener.

“What’s he doing?” said the first.

“Putting fertilizer on the strawberries,” said the second.

“Fertilizer on the strawberries!” exclaimed the first. “We put sugar and cream on our – and they call us crazy!”

This one’s my favorite:

The fashionable psychiatrist finished his notes and turned to the lady in front of him. “I’ll be perfectly frank,” he said. “I find nothing the matter – nothing abnormal – and I shall so inform your relatives.”

“Thank you, doctor, I was sure you’d say that,” she replied. “I only came here to please my family. After all, there’s nothing very strange about a fondness for pancakes, is there?”

“Pancakes?” repeated the psychiatrist. “Certainly not. I’m fond of them myself.”

“Are you?” she queried brightly. “Then you must come over to my house. I have trunks full of them.”

Yup, that’s a zingah!

A Mormon Joke

Inevitably, when a story is set in Utah, you get the obligatory Mormon Joke. Here’s Bill Nye’s, from an otherwise lackluster “Twombley’s Tale”:

She was an emigrant, about seventeen years of age, and, though she had been in Salt Lake City an hour and a half, she was still unmarried.

Hee hee. Funny and original. Mormon. Marriage. Marriage at a young age. Hi-la-ri-ous.

Not that I don't mind reading this kind of japery. When it's well-done, I don't mind an entire book that pokes fun of my religion, because, frankly, in some ways it deserves to be made fun of.

So let us move on to “The Stars,” which is only slightly better.

There’s this:

In 1866, there appeared suddenly in the northern crown a star of about the third magnitude and worth at least $250. It was generally conceded by astronomers that this was a brand new star that had never been used, but upon consulting Argelander’s star catalogue and price list it was found that this was not a new star at all, but an old, faded, star of the ninth magnitude, with the front breadths turned wrong side out and trimmed with moonlight along the seams.

And that’s about it. Next, please.

Borrr-ing

As a writer, I know not everything I write is going to shine. In fact, a lot of it is unadulterated crap. But I like to think that, someday, I'll be remembered by someone for the good stuff I wrote, rather than the mediocre.

Then there's Alva Johnson.

If Louis Untermeyer is to be believed, "Legend of A Sport" is one of Johnson's better bits of amusing writing.

I've got to be honest: This is the first bit in the Treasury of Laughter I couldn't finish reading. Especially when I hit this old joke:

As a wit, [Wilson] Mizner belonged to two distinct schools -- the scientific and O. Henry. His scientific method consisted of bringing a calm spirit of inquiry to bear on boiling emotion. When an excited man rushed up to him exclaiming, "Coolidge is dead," Mizner asked, "How do they tell?"

And it goes on like that. For twelve pages. In small type. I'll spare you any more snoring, and leave you to go to your respective uncles to hear the old, bad jokes.

Down on the Farm

I'm sure farm jokes have been around since mankind discovered agriculture or, conversely, since Abel and Cain had the following exchange:

Abel: That peculiar odor, it seems to be coming from the plowed field. What can it be?
Cain: Fertilizer.
Abel: For the land's sake.
Cain: Yes.

That's actually one of the jokes Louis Untermeyer includes in his "Down on the Farm" joke section. They don't get much better. Here are a few more:

It was in Kentucky; the night was dark. Two men banged on the old cabin door. "Joe and me, we just found a body down in the holler, and we were afraid it might be you. It was too dark to tell."
"What did the body look like?"
"About your height; sort of scraggy--"
"Did he have on a shirt?"
"Yep."
"Flannel?"
"Yep."
"Was he shaved?"
"I think so."
"Well then, it warn't me."

That's actually a good one.

Now, I don't mind farm jokes. I live in a farming community (though I'm not a farmer; Dad was a bricklayer, I'm a technical writer). We did watch the occasional Hee-Haw episode. I've made it my 2011 resolution to learn how to eef:

I've even got a good one for ya, learned from a guy who spent some time in Tennessee. It's not really a joke, per se, just a play on how some folks in the country talk, he says. Here it is:

MR snakes.
MR not.
SAR2. CDEDBD eyes?

That's it. Just say the capitalized letters (and number) as you would reciting the alphabet. Hopefully you get the humor. If not, don't blame me -- I'm just passing the joke on.

Here's one more from Mr. Untermeyer:

It was Farmer Brown's first visit to the big town. In the window of the department store he read a sign: "Ladies Ready to Wear Clothes."
"Gosh," he said. "It's about time."

The Old School Joke

Oh, the old school joke.

No, really. The old jokes. From school. Johnny getting one up on the teacher and that.

Do they still tell those jokes these days? It’s been a long time since I heard a new one.

Take this one:

Professor: “Give the most important fact about nitrates.”

Student: “They’re cheaper than day rates.”

Ha ha, it is to laugh.

It’s been done. Ad nauseaum. Behold:

Louder and funnier? Hardly, Gabby.

Yeah, it’s Bad Joke Uncle fodder. Speaking of which, here’s my mother’s favorite joke:

Why do gorillas have big noses? Because they have big fingers.

Yeah. It’s a groaner. But I still love the woman.

“Most humorists rely on the old formula – the formula which represents Teacher and Johnny matching wits in the classroom,” Untermeyer writes, perhaps expressing his own subconscious exasperation with these amusing, but tired japes. “It is a foregone conclusion that Johnny must win,” he concludes.

For example:

Teacher: “We have been talking about recent inventions. Now, Johnny, name something which did not exist twenty-five years ago.”

Johnny: “Me.”

I could continue. But then you’d have to kill me.

Guy Wetmore Carryl -- Another Bad Joke Uncle

Louis Untermeyer calls Guy Wetmore Carryl "an extraordinary versifier," in the vein of Ogden Nash. And I have to agree with Untermeyer when he says Carryl can keep up a "battery of bristling rhymes, astounding puns, and topsy-turvy morals in the air at one time and in one poem."

And I'm jealous.

It's the kind of stuff I'd like to write. And it's not as easy as it seems -- nor is it as easy to recite, as many recitations on YouTube attest. This is one of the best recitations of his "The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven," obviously put there by someone trying to keep Carryl's poetry in the ears of modern listeners:

I've got a lot of respect for poets who can work unusual words like "Gotterdammerung" into their poems.

Still, there is a bit of the Bad Joke Uncle about Carryl's poems -- which is ultimately forgivable. The morals to which he arrives are the kinds of puns that can make any crowd groan. But at the same time, you're agreeing with what's said, and laughing at it. Thanks, Bad Joke Uncle.

Roark Bradford, Meet Uncle Remus. Or Tom. Your Preference.

Here we tread into delicate territory.

That’s how I could start this entry. And I could go on, paragraph after paragraph, tap-dancing around subjects of Uncle Remus, Uncle Tom, “Song of the South,” and Roark Bradford’s “Green Pastures,” a re-telling of Bible stories, as Louis Untermeyer puts it, “as they might have been rendered by illiterate but highly imaginative colored preachers.”

Thus you see my hesitancy.

But Bradford, descendant of William Bradford, the first Governor of Massachusetts, proceeds with gusto. As will I. Here’s a sample:

After ole King Solomon died de kings got to comin’ and goin’ and goin’ so fast dat hit made de Lawd dizzy tryin’ to keep up wid who was de king and who wa’n’t de king. So he say, “Dis ain’t gittin’ nowheres. Ef my people can’t keep a king long enough for me to get acquainted wid him, well, I’m gonter see what gonter happen.

If you can’t handle the patois, or are livid or in any other way annoyed, do not continue.

Sometimes, racial stereotypes are put into films, stories, et cetera, to be hurtful.

Other times, a cigar is just a cigar.

Let’s continue with Bradford’s story:

So hit was a king over in de next town name Nebuchadnezzar which yared de news, so he say, “Well, when de Lawd was sidin’ wid de Hebrew boys they was doin’ some mighty struttin’. But now wid de Lawd layin’ back and watchin’, I’ll just drap over and raise me some sand.” And so he did.

So ole King Nebuchadnezzar lined up his army and lit out.

“Halt, who’s comin’ yar?” say de Hebrew sentry.

“Sad news is comin’ yar,” say King Nebuchadnezzar.

“Ain’t yo’ name King Nebuchadnezzar?” say de sentry.

“Dat’s what dey calls me,” he say. “What’s yo’ name?”

“Daniel,” say de sentry.

“Well, Daniel,” say Nebuchadnezzar, “I’m bringin’ you some sad news. I’m bringin’ you de news which say I’m gonter raise me some sand in dis town.”

“You better let dis town alone,” say Daniel. “When you raise a ruckus in dis town you’s raisin’ a ruckus in de Lad’s town.”

“I kotched de Lawd away f’m home, dis time,” say Nebuchadnezzar.

“You didn’t kotch me away from home,” say Daniel.

“Naw,” say Nebuchadnezzar,” and I’m gonter use you. I’m gonter feed my pet lines on you.”

And the story continues, a garbled version of Daniel in the lions den, getting chucked into furnace (which didn’t happen to Daniel) and Daniel interpreting the proverbial “writing on the wall,” while the addled members of King Nebuchadnezzar’s court chalk up the writing to the effects of drinking too much alcohol:

“What all dem solid-gold cups which I tuck f’m de Hebrew boys?” say ole King Nebuchadnezzar.

“Put away,” say de haid waiter.

“Well, bring ‘em out so My Majesty kind drink come licker outer dem solid-gold drinkin-cups,” say ole King Nebuchadnezzar. And right dar was whar he made a big mistake, ‘cause dem cups wa’n’t de Hebrew boys’ cups. Dem was de Lawd’s cups. So ‘bout de time old King Nebuchadnezzar drunk out of a solid-gold cup, de Laws stepped right through de wall and wrote somethin’ on hit, and den stepped right back again.

“I seen a ha’nt,” say King Nebuchadnezzar.

“Hit’s de licker,” say de gal which is settin’ in his lap. “Hit’ll make you see mighty nigh anything.”

Then we get this lovely picture:

So, yikes. Maybe we’d have been better off if someone had spilled jelly on this part of the book and made the pages stick together after all.

Marc Connelly, inspired by Bradford’s Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun, wrote a play called “The Green Pastures,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1930.

It didn’t play well in African-American circles.

Ludwig Bemelmans Goes for the Yuks

We’ve all got an uncle like this. The kind who tells the same tired joke each and every time you see him. Everyone has to laugh because, hey, somebody told a joke, and not to laugh would be the acme of rudeness.

Then again . . .

Maybe this setup is a little unfair to Ludwig Bemelmans, whom Louis Untermeyer describes as “a small continent of varied cultures.” He did, after all, create the beloved – at least by some – character “Madeline,” of the popular childrens’ books of the same name.

But the Bremelmans selection Untermeyer picked for his Treasury of Laughter is an echo of the bad joke-telling uncle. It is entitled “The Elephant Cutlet.”

The story carries a lot of currency, in fact, it was the subject of a letter to the editor of TIME magazine in 1950, among other cultural references.

Te story goes like this: Two men in Vienna open a restaurant named “Cutlets from Every Animal in the World,” and have as their first customer a “distinguished lady, a Countess,” who orders an Elephant Cutlet.

“How would Madame like this Elephant Cutlet cooked?” said the waiter.

“Oh, Milanaise, sauté in butter, with a little spaghetti over it, on that a filet of anchovy, and an olive on top,” she said.

[Editor’s note: I can feel my acid reflux bubbling up already.]

The waiter places the order, much to the chagrin of the restaurant’s owners, a dentist who bankrolled the restaurant but had doubts on the premise, and the chef, who comes through with a zinger:

The Chef said nothing. He put on a clean apron and walked into the dining room to the table of the Lady. There he bowed, bent down to her and said, “Madame has ordered an elephant Cutlet?”

“Yes,” said the Countess.

“With spaghetti and a filet of anchovy and an olive?”

“Yes.”

“Madame is all alone?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Madame expects no one else?”

“No.”

“And Madame wants only one culet?”

“Yes,” said the Lady, “but why all these questions?”

You already know what’s coming, but I’ll still give it to you smack between the eyes:

“Because,” said the Chef,” because, Madame, I am very sorry, but for one Cutlet we cannot cut up our Elephant.”

To that, all that can be said is this: