I Don't Need Pie: A Satire

Can’t count the times I’ve sat watching a movie and been so bored by its clichés and derivative scenes and dialogue I had to wonder: Who wrote this? And why am I not writing similar drivel and getting paid to do so?

Well, it’s obvious Frank Sutton thought the same thing, because in his comical piece “A Trip To Hollywood,” he hits all of the boring bases.

Here, we see the hero of our story interrupting his lunch at The Brown Derby with Joan Crawford, Mae West, Shirley Temple and a bevy of other beauties to have a contrived love-at-first-sight scene with the waitress:

I looked up, and there stood absolutely the most ravishingly glamorous creature I had ever seen in my life.

“Waitress?” I gasped, in a kind of daze from the impact of her loveliness on my already beauty-befuddled senses. “You are a waitress?”

“Yes,” said the waitress simply, smiling down at me with great sad brown eyes.

I rose and clasped her in my arms.

“I always knew that someday, and so on,” I said.

“I knew that someday, and so on,” she said brokenly. “Be careful of my tray.”

“Tray. Tray. What care we twain for trays? Let the world and its trays go by. Our love is all that matters.”

“I have always dreamed that someday, somehow, a golden knight would come riding through clouds of sapphire, coral and ebony,” said the beautiful slavey.

“Oh my darling,” I said. “Why do you tremble? What kind of pie have you got?”

“Huckleberry, raspberry, lemon meringue, custard—“

“Ah, I don’t want pie, I said fiercely. “I don’t need pie. With you at my side, I no longer fear destiny.”

I’ve watched my fair share of old movies, so as the story progressed, I recognized a few scenes from a few of the more grandiose ones.

And that is the key to satire – you’ve got to know your subject, as Sullivan obviously does very well. Bravo, sir. I tip my hat to you.

SJ Perelman and The Out of Context Theatre

Satire is a delicately balanced thing.

Satire is also subjective. Hit just the wrong tone with the wrong audience and, as Scott Adams is finding out, you’ve got a group with pitchforks and torches at your door, even if your only intention was to incite a little “Dance, Monkey, Dance.”

As a writer, unintended messages are unbearable.

I confess that I misjudged the degree of excitement this would generate. Indeed, the big fuss didn't happen for over three weeks. I also didn't predict that critics would reprint the post one component at a time so they could dissect it, which has the fascinating effect of changing the humorous tone to something hideous. Humor requires flow and timing. A frog isn't much of a frog after you dissect it.

Unbearable and, I might add, inevitable.

Satirist S.J. Perelman had better watch it.

This wit, who co-wrote the Marx Brothers’ film “Horsefeathers” and won an Academy Award for co-writing the screenplay for 1956’s “Around the World in Eighty Days” might be slightly misunderstood today if his satire, such as this bit from “Nothing But the Tooth,” were taken out of context, which you’d better believe is a paddlin’ and is going to happen here.

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes

(For those who want full context, go here. It should be noted the excerpted text here is used also under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes.)

There is practically no problem so simple that it cannot confuse a dentist. For instance, thumb-sucking. "Could you suggest a method to correct thumb and index finger sucking by an infant of one year?" flutters a Minnesota orthodontist, awkwardly digging his toe into the hot sand. Dr. Smedley, whose patience rivals Job's, has an answer for everything: "Enclose the hand by tying shut the end of the sleeve of a sleeping garment, or fasten a section of a pasteboard mailing tube to the sleeping garment in such a position as to prevent the bending of the elbow sufficiently to carry the thumb or index finger to the mouth." Now truly, Dr. Smedley, isn't that going all the way around Robin Hood's barn? Nailing the baby's hand to the high-chair is much more cozy, or, if no nail is available, a smart blow with the hammer on Baby's fingers will slow him down. My grandfather, who was rather active in the nineties (between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues they finally got him for breaking and entering), always used an effective method to break children of this habit. He used to tie a Mills grenade to the baby's thumb with cobbler's waxed thread, and when the little spanker pulled out the detonating pin with his teeth, Grandpa would stuff his fingers into his ears and run like the wind.

Yeah, you read that right here folks at Out of Context Theatre, SJ Perelman recommends curing a baby’s teething by strapping a grenade to the kid’s hand and running like the wind.

(And to echo what Mr. Adams has experienced, now the blossoming haters of SJ Perelman will bolt with my incorrect summation of the above satire and spread through the tubes the “fact” that SJ Perelman (isn’t that a Jewish name?) absolutely hates babies and everything they stand for.

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes

A Satirical, Stuffy Victorian Novel

If writers have nightmares that they rarely put on paper, they’ve got to resemble the farcical bit of writing that is Stephen Leacock’s “Gertrude the Governess, or Simply Seventeen,” a satire of the traditional, stuffy Victorian novel along the lines of those written by the sisters Bronte or Jane Austen.

It’s nightmarish, of course, in that it resembles the stratified and stiff Victorian society the Brontes and Austen lived in but does not, in fact, resemble the carefully created stories, the deep characters or the limpid language we’ve come to associate with the best novels of the age. Instead, it reads like a cheap imitation copy of a fake. Behold:

“What a dull morning,” Gertrude had said. “Quel triste matin! Was fur ein allerverdamnter Tag!”

“Beastly,” Ronald had answered.

“Beastly!!” The word rang in Gertrude’s ears all day.

After that they were constantly together. They played tennis and ping-pong in the day, and in the evening, in accordance with the stiff routine of the place, they sat down with the Earl and Countess to twenty-five-cent poker, and later still they sat together on the verandah and watched the moon sweeping in great circles around the horizon.

It was not long before Gertrude realized that Lord Ronald felt towards her a warmer feeling that than of mere ping-pong. At times in her presence he would fall, especially after dinner, into a fit of profound subtraction.

So we have here, as Larry Donner might say, all the elements of a Victorian novel, we have the tension, the horror of courtship – but you might want to know a little bit more about Victorian living before you set a novel in the era. And you’ve made ping-pong feel dirtier than I’ve ever had it feel before. Ever.


Of course it’s the smart author who can turn a nightmarish imitation of something into a satirical take on something. I’m not that smart; I’m still in the nightmare stage. But perhaps studying things like this will help me recognize my own follies.