Callahan's Place 10 - Off The Wall At Callahan's (v5.0) (6 page)

      
It happens that he’s the first one to ask a direct question in the thing’s presence.  It rises with a thunderous rumble to its full height, scattering the clouds, thinks for a second, booms, “IT COULDN’T,” and squats down again.

      
“Migod,” exclaims the xenobiologist, “of course! 
It only stands to reason!
”

—Long-Drink McGonnigle

      
Did you boys ever hear of the planet where the inhabitants were mobile flowers?  Remarkably similar to Earthly blossoms, but they had feet and human intelligence.  The whole planet was ruled by a king called Richard the Artichoke-Heart, and one day at a court orgy his eye was caught by Fuchsia, a pale-eyed perennial.  Her beauty was so great that it
almost
 made up for her stupidity. 

   Refusing to believe the ancient principle that beauty times brains equals a constant, the smitten monarch engaged royal tutors of all sorts for Fuchsia, to no avail.  All failed to engage the attention of the witless concubine, whose only apparent interest was in gathering pollen.  At last the embarrassed Richard gave up and had Rotenone slipped into her soup. 

   As he exclaimed to his prime minister later that night, “I can lead a horticulture, but I can’t make her think!”

—Doc Webster 

(according to Jake Stonebender, Fuchsia had a child before she died—and dark rumour suggests that Richard, a notoriously forward-thinking ruler, spent his declining years riding the Waif of the Fuchsia.)

One night the conversation turned to Richard Adams’s book SHARDIK, about an ancient empire which is ruled by an enormous, semimythical bear.  This triggered Doc Webster:
 

The only way to become a knight in Shardik’s empire was to apply for a personal interview with the bear. This had its drawbacks.  If he liked your audition, you were knighted on the spot—but if you failed, Lord Shardik was quite likely to club your head off your shoulders with one mighty paw.  Even so, there were many applicants—for the peasantry were poor, and if a candidate failed for knighthood his family received, by way of booby-prize, a valuable sheepdog from the Royal Kennels.  This consoled them, for truly it is written:

      
“For the mourning after a terrible knight, nothing beats the dog of the bear that hit you.” 

If you’re under 35, and not passionately interested in health food, this one may go over your head.  If so, count your blessings
:

      
Until very recently, a tribe of killer monkeys lived undetected beneath Greenwich Village.

      
To some extent it was not surprising that they escaped notice for so long.  They had extremely odd sleeping habits, hibernating for 364 days out of every year (365 in Leap Years) and emerging from the caverns of the Village sewers only on Christmas Day.  Even so, one might have thought they could hardly help but cause talk, since they tended when awake to be enormous, ferocious, carnivorous, and extremely   hungry.  Yet in Greenwich Village of all places on Earth they went unnoticed until last year, when they were finally destroyed.

   Everyone knows  that Yule Gibbons ate only nuts and fruits…

—Ralph Von Wau Wau

      
I commanded a submarine in Her Majesty’s Navy during the last World War, and had at least one secret mission.  The famous spy Harry Lime, the celebrated Third Man, had developed a sudden and severe case of astigmatism—and many of his espionage activities forbade dependence on spectacles.  At that time only one visionary in the world was working on the development of a practical contact lens: a specialist at Sir Walter Reed Hospital in America.  I was ordered to convey Lime there in utmost secrecy, then fetch him home again.

   Lime was an excellent actor, of course, but I began to suspect that there was nothing at all wrong with his vision.  I learned that he had an old girlfriend who lived twenty miles from the hospital.  So I called him into my cabin.

   “I can’t prove a thing against you,” I said, “but I’m ordering you to go directly from the sub, Lime, to the Reed oculist.”
 

      
The toilet tanks on commercial airliners often leak.  This results in the formation of deposits of blue ice on the fuselage.  The ice is composed of feces, urine, and blue liquid disinfectant.

   Now: occasionally, when a plane must descend very rapidly from a great height, as in the Rockies, chunks of blue ice ranging up to two hundred pounds can—and
do
—break off and shell the countryside.  I have seen a UPI wirephoto of an apartment in Denver which was demolished by a fifty pound chunk of blue ice.  (The airline bought the occupants a house.  Neither was hurt…and for awhile—until it began to melt—they were actually grateful for the coolness the bolus provided.  It was summer, you see, and the impact had destroyed their electric fan…)

   So even if you live where there are no strategic military targets, you can still be attacked by an icy B.M.…

      
As many of you know, I just got back from visiting Juan Ortiz, an obstetrician friend of mine in L.A.  He was nominally on vacation, but one day there was an emergency delivery he just had to attend, so he deputized his brother-in-law Obie Stihl—honest to God, that’s his name, I’d never make up a name like that—deputized Obie to show me around town.  We went to Disneyland.  Obie turned out to be a dedicated Star Wars freak, with a sense of humor even more depraved than my own—we were passed by three sailors on the way in, for instance, and when he noticed they were all Chief Petty Officers, he made sure to point out the “Three C.P.O.s”…

      
So he took me to Adventureland, where you go on a Jungle Boat Ride.  It could have been fun except for the damned boat captain.  Through the whole voyage he kept up a running monologue—that had shin splints.  Bad jokes, worse puns, even mother-in-law jokes. 

   As we got back to the wharf, just as I was stepping off the boat, Obie leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Now you’re getting to see the dock side of the farce…”

—Doc Webster 

(Abominable as this particular pun is, it was immediately topped by Jake Stonebender.  He announced that the most amazing feature of the Doc’s tale was his claim to have toured Disneyland with a fictional character: O.B. Juan’s kin, Obie…)

Puns (II)

-

Spontaneous Conversational
 

Eructations, Mercifully Brief

Note: as these are mostly unattributed, blame cannot, at this late date, be positively assessed.  But it is safe to assume that better than half of them were perpetrated by Doc Webster.

We were going to explore the Kama Sutra…but at the last moment her Kama turned into a period…

Be he never so humble, there’s no police like Holmes.

—Bill White

The success of a pun is in the
oy
 of the beholder.

Got a date with the doctor who did my vasectomy.  She believes in reaping what she sews.

The Buddhist hamburger joint: they’ll make you one with everything. 

The hackers’ burger joint: you can have chips with it. 

The junkies’ hot dog stand: they’ll sell you one with the works.

I
know
 you’d like to screw like a bunny—but I just washed my thing, and I can’t do a hare with it.

 
 
Bulimia is one of those subjects which can
only
be discussed ad nauseam.

He acquitted himself well at the trial.  Regrettably, the jury did not follow his example… 

(He was blamed for something he didn’t do.  He didn’t wear gloves…)

He learned about sex by trial and error.  Now they’ve got him on trial for one or two of those errors… 

—Ronny Corbett

Name a cowboy hero you can’t even call by his first name without going insane. 
 
 
 
(Answer: Paladin, from HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. His first name is "Wire"–it says so right there on his card: "Wire Paladin, San Francisco"–so to call him by name, you have to go, "Hey, Wire!"
)

The shortest distance between two puns is a straight line.

—David Gerrold

Songs

-

From the repertoire of
 

Jake Stonebender and
 

Fast Eddie Costigan,
 

as performed on

Fireside Fillmore Nights

at Callahan's Place–

Those unattributed must be
 

assumed to have been written
 

by Jake and Eddie.

The Drunkard’s Song

A swell and wealthy relative of mine had up and died

And I got a hundred thousand from the will

So a friend and I decided to convert this into liquid form

The better our esophagi to fill

So we started in the city, had a drink in every shitty

Little ginmill, which is really quite a few

Then a cabbie up in Harlem took us clean across the river

Into Brooklyn, where he joined us in a brew

We was weavin’ just a trifle as we pulled into Astoria

At eighty miles an hour, in reverse

But it was nothin’ to the weavin’ that we did as we was leavin’

And from time to time it got a little worse

      
Well, there’s nothing like drinkin’ up a windfall

      
We was drunker than a monkey with a skinfull

      
So goddam drunk it was sinful—and I think I ain’t sober yet

We was feelin’ mighty fine as we crossed the city line

Suckin’ whiskey and a-whistlin’ at the girls

But the next saloon we try, a fella wants to black my eye

’Cause he doesn’t like my shaggy hippy curls

So then a fist come out of orbit, knocked me clear across the floor

But I was fairly drunk and didn’t really care

And I was sorta disappointed when the coppers hit the joint

As I was makin’ my rebuttal, with a chair

Ah, but the coppers come a cropper, ’cause I made it to the crapper

And departed by a ventilator shaft

Met my buddies in the alley as they slipped out through the galley

And we ran and ran and laughed and laughed and laughed

      
Well, there’s nothing like drinkin’ up a windfall

      
We was drunker than a monkey with a skinfull

      
So goddam drunk it was sinful—and I think I ain’t sober yet

Halfway out of Levittown we got our second wind

In a dump so down and out I had to laugh

So I had another mug, and my friend another jug

And the hack another pitcher and a half

When we got to Suffolk County we were goin’ into overdrive

The word had spread, and crowds began to form

We drank our way from Jericho along 110 to Merrick Road

A-boozin’ and a-singin’ up a storm

I lost my buddy and the cabbie in the middle of the Hamptons

We was drunker than it’s possible to be

But there finally came a time I didn’t have another dime

I sat on Montauk Point and wept into the sea

      
Well, there’s nothing like drinkin’ up a windfall

      
We was drunker than a monkey with a skinfull

      
So goddam drunk it was sinful—and I think I ain’t sober yet

Afterglow

(Iris’s Song)

by Teodor Vysotsky

Tending to tension by conscious intent,

declining declension, disdaining dissent;

into the dementia dimension we're sent:

we are our content, and we are content.

Incandescent invention and blessed event,

tumescent distention, tumultuous descent:

our bone of convention again being spent,

I am your contents, and I am content

to be living…to be trying…to be crying…to be dying…(I want)

to be giving…to be making…to be breaking…to be taking
 

all you have…

Assuming Ascension, Assumption, assent,

all of our nonsense is finally non-sent—

with honorable mention for whatever we meant…

You are my content, and I am content.

Time Travel Blues

You've heard of every kind of blues there is, I hear you say?

Well, I'm leavin' here tomorrow…and I just got back today

I got the time travel blues, look at the mess I'm in

I'm sad for what the past will be… and what the future
      
hasn't been