I’m frequently able to find humor where others can’t, like that pee-pee shirt.
My day job is running a company that sells phone equipment. Other companies describe the color of a certain kind of wire simply as “blue and yellow.” I decided to use flavors instead of colors and call it “blueberry-banana.” Even the straitlaced Pentagon procurement officers order many thousands of feet of our blueberry-banana wire. And strawberry-clam.
It’s good for bureaucrats to lighten up. One of my basic rules is, “If it’s not fun, don’t do it,” and I’m often able to make dull things amusing. More people should try it.
General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “War is hell,” but Hogan’s Heroes, McHale’s Navy and MASH made war funny. Some day the war in Iraq will seem funny.
I enjoy finding bloopers, errors and inconsistencies. In movies, I look for cavemen wearing watches and shoes. I love typos on book covers and in ads and on big signs that were checked dozens of times.
Even menus make me laugh. In a typical Greek diner, the price of a slice of ordinary cheese can range from a dime to a dollar or more, depending on what it’s attached to. In a Chinese restaurant, you can pay $3.95 for a small order of fried rice, or $2.95 for four chicken wings with the same rice.
Most recent TV sitcoms do nothing for me. I watched exactly one episode of Seinfeld and hated it. I never watched Cheers. Nothing done in recent decades seems to equal Lucy, The Honeymooners, Bilko, The Beverly Hillbillies or Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Among latter-day sitcoms, my favorites are Married, With Children and Modern Family (both with Ed O’Neill). I miss early SNL and Johnny Carson, but I watch parts of Leno, Letterman and Conan. I find little to laugh at on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, but I do like Real Time with Bill Maher, 30 Rock and the Saturday radio comedy shows on NPR.
Boston Legal and The Sopranos can be hilarious, but they’re not full-time comedies. The Simpsons is. And so are South Park and Family Guy. I wish I had time to watch every episode.
Like most males and unlike most females, I like the Three Stooges and Howard Stern. I love Jay Leno’s “Jay Walking” segments and when Dave Letterman dropped stuff off the roof to smash in the street.
I don’t like it when comedians pick on nice people, but I do like taking funny pictures of friends and relatives. (Those are my sister’s kids.)
I also like elaborate pranks, spoofs and put-ons. I’m very good at manipulating the media and circulating believable phony news—a talent I inherited from my very funny father.
I try to make enforcers realize the absurdity of the rules they are enforcing. Logic is good. Illogic is funny.
I sometimes obey the letter of the law but not the spirit. In high school we had to wear ties, but there was no rule against wearing extremely ugly ties.
I like deflating pompous people and institutions.
When I was an editor at Rolling Stone, I attended press conferences and speeches at the fancy-shmancy 21 Club in Manhattan with friends from other magazines. The 21’s dress code required that men wear jackets and ties, but three of us were noticeably informal.
Our corporate hosts had paid big bucks for 21 to feed us, so, despite our scruffy appearance, we were too important to be rejected by the stuffy maître d’ in the tuxedo.
Other customers wore $200 “power ties,” but we had real power and dined sans cravate. The restaurant was lucky we didn’t decide to dine sans pantalons.
Thanks
I thank my parents, Rita and Bud Marcus, for putting up with a lot of crap, providing material for me to write about, exposing me to many things and inspiring me in many ways.
I thank my wife, Marilyn Marcus, for loving me, encouraging me and tolerating me. She used to be jealous, but now she knows that if I’m not in bed at 3 a.m., I’m with a computer, not with another woman. Marilyn is a worrier and thinks I should have changed every name in this book. I’m betting she’s wrong. We’ll see what happens.
In ancient Greek mythology, the “muses” were beautiful goddesses who inspired the creation of literature and art. I’ve had several muses, and they are all beautiful and smart women.
For most of my 41-year writing career, I’ve written about things, and about how people related to them. In 2004, I started writing about people without the things. In 2009, I finally became comfortable writing about emotions.
This most recent and most important evolutionary development coincided with my reconnecting with Rosemary Garcia. We dated in high school and college. In 2009, after no contact for 43 years, Rosemary emailed me from 1,300 miles away. She helped me to become a more complete writer, and a happier, more tolerant and less cynical person.
Deborah Lurie Edery was my first muse. She put me in the mood to write more stories after she said she liked the first one in 2005. Deb is a very important former girlfriend from college, who reconnected with me via email from 15 miles away, after about 40 years. Deb activated my memory and pushed me to turn thoughts into pages. This book would not exist without her.
Phyllis Caplow Helfand put me in the mood to finish writing the stories after I stalled and got out of the mood. Phyllis was one of the first females I was attracted to, when we were in the second grade in 1953. In 2007 Phyllis became my second email muse, reconnecting after 43 years from 3,000 miles away. Her unintentional but powerful push was a nice payback for the cookies I gave her 55 years earlier. Phyllis remembered things about me that I forgot. This book would not exist without her.
Dedication
Bertram “Bud” Marcus
1922 – 2009
My father died while I was writing this book. I’m sorry he did not get to read it. Pop introduced me to most of the things I care about, including technology, humor, collecting, traveling, building things, languages and history. My father was one of the world’s greatest storytellers and is a major influence on my writing. I miss him a lot.
Acknowledgments
Sally Cafarelli (1915-1986) is my wife’s late mother. Sally said she worried double to make up for my refusal to worry at all. Who knows? Maybe it helped.
Gerald Light (1919-2004) was my first boss in advertising. Gerry taught me a lot about the ad business. After the SOB fired me, I used what he taught me, to take business away from him. Fuck him—and the horse he rode in on.
Dave Evans is a friend and former housemate and business partner. He shared some of the great college-era adventures. I still use the hair brush Dave left behind when he graduated from Lehigh and moved out of our house over 40 years ago. I don’t need to use the brush as much as I did back then, and it will probably outlast me.
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