We Will Tell No Joke Before Its Time
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Cowboy and Adolph Hitler, by H. S. Anderson, Topanga, California, 1942 National Archives and Records Administration
You could get a Jewish guy to join the KKK if they served coffee and cake.It’s difficult to capture Jackie Mason on paper but the line was really funny in his concert and just about every word in it alienated or angered somebody. Cake manufacturers didn't protest but I wouldn’t be surprised. Yet no one really had a right to be angry. The line holds up to scrutiny, saying as it does that joining the KKK is the last thing a Jewish guy would do.
I remembered this morning I’m the custodian of a joke-in-progress. Some years ago, circa 1983, my apartment-mate and college friend Eric Schwartz suggested we invent a joke together. Schwartz is Jewish and introduced me to the marvelous breakfasts integral to his faith. He's also a mensch, so when he proposed inventing a joke he was also ready to get us started. He looked at me and said:
Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store.We improvised in many directions but in the end, we agreed we'd gotten no further than this promising beginning. I forgot about this college conversation for ten years.
Ten years later I was talking to another Jewish comedian, the The Philosopher King Of Morton Street, in his restaurant as we waited for the breakfast crowd. In a moment of pure spontaneous recall, and without any contextualizing introduction, I said “Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store.” Kenny, with little hesitation, responded offhandedly:
I’d known Kenny for years before some part of my brain recognized he was the person to add a line to the joke. After rousing him from his NY Times crossword I forgot about the joke again – for another ten years.
In 2004 I was sitting with my former employee, Jon, on a lawn in front of a church, waiting for Gilfest to start. Jon is funny, Jewish, has an active mind. In fact he drinks deep at a well of paranoia, but he’s gentle and self-deprecating. He once confessed to me his guilt over some psychic complicity in killing The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. I assured him he’d only maimed the guitar great.
It took me a while to recognize Jon, too, as the next trickster from the collective unconscious to supply a line for the joke. Maybe there's a circadian rhythm for the ten year interval, but not until Jon and I were sitting on the church lawn, after knowing him for a couple of years, did THE JOKE, twenty years now in the making, come to me. I offered to him, without explanation: “Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store. He’s naked and he has a paintbrush tied to his penis.” Jon mumbled and grumbled, but understood the task at hand intuitively. In a few seconds he blurted:
Oh, and he’s naked and he has a paintbrush tied to his penis.We didn’t even try to go further. When a thing is right, it’s right.
I’d known Kenny for years before some part of my brain recognized he was the person to add a line to the joke. After rousing him from his NY Times crossword I forgot about the joke again – for another ten years.
In 2004 I was sitting with my former employee, Jon, on a lawn in front of a church, waiting for Gilfest to start. Jon is funny, Jewish, has an active mind. In fact he drinks deep at a well of paranoia, but he’s gentle and self-deprecating. He once confessed to me his guilt over some psychic complicity in killing The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. I assured him he’d only maimed the guitar great.
It took me a while to recognize Jon, too, as the next trickster from the collective unconscious to supply a line for the joke. Maybe there's a circadian rhythm for the ten year interval, but not until Jon and I were sitting on the church lawn, after knowing him for a couple of years, did THE JOKE, twenty years now in the making, come to me. I offered to him, without explanation: “Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store. He’s naked and he has a paintbrush tied to his penis.” Jon mumbled and grumbled, but understood the task at hand intuitively. In a few seconds he blurted:
He asks the clerk, “Do you have a copy of Windows XP, Fatherland Edition?”We both knew he'd nailed it.
So that’s where we stand. My sense is we’re only one or two lines from the end. The joke will be done in 2014 or 2024. I’m amused by the fact that when the joke began there was no such thing as Windows XP. I’m hoping I’ll forget it again. And then one day I'll turn to someone and say:
Adolph Hitler walks into a computer store. He’s naked and he has a paintbrush tied to his penis. He asks the clerk, “Do you have a copy of Windows XP, Fatherland Edition?”The rhythm seems to be calling for a punch line already. The punch line could very well be the clerk’s.
