Tuesday, December 04, 2007

All The World's A Stooge

And all the men and women merely chuckleheads.
They have pie-in-the-face exits and pratfall entrances;
And one birdbrain in his time writes many well-meaning, yet unintelligible, blog posts.

OK, do most of you think that I went off of my nut? Is that the reason for the dearth of comments on yesterday's post?

Here's the deal (which I thought was obvious, but I guess not):

All of the quotes from the coach and the players were lifted verbatim from Three Stooges films.

Coach Howard = Moe Howard

Lawrence Fine = Larry Fine

Sam Horowitz = Shemp Howard

(His real name was Samuel Horowitz. The same was true for all of the Howard brothers; their real last name was Horowitz.)

Besser and DeRita = Joe Besser and Curly-Joe DeRita, the folks who filled the "Third Stooge" role following the deaths of Curly and Shemp.

Finally, Curly Q. Link = Jerome "Curly" Howard.

(It was the name of his character in one of the films; If A Body Meets A Body, if you really need to know.)

OK, maybe I did go off my nut.

I thought it was a cute idea. I guess it was just an insane idea.

(The lovely Michal, of Relishing Motherhood, got it. Bless you, my dear!)

The thing is, I keep forgetting that not everybody is a Three Stooges fanatic. So, I didn't think I'd have to make it any couchier than I did.

(Couchier. That was a term used by Milton Berle. In the early days of television, when Uncle Miltie ruled the roost, the screens were small and the reception generally lousy. As a result, Berle felt that every gag should be as broad as possible, so that anybody, no matter how fuzzy their picture or tiny their picture tube, would get it. He wanted no doubt about it playing to the people at home sitting on their couches. So, if he was in a writers meeting, and he felt that the gag was too subtle, he'd say, "It's not couchy enough! Make it couchier!"

I might be insane, but at least you learned something today. Not that anybody who hasn't read this will have any idea what in the hell you're talking about if you go around yelling, "Make it couchier!")

The funny thing is that I didn't just do this on the spur of the moment. I had this in a notebook at home for about a month. Every couple of days, I'd pull out the notebook, look at that bit, and try to remember more Stooge lines that would fit. Never once did it enter my mind that anybody wouldn't get it. Oh, well.

In any case, if you think it might help, feel free to call me a knucklehead, then put a wrench on my nose and give it a twist.


Soon, with more better (maybe even rational) stuff.

8 comments:

Suldog said...

I needed to re-post this piece, so I lost the only comment thus far, which was from CHEWY. Sorry, Chewy. Here's what she had to say, in any case.

"Sometimes I had to change the channel while watching the 3 Stooges. All that physical comedy would make me squeamish. Some of it looked painful. Funny, yes, but ouch!"

Suldog said...

Furthermore, here is CHEWY's blog address:

http://chewy-myblog.blogspot.com/

(See the kind of service I give around here? Make a comment and I consider you my friend and ally for life!)

All-Mi-T [Thought Crime] Rawdawgbuffalo said...

sow the super bowl is the marx brpthers versus the stooges = lol


how bout my memphis tigers, and why them pats keep sliping by

david mcmahon said...

Love it.

Especially the post title!

Stu said...

When I write something (such as my recent post on GNMP where I rant about child safety and corporal punishment) and no one comments, I choose to assume that my writing was so excellent that readers don't comment for fear of spoiling the perfection.

Anonymous said...

I got it and thought it was terrific but I didn't want to encourage you, remembering the days when your teachers would send home notes saying "James is watching to much "Three Stooges". He is acting out their stories and disrupting the class".

Melissa said...

Unfortunately I didn't read the entry from yesterday until after I read this one. I loved The Three Stooges and still enjoy watching it. I don't think my daughter enjoys it as much as I did growing up!

Merisi said...

I didn't read yesterday's post, somehow things got a bit busy up in Reality Land. *sigh*
I must also confess I am not really an expert on the Three Stooges, due to a TV-deprived childhood (those parents of mine thought that with eights kids there was enough entertainment around *g*). Grateful for your lesson. Never too late to learn, isn't it?