The Pun Also Rises(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"Snoo Lives: The Glory of Updog"As I was walking near MCLA the other night, a guy sitting on his porch with a few friends called out to me, "Hey, do you have any updog?" I parsed the sentence briefly in my head, and then smiled. Hearing that question brought back a flood of happy memories for me, in spite of the fact that I had never heard it before. You might ask how this is possible, and I would reply that this question has a glorious history. Variations of it have been used by generations of joke-tellers. My grandfather, many years ago, was a funny man. (He is currently somewhat less funny, due to being deceased.) He would tell jokes over dinner, many of which had questionable merit, to say the least. And one of my favorites was when my grandfather had asked me, "Hey, do you have any snoo I could borrow?" Naturally, I asked, "What's snoo?" to which he replied, "Not much, what's new with you?" A classic. This was one of the old standards, a joke told by would-be funnymen on a stage no greater than the family dining table. I thought it was genius, and immediately set to work trying this gag on all of my classmates. Most of them didn't find it very funny, but I continued to use it for months. There were few jokes that I felt compelled to carry for such a long time; the other big one was the banana-in-the-ear gag. For those of you fortunate enough not to be familiar with it, let me explain: You hold a banana with one end in your ear. The mark looks at the banana inserted into your ear and says to you, "Hey, Seth, you've got a banana in your ear!" to which you reply, "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana in my ear!" (If your name isn't Seth, just play along; they probably presume that you're me because nobody else would still attempt to use that joke today.) These two jokes may not seem terribly funny to you, but I assure you, they were comedy gold compared to the other bits of humor that my grandfather had shared with me. My proof is that while I have forgotten most of the jokes he told me, these two I still remember. I also remember a few nonsense poems, such as: Yesterday upon the stair, Or the ever-popular: Mary had a little lamb, Sadly, nonsense verse has disappeared. Silly verse was popular at the beginning of the 20th century, but it steadily declined as time passed; Ogden Nash was probably the last master of the form. And some have said that the joke itself is dying. Vaudeville is already dead, and with today's attention spans growing ever shorter as our worries of offending people grow ever larger, I worry for the fate of the joke. But then I remember: Humor cannot be killed; it evolves. Vaudeville didn't die, it simply evolved into the sitcom. Stand-up comedy may have changed tone over the past few decades, but people are still getting up on stage and saying things to make others laugh. And old jokes are constantly being recycled. Jokes from centuries ago about men betting they can throw an egg and have it land on a mantelpiece are set in modern times, and become jokes about men betting the bartender they can pee into a cup from across the bar. And what happened to the snoo? "Hey, do you have any updog?" I smiled, and replied, "What's up, dawg?" "Not much, you?" "Not much," I said, and walked away, content in the knowledge that the proud tradition of Snoo was still being carried on. ____________________ Seth Brown is a local humor writer in need of a henway. (About twelve pounds.) He appears frequently in the Washington Post's Style Invitational, infrequently in various other publications, and once in book form -- in his first book 'Think You're The Only One?' published by Barnes & Noble. His Web site is www.RisingPun.com
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