UBC graffiti (1969)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 05:43:08 -0700, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

>Has anyone heard any *new* book-author jokes ?  (_The Da Vinci Code_
>doesn't count.)
>
>Or is this an obsolete genre ?

Mostly obsolete, I think. Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon ran an _Atlantic_
contest some years ago called "Coauthors". The winners were:

  "The Origins of Frankenstein" by Bill Tim with Lou Sparts.
  "Common Medical Problems" by D. Tommy Hertz and Denise R. Aiken.
  "Skin Deep: The Art of the Supercilious" by Hugh Luke Marvilas and
   I. Dolph Lattery.

The more juvenile tradition of prank-call names has been kept alive by
Bart Simpson and Saturday Night Live...

http://www.snpp.com/guides/moe_calls.html
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/02/02gridge.phtml

Bart's calls to Moe's bar, by the way, were inspired by the legendary
"Tube Bar" recording, a collection of prank calls made in the '70s to a
Jersey City bar owner named Louis "Red" Deutsch. See:

http://www.missioncreep.com/mw/tubebar/

Full transcript of the recording is available here:

http://web.archive.org/scruz.net/~knielsen/prankcall/tubebar/script.html


--Ben Zimmer