UBC graffiti (1969)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Enlightening.

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: UBC graffiti (1969)
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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

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