Callahan's Place 10 - Off The Wall At Callahan's (v5.0) (2 page)

      
Besides, a great many of these quotes, and all the shorter atrocities, appear here for the first time.

      
And I have included lagniappe.
 
Along with sayings from The Wall, I have included the lyrics to several of the songs that Jake and Fast Eddie used to play on Fireside Fillmore Nights, the ones that got the most requests during my tenure there.
 
While only one or two of these songs actually appeared on The Wall, all of them frequently echoed
from
it, and from the other three walls.
 
Several of these are recorded here for the first time.; I’ve transcribed most of them from tapes in my possession, and can certify the accuracy of the lyrics.
 

      
And as if that weren’t enough, I have taken special trouble to isolate the most potentially lethal quotes from off The Wall—the puns!—in a separate, labelled section of their own, for your sanitary protection.

      
Wisdom, laughter, and song—here you have Callahan’s Place in a nutshell…

      
I know: it’s not the same as having more Callahan stories.
 
But it’s
something
, and the best I can presently offer you.
 
Half of why one went to Callahan’s Place was the companionship, the camaraderie, the merriment and melancholy and the stories that got told, and I wish I had more of that for you, I do.

      
But the
other
half of why I used to go there was the consistently good conversation.
 
Interesting things got said there a lot, because Callahan’s custom of requiring a toast got his customers into the habit of distilling their (very!) varied experiences and insights into crystallized form.
 
As the late, immortal Theodore Sturgeon used to say, “If it’s really basic, it’s simple.”
 
And you can’t have too much of that kind of stuff.

      
It is my fond hope that in consideration of all this, readers will take pity on me, cut me some slack, and
not write me any more letters asking for more Callahan’s Place stuff for awhile.
 

      
I promise, anything I hear, you’ll hear.
 
Okay?

Spider Robinson

Vancouver, British Columbia

29 November 1991

C)
 
Begin reading here if you’re the kind of reader who always skips the Forewords:

Graffiti

-

Off The Wall

at Callahan's Place

Callahan’s Law:
shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
 

Lady Sally’s Law:
shared despair is squared; shared hope is cubed (or better.
 
Raised to the power of infinity?).
 

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of.
 
But do it in private, and wash your hands afterward.
   

—
Woodrow W. Smith

A person should live forever, or die trying.

—
Mike Callahan

Most joints, the barkeep listens to your troubles... but we happen to love this one so much that we all share his load.

—
Jake Stonebender

We raise hopes, here… until they’re old enough to fend for themselves.

—
Mike

The church is near

But the road is icy

The tavern is far

But I will walk carefully

—
Ukrainian proverb, quoted by Charlie Daniels

Funny men are better lovers.
 
They know about pain.

—
Josie Bauer

The average human in the best of circumstances spends a hell of a lot of attention and energy on monitoring the body’s thousand and one aches and pains and twinges and other sudden small alarms.
 
At least as much energy and time goes into constantly combing the environment for immediate dangers or enemies.
 
And as much again is spent on worry about impending or chronic problems, the struggle to stay afloat, the need to be loved, and the underlying awareness of mortality.

No wonder we’re all so
grumpy
so much of the time…

—
Joe Quigley

One man’s meat is another man’s person.

—
Lady Sally McGee

If you can’t have fun
here
, it’s your own damn fault.

—
Mike

There’s nothing in the human heart or mind, no place no matter how twisted or secret, that can’t be endured—if you have someone to share it with.

—
Jake

For a predator, a wrong guess can be preferable to a slow one.

—
Jake

"This game’s
over
, man!
 
You gotta move your Boss or Rocky’s gonna lay a subpoenie on him; then his Torpedo is gonna smoke your Old Lady, and all your Heavies’ll be doin’ time—except for maybe your Mouthpiece, but Rocky’s Sheriff got him put in the corner—you got nothin’ left but Punks and Junkies: you’re
through
, Jimmy."

—
Angel Martin to Jim Rockford, commenting on a chess game, in the
Rockford Files
episode "Chicken Little is a Little Chicken," by Stephen J. Cannell.

Context is everything.
 
Breastfeeding is beneficial for nearly all infants—but for an elderly cardiac patient it can be fatal...

—
Samuel Webster, M.D.

All purpose toast: "To all the ones who weren’t as lucky."

—
Mike

"Rupture" occurs when you think you are in the middle of a conversation with someone… and suddenly discover that you’ve merely been making noises at each other, that there is a previously unsuspected chasm between you.
 

—
Chip Delany

Never wake up a cop by dropping a .45 on the pavement next to him.
 

—
Joe

If you’ve got a hurt and I’ve got a hurt and we share them, some-crazy-how or other we each end up with less than half a hurt apiece.

—
Jake

Everybody’s got roots in the past—but they’s all got roots in the future, too.

—
Fast Eddie Costigan

Joy always equals pain in the long run.

—
Mike

Joy is the product of the pain that has gone before it, and vice versa.

—
Rachel

Femaleness and maleness are halves of a spectrum, a curve on which you can graph humanity and get a hell of a lot of overlap in the middle.
 
Some disparage these so-called "in-betweeners," but the true freaks are the ones stuck way out on either end of the curve, their sexuality unalloyed by any of its complementary ingredient.
 
These poor perverts often carve wide paths through the world, driven as they are by untempered engines, inspiring the awe due mighty forces out of control.

—
Maureen (last name unknown)

Suicide isn’t just a cop-out; it’s a rip-off.

—
Jake

Author's note: this quote was inscribed on The Wall a full decade before the debate over one's Right To Die got going. I've checked with Jake, and he confirms that the choice by a terminal patient to terminate his or her anguish does not, in his opinion, constitute "suicide."

There is so
much
yammer-yammer on the air and in print these days that nobody could keep up with it, much less remember it.
 
I mean, look at Richard Nixon.
 
There’s always somebody who didn’t get the word.
 

—
Joe

The most important step in mapmaking is to throw out all the old maps you have in the glove compartment.
 
Forget all the reports of earlier explorers.
 
You can’t discover America if you keep shying away from the edge of the world.
 
And if you do find it, you’ll waste years asking to be taken to Kublai Khan.

—
Priscilla (last name unknown)

Cheering someone up is a little like breast-feeding, or good sex: mutually satisfactory.

—
Jake

Pregnant women aren’t sick.

—
Doc Webster

If you can’t cut the mustard, you can always lick the jar.

—Mary Callahan

We’ve got a world in which physical miracles are commonplace—and nobody’s happy.
 
We’ve got what it takes to feed all the billions of us—and half of us are starving.
 
You can show a dozen guys murdering each other on TV, but you can’t ever show two people making love.
 
A naked blade is reckoned less obscene than a naked woman.
 
Isn’t it about time we started trying to get a handle on love,
from any and all directions
?

—
Jake

Get it right, you’re a star.
 
Get it half-right, you’re a gas giant.
 

—
Joe

"Champagne is a barometer of happiness.
 
There is a sort of morosity everywhere."

—Yves Bernard, chairman of Moet & Chandon, commenting on poor sales

The delusion that one’s sexual pattern is the Only Right Way To Be
 
is probably the single most common sexual psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim’s fault.
 
You cannot acquire this delusion by observation of reality.

—
Lady Sally

A shrink’s office from which laughter is not heard as often as tears ought to shut down.

—
Jake

Never been to a shrink.
 
What could be sillier than a priest who doesn’t believe in the soul?

—
Stephen Gaskin

Where I come from, anyone who says "Excuse me" is a human being.
 

—
Joe

Old age is not for sissies.

—
Larry Van Cott

The only kind of payment that always guarantees a handsome return is paying attention.

—Lady Sally

It’s amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired.

—Commodore Aaron Sheffield

People who wear glasses are lucky; we have stars on rainy nights.

—Jake

Improving morale is simultaneously one of the noblest and most intelligently selfish things a person can do.

Degrading morale is simultaneously one of the sleaziest and most stupidly self-destructive things a person can do.

Guess which pays better?

—Long-Drink McGonnigle

I must have missed something: if a guy has truly
absolute
 
power, then what could you possibly corrupt him with?
 

    
Acton got it backward: what engenders corruption is paranoia, the perception of
inadequate
power.
 
Absolute power renders you absolutely immune to corruption.

—Mike