I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (20 page)

Now when I’m on a plane or in the lounge at an airport, I try to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations to stay in touch with everyday life. Not only do I feel cut off, even the people I’m around sometimes seem cut off.

Valet parking, a subject often suggested to me, probably wouldn’t work, though parking lots might. Lately I’ve noticed that the entry-level job for the people who have escaped from the poorest countries is the parking attendant. Determining his accent gives you a real insight into the next trouble spot in the world. His brother came over from his country and then sent for him.

“All you have to do is say, ‘You going to a movie. … Tree dollars,’ ” the guy tells his brother. “That’s all you have to know.”

Problem is, what if I pulled in and said my wife’s expecting a baby, she just broke her water, and we have to get her to the nearest hospital!

“You going to a movie. … Tree dollars.”

Becoming a senior citizen has given me a few universal jokes that any audience can appreciate, like the man who was slowly losing his hearing. The man said to his friend, “I just got this new hearing aid and it’s great.”

“How much did it cost you?” his friend asks.

“One hundred and fifty bucks,” the man with the new hearing aid says.

“Wow,” his friend says. “That’s a great deal. What kind is it?”

“It’s 4:15.”

Success has given me the opportunity to embarrass myself in different forums. In the past several years, I’ve had some unusual offers that I’ve accepted. Either I want to be more unpredictable, or just more perverse.

In a stamps.com commercial, I played Frank Mettman Jr. Frank explains that since the founding of the Mettman Manufacturing Company in 1942, the Mettman name has become synonymous with ill-conceived products that carry the risk of serious physical injury, like the Suckmaster 100 vacuum cleaner, the rocking folding recliner, and the unfortunate home surgery kit.

As Frank talks, people are shown using these various products and injuring themselves in bizarre and painful ways.

But, Frank adds, there has been some progress. The company signed up for a new service called stamps.com that allows you to download your postage directly to your printer. This has saved the company lots of time when it needs to respond to people who have been injured by its various products.

I thought the commercial was offbeat and funny, and it won the Palme d’Or for commercials.

Before stamps.com, I had done several inhouse training videos for IBM. One of them was in the vein of “Introducing Tobacco to Civilization.” I played Herman Hollerith, who came up with the punch card for clocking in workers. Herman was trying to explain the new system he had come up with to rid the company of idiotic jargon and force the engineers to speak in plain English. The ad agency had neglected to tell me that it was tongue-in-cheek. So I was having the hardest time getting the lines out.

“We are all familiar with the cyclomilitron and interfacing it with diobionetics …”

I would blow a word and hear, “Okay, Herman Hollerith, take twelve!” Which was making it worse. About the fifteenth take, I realized that I was speaking gobbledygook and it wasn’t supposed to make any sense. I had been playing it straight.

And they say comedians are perverse.

I was also asked to give a commencement address at my son’s alma mater, Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in 1997. My son Tim had graduated in 1989 with a degree in English literature specializing in the poetry of Yeats. As you all know, when you pick up the classified pages you just see page after page of jobs for Yeats scholars.

The graduates greeted me with a rousing, “Hi, Bob!”

“In preparation for the speech,” I told them, “I read a number of other commencement addresses. There always seems to be an obligatory reference to Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World.
And also to give the perception that you are intelligent, you don’t actually have to
be
intelligent, but just create the perception. This can usually be accomplished by a reference to Kafka—even if you haven’t read any of his … or her works.”

Thankfully, I got some laughs.

Then there is
Desperate Housewives
, which is either a serious drama or spoof depending on which side of the humor scale you fall. In what was perhaps the oddest and most flattering offer I’ve received in recent memory, I was asked to guest star on the show as a character named Morty, the estranged ex-boyfriend of Susan’s mother (played by Lesley Ann Warren, no less). Teri Hatcher, of course, is Susan.

I was thrilled with the offer because it seems that most adults in the free world watch it every week. The show is one of the hottest things on TV, and they really could have gotten most anyone for my part. They could’ve gotten Bruce Willis if they wanted, or even the governor of California.

To me, the show is a spoof on a soap opera and makes fun of the genre that encompasses
Soap
and
Dynasty
. However, I find that most people watch it as a soap opera and aren’t aware that it’s a sendup. I know people who are such fanatics that they plan their week around the show. They wouldn’t dare tape it or TiVo it, as the case is these days, because they wouldn’t be able to call their friends immediately after the show and gossip.

I did see one episode that had a truly memorable scene. In the show, one of the housewives follows the plumber, with whom she is having an affair and who is cheating on their affair. She hangs back a distance of five or six car-lengths and soon loses him. Finally, she sees a car that looks like his, so she walks up to it and confronts the man and woman. After apologizing for a case of mistaken identity, she returns to her car.

The girl in the car says to the man, “Was that your wife?”

He looks at her and says, “If that was my wife, do you think I’d be here with you?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

You Can Have
My Frequent-Flier Miles

Good Evening, I’d like to welcome you aboard the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Company). I don’t know how much you know about our airlines. We’ve only been in business about a week. Our airline was founded on the premise that what the American public wanted was low-cost overseas transportation. We’ve attempted to eliminate what we call in the airline business “frills and extras” … like maintenance and radar and a whole bunch of technical instruments. … Have you ever had one that hangs on for about four or five days? I don’t mind the headache so much, but it’s that damn double vision. …

I really dislike flying, and there’s a logical explanation for this. The first airline flight I ever took was a non-scheduled flight on Costal Cargo. It was 1952, and I was on my way to Camp Roberts in California to serve my two years in the military. The plane was a C-47 cargo plane. When it carried passengers, they bolted seats to the floor, and when it carried cargo, they removed the seats.

It was something like that in “The Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Co.).”

From that point forward, I’ve never felt comfortable on a plane. I feel trapped. It goes back to a childhood experience during the depths of the Depression. It was wintertime. I was playing outside and this drunk was walking past me yelling incoherently, so I ran into the vestibule of the apartment building where I lived and frantically pushed the buzzer for someone to open the door. Nobody responded and I felt trapped. Just as the mad drunk turned in to the vestibule, someone buzzed me in, and I ran upstairs.

Now, Dr. Hartley would ask, “What does that have to do with traveling five hundred miles per hour at thirty thousand feet?”

I guess it’s because I felt trapped and unable to control the situation, just as I did on the plane. I don’t know. Maybe if I would have done some method preparation to play Dr. Hartley, I could answer that question.

I’m one of those passengers who arrives at the airport five or six hours early so I can throw back a few drinks and muster up the courage to board the plane. Apparently I’m not alone because I’ve never been in an empty airport bar. I don’t care what time you get there. Even at 8:00
A.M
. you have to fight your way to the bar. At that hour, everyone drinks Bloody Marys so no one can tell it’s booze—at least until they fall off their chair.

The invention of the airplane changed society forever. In the telephone routine titled “Merchandising the Wright Brothers,” which I wrote while trying to fill
The Button-Down Mind
, the Wright Brothers are marketing their first plane to a guy from a sales-promotion firm, who is pushing to start booking passengers immediately. Of course, there are a few problems.

“In all of the pictures we have,” the sales guy tells Orville, “either you or Wilbur is lying on the wings. Now … if we’re going to charge them seventy-five or eighty bucks to the coast, I don’t know how they’ll go for lying on the wings like that. … And having to land every 105 feet.”

I’m not sure about flying on the wing, but truthfully I didn’t mind the old propeller jets because I prefer a lot of noise when I fly. Now they have those pod engines hanging from the wings. When I hear them hissing, I sit there and say to myself, “They’re probably on. They must be. Yes, I’m certain they’re on.”

Before takeoff, the crew always runs down a checklist. I’m convinced that this has nothing to do with maintenance or safety. It’s just to make the passengers feel better. The list is read by a flight attendant or the pilot, whoever happens to be flying the plane that day.

First, they come out and kick the tires. This is reassuring. After that, they walk around the plane and count the engines—one, two, three, four, check. I don’t mind that too much, except when they check it against the list on the clipboard they are carrying.

Each time I fly, I like to treat it as a new adventure. I relish the technological achievements of man inventing and perfecting the airplane. I’ll turn to the person next to me and say something along the lines of, “This flying is amazing. The people down there look like ants.”

Usually, they’ll respond with something like, “Those are ants, you idiot. We haven’t taken off yet.”

Incidentally, I want to apologize for your having to stand all the way. If I can give you a little tip, every half hour or so you want to alternate your arms through those straps above your head. You folks flying tourist class, you don’t have any straps so don’t bother looking for them. We’re going to have a little drill in a few moments by our two stewardesses, Trixie and Bubbles. … I’m sorry, Miss Swanson and Miss Savage … and they’ll show you how to put your life jackets on. There really isn’t that much to it, but a lot of people get them on backward and that way you are going to wind up with your face in the water. If we should have to ditch, you’ll have plenty of warning because our copilot becomes hysterical. He’ll start running up and down the aisles yelling, “We’re going to crash.” Actually, he gets kind of panicky, and it isn’t always easy to understand him. At least it has been in the past anyway. If you see him running up and down the aisles, and you can’t make out what he’s saying, you might slip on your life jackets to be on the safe side. …

The two airlines I prefer are Delta and United, mainly because I’m not a stockholder in either one.

I like Delta because they pay their pilots the most out of all the U.S. airlines, and there’s nothing better at 30,000 feet than a happy pilot. On United, I can listen to the pilots talking to the air-traffic controllers on the inflight entertainment system. That way, I know exactly when the turbulence will begin and end, and I can mentally prepare myself. At least I feel like I’m doing something besides sitting there and waiting for an air pocket to turn my drink over onto my lap.

Regardless of which airline I fly, I prefer to sit by the window so I can see what’s going on outside. I want to know if we are flying over the Grand Canyon or into it.

Considering I’ve flown something like two million miles in my life, I haven’t had that many bad experiences— though I take little comfort in this because it only takes one. Once I was on a DC-10 leaving LAX, and one of the wing flaps didn’t retract. The pilots circled back and dumped fuel while the passengers braced against the seats in front of us. It was scary, but everything ended up fine.

Another time, Ginnie and I were flying from Paris to London with the Rickleses. As we were coming in, Ginnie whispered to me, “We’re awfully high.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, pressing my nose to the window.

“We’re too high to land,” she reiterated.

“Yeah, I, I know.”

“We’re not going to land.”

With that, the pilot gunned the engines, and the plane banked hard to the right. Barbara Rickles, who was sitting across the aisle reading a magazine, looked up and non-chalantly said to Don, “We’re going up again.”

Ginnie let out a scream and Don said, “Newhart, can’t you do something with your wife?” and went back to reading. I turned to Ginnie and said, “It’s like flying with Chauncey Gardner and his wife.” (Chauncey was the trusting childlike character Peter Sellers portrayed in
Being There.
)

I’d like to answer some questions that you may have about the airline. … Ma’am … if I may, I’ll repeat the question so everyone can hear it. If we should ditch, how long will the plane remain afloat? That’s your question, ma’am? Uh, golly that’s awful hard to say, ma’am. Some of ’em go down like a rock. And then, for some reason or another, others will stay up for two or three minutes. … I want to get to the gentleman way in the back. If you could speak up, I can’t hear you over the roar of our engines. Oh, wait, they’ve stopped now. Harry, the engines are going out. … Try the third button on the left, I think Harry … hold it. Harry, the cabin lights went out. Try the third button on the right. That’s got ’em. You want to try the question again? … Sir, I’m sorry, I still can’t make out what you’re saying. … Sure, if you want to try it that way, it may work. … First word, sounds like running, sounds like racing … track and field … ran … It sounds like ran…man….A lot of man…A whole bunch of… men. … Oh, men! It’s right behind you, sir. I’m glad I took your question ahead of this gentleman’s over here.