This
is my favorite mother joke. Actually it's a mother-in-law joke and it
comes from the very politically incorrect but screamingly funny AMOS
& ANDY SHOW. I believe this was written by Mosher & Connelly
(who went on to create LEAVE IT TO BEAVER and THE MUNSTERS).
The Kingfish sets up a blind date for "Mama". Hoping the poor guy would
like her and take her off of his hands he arranges for Mama to go to the
beauty parlor. He's talking to the hair stylist, describing Mama. He
says (and I'm paraphrasing), "Picture a grapefruit that's been out at
sea. And it washes ashore, all covered with seaweed and crabs. Now it
sits in the sun for a couple of weeks and gets all wrinkly and rotted
and bugs are now flying around it. Can you picture that?" The
hairstylist says "Uh huh." And the Kingfish says, "Good. If you can make
her look that good I'd be satisfied!"
TOMORROW: I update the network pilots and cancelled shows. Happy Mother's Day.
3 comments :
My favorite Mother's Day joke comes from Jeff Dunham and Peanut a few years back:
JEFF: Hey mom, we're here to tell you that you deserve a day off.
PEANUT: Until then, Happy Mother's Day!
A&A was brilliantly written and often sidesplittingly funny. If the show had been written about 1940s Jewish-Americans or Italian-Americans living in their own ethnic stronghold in New York, the series would have been considered a TV classic and be rerun to this date. If Kingfish had spoken like Jackie Mason or Jack Klugman or William Bendix, the series would be looked on in a totally different light.
Particularly galling in that A&A's racial "stereotyping" isn't nearly as offensive as the modern-day stuff churned out by the various Wayans, Tyler Perry, Martin Lawrence, Katt Williams, ad infinitum. And most of them aren't even funny!
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