Here are a couple of jokes that took me over 20 years to finally get the punch line.
Joke #1: In the 1936 Three Stooges classic film Disorder in the Court, through a comedy of errors (which pretty much describes every situation the Stooges ever found themselves in) a man’s toupee ends up attached to Larry’s violin bow (at the 8:30 mark). After Larry mistakes the hair piece for a tarantula, Moe grabs the bailiff’s gun and shoots the toupee multiple times. When Larry picks the toupee up from the floor, Moe says, “Tarantula? I just shot five holes in a divot.” Larry is then smacked, for good measure.
What I Missed: A “divot” is the small piece of turf that gets scraped up while golfing.
In My Defense: Shortly before the above scene takes place, there is another scene in which Curly is advised to “drop the vernacular,” after letting loose a string of slang words that neither the judge nor the jurors can understand. As a kid, I assumed “divot” was slang for “toupee.”
Joke #2:Weird Al’s song “I Want a New Duck,” based on Huey Lewis’ “I Want a New Drug” (as was Ray Parker, Jr’s Ghostbusters, apparently), is filled with dozens of duck-related jokes. (“I want a new duck / One that won’t steal my beer / One that won’t stick his bill in my mail / One that knows the duck stops here.”) What I missed was a sly play on words at the end of the second chorus: “One that won’t drive me crazy, waddling all around / One who’ll teach me how to swim and help me not to drown / And show me how to get down … How to get down baby.”
What I Missed: “Down” is a layer of feathers that comes from birds, often used in sleeping bags, coats and pillows.
In My Defense: “I Want a New Duck” was released on 1985’s Dare to be Stupid. In the mid-80s, I frequented Yukon on Wheels, our local roller rink. Rick Dee’s Disco Duck was in regular rotation back then (played when it was time to shoot the duck). I always thought Al’s was jokingly relating to Dee’s classic song.
I can barely remember the 80s, let alone songs played during that time. Most of what I listened to was whatever my Mom had playing on the radio in the car until the late 80s and then it was all teeny bop type stuff like Debbie Gibson, New Kids on the Block, etc.
I can understand the stooges msitake because they did use a lot of terms popular in the 40s and 30s that have virtually been forgotten like ‘hemagloba’, an old English term for knife and ‘sulfadimas’ a term for a boring device before Black and Decker coined the word ‘drill’ in the early 50s.
Don’t forget the popular operating tool, the “anna conna poona”.
This reminds me too of the book you got a few years back, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” (Hendrix), which was a look at often-misheard lyrics. “Have you seen junior’s grapes?” (Van Halen)
There’s a warm wind blowin’ the stars around?