I was a cock teaser at Rooster-a-rama!
Generally speaking, my Dad didn’t get The Firesign Theatre, but I remember playing one of their off the cuff pieces for him one time, and in the middle of the bit, one of the guys in Firesign Announced: “I was a cockteaser for Rooster-Rama…I dressed up like an egg and sat on the chickens…It really freaked them out, man!” My Dad laughed so hard that he “vapor locked” – a “vapor lock” (in older cars) is when the gases that were supposed to be expelled during the internal combustion process weren’t -keeping the car from running. It chugged and lurched but it also threatened to “die”; whereas my Dad just laughed so hard that he was unable to breathe! Ancient history now…But he turned red, trembled and had a petite mal and then stopped breathing and I began to wonder: “Did I just kill my dad? Was this joke lethal?”
Here I might cross reference an old Monty Python bit where the military weaponized a joke that was so funny and so lethal that it killed everyone who heard it instantly.
Listening to the Firesign Theatre was like listening to Jazz Masters at work, they would just say something surreal and someone else in the group would pick up the scissors and run with them. Their skill at listening and their trust in each other- to pick up the thread and help make something golden with it was a key factor in their work. And, they were frequently incomprehensible but always entertaining, (for that matter, does anyone understand the lyrics to a bunch of Steely Dan songs? -Or virtually any Yes song? I thought not).
These four guys re wrote the comedy rules…When they originally came out, jokes were expected to be standardized and to a point, predictable, that is: a beginning, a middle and an end with a great punch line. They took all that stuff and threw it into a blender (from Bailiol Brothers no doubt!) and ended up with something that never existed before or after.
My Dad’s taste in humor was as was most of his generation, pretty tame most times but every once in a while, he’d laugh at someone like George Carlin, who I met one time at the salad bar at a Hamburger Hamlet in Hollywood. I didn’t want to be a pest, I mean he was assembling a salad, so he was getting ready to eat. I just said: “Love your work”. To which, he replied: “Thanks man”. And to this day, I believe that he was thanking me for not making a fuss and keeping it brief and not for his actual work.
I’ve run into a great many stars while I was working in Hollywood and by and large I acknowledged that I knew who they were and said I was a fan. That was it. I never bugged any of them for a picture or autograph. I’d like to be left alone while buying underwear at Ross (low rise, medium, neutral colors BTW), so I treated anyone I ran into on the street with the same deference that I’d like.
My Dad instilled that sense of propriety in me I guess. However, I wonder if he’d have been so restrained had he run into the “cock-teaser” himself some time. I can’t think of the Firesign Theatre without also thinking of my Dad.
BTW if you haven’t heard the bit and I’ve piqued your interest, it’s easy to find on Youtube, though it wouldn’t hurt to be in the “right frame of mind”, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Then Czech out “Rat in a box”( “We fry what you won’t touch!”)
