Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (54 page)

I wrote down on my legal pad the words:

When I lost my baby

I almost lost my mine

This is more or less a traditional opening for this type of song. Maybe it was written by somebody originally way long ago and who wrote it is forgotten. It often helps to begin with a traditional or well-known line or lines to set a pattern for yourself. You can then write the rest of the song and, if you wish, cut off the top part, giving you an original song.
Songs are always composed of both traditional and new elements.
This means that you can rely on the tradition to give your song “legs” while also putting in your own experience or particular way of looking at things for the new.

Incidentally the lines I have quoted may look pretty bare to you but remember you are looking at just one element, the words, and there is also the melody and the special way various artists will have of singing it which gives flavor and freshness. For example, an artist who is primarily a blues singer would probably give the “when” a lot of squeeze, that is to say, draw it out, and he might also sing “baby” as three notes, “bay-ee-bee,” although it is only two syllables. Various artists have their own unique ways of doing a song and what may appear to be rather plain or dull on paper becomes quite different when it is a song.

I then wrote:

When I lost my baby

I almost lost my mine

When I lost my baby

I almost lost my mine

When I found my baby

The sun began to shine.

Copyright © 1972 by French Music, Inc.

You will notice I retained the traditional opening because it was so traditional I did not see any need to delete it. With the addition of various material about Rudelle and what kind of woman she was, it became gold in 1976.

Incidentally while we are talking about use of traditional materials here is a little tip: you can often make good use of colorful expressions in common use such as “If the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise” (to give you just one example) which I used in “Goin’ to Get Together” as follows:

Goin’ to get to-geth-er

Goin’ to get to-geth-er

If the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise.

Copyright © 1974 by French Music, Inc.

These common expressions are expressive of the pungent ways in which most people often think—they are the salt of your song, so to say. Try it!

It is also possible to give a song a funny or humorous “twist”:

Show’d my soul to the woman at the bank

She said put that thing away boy, put that thing away

Show’d my soul to the woman at the liquor store

She said put that thing away boy, ’fore it turns the wine

Show’d my soul to the woman at the 7-Eleven

She said: Is that all?

Copyright © 1974 by Rattlesnake Music, Inc.

You will notice that the meter here is various and the artist is given great liberties.

ANOTHER type of song which is a dear favorite of almost everyone is the song that has a message, some kind of thought that people can carry away with them and think about. Many songs of this type are written and gain great acceptance every day. Here is one of my own that I put to a melody which has a kind of martial flavor:

How do you spell truth? L-o-v-e is how you spell truth

How do you spell love? T-r-u-t-h is how you spell love

Where were you last night?

Where were you last night?

Copyright © 1975 by Rattlesnake Music/A.I.M. Corp.

When “Last Night” was first recorded, the engineer said “That’s a keeper” on the first take and it was subsequently covered by sixteen artists including Walls.

The I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-man song is a good one to write when you are having a dry spell. These occur in songwriting as in any other profession and if you are in one it is often helpful to try your hand at this type of song which is particularly good with a heavy rhythm emphasis in the following pattern:

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

where some of your instruments are playing da da da da
da,
hitting that last note hard, and the others answer whomp, whomp. Here is one of my own:

I’m just an ordinary mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

Just an ordinary mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

Ain’t nothin’ but a mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

I’m a grizzly mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

I’m a hello-goodbye mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

I’m a ramblin’-ramblin’ mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

I’m a mane’s mane

I’m a woeman’s mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

I’m an upstairs mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

I’m a today-and-tomorrow mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

I’m a Freeway mane

Da da da da da

Whomp, whomp

Copyright © 1977 by French Music, Inc.

Well, you see how it is done. It is my hope that these few words will get you started. Remember that although this business may seem closed and standoffish to you, looking at it from the outside, inside it has some very warm people in it, some of the finest people I have run into in the course of a varied life. The main thing is to persevere and to believe in yourself, no matter what the attitude of others may be or appear to be. I could never have written my songs had I failed to believe in Bill B. White, not as a matter of conceit or false pride but as a human being. I will continue to write my songs, for the nation as a whole and for the world.

1978

CATHLEEN SCHINE

SAVE OUR BUS HERDS!

S
ECOND
Avenue, once a busy commercial thoroughfare, has been all but destroyed recently, overrun by migrating herds of enormous, baying buses. These great lumbering vehicles, which travel in groups of about eight or nine, rumble through the area each morning, scattering frightened pedestrians into the shuttered doorways of newly abandoned shops.

Approximately the size of an elephant, the once solitary bus has baffled the scientific community by beginning to exhibit herding behavior. Just before dawn, the dusty caravans make their way downtown, dawdling at intersections, where they emit their eerie honking calls, nudging each other a little before resuming their long journey.

Last January, the Federal Carrier Protection Agency designated buses an endangered vehicle. Since then, Second Avenue has drawn international crowds of omnibus watchers and conveyance researchers to the spectacle of our rare and powerfully beautiful Grummans. Residents and local merchants, however, are less appreciative of the migrating herds. “They’ve ruined the neighborhood,” said Mrs. Edna Hardee, one of a group of antibus demonstrators gathered at Seventy-ninth Street. “Just look what they’ve done to the ecological balance. They travel in a pack, honking and squeaking and frightening off all the smaller vehicles.” Of the flocks of yellow cabs and shore jitneys that used to frequent Second Avenue, only an occasional hardy Checker now ventures into the territory. In front of Lamston’s, a perambulator stands—empty.

Several shooting incidents have been reported recently. Police say they involved deer hunters from Florida invited to the area by the more reactionary members of Young Americans Against Herds (
YAAH!
). The hunters picked up the trail of a herd at Thirty-fourth Street and, after stalking it for twenty-five minutes in the early-morning fog, surprised seven Grumman Flxibles placidly grazing a mailbox on the southwest corner of Twenty-third Street. Shots were fired, and two of the buses fell before the rest of the startled herd escaped around the corner. A.S.P.C.A. volunteers trying to pull the fallen buses to safety vied with hunters attempting to tie the Grummans onto the roofs of their station wagons.

“Poachers are a great threat to these worthy vehicles,” said noted bus researcher Charles Pearly in an emotional appearance on “Good Morning America.” “There is a flourishing black market in bus pelts. Since 1981, the U.S. Bus and Wildlife Department has confiscated six million dollars’ worth of merchandise manufactured from illegally slaughtered buses. Why, just last week a raid on a Queens warehouse uncovered a huge cache of powdered bus horns destined to be sold as aphrodisiacs.” Dr. Pearly, professor emeritus at Cornell University’s Division of Bus Sciences, is president of the Interfaith Bus Relief Corps, a nonprofit organization established in 1979 to collect tokens for starving buses. A normal bus consumes fifteen hundred pounds of tokens per day, and the natural supply has dwindled to dangerously low levels. In theory, the buses could subsist on coins alone, but because of weather conditions this year, there has been a disappointing coin crop. Also, a subspecies native to Washington, D.C., known as the “White,” because of its distinctive coloration, has joined several herds of Grumman and General Motors vehicles, almost doubling the population and causing an alarming concentration in the region. Said Dr. Pearly, “Poachers just slaughter these weakened transports.”

Captain Jiminy Strout, leader of the Florida hunters, responded to Dr. Pearly’s charges by saying he was “only trying to help.” According to Captain Strout, the hunters must step in now that man has decimated the El and the West Side Highway, the bus’s natural predators.

Conservationists, outraged by the shootings, held a press conference at Loews Tower East, during which Walt Gawd, bus biologist and chairman of the Save Our Surface Transportation Protection Foundation (SOS), raised the issue of bus shooting as a sport. “How many buses are felled every year by the hunter’s bullet?” he asked. “So-called sportsmen have already wiped out the double-decker, just because it was a sitting duck.”

SECOND Avenue has long been a haven for the migrating bus; in fact, it is believed that Second Avenue was originally a pathway beaten out by prehistoric motor coaches moving south. But researchers are still not sure where these impressive vehicles come from or where they go. And although there have been several sightings of individual rogue buses charging up Third, the actual northbound route has never been identified. Even so, scientists say, they do know enough about bus behavior to predict that any disruption of herding or migration patterns would destroy the once mighty bus altogether.

“Buses been coming by here long as I remember,” one gray-haired man commented. “Grummans now. And them white ones. But there used to be green ones all along here. And they didn’t travel in packs, neither. No, sir. They just come along, all by themselves, one after t’other. They gone now. Gone forever.”

Concerned citizens, like Judith Needleham-Stark, of the Agency for a Very Nice New York, attributed the extinction of the green city bus to officials who had them painted blue. “We warned them what would happen,” Ms. Needleham-Stark recalls. “But there is so much ignorance about buses.”

1982

WILLIAM WHITE

THREE GREAT MEALS

I
N
this article I am going to tell you how to make three great meals using standard ingredients. By “standard ingredients” I mean things that can be found in any supermarket from one end of the country to the other. I am going to name names and tell you what brands I use, not because I am in the pay of these particular brands or have any fiduciary relation to them but because they are the ones I use daily and ones that I have found work well, day in and day out. In each case you will notice that the meal is geared to the person who does not have too much time to screw around but at the same time wants extra-good results, something a little better than what you would get if you just used these fine products straight, without informed guidance or nuance.

It is true that all of these great meals fall roughly under the rubric “Southern Cooking,” but I stress that the ingredients have nationwide distribution, for the most part, and that because something has its origins in the South doesn’t automatically mean that it can be dismissed as “low-rent” or beneath contempt. An open mind toward the cuisines of various regions is the first hallmark of the educable palate.

A GREAT BREAKFAST

For the Great Breakfast we assume that, the night before, you have gone out and bought 8–10 pieces of Popeyes Fried Chicken at the drive-in window of your local Popeyes, together with 6–8 Popeyes Biscuits. Now I am not sure that Popeyes is entirely national, but it is widely found throughout the South which makes it national enough for our purposes. Colonel Sanders may be substituted if you wish. The average family will have eaten about seven of the chicken pieces and maybe four of the biscuits during the original meal leaving you with a wealth of residue for the Great Breakfast.

Upon awakening, take one package McCormick Chicken Gravy Mix and place it in a saucepan, adding one-half can of Swanson’s Clear Chicken Broth. This is the first subtlety. The directions for the Gravy Mix suggest cold water; by adding Swanson’s Chicken Broth you get a gravy that is far richer. (You also double your expense, but as the Gravy Mix is typically about 63 cents a package and the Broth about 49 cents a can, it’s not that much.)

Next, chop a fresh onion very fine—very
very
fine, about two tablespoons’ worth. Throw this in the gravy. You may then add a splash of Soave Bolla white wine and raise heat to boil off the alcohol. If your religious convictions do not permit the use of alcohol in your breakfast it may be omitted, but what do you do when you get to Turtle Soup, leave out the sherry? While the gravy is simmering, take the leftover Popeyes Biscuits and split them, placing them in a small container in a 425-degree oven for approximately eight minutes.

Now, strip chicken from leftover Popeyes pieces and add to gravy, being careful to not include the heavy crispy skin that was your motivation for getting the Popeyes chicken in the first place. Then remove biscuits from oven, ladle gravy over them, and sprinkle with Spice Islands thyme, taking care to crush thyme between thumb and forefinger to release flavor. The result is a chicken-with-dumplings that cannot be equalled this side of that tin-roofed place on a dirt road outside of Talladega, Alabama, that we’ve all heard about but no one has ever found. The masterstroke here is of course the onion.