Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace, and More

by James Burrows

Bob eventually retired that parrot joke and put a new one in his repertoire: There’s this magician on a cruise ship, and he does the same show every night in front of a different audience. But the captain has a parrot. And the parrot’s seen the magician’s act 100 times, and he’d be giving all of the secrets away to the audience. The magician would do a trick in front of the audience and the parrot would yell out, “How come the deck is all the ace of spades? The flowers are under the table! It’s a new hat!” The cruise ship hits a storm. It gets really bad and the ship sinks. The magician is in the ocean, hanging on to this piece of wood and the parrot is hanging on to the same piece of wood. And they don’t talk for four days. Finally, the parrot turns to the magician and says, “Okay, I give up. Where’s the ship?”