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Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > World's Greatest Jokes
World's Greatest Jokes
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Ok, once again, I realize I'm stretching the boundaries of what might be considered a bk here but it seems worthwhile, perhaps even monumentally significant. This is a practical joke. The bk has a conductive cover, inside there's a simple battery-powered electrical mechanism that makes electricity flow thru the cover when opening the bk activates the circuit. The page that houses the mechanism has "THE SHOCKING TRUTH" printed at the top. I love joke shop stuff. The art of these things seems largely lost. This is like a product of a parallel universe to artists' bks. Wd people even buy something like this anymore? Or have such things gone the way of Vaudeville?
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But of course! Rubber puke is de rigeur! I even made an installation using it that I incorporated into a movie about bulemia: "Barfroom". There was a joke shop in Baltimore run by old people that I always thought were post-Vaudevillians. I loved that place. There was plenty of stuff that was affordably cheap & alotof raunchy/silly sex joke stuff. Ah! When I was a child & ya cd buy some sortof box that had a pop-up penis in it for a few bucks. I'll still be talking about things like this when I'm drooling in the broken wheelchair at the impoverished old folks home & the orderlies are laughing at me behind my back when I tell them that I've written (by then) 25 bks & made (by then) 650 movies. "That old fart's never been worth a drop of shit his whole life!" they'll laugh. Then they'll pick up "The World's Greatest Jokes" & I'll have it wired to the 220. That'll teach 'em!
I had one of these books when I was a kid, excpet it was called, if I remeber correctly, "Shocking Stories". It was on the basement bookshelf near the family bible and books my mother thought too improper to be upstairs ("Valley of the Dolls" and "Ball Four" are two I remember sneaking around to read. My brother and I spent a few hours making ourselves immune to the tingling effect. With such disciplined nerves of steel, we then had our friends open the book. They would usually jump and fling the book aside. At that point, we'd open and close the cover without flinching, ensuring our legendary status amongst the tribe of Kirk Avenue kids. (I think my dad took the book away from one of his students at school; we also had the rubbery puke trick... ah, them were the good times.)