Old School GI Joe

This is a shameless plug for an OLD SCHOOL GI JOE bit at CircusAfterDark.com.


A while back, I was planting a bush in my mother's backyard. It was a nice schrubbery, not too large, maybe a yew. The first foot, or so, there was nothing special, dirt, stones, roots, the usual things you find while digging. Then, to my surprise, I unearthed an aluminum can pull top.

It was old, real old. The kind that popped off the can. The kind that littered our highways and cut our feet open at Jones Beach. Finally, I owned something that I could bring to the Antiques Roadshow. I slipped it in my pocket while my mom was busy weeding the azaleas and kept on digging.

The next artifact was plastic. No analysis of the teeth marks was necessary. My old man went through a longer than normal tiparillos phase. He was a White Owl man, though despite the claims in the television ads, this never resulted in him getting groped by Joey Heatherton. There was nothing he didn't smoke, sequentially, cigarettes, cigars, a ridiculous Hugh Hefner pipe, skinny cigars with plastic mouthpieces, *INSIDE JOKE WARNING* he even snuck a fag now and then, we figured this out when we saw Pete slipping out his bathroom window*INSIDE JOKE OVER* The tiparillo tip did not go in my pocket because that would be gross but it was a certain indicator of great things to come.

I had reached what we amateur archeologists call a landscape within my dig. A landscape, or horizon if you will, that most probably carbon dated back to the 1970's. I asked my mother to fetch a brush so that I could more carefully reveal my next find. She ignored me. I asked for a lemonade. She just continued weeding. My hole was now big enough for the ball of the yew. Stop snickering. The ball of the yew was the burlap wrapped roots of the bush not it's external genitalia. The yew, being a vascular plant, used pistols and stamens for sexual reproduction not balls and stems.


The sweat on my brow felt good and so I pushed on. A few inches deeper and I found this.

An abandoned bayonet from a little plastic M1. GI Joe. A 12 inch GI Joe. Sweet merciful crap! The Olduvai Man of action figures. My dream of owning a Wii was within my grasp. I dug quicker.

A Russian anti-tank grenade! How did I know this was a Russian anti-tank grenade? Well, it wasn't an American "pineapple" grenade and me and my brother were sort of Jewish, so playing with dolls dressed up like Nazis was considered verboten back in the day. But a nice, Cold War Ruskie caught sneaking across the Czechoslovakian border was considered the perfect enemy.

Now I was excited. Screw the accessories! I knew that there had to be dozens of GI Joes scattered throughout the rolling hills of Dix. My shovel flew -- and than I saw the pale flesh of a Joe rising up out of the soil. A trigger hand! An articulated arm with outrageously complicated metal hinges -- clearly first generation action figure design.

And nothing else. No torso. No legs. No head. No left arm. What horrors had befallen this Joe? The Viet Cong, the dog, the girl next door, me? I dug holes like Sigourney Weaver and nothing. The End.

Come on, if I had cashed in a 12 inch GI Joe for a Wii would I be wasting my time blogging? If you got the Sigourney Weaver reference, I'm buying. If you want more GI Joe humor with MUCH LESS REQUIRED READING, go to CafterD.

Shameless Plug: The Vermont BJ Company

From the PtB Archives:I reposted a Father's Day Classic, The Vermont BJ Company.

This bit has a special place in comedy history. It was the first time National Lampoon ever rejected one of my submissions. It was called The Vermont BJ Company or How to Write a Funny Article for National Lampoon. Why did they reject it? I'll give you three guesses.

Was it not dirty enough for the frat boys? It's called Vermont BJ Company! Next.

Was it not funny enough? I wrote it! Next.

They were afraid of being sued? This is the U.S. of effing A. Satire and parody are protected under the first amendment, and by satire and parody, they mean any lame attempt at humor even if its not satire or parody, e.g., The Onion.

They rejected it because it made fun of National Lampoon.

That's when I realized that this was not my daddy's National Lampoon.

Typos, National Lampoon and a Shameless Plug

I was just reading a bit that is posted over at the site, admiring my own cleverness and wit, when I found two typos. I hate typos. What pisses me off about these particular typos is that not only did I miss them, no fewer than two editors at National Lampoon missed them two. (I did that on purpose cause it's whacky).

I have this dislexic thing about your and you're. I know I have this problem. I've always had this problem. You would think that whenever I type these frickin' words I would be extra careful. You would be wrong.

The bit is called Eighteen Magazine's Guide to the Prom. It's memorable for a couple of reasons.

1. National Lampoon bought it even though it had been on UncleMelon.com for years and had been read by several dozen people. A couple of Benjamin Franklins for absolutely nothing, sweet.

2. I really, really like the photoshop job I did on that dandelion corsage. I especially like the two dangling flowers. Most of the stuff I do is crap but not always.

3. The loser with the pink cummerbund is Stuttering John Melendez from the old Howard Stern Show. Why did I use it? Because dogs can lick they're own balls. I got a thing about their, there, and they're, two.