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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, September 13, 1999
And now, let us praise ultimate deadpan comic
Look: August in Corpus Christi is always a downer. This year, we've had to deal with the Hurricane Bret near-miss and the attendant mass migration northward, not to mention a collective psyche that seems to have developed a massive case of prickly heat.
Seems there is fear and loathing wherever we look: City Hall, the county courthouse, CCISD - name it. We have student athletes and coaches from two of the city's premier football programs duking it out during a "controlled" pre-season scrimmage that went sour. We even have a public debate about the sinister message being sent by the color scheme in a candidate's political signs.
I can live with that. But by no stretch of the imagination was I prepared for what leapt out at me from page A2 of last Sunday's paper:
Bob Newhart is 70 years old.
I'm really having trouble coming to terms with this. I have come to think of Newhart as ageless. While all about him has changed, Newhart, sphinx-like, has remained unaltered.
What I find even more dispiriting, though, is the fact that millions of my countrymen/women out there know him only through his TV sitcoms.
Now, these are fine shows - not a thing wrong with them. Certainly they're a cut above (no: make that six or seven cuts above) the grinning, leering, witless stuff that passes for prime-time network comedy these days.
Still, it strikes me as inexpressibly sad that so many of us are not even aware of the finest part of Newhart's oeuvre (that's a word, ain't it?): his work as a stand-up comic.
That's right: Back in prehistory - the late '50s, or was it the early '60s? - Newhart arrived as the avatar of new brand of humor, cerebral yet accessible. His deadpan delivery was (is) faintly reminiscent of Buster Keaton - except, of course, for the fact that he talks. (Who's Buster Keaton, you ask? Look it up, kid.)
Granted, a lot of the attention those days went to Lenny Bruce, whose "sick humor" embodied (it says here) the liberating power of naughty language and self-destructive behavior. And of course the estimable Mort Sahl and Shelly Berman and Jonathan Winters were hitting their own licks as well.
Yet, though Newhart looked and sounded like the accountant he was prior to his decision to switch careers, there was a certain slightly sprung, even subversive, quality to his comedic riffs.
Just last night I hauled out a couple of his old LPs (never throw away your turntable) and found that his work retains its freshness and (hateful word) relevance.
Newhart takes an utterly familiar situation and puts a surrealistic spin on it. Take the number about an employee reporting for his first day on the job: So? So the poor slob's a security guard at the Empire State Building, and it turns out he arrives just as King Kong is climbing the building. Speaking with his boss over the phone (Newhart raised the one-sided phone conversation to an art form), the hapless wretch reports that he has swatted the ape's toe with a broom, but since Kong is being attacked by fighter planes, the broom doesn't seem to make much of an impression.
In another sketch, Newhart assumes the persona of an entertainment agent handling a phone call from one Abner Doubleday, who's come up with something called baseball: With each successive fillip - balls, strikes, walks, outs - the agent grows more incredulous: This thing will never fly.
Then there's the address given by a beleaguered nuclear sub commander who's vessel has just completed the longest underwater voyage in history: "Men," he tells the assembled crew, "I think it's time for you to tell me what you did with the executive officer."
Sometimes the best numbers are the briefest. Newhart envisions Thomas Alva Edison summoning reporters to his laboratory. There, he ushers them into a darkened room, where they behold a bulb on a table, connected by a wire to a generator operated by a lab assistant. Edison nods to the assistant, who begins cranking the generator. Sure enough, the bulb comes to life: First a faint radiance, then a sure, steady glow!
The newsmen are electrified! (So to speak.) They rush for the exit to file their stories - but Edison calls them back.
"No, no, no!" he tells them. "That isn't it!" Then he walks to the table and bends as close as he can to the bulb:
"Hello?"
Many happy returns, Bob.
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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