Have Pirates peaked?

I'm a little ambivalent about tomorrow's celebration of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. There are a few reasons, some personal, most not. Here are my thoughts:

1) Right off the top, I confess that I am still a little hurt by the utter failure of Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day (June 2). I know I made many errors in the concept -- the Bowery Boys and Slip himself, the late Leo Gorcey, are hardly remembered anymore. Plus, even for those who remember the many Bowery Boys movies fondly, talking like Slip Mahoney is not simple. Slip's hard-knocks New York accent is easy enough to imitate, but his constant stream of malapropisms is difficult to replicate off the cuff. Malapropisms are hard! You have be to clever to sound that dumb. As I wrote before, any fool can go ARRR and Avast ye, but it's tricky to come up with lines like "You're not holding me here as an accomplishment to the crime because I never accomplished anything in my life, so what's the charge?" I blame myself for thinking we were up to the challenge.

2) The failure of Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day (January 24) to catch on should have taught me that the "Talk Like" holiday concept is not infinitely expandable. I don't even hear much about International Talk Like William Shatner Day (March 22) anymore.

3) And I don't think that Talk Like a Pirate Day is even what it used to be. The founders don't update the Webpage very often. Krispy Kreme used to give out free doughnuts on the big day, but there's no mention of it on the company site now. Dunkin' Donuts hasn't done anything for it, I believe, in five years. The day's biggest supporter, humor writer Dave Barry, has been missing for weeks, dealing with a serious family medical issue. (Maybe he'll make an appearance tomorrow.) Childhood Cancer Support in Australia does use the day as a fund-raising opportunity, so I hope for their sake it is not disappearing.

I don't know if any offices are doing employee fun events based on the day, but in the current sensitivity-to-the-point-of-explosion atmosphere, it would seem reckless to celebrate anything relating to a people known for intemperance, violence, thievery, and sexual incontinence. Hey, I'm glad I'm not working in an office anymore!

4) Finally, are pirates what they had been? The main tent pole for the pirate popularity is the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. The first movie came out in 2003, and they've been getting stupider ever since. While there was a lot of smarts in the first film, it got progressive sacrificed for looks and set-pieces as it went. I bailed after #3. They've all made money, but no one knows if there will be a #6 at this point. It may be stuck in Development Hell. If it actually is made, it may be dumber than the dumbest Bowery Boys movie -- so dumb that it will cause a explosion of stupid that will make the Kraken look like a Chiweenie puppy, taking all the fun of piracy with it.

Plus, the Pittsburgh Pirates are in fourth place in the NL Central as of this morning.

So all this is rather distressing. But, of course, I will be ready tomorrow all the same.

What the hey -- Dunkin' Donuts might change its mind and hand out doughnuts. Doughnuts ahoy!

Slipped our minds.

Now that it's June 4, the truth can be told.

We had to cancel Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day.

He's pissed. 

For the past couple of years, June 2, the date of Leo Gorcey's death, has been the day we've celebrated by talking like his famous character Slip Mahoney. But this year we have had to cancel that special day. I didn't have the heart to mention it on June 3---Gorcey's birthday.

Why did we cancel it? Was the storm too hard, the sleigh couldn't get through?

No, as hard as it is to believe it, Americans have failed to rise up in force and start blabbing malapropisms in Brooklynese. How can this be, when so many are willing to talk like a pirate on September 19?

Well, I still think it's because malapropisms are hard. To make a good one, you really have to know the meanings of the words you are misusing. Frankly, any dummy can go "Arrr" and "Avast ye" and "Blow me mizzen" or something, but to sound dumb in a clever way you have to be smart.

Leo Gorcey was a lot of things, and many of them not good, but he was not a dummy.

Oh, well. Holidays don't always last. Abraham Lincoln's birthday has been lumped into an all-purpose Presidents Day. Victory Day was last celebrated in 1975. Ireland dropped Whit Monday from its bank holiday calendar in 1973. Talk Like a Grizzled Prospector Day (January 24) and International Talk Like William Shatner Day (March 22) have failed to gain the traction they deserve.

God rest your soul, Leo Gorcey. Give our regads to da poily gates. Hushed in the abalone arms of Death / Our young Marsupial sleeps. Recapitulate in pace. See yez in the funny papuhs.

Slip Mahoney: The Recap.

Well, folks, that wraps another Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day. The second. In a row! So it's all very exciting. Or, as Slip might say, it's been absolutely dogmatic and innocuous.

Here are some inspiring and completely unconfirmed anecdotes connected with this year's event, reported to us at TLSMD HQ:

• An angry police captain in Houston was overheard telling a sergeant, "I oughta moidelize ya, ya bum."
• Nationwide, bow tie sales were up 38% on the day.
• A female pediatrician in Oshkosh told the mother of one of her patients, "She just needs ta get some good eats, some fresh air, and some ostracize."
• Seven palookas in Cleveland went to Walmart to buy hats so they could hit one another with them.
• A Baptist minister in Mobile told some congregants, "God sent his only kid to redeem our exegetical souls, and dat ain't hay, bruddah."
• An elderly woman in Saskatchewan, faced with a picky-eating grandson, promised that, "If yeh don't eat dat tuna sanwich I'm gonna feed ya a knuckle sanwich!"

So we're positively immobilized with glee at da toinout.

Why do we honor the great Slip Mahoney? Why do we chase these ghosts of celluloid past? I'd say, we may be ghost chasers, but we're in excellent company.

See you next year. Tomorrow, back to foods I shouldn't eat (but did), dog anecdotes, miscellaneous complaints, pedantry, and observational humor!

Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day: One last primer.

All right! The day is here! We're all going to honor the late Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys today by talking like Slip Mahoney, right?

If you need one more dose of encouragement, here is the mastah at woik:

And a couple of trailers:

And a dramatic toin:

You get the idear.

As I mentioned yesterday, the proper Slip attire helps sell the imitation. And Fred is always willing to provide a good example.

All right, you mugs! Get dressed up, get your accents and malapropisms in order, and go get 'em!

Hours away from Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day!

June 2 is the day that the great Leo Gorcey died in 1969, and we honor him tomorrow with the second annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day. So when you're out and about on Tuesday, make sure to use your broad Noo Yawk accent, act tough and mean when you're angry (and panicked when you're scared), and work in those malapropisms as often as you can.

The character Slip Mahoney from the Bowery Boys films was known for his colorful misuse of large words, and as I acknowledged last year, it can be hard to zing one out without proper preparation. Gorcey had screenwriters, and Mrs. Malaprop from The Rivals had Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but you'll have to make do on your own. Bear in mind that you can make near words---words that are not quite in the dictionary but A) sound like the word that is meant and B) have a comic effect.

Here's a few I've concocted to get you started, complete with accent:

• "We need ta use a block and cackle on dis job."
• "I owe some money ta de Infoirnal Revenue Soirvice."
• "I'm very intelligent. I'm known for my condensation."
• "No need to be so elephantic about it!"
• "Sure, I eat meat. I ain't no veterinarian."
• "It's like dat story, 'Da Pit an' da Pandemonium.'"
• "Of course I'm a patriot! I'm a absolute libertine!"
• "We nevah give up. We're known for our tendinitis."
• "I love your abalone hair, your porcine skin."

"Tanks to dis jack pot, we're positively effluent!"

Remember that Slip was often trying to sound smart and sophisticated, so you may want to pull the double trick of doing a froufrou accent as if your natural accent is New Yorkese. That's advanced Slip.

Will people look at you funny? Dat's the idear! As with dat pirate day in September, if you dress the part people will depreciate what you'se doin'. More on dat tomorrow.

Where in the world are the Bowery Boys?

As we get even closer to Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day on June 2, the tension mounts... the streets of New York are a-sizzle with excitement!

The Wikipedia entry on the Bowery Boys (of which Slip Mahoney was the one true king) noted that the BBs' many film plots followed those of Abbott and Costello---when Bud and Lou did a Western, the Boys did a Western; when A&C did a haunted house, the Boys did a haunted house, and so on. I enjoyed Abbott and Costello films, but hey---they made only 36 movies; the Bowery Boys made 48. How many easy comedy ideas were floating around in that era? B movies were not nor expected to be dynamos of originality.

Anyway, the Bowery Boys got around a lot in those pictures, although they always played the same characters---unlike Abbott and Costello, who played different characters (who were exactly like Bud and Lou). Sometimes it required taking storytelling liberties. For example, in Bowery Buckaroos, the characters were transported to the Old West by virtue of the story being a dream of Sach's. In a later film (Hold that Hypnotist), a hypnotist uses past-life regression hypnosis to send the Boys on an adventure in piracy. (Note that Slip was out of the series by then, so there's no crossover between Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day and International Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

Most of the Bowery Boys films were typical New York-based crime stories (although fantasy elements were featured in several of them), but the Bowery Boys often hit the road, especially in later films. If this should come up in conversation on the big day, you might mention that Slip and the gang had many adventures outside the confines of the city:

Let's Go Navy! -- the Boys enlist in the Navy to find thieves that rob a charity and spend a year at sea
Loose in London -- the Boys go to London when Sach gets an inheritance
Paris Playboys -- the Boys go to Paris to find a missing professor
Jungle Gents -- the Boys go to Africa to find diamonds
Bowery to Bagdad  -- a genie transports Slip and Sach to Baghdad
Dig That Uranium -- the Boys go to the western U.S. to find uranium
Crashing Las Vegas -- the Boys win a trip to Vegas

They go to the mountains in Spook Chasers, but by then Slip was gone, so for our purposes we're leaving it off the list. Talk to us if there's ever a Talk Like Duke Covelske Day.

The Boys wound up enlisting in the Navy, Marines, Army, and the Air Force in their adventures, which would make them unique in the armed forces history of the U.S. The Coast Guard is probably pretty sore about being left out again.

So as you can see, Slip Mahoney was not only a tough New York street kid, but he was also something of a world traveler. He could mangle words from several languages, too, which might make him describe himself as something of a polygoat.

Póg Mahoney.

The excitement mounts as we are a mere seven days from the second annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day!

"We've osculated by joy!"

To help buoy your enthusiasm for the king of the Bowery Boys during the seven-day countdown, here's seven things you may not know about the great Leo Gorcey, who portrayed Slip for more than a decade. Today we will take a look into the darker side of Leo, I'm afraid, but we shall want to know the whole man.

1. Gorcey's father, Bernard Gorcey, played shopkeeper Louie Dumbrowski in the Bowery Boys series, at whose sweet shop the boys frequently hung out. Bernard died in 1955 in a car accident, so Louie was not in any further films in the series. They couldn't CGI a guy into the film in those days.

2. Leo Gorcey, and consequently Slip Mahoney, did not appear in the last seven of the 48 films considered to be part of the Bowery Boys series. He got drunk and wrecked a movie set, then was incensed when the studio wouldn't give him a raise. ('Magin' dat.) He was replaced by Stanley Clements as Duke Coveleskie.

3. Gorcey's drinking was pretty horrid, especially after his father died, and ultimately killed him at the age of 51. Despite that, he managed to get married five times, which is pretty impressive. I mean, I know he was a movie star, but he was 5'6", kind of funny looking, and not always a cheerful drunk, and his movie career was pretty much washed up by 1956, when he still had two marriages to go.

4. Huntz Hall, who played Sach, is on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Gorcey is not. He was going to be in the blank spot to the left of Hall. Supposedly his agent demanded $400 from the Beatles, which even in 1968 would have been pocket lint to Paul McCartney, but they just took him out. I don't know if Fred Astaire got any money out of it.

5. Leo's kid brother David actually appeared in more of the Bowery Boys movies than Leo, playing Charles "Chuck" Anderson. Funny that his character should have such as WASPish name, since he was just as much of an authentic New York ethnic blend as anyone---born in Manhattan, half Jewish, half Irish. After his acting days David became a minister and founded a halfway house for recovering alcoholics.

6. Leo Gorcey wrote a book toward the end of his life, the hard-to-find An Original Dead End Kid Presents: Dead End Yells, Wedding Bells, Cockle Shells, and Dizzy Spells. Reviews are mixed; seems he wrote like, well, a rambling drunk. But Gorcey really did have a great sense of humor and was known as a practical joker, and it seems a lot of that comes through in the book. The title is horrible, though.

7. Leo Gorcey's son, Leo Jr., wrote a book about his father in 2003 that sounds like it should have been a Mommy Dearest type of Hollywood complainorama, and certainly Leo Sr. earned it, with his drunken, explosive temper. But the title (Me and the Dead End Kid: Leo Gorcey, the Hollywood Legend: His Happy Ending) tells you that this is going to be a more loving story of survival and grace. I haven't read it, but the Amazon reviews have been mostly full of praise.

Considering Gorcey's personal problems, he was a monster for work, cranking out movies day in and day out for years. He was one of the most popular film stars of the time. Although working in B movies was never a means to critical acclaim. He would have to settle for the abiding love of the moviegoing public.

Keep thinking those Slip thoughts, and we'll have more Mahoneyist information later in the week.

Slip kid.

Only two weeks to go until the Second Annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day on June 2! 

"I'm overcome wit' emulsions!"

And remember, Slip always claimed to be allergic to work, so you have to take the day off.

We all know we have to bone up on our Slip Mahoney malapropisms; but a casual perusal of his quotes reminds us that we need to have random insults ready for our nearest and dearest. Like:

Sach: I lost my button. 
Slip: You lost your buttons a long time ago! 

Sach: I wish I was in the ring, I'd fracture that guy. 
Slip: You couldn't fracture a toy balloon. 

As you can see, it helps to have a dumb sidekick handy at all times to give you the intro. In an ideal world, Talk Like Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones Day would fall on the same day as Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day, so you'd always have a ready straight man. If you can find one willing to play along, or just a dumb guy to hang around with, though, you're all set.

Just wait for your pal to make a simple declarative sentence; then seize on the key idea and turn it around. If it happens to be an opportune time to deliver a casual threat, go for it. Use your angry New Yawk accent to seal the deal.

Him: What's the weather like tomorrow?
You: For you? Cloudy with a chance of stupid.

Him: Can I use your phone?
You: What, you checking your reservation at the nuthouse?

Him: I sure could use a sandwich.
You: You sure could use a knuckle sandwich! 

And remember, kids, no actual fighting beyond hitting with your hat. The hat-hitting, so well identified with Skipper Jonas Grumby, was another great move of Slip's, and a way to be Sliplike without even opening your yap.

All right! Two weeks to go! Practice your malapropisms, insults, and threats, buy a sturdy hat, and let's get ready!

Time to constipate the wonder of Slip Mahoney again.

Time to start gettin' exacerbated, because we're coming up on the Second Annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day. Yes, Slip Mahoney Leo Gorcey's master of the malapropism, the Solon of the solecism, the only real chief of the Bowery Boys, with his Noo Yawk accent and his casual cartoon violence, is cerebrated on June 2, the day of Gorcey's death in 1969.

Mahoney was a well-meaning street punk, surrounded by dummies, who was willing to do anything to help those in need. He also spoke like he'd swallowed a dictionary, threw it up, and then memorized the remains. Malapropism is difficult to do well, but Gorcey carried it off for decades. Any fool can go "Arr Arr" "I be keelhaulin' ye" "Keep a weather eye on me doubloons" etc. on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day requires some thought.

You wouldn't wanna go off half-crocked.

We'll work on our malaprops as the big day draw closer. Right now, to get ready for June 2, you need to get yourself a Mahoney hat. Almost any brimmed hat will do, if you can fold up the front.

Just ask your local melonery for somethin' to cover your melon.

So let's all commiserate on this for a while, and see how we can inveigh the best ways to Slip Mahoneyize ourselves. Or else Slip'll slap us in the teeth.

Hoist the Jolly Roger! Or at least the Cheerful Roger.

Arrr, matey! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so get out there and start arrin' and threatenin' and droppin' the possessive determiner for the personal object pronoun, me hearties. We found some salty seadogs to show you how to get your ensemble together:

"Aaaarrrrr."

A lot---maybe most---of what we love about pirates we get from the movies, and from our romanticism about their freebooting ways on the open sea.

The movies have always enjoyed showing a sympathetic view of pirates, although before CGI it was really hard and expensive to do sea movies. Further, the movies have had to tone down the violence, scuzziness, rapine, and general bullying of the pirates---not to mention their weirdness. George MacDonald Fraser (of Flashman fame) in his 1988 tour de force The Hollywood History of the World, wrote:

At first glance, Hollywood and pirates would seem to be made for each other, but in fact they are not.... there is the plain fact that pirates---the real pirates of history---the Blackbeards and Morgans and Kidds and Calico Jacks---are too bizarre, too larger-than-life, too unreal for even the cinema. That they were real is irrelevant; their truth is too strange for fiction, and pantomime and Peter Pan have turned the grim reality into a comic figure which usually defies attempts to fashion it for conventional drama, or even melodrama.

Since he wrote we've had Jack Sparrow and his salty brethren, but such cartoony pirates are hardly different from Captain Hook. Ah, but they all long for the freedom of the Seven Seas.

The open sea has long been a symbol of freedom, but we know that actually being on the open sea requires a lot of discipline. It's freaking dangerous out there. So merchant sailors and navies have always had a reputation for strict discipline. Ah, but pirates! They were like democracy on the high seas, right? With compacts and contracts and settling things like men when necessary.

Well, maybe not so much. The thing about lawlessness is that it usually gets filled with something, and it's not usually something friendly. But worse, the pirates were not living the life that's free; they were living the life of a parasite, sucking life from their victims. Without the suckers running honest sailing ships there could be no pirates.

The people who started this holiday are well aware of all this, and know that their day is not focused on historical pirates, but fictional and hysterical pirates, all in good fun. And I think you should don your piratey apparel and go celebrate. Have some grog, sign up with the Dread Pirate Cruller, get your pirate name (mine is "Monkey Mate" Bob Barbossa), and annoy the bilge out of your coworkers.

But think about this: Next year, let's gear up to celebrate a real American hero, not a bunch of jerk pirates like the ones who were the victims of America's first naval butt-whupping. I'm talking about a guy with as distinctive a speech pattern as any pirate, a guy who exemplifies pluck and fellowship, but one who only ever engages in cartoon violence. Yes, folks, remember: June 2, 2015 is the Second Annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day. Mark your calendars! (Sorry: YER calendars!)

I do not think you said what you think you said.

It is not always clear when people say expressions wrong whether they have merely mispronounced them or whether they have no idea how they should be pronounced. When I hear one I may ask the person to repeat it, or I may just sit back and ponder what the person thinks it means and why.

Let me trot out a few I have enjoyed as an example, and what they could mean if they were the actual expression:

Cool, calm, and collective: That satisfied feeling a hippie gets in the early days of the commune, before human desires, boredom, argumentativeness, and selfishness turn the whole thing to crap.

A reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippines: Evidence that St. Paul's reach far exceeded the range classically ascribed to him, this letter was sent to a tribe of Hebrew Negritos (called Negribrews) around A.D. 55. Almost 1500 years later, Magellan finally delivered it.

Mea copa: I feel really guilty, but only for the things I did at the Copacabana.

He forgives you.

As rich as crocus: Yes, those little purple flowers are a wealth of delight for the eyes after a long winter, are they not?

Flotsam and gypsum: Rocks float!

On tenderhooks: If I have to be on hooks, these are the hooks to be on.

Some of them are really charming, and in fact would make excellent Slip Mahoneyisms. I'm sure the malaprop master would approve.

Post-Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day: The Encapitation.

Yesterday was the first annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day, and I had big hopes of perannotatin' da streets of Noo Yawk, hearin' people droppin' malaprops and wise-guyisms with great acrumb. But sadly, da streets remained unpolluted wit' Slip Mahoney imitators.

Dis is depressatatin'.

Well, Leo, it was just the first annual. We'll start earlier next year. We'll move the decorations into the stores right after Easter. Peeps out, Slip in. We'll have a big Black Toisday sale or something. Get people fired up weeks beforehand. Sell malaprop dictionaries and English/Bowery Boy translator apps.

Maybe it slipped (har!) some minds. Mr. Philbin says he totally forgot for most of the day, until he slipped (hyuk!) some dese and dose into his dialogue after supper.

So assuming that mere forgetfulness was our downfall, I resist his suggestion that we were up against pushback from the Talk Like a Pirate guys. Sure, those guys are scurvied scalawags and all, but their day doesn't fall until September. I consider us cohorts, not competitors. Of course, in the Bowery Boys' film Hold That Hypnotist, it was suggested that in a past life Slip's sidekick Sach Jones snagged a map leading to Blackbeard's treasure, so there may be some bad feelings.

Anyway, enough of this stupidity! Back to our regular stupidity tomorrow!

Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day is here!

So da day is finally here, da day we rememberate our ol' pal Slip Mahoney, king of the Noo Yawk malapropism and central protractorist of most of da Bowery Boys movies. Slip was portrayed by dat esteemed thesaurus Leo Gorcey, who expiated on dis date in 1969.

Da Bowery Boys began as da Dead End Kids in da 1937 Cagney pitcher Dead End, den went on ta do movies and serials as da Little Tough Guys, den da East Side Kids, and finally da Bowery Boys. Da flicks stahted as crime adventures wit some comedy and eventually turned into comedy wit some crime adventures. Troughout most of da Bowery Boys era, Slip Mahoney was da king (and Leo Gorcey owned a hunk of the production company).

Da flicks had most of da ushal street types in movies---dummies, palookas, babyface lovers, dippers, gorillas, yeggs, you name it---but Slip was a classic of da type of fast-talkin' woik-aversive dropout whose tough exterior hid a knightly interior. He could crack wise with da best of 'em, but was expecially good at misusin' da language.

You can see Slip doin' his thing here, in the opener* of 1954's The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters:

Now dat you'ze seen da maestaro in action, I'm sure you can eviscerate his technique. Let us know how youze make out. (And remember to trow in some insults to yer idiot sidekicks. Dat's anuddah Slip trademark.)

*Something I didn't know when I was watching these things as a kid: Leo Gorcey's father, 4'10" Bernard, played Louie Dumbrowski, proprietor of the soda shop. The Bowery Boys were kind of a family business---Leo's brother David actually appeared in more of the Bowery Boys movies than Leo did.

Tomorrow is the day!

Tomorrow is the first annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day, in honor of the 45th anniversary of the death of Bowery Boys great Leo Gorcey.

If you've never seen the old Bowery Boys movies, you may be asking, "Gee, Fred, I would love to participate, but how do I, a random person, talk like Gorcey's most famous movie character?"

Here's your refresher:

Adopt an old-fashioned dese-and-dose type New York City accent (some say Brooklynese, but remember, the Bowery is on the Lower East Side) and misuse large words in an attempt to sound educated.

Let's take a sample sentence and Slip Mahoneyize it for your edification:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

First, let's get that Noo Yawk thing going.

Now is da time for all good men ta come to da aid of dere country.

Then, we judiciously replace key words with high-falutin' words---uh, woids.

Now is da epoch for all creditable men ta come to da facilitation of dere coalition.

Then replace the high-falutin' words with other, improperly used high-falutin' words, or at least mispronounce the words:

Now is da epoxy for all credulous men ta come to da facsimile of dere coalification.

See? Street malaprops!

Not too difficult, although it may take a little thought. As I've noted before, it takes consideration to act stupid. Although it must be pretty easy to be stupid. Either that, or stupid people make it look easy. Or something. I'm getting confuserated.

Okay, kids, go out there tomorrow and talk like Slip Mahoney all day! And remember, foretought is da secret ta proper exegesis.

Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day gets a landswell of popular support.

Yes, despite the move, we're all busy at Fred Central making our plans for the first annual Talk Like Slip Mahoney Day, to be celebrated on June 2, the day Leo Gorcey passed away. (Earlier reports had him born on that date, but he was actually born June 3 and died on June 2.) So get the Slip-shaped cakes and parade floats ready.

 

Celebrate or I'll punch yez.

You know who would be a great spokesman for the holiday? The great Norm Crosby, that's who. You kids won't remember, but back in the 1970's you could not turn on the television without seeing Norm Crosby on it. And we watched him. Why? No Internet, that's why! And we only had three channels---two if we ran out of tinfoil. (Ask your grandma to explain that joke.)

Norm Crosby is still around, glad to say, 86 years old and still working. His schtick was a streetwise kind of guy with a constant stream of malapropisms, just like Slip. He might thank an audience for giving him "a standing ovulation." He'll insist on "decapitated coffee." As Mr. C said in this interview, "I used proper words that didn't belong in the sentence. It was close enough that it sounded like the proper word. 'Women need love and affliction.'"

But the interview also reveals that Mr. C has only a passing professional connection to Slip Mahoney:

Kliph Nesteroff: Were you familiar with Leo Gorcey's character in the Bowery Boys films? He did a lot with malapropisms. 

Norm Crosby: Oh, right. No, I was not familiar with him, but a lot of people have told me about that. I narrated once a whole tribute to them. I think it was for HBO.

Well, maybe he'd like to jump in anyway. If he's not otherwise engraved.