The elusive joke. Help me remember!

February 27, 2009 11:48 AM

Help me find a joke I once heard. Apologies for the vague details.

It is about a young kid who is going to be in a Shakespearean play for school. He studies his lines over and over, but worries he'll screw them up. He does, but in such a way that the rhyme and meter is not damaged, however, they contain sexual and crude references. In fact, his lines, as he says them, are close enough to the original lines that it impressed me with its cleverness.

Unfortunately all googling has failed me, so with this wealth of unasked mefi questions piling up on my account, I thought I would use one to ask all of you. Perhaps one of you has also heard it? The person who told me is someone I lost touch with some years ago, and since he told me the joke over 10 years ago, I imagine he won't remember it to repeat it for me on command.

posted by routergirl to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

My google-fu is weak today, but this one satisfies at least some of your description:

An English professor and his son recently moved to Texas. One Saturday afternoon they decided to take a walk through the park. During the walk the boy sees two cowboys go by.

'Dad, look at those bow-legged bastards!'

The father is surprised by this and tells his son that that is not very nice language to use.

A few minutes later, two more cowboys walk by and again the boy yells, 'Dad, look at those bow legged bastards!'

The father, quite upset now turns to his son and says, 'I told you not to say that and I do not want to hear it again, or else.'

Just a few minutes go by and another pair of cowboys, walk by and once again the child yells, 'Dad, look at those bow-legged bastards!'

'That's it!' the father yells, and takes the kid home and locks him in his room with the complete works of Shakespeare.

Two weeks later, he lets his son out and notices that he has taken to speaking in verse like Shakespeare wrote. This impressed the father so he decided to take his son out for another walk through the park. As they were walking a pair of cowboys walk past them.

The boy turns to his father and says,
'Father, what strange men are these
whose balls hang in parentheses?'
posted by specialagentwebb at 12:08 PM on February 27, 2009 [2 favorites]

The only crude Shakespearean mixup that comes to mind is a female error, but just in case:

Macbeth
If we should fail--

Lady Mac
--We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place
And we'll not fail.

I've heard the Lady's line swapped as "But stick your courage to the screwing-place", which is a different sort of place to stick it, altogether.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 12:28 PM on February 27, 2009

Could it have come from an Eddie Izzard routine?
posted by glibhamdreck at 12:29 PM on February 27, 2009

This sounds familiar but for some reason I want to say it came from part of the Seven Up documentary, which isn't at all a stand up thing.
posted by Nattie at 12:48 PM on February 27, 2009

Response by poster: The person who gave it to me absolutely could have taken it from a standup routine. But it was a good solid joke and took a few minutes to tell. It definitely was a school play, or some such.

specialagentwebb - not it, but that made me giggle aloud.
posted by routergirl at 12:55 PM on February 27, 2009

This is ringing bells for me, too, somehow. I'm thinking perhaps one of Asimov's humor books, or perhaps something from the Games magazine crew.
posted by dhartung at 1:09 PM on February 27, 2009

Best answer: How about this:

Little Johnny tried out for the school play. The teacher gave him these lines to practice:"Hark! A pistol shot! There lies a lady with hope in her soul. I think I'll snatch a kiss and run into the forest. By William Shakespeare."
Little Johnny practiced and practiced and did the lines perfectly every time. The night of the play it was his turn to speak. This is what he said:"Hark! A pigeon shit! There lies a lady with soap in her hole. I think I'll kiss her snatch and run into the forest. By William Snakeshit...
Horseshit...
Oh, shit! I didn't want to be in this damn play anyway!"
posted by simplethings at 1:18 PM on February 27, 2009 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: YES. That's IT. Thank you simplethings. Thank you. I've been trying to remember that joke for years.
posted by routergirl at 8:22 PM on February 27, 2009

For the record, specialagentweb, although I cannot recall the setup¹ to that same punchline which my father uses, I think I prefer his variant as it scans better (and is less crude ;):

Hark! What manner of man is this?!?
Who walks with legs in parenthesis?

1: I'm fairly sure it involves pirates.
posted by coriolisdave at 10:11 PM on February 27, 2009

Huh. Could be this variant (although balls are still involved):
So. So Keats and Shakespeare were in the Elysian fields arguing the relative merits of their poetry/prose. The multitudes were gathered around listenign to the great men debating. "I'm better", said Keats. "No you're not, I am", said Shakespeare. "Not", "Am", "Are", "Aren't" etc for the next few millenia.
To clear it all up, they agreed to make up a piece of their won work about the next person they saw coming down the hill of the North face of the fields. So they waited and waited. And they saw a head appear at the top of the hill, tossed a coin and Keats had to go first. And the rest of the man appeared and he had the most advanced case of rickets - ever.

"Oh bugger", said Keats. "Quel problem! Hmmmm. Give me a minute." And then he came out with it ----

"See over the hill there strode
A man whose legs were very bowed"

The crowd went wild - "whoop whoop whoop! Bring it on Keats baby!"

And then it was Shakespeare's turn.

"Easy", he said and great hush went over the multitudes.

"Hotchkiss what manner of man is this, who carries his balls in parenthesis?"
posted by coriolisdave at 10:15 PM on February 27, 2009

This is not what you're looking for, but:

I used to be part of a group that toured abridged Shakespeare to middle schools in order to get them more familiar with it. During one segment of Romeo and Juliet, we'd take a male teacher and a female teacher out of the audience to play the lead roles. We'd hand them cue cards.

One skinny awkward white history teacher, one curvy black music teacher and several hundred laughing middle schoolers later, "I've never seen true beauty until this night," becomes "I've never seen true booty until this night." Hilarity ensues.
posted by thebrokenmuse at 12:41 AM on July 5, 2009