by CIC Artistic Associate Nathan Petts
My Grandfather had a mixed tape with the unassuming title “baseball.” He had a lot of old stuff like that, he was something of a pack rat. It was Thanksgiving, or Christmas or Easter, or some such holiday, and as usual, Grandpa was hanging out with the grandchildren rather than the adults. He found this tape the day before we arrived, or maybe the week, or month before. He put it in an old Dictaphone-style tape recorder and played it for us.
The first track on the tape was “Who’s on first.”
I still remember how hard I laughed.
I played it again, and again, and again, and I took it from my Grandpa as a gift, and brought it home, and continued to listen. I would play it at night, before going to bed. I must have heard that routine at least two hundred and fifty times. I still laugh.
For me, the routine summarizes simply, and brilliantly everything I love about comedy. The cleverness of it, the quickness of it, the approachability, the style of speech indicative of its time, and the remembrance of my first time hearing it, and the associated memories.
The Independent Film Channel, and Nerve.com made a list this week of the top 50 comedy sketches of all time, and Abbot and Costello’s signature routine made it to second place loosing out to Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch. I can understand this judging, and the list makes for a great read/watch, but in my mind, Comedy; the kind I want to do, the kind I want to see is typified by “Who’s on First.”
The link to the list can be found here, as well as the routine http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/nerveeditors/50GreatestComedySketches/01/
