Happy Birthday, Bill Cosby

[filkertom]

July. July Twelfth.

So, what's your favorite Cosby routine? Mine, hands down, is "Tonsils", followed immediately by "Chicken Heart".

Comments

[dhstein.livejournal.com]

You can't beat chicken heart - but I also like the Chocolate cake bit

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Noah...

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

Riiight...

[popefelix.livejournal.com]

Hm... I don't know if I have a single favorite. "Karate" and "Little Tiny Hairs", in addition to the ones already mentioned, are among my favorites.

[aiela.livejournal.com]

The chocolate cake one is fantastic, as well as the one about getting kids to shower. I recently heard the one about being a Boy Scout in the City and that one cracked me up, too.

[eleri.livejournal.com]

I always wanted to have an icecream truck that drove through town playing "ICE CREAM! WE'RE GONNA EAT ICECREAM!!!" rather than some silly tinkly music.

[batyatoon]

... That would be so much better than the little tinkly music that DRIVES ME CRAZY.

Fitting words to it will only help for so long.

(Best two versions of the words: "I'm gonna play you this stupid song until you buy some ice-cream" and "Why don't you all come along with me and we'll go worship Sa-tan".)

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

I always liked "The Lone Ranger": "You go to hell, Kemosabee."
And, of course, "Noah!"

Gotta pull that snowball out of the freezer today.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

And make sure you call someone a "Gunkie" today.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what the title is, but it was about scaring his buddies at the top of the stairs.

Followed by the one about the water balloons, the fire escape, and Fat Albert with his arms full of grocery bags.

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

The first one is from "Buck, Buck." It introduced Fat Albert to the unsuspecting world.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

"200 MPH", "Go Carts" (Frump, Frrrump..), but its got to be "Chicken Heart"

[kshandra]

200 MPH

"My scarf...had left me."

[kshandra]

o/` ICE cream! We're gonna eat ICE cream! And then we'll eat it every day (and in the middle of the night....) o/`

murphymom had several of his albums as I was growing up, and there was a period where I could quote them all line for line. As you might imagine, I have a considerable soft spot for "Driving In San Francisco." But, really, I don't think anything of his has ever come close to the "Noah" trilogy.

"I'm not goin' back out there! You change one of 'em!"

Gotta be The Dentist from "Himself".

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

"Ribbins?! You want me to ribbins? How can I ribbins if I don't hab a bottom lib?!"

A close second would be Oops! from the same album. (IIRC)

There are so many good ones to choose from though.

"How did you die?"
"Me and a volkswagen drifted backwards into the bay."
"You, you go to hell."

;-)

[bigtig.livejournal.com]

"But Daaaaad. I'm Jesus Christ."

[batyatoon]

"He's Lookdammit!"

Bill Cosby Nostalgia

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... Bill Cosby routines. Gosh, I haven't heard most of these since I left home back in the 1970s.

Our family procured a large number of Cosby monologues on vinyl (remember vinyl?) records: I Started Out as a Child; Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow: Right!; Wonderfulness; Why Is There Air?; Revenge; To Russell My Brother, Whom I Slept With come to mind.

Probably my favorites (while growing up) were "Noah!" and "Buck, Buck" (with "Revenge") coming in a close third. The title track of To Russell was almost too close to home.

But Cosby's story-telling made us all laugh ourselves to tears. It was my first introduction to the full power of this form of the spoken word.

My gosh, I haven't listened to any of these monologues told from start to finish in decades. Favorite quotes (paraphrased from a faulty memory): "Noah! I want you build Me an Ark! ..."; "My mother had thrown the snowball away."; "Ooohhh ... YOU broke the bed!"; "Every phys-ed major knows why there's air! There's air to blow up basketballs, there's air to blow up volleyballs! That's why there's air!"; "I told you that story in order to tell you this one."

And, I see those recordings are now on CD. Temptation.

Happy birthday, Bill!

Re: Bill Cosby Nostalgia

[kshandra]

Our family procured a large number of Cosby monologues on vinyl

We had all of those except Air and Russell, and had 200mph and 8:15/12:15 as well.

And, yes, "I told you that story so I could tell you this one," as pedestrian as it looks out of context, is quite possibly the greatest segue I have ever heard.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

"Carol Burnett once described labour pain. She said....'Take your bottom lip, and pull it up over your head."

I think my faovurite Cos album of all time is 8:15/12:15. Especially the bits about golf on television.

[kshandra]

Cool - someone else has heard 8:15/12:15. I love the bit where he's reading the postcard.... "We're drinking their best champagne like we're rich."

Easy

[nezmaster.livejournal.com]

Old weird harold. The bit about frankenstien, which is two bits wratpped together. "It was a medium kid on top of a tall skinny kid beating him with s stick yelling faster faster you fool you fool!."
Second place: My Dad's Car
Third Place: Noah

[bizarra.livejournal.com]

My favorite is "To Russell my brother, with whom I slept." We used to listen to that when we were little and its still hilarious to me!

[lizard-sf.livejournal.com]

I'd have to go with childbirth, though the whole 'dammit/jesus christ' bit was funny, too.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

It's a good day to have a birthday. Besides Bill Cosby and me, there's Henry David Thoreau, Julius Caesar (that date might be debatable), pianist Glenn Gould, skater Kristi Yamaguchi, actress Cheryl Ladd, and maniac exercise guru Richard Simmons.

My favorite Cos routine is probably "Why is there air?"

[kshandra]

and maniac exercise guru Richard Simmons.

You said the magic words!

The entire Richard Simmons episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

Noah. Hands down.

Funny story for ya. gootmu and I were dragged to a biblical playhouse by my parents, and they were doing the story of the flood.

The opening scene - there's Noah, outside his house, sawing some wood.

I kid you not. I managed to muffle a squeak. We looked at each other. My parents were clueless.

*zuppa**zuppa**zuppa**zuppa*BING!
Noah!

We died. I swear, we died laughing. We weren't the only ones - several other people in the theater were muffling giggles. I had to explain it to my parents later, as they'd not heard that routine.

That reminds me, I should go listen to it now. Heh heh heh.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I kid you not, somewhere near Easter this year the sermon in church had a section about Noah in it, and the preacher said "What must Noah's neighbors have thought?" At which point blaisedec and I looked at each other and it was all we could do not to bust out laughing.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Childbirth. It was quoted in snippets throughout both of my children's arrivals.

"Give. Me. MORPHINE!"

[maya-a.livejournal.com]

Yes. It surely was. And I was quite pleased to be able to do so under such trying and appropriate circumstances. ;)

It's my favorite too, followed by Noah.

[rms-butterfly.livejournal.com]

My favorites are Child Birth (not sure if that's its proper name) and Chocolate Cake. Chocolate Cake is the one that gets quoted around the house the most, esp around breakfast time on weekends. What do you want to eat? Chocolate Cake (or insert cake of choice)! There's flour/eggs/ etc. in *random baked goods*

:-)

[beldar.livejournal.com]

Could the entire live show of "Himself" count?

"I'm four years old"

The breathing Cosbys, ladies and gentlemen: "Puuuush, Puuush!"

"Oh father, we cannot sleep throughout the night, without a beating!"

One of the best one-liners from that show that you rarely here is, "Someone told me that cocaine intensifies your personality -- yeah, but what if you're an asshole?"

[batyatoon]

The one I remember best is the Noah routine.

That and "Dad is great, he gives us chocolate cake."

[it-aint-easy.livejournal.com]

My favorite routine is one that other people don't seem aware of: Fernet Branca. Bill and his wife go to Italy with another couple, and he feels his manhood shriveling up because the other guy is the only one who speaks Italian, so the women are constantly asking him to talk to the locals for them. Finally he becomes determined to order some food on his own: "And I figured that I could do it, because I had had 3 years of Latin I." Needless to say, it doesn't go well.

Happy Birthday, Bill.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

So many possibilities. I do love "Chicken Heart", and the Frankenstein bit ("When he got to the bottom of the stairs, the bread was toasted.") And Go Carts ("They called it Dead Man's Hill because it went straight down for a quarter of a mile, then emptied out onto a freeway.")

But the one I just used Google to find is "Track and Field": High Jump". Years ago, I owned an LP of Cosby's that was all sports-related, and that was the best track. The descriptions of Neanderthal Man's jumps were wonderful.

[kshandra]

"And he fell. *thwump* Dead.

"And I won." :D

His description of playing basketball against a then-unknown Wilt Chamberlain was priceless, too. "The man ate the ball...and jumped through the hoop!"