Can’t help yourself from talking? Like Joni Mitchell: “I’m always talking/Chicken squawking.”
Sounds like you could be an aspiring folk journalist!
But remember, an awkward phase can be handled. (And it is just a phase so please keep your phasers on stun — nobody wants to get hurt here.)
Did I say phase? I meant phrase.
Either way, self-deprecation that is also funny is your best move.
Here is an actual conversation that took place in an actual restaurant. We’re in the town of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and my friend Sally orders, “Rocky Mountain Oysters.”
SALLY: I had them once. They’re delicious.
HANK: Really?
SALLY: Yep.
HANK: Are you sure? I heard they’re slimy.
SALLY: You’re thinking of Oysters Rockefeller. Those are very slimy.
HANK: Oh.
WAITER ARRIVES
HANK: Um, how are these prepared, like fried or garlic oysters?
WAITER: They’re deep fried, served with a barbecue sauce, sir.
HANK: Mmm. Okay.
SALLY: See?
HANK: Sounds great!
FOOD ARRIVES
HANK: These definitely look deeply-fried.
WAITER: Yes, these are your beef bull balls, sir.
PAUSE
HANK: Oh.
SALLY: Oh.
Awkward, right?
Possible lesson: Never argue with a gal named Sal, for you will not win that conversation.
Back Pocket Banter
What’s your method to “smooth over” uncomfortable situations?
What did you say to get out of one?
When have you found it awkward to navigate life?
What is the strangest food you’ve ever tasted?
Activity Guaranteed To Ease Awkwardnesses
If complimenting a person about an item of clothing doesn’t get you out of an awkward phase, try the following: Do something silly. Lift your right arm above your head, and turning your body slightly to the right, bend that right arm at the elbow, waving your hand over your head with a shout of “Woo Hoo!” At once intimate and anti-intimate (especially if employed too closely, bringing unwanted physical contact), this shticklact* I watched displayed to perfection in 1976 by a British gentleman called David Bernstein at the border between Israel and Lebanon. It proved to be a terrific communication and ice-breaking tool with non-English speakers, also amusing those in uniform.
Lesson: Put an onus of awkwardness upon yourself. This will allow others to laugh and relax.
the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not
able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more
than I invent or is invented on me: I am not only
witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other
men.
Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV Part II
Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country.
Stephano in The Tempest
Is it true you run a chain of brothels from coast to coast?
Groucho Marx in West Virginia to a hotel clerk
Brecher & Marx in 1937 or 8
Standing around at a New Year’s Eve celebration, sitting at a dinner party, cornered in a club stuck with someone with a story that you have zero interest in.
How did/do you handle it?
How about when somebody is just jaw-jacking about anything, but in a way that no matter how meandering still achieves a certain story-like wonderful roundness? And it is being fed to you in a way that you get?
You’re not in the Twilight Zone. Rather, you’ve just stepped inside a conversation containing witcraft.
This is where allasudden you feel “a flash of lightening” — this, according to musician/actor/humorist and raconteur Oscar Levant (ask your great grandmother or her new boyfriend) — how he described verbal humor. In one of his memoirs – he wrote at least three— called, “The Unimportance of Being Oscar,” Levant says that when Groucho Marx and S.J. Perelman were asked who was the fastest wit around, this is what they told English critic, Kenneth Tynan: “George S. Kaufman, Oscar Levant and screenwriter Irving Brecher.”
This was 1954. Kaufman and Perelman wrote movies for the Marx Brothers in the 1930s. And so did Brecher. I spent six years with Irv “the Nerve” (as Harpo Marx called him) in the 2000s as we worked on his memoirs, detailing his friendships with and writings for Groucho, Harpo and Chico, Milton Berle, Jack Benny and George Burns, among others. Hanging out with Irv, I bore witness (never bored!) to his comedic gifts and takes and I’ve considered him my droll model ever since. Look, how rapt:
Brecher in conversation after screening one of his Marx Bros movies in 2005
Witcraft. Irving Brecher proved a master at this, meaning he was funny as hell in magically getting out of conversations that he found dull or annoying or that asked him for money like those talking snake oil salesmen/TV pitchmen and blowhards out of all proportions.
Remember Jerry Seinfeld’s surefire way of dismissing them?
(JERRY ANSWERS PHONE; IT’S A GUY WHO WANTS HIM TO SWITCH LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE SERVICES)
SEINFELD: Oh gee I can’t talk now, why don’t you give me your home number and I’ll call you later?
CALLER: I’m sorry we’re not allowed to do that.
SEINFELD: I guess you don’t want people calling you at home.
Likewise, Brecher was a superbly skilled athlete making plays in the game of life.
One time visiting, I arrived at his apartment on Wilshire in Westwood right as he appeared in the middle of an important phone call. He waved me into his study with one finger on his lips, leaned into the black landline from his favorite chair, and this is what I heard:
“Before I give you the number,” Irv was saying, “I want to be sure. What’s the price of that record offer again?”
Out of the speakerphone came a male telemarketer’s voice: “It’s 19.95, sir.”
“That’s the full price then?” asked Irv.
“Plus 4.95, shipping and handling,” said the voice.
“I thought you said 19.95,” Irv barked back. “Are you taking advantage of me because I’m 92 and don’t hear too well?”
“No sir,” the voice said. “The cds are 19.95, and then 4.95 for shipping and handling.”
“That’s a little too much.”
“It was printed right on the TV screen, sir.”
“Maybe it’s printed, but I didn’t see that shipping and handling. My eyes are so bad that this morning when I woke up, I couldn’t find my hearing aid.”
“So the total would be 24.90,” the voice pushed on, missing the gag.
“I’ll tell you what,” Irv said. “I’ll just take the shipping and handling.”
A pause. Then the voice said: “What?”
“Just bill me for the shipping and handling,” explained Irv. “Don’t send the albums. I can’t afford it.”
“You want us to bill you for shipping and handling? Without the cds? Uh,” the voice wavered. “We’ve never done that before.”
“Well, I’d rather not deal with pioneers.” Irv said. “So if you’ll excuse me.”
He pushed the button that disconnected the call and looked up.
“Pretty good, huh?” he said.
Now this was no performance put on by a master of merriment for my amusement—Irv was amusing himself. “People call them pranks,” he said. “But it’s more than that. It’s quiet outrage.”
I understood he could get mad at being bothered.
“But,” I asked. “Why don’t you just get caller i.d.?”
Said Brecher: “I’d just as soon talk to them and screw them around.”
Chico and Harpo wonder who is this guy dressed up as Groucho. It’s Irv, AKA “Brecho!”
THIS JUST IN~!
I just read in Dick Cavett’s recent book Brief Encounters (Henry Holt, 2014) where Groucho was on the phone and fired back with this wittily crafted line: “Extension 4-8-2, eh? 4-8-2. Sounds like a cannibal story.”
Activity
As kids, we used to call pranks like what Irv pulled, “phony phone calls.”
“Hello? Is your refrigerator running? Ya better go catch it!”
“Do you have Dr. Pepper in a can? Well, let him out!”
Try these at home, sure. But Brecher’s way was wicked, a nasty mastering of the deadpan. He admired Jack E. Leonard, Fred Allen’s antically addled quippage. Livewire ire, ridiculing societal conventions. The same anti-establishment attitude Irv wrote into the characters Groucho played: J. Cheever Loophole in “At the Circus” and S. Quentin Quale in “Go West.” (They even leap out of their movies and speak directly to the audience.)
Groucho’s wordplay would rip and snort through anything to do with sex and death. “Lulu Belle,” he greets a floozy in Go West’s version of Mos Eisley’s Cantina, “I didn’t recognize you standing up.”
Harpo with a gun at the bar while his brothers look on in GO WEST saloon
Back Pocket Banter
Do you spend time with people who bore you? Why? And how do you get out of such conversations?
Can you learn something from a dull person about yourself?
Who is your most boring relative? Do you get stuck with them for long periods at family gatherings, or hide in avoidance?
If you could, who would you give a “greatest buffoon” award to?
Do you repeatedly use catch phrases in conversation, or hear other people start sentences with, “At any rate,” “To make a long story short,” “To tell you the truth,” “In other words,” etc?
Bonus Activity
Watch “My Dinner With Andre” a movie containing some of the greatest back-and-forth you ever eavesdropped into, with director Andre Gregory and writer Wallace Shawn. Enlightening stories told by two delightful and delighted friends— all of it happening in an emptying New York restaurant, featuring an ancient waiter seemingly waiting for Godot.
Bonus Back Pocket Banter
Interrupt a boring confab with a swift kick to the midsection. (Kidding!) Better to say, “Excuse me, have we met before?” And then walk away.
Wear a button that says: “You Should Get To Know Me.” This worked surprisingly well during Freshman Orientation for my college friend David Schreff, who now consults w/ Fortune 500 companies and taught the Jimmy Carter White House administration how to speed-read.
As a surefire final try: “I’m sorry but I have to go to the bathroom now that you’ve made me so excited about your_______.” (Whatever that person was droning about)
When All Else Fails: As Catherine Blythe writes with resignation, “Be kind to the bore (one day he could be you)” (pg. 142)
Irv Brecher made the English language funny – what’s better than that? And one of the funniest and timeless of conversations is called, “The Two Thousand Year Old Man,” with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.
Reporter: What language did you speak two thousand years ago?
Two Thousand Year Old Man: Uhh…basically, Rock. Rock talk.
Reporter: What’s that –
Two Thousand Year Old Man: Uhh…hey put that rock down. Don’t throw that rock at me!
