Joke of the Day (George Carlin, on Airport Announcements and Evel Knievel)

“About this time [during airport announcements], someone is telling you to get on the plane. ‘Get on the plane. Get on the plane.’ I say, ‘F--- you, I'm getting IN the plane! IN the plane! Let Evel Knievel get ON the plane! I'll be in here with you folks in uniform! There seems to be less WIND in here!’"—American stand-up comic George Carlin (1937-2008), George Carlin: Jammin' in New York, original air date Apr. 25, 1992, directed by Rocco Urbisci

I heard a slight variation on this joke on vacation two months ago, while visiting the National Comedy Center in southwestern New York. (This museum, which only opened earlier this year, is in Jamestown, the town in which Lucille Ball lived as a child. It is well worth your visit—and well worth a future blog post from yours truly.)

The joke reminded me of the shrewd attention to language nuances by George Carlin. Mentally, I filed it away for future use. It turns out to segue nicely into my brief consideration of daredevil Evel Knievel, born on this date 80 years ago in Butte, Mont. 

If you came of age in the late Sixties to late Seventies, as I did, you couldn’t have turned on your TV set without witnessing some outlandish stunt or other by this showman. His first--performing wheelies, crashing through plywood firewalls and jumping over two pick-up trucks at the National Date Festival in Indio, Calif.—was a big success, but comparatively tame compared with what followed at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, where he successfully jumped the fountains before crashing (1967); Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls, Idaho (1975); and a crash in a jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London, England (1975).

A fine interview with Knievel by Pat Jordan shortly before the onetime media sensation died at 69 depicted him as the father of “extreme sports.” It might be easier to think of Knievel as a defier of death, the late 20^th-century link to Harry Houdini. 

Muhammad Ali once humorously billed the daredevil in his mid-‘70s prime as “the white Muhammad Ali.” Indeed, his motorcycle and costume—a white leather costume with red-white-and-blue stars and stripes and a flowing cape, inspired by his friend Liberace—both now reside in the Smithsonian.