Two-Holers and Hot Air: Lou Waxman on Fart Records and Maine Humor

Full disclosure.  Lou likes to watch fart videos on YouTube.  He comes by this predilection naturally.  You see his maternal grandfather, who Lou never met, was a fart man.  To hear Lou’s mother tell it, her father at gatherings at the family home would pull out the red vinyl 78 of The Great Crepitation Contest of 1946.  It was the perfect icebreaker and by my mother’s account, a crowd favorite.  Lou’s mother remembers sitting on the top of the stairs eavesdropping on the party below and hearing snatches of The Contest when she should have been tucked in her bed.  There is nothing more thrilling in one’s childhood than hearing things you shouldn’t at the top of the stairs.  Well, there is making out in the backseat of a car in the darkened school parking lot.

Anyway, Lou decided to give The Great Crepitation Contest of 1946 a listen.  As with everything else, the recording is on YouTube along with a picture of that red vinyl.  It is a Canadian recording by the CBC and features a contest between challenger Paul Boomer, an Australian bumpkin, and Lord Windesmear, the champion, a British blueblood.  Lou will not provide a summary so you can enjoy The Contest for yourself, but if you are a devoted watcher of fart videos you can guess where it goes.  Lou must say that he liked the tiny details like the reference to Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan.  Not surprisingly, Saturday Night Live had a Lord Wyndemere character in a sketch starring guest host Charles Barkley.  The Round Mound of Rebound appears to be enjoying himself.  Stupid sketch by the way.

As much as Lou enjoys a good fart joke, he does not like a humorist.  What is a humorist exactly?  Well, for one thing they are ofttimes regional and rural.  New England, Appalachia, the Midwest, the Deep South, and the Far West all have their own humorists.  Lou suspects Alaska and Hawaii have humorists as well.  Despite their geographic differences, humorists engage in downhome philosophy, common sense, nostalgia for simpler times, and distrust of technology and “progress.”  They are all wholesome. Family humor about family values.  Yet there is a whiff of blue humor.  None of them talk a blue streak like Lenny Bruce, but a humorist will dare to be naughty and will clean up the dirty talk of your dirty Uncle for discussion around the family hearth after dinner.  

Humorists are storytellers.  Comedians deal with punchlines.  Of course, the great comedians from Lenny Bruce to George Carlin to Richard Pryor to Norm MacDonald are storytellers as well, but they have urbanized the humorist and made the humorist hip.  They are not Americana.  Someone like Mitch Hedberg or Steven Wright are straight-up comedians.  Correct Lou’s history here if you like, but the first American humorist was Benjamin Franklin with Poor Richard.  In the 1800s, Mark Twain reigned supreme as a humorist.  Pre-WWII it was Will Rogers.  Garrison Keillor is a recent humorist who was immensely popular.  The humorist is often a writer rather than a performer with Dave Berry, David Sedaris, Art Buchwald, Erma Bombeck, and endless others scribbling away in newspapers and magazines eventually being collected in stupid books you read on the toilet.  Lou hates all this stuff and wipes his ass with them.

Recently, Lou’s two worlds collided at the Vogue:  toilet humor and the humorist.  While browsing the bins looking for some tasty vinyl, Matt handed Lou an album that he thought might be right up Lou’s alley:  That Wonderful Two-Holer by Joe Perham.  This is an album dedicated to the rural outhouse, the foundation upon which Maine is built.  Lou had never heard of Perham, so he looked him up.  Turns out Perham is a Maine institution with over fifteen LPs to his name.  Perham is a textbook humorist as outlined above.  Born in West Paris, Maine in 1932, Perham died there in 2013.  He attended undergraduate at Colby and received advanced degrees from the University of Maine.  A high school English teacher for decades, Perham retired at fiftyto pursue his career as a humorist full time.  Maine to his core, in 1990, Perham played a bit part in Graveyard Shift, the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s collection of short stories.  This is an example of one Maine icon tipping his fishing cap to another.  

High school English and Drama teachers are an interesting bunch.  Lou has written about Suds and Dregs in a previous post, two high school teachers who influence Lou to this daywith their books about bars and restaurants of Reading, Pennsylvania.  They were humorists disguised as reviewers.  Perham also conjures another English teacher Lou had who operated The Cosmic Cement Company when he wasn’t teaching and followed the Grateful Dead around in a tricked-outvan during the summers.  At the time, Lou thought he was just plain weird, but now Lou would love to have a beer with him and talk music.

Lou gave Two-Holer a spin and it was more humorist than fart joke.  Too wholesome and homespun and not enough gross out or juvenile.  Others might like it better.  You might find the LP in the bathroom at the Vogue.  Meanwhile, Lou is on the hunt for that red vinyl 78 of The Great Crepitation Contest of 1946. That 78 is more Lou’s speed.

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

The Great Crepitation Contest of 1946:  The Contest - (aka: The Great Crepitation Contest of 1946) - Fart Comedy

The Round Mound of Rebound Acts:  Lord Wyndemere - SNL

Will Rogers Humorist for All Time:  Will Rogers - Bacon, Beans, and Limousines

Keillor on Letterman:  Garrison Keillor on Letterman, February 7, 1983

Joe Perham in the Kitchen:  In The Kitchen with Kendall Morse: Joe Perham