JUST PIE
Today I found the pie video. I've been waiting half my life for this.
It starts, as so many of my sense of humor's formative experiences do, with my dad.
The pie video is a legend from when my dad was somewhere in the vicinity of my age. He was living with some guys and the local library system rented 8mm (or 34mm, or whatever it was) films and they had a projector and they used to check out these completely random films -- like one was a documentary on Texas cheerleaders, I think, called Beauty is Pain, and involved a kickline up against thorn bushes, and which my dad would continually reference by saying "beauty is pain, pumpkin" whenever I was involved in some bizarre teenage girl self-improvement ritual. But I digress. My dad and his friends would do this and watch them cause it was Awesome, and Because They Could, and to my young mind there was no better reason to do anything.
One day when I was about twelve my dad told me about this, and about one in particular -- a skit by comedian Marshall Efron about Making Pie Through Science. He had my full attention, because at this point in my life I'd just become fast friends with stayawaystars (after, oddly enough, she threw up on my notebook), and she'd introduced me to Monty Python, and everybody else we hung out with at Eastern was all into random, absurdist humor (seriously, one summer we mailed slices of processed cheese in perfumed envelopes to boys we knew at camp. A fair amount of the awesome stuff in my life from ages 12 to 20 is connected in some way to this woman). So it's like six-thirty in the morning in the car on the way to middle school and my dad's explaining this sketch, about how this guy's on camera putting chemical after chemical into a bowl and stirring it up, and he comes to the conclusion where he announces that when you're done you have Pie. No lemons. No eggs. No cream. Just Pie.
Naturally I think this is hilarious, but as this is a story from my father's youth, I assume with great disappointment that the film has been lost to time. At school I immediately find my friends and go around repeating "No lemons. No eggs. No cream. Just Pie." They think I'm weird. I don't care. It sticks with me.
Half a lifetime later God has made the intartoobz and YouTube and we come to this afternoon where my dad randomly sends me this ... thing on YouTube with a fictional scientist explaining a fictional technological development in the most impenetrable wall of text-speak possible and I suddenly go “oh hey, the Internet has everything now, I wonder if I could find that pie video somewhere deep in the couch cushions of YouTube.” So I type in “Marshall Efron” and scroll down and BAM there is Better Living Through Chemistry: Lemon Cream Pie.
I click. I watch. There is a distant chorus of angels; the skies open above me and light streams down from the heavens. My dad and I exchange a couple rapid-fire emails in all caps.
Factory fresh.
Factory approved.
No lemons.
No eggs.
No cream.
Just.
PIE.
It starts, as so many of my sense of humor's formative experiences do, with my dad.
The pie video is a legend from when my dad was somewhere in the vicinity of my age. He was living with some guys and the local library system rented 8mm (or 34mm, or whatever it was) films and they had a projector and they used to check out these completely random films -- like one was a documentary on Texas cheerleaders, I think, called Beauty is Pain, and involved a kickline up against thorn bushes, and which my dad would continually reference by saying "beauty is pain, pumpkin" whenever I was involved in some bizarre teenage girl self-improvement ritual. But I digress. My dad and his friends would do this and watch them cause it was Awesome, and Because They Could, and to my young mind there was no better reason to do anything.
One day when I was about twelve my dad told me about this, and about one in particular -- a skit by comedian Marshall Efron about Making Pie Through Science. He had my full attention, because at this point in my life I'd just become fast friends with stayawaystars (after, oddly enough, she threw up on my notebook), and she'd introduced me to Monty Python, and everybody else we hung out with at Eastern was all into random, absurdist humor (seriously, one summer we mailed slices of processed cheese in perfumed envelopes to boys we knew at camp. A fair amount of the awesome stuff in my life from ages 12 to 20 is connected in some way to this woman). So it's like six-thirty in the morning in the car on the way to middle school and my dad's explaining this sketch, about how this guy's on camera putting chemical after chemical into a bowl and stirring it up, and he comes to the conclusion where he announces that when you're done you have Pie. No lemons. No eggs. No cream. Just Pie.
Naturally I think this is hilarious, but as this is a story from my father's youth, I assume with great disappointment that the film has been lost to time. At school I immediately find my friends and go around repeating "No lemons. No eggs. No cream. Just Pie." They think I'm weird. I don't care. It sticks with me.
Half a lifetime later God has made the intartoobz and YouTube and we come to this afternoon where my dad randomly sends me this ... thing on YouTube with a fictional scientist explaining a fictional technological development in the most impenetrable wall of text-speak possible and I suddenly go “oh hey, the Internet has everything now, I wonder if I could find that pie video somewhere deep in the couch cushions of YouTube.” So I type in “Marshall Efron” and scroll down and BAM there is Better Living Through Chemistry: Lemon Cream Pie.
I click. I watch. There is a distant chorus of angels; the skies open above me and light streams down from the heavens. My dad and I exchange a couple rapid-fire emails in all caps.
Factory fresh.
Factory approved.
No lemons.
No eggs.
No cream.
Just.
PIE.