I JUST SAW the funniest thing that has ever occurred in history.
I’m choosing my words as precisely as I can, with no hyperbole. Take any kind of comedy down the entire line of human civilization, in every facet of life, true or not, fiction or non-fiction, intentional or unintentional. Throw it all together, from your favorite Marx Brothers movie to Henry II slipping on a banana peel just before kneeling down in the snow; traveling salesman jokes, Shakespeare, a great pun, seeing an annoying uncle bang his head into the door jamb. Anything at all, real or imagined, however you like it: broad farce, delicate satire, mordant wit, silly slapstick; the funny face, the perfect line, light or dark; Jimmy Stewart slyly winking, or the video of a baby throwing up on the camera. Yes, across the spread of time, from the day Adam woke up, counted his ribs, and realized someone was yelling at him, ’til now, what I just saw is, in my opinion, the out-and-out funniest thing that has ever happened. And it’s real.
And here it is: The Israeli Embassy in Paris burns down in the middle of the night, and the French official stands up in front of the bank of microphones and actually says, with a straight face, “We believe it was an accidental, short-circuit, electrical fire.”
Is that gorgeous, or is that gorgeous? Now, it’s certainly true that this isn’t the firsttime the French, God (INSERT YOUR OWN WORD) them, have, over the years, contributed some of the most hysterical events to the world of comedy. I mean, building the Maginot line and never realizing that someone like, say, the Germans, could just walk around it-well, that’s a pretty good one, too. Or, the instant World War II ended, having the number of French Resistance fighters miraculously increase from two dozen to just over forty million. That’s a knee-slapper. And their taste in comedy is certainly worthy of remark. I mean, forget giving Jerry Lewis an award, they should give out medals to anyone who can watch one of his movies start to finish. (“Congratulations, monsieur, I kiss your cheeks. No one has ever made it through ‘The Bellboy.'”)
But it was just an accident. A short circuit. At two in the morning. Just a few hours after that great Jewish sage, Woody Allen, was in Cannes in front of the French press insisting he has never seen or heard of any anti-Semitism in France. Yup, just a short circuit with no investigation. Well, why look into something when no one can even imagine a stray reason to think it was anything else? Let’s see, you’re in France, these days, and a building burns down in the middle of the night. Hmm . . . Was it the Louvre? No . . . Was it the palace at Versailles? No . . . Was it Disneyland? No . . . Was it the big, concrete building full of Jews? Bingo! Just an electrical problem, though. (And the head electrician, Mohammed Jihad, agrees completely.)
After all, accidents like that happen all the time. When the Germans invaded Poland? It was just a wrong turn. Oh, yeah, the light turned green, we made a left, and, next thing we knew, we were in Warsaw. By the time someone stopped at a gas station and got a map, we had taken Holland. It could happen to anybody.Hey, is that poison gas coming out of those showers? Sounds like a plumbing problem.
And you know what’s even funnier than that? The best joke of the series? The topper, as we say? I’ll bet you a dollar virtually none of you even knew this had happened. I’ll bet almost everyone reading this article is thinking, “Did the Israeli Embassy in Paris burn down? I didn’t hear anything about that. Is he kidding?”
Nope. Not kidding. 2 a.m., early Thursday morning, May 23, 2002, down to the ground, no questions asked. And you didn’t know, did you? I almost didn’t, either.
That day, Thursday, I was talking to my friend and editor (and wonderful writer) here at The Daily Standard, Jonathan Last, and he asked what I was writing about for my next column, and I said I didn’t know yet, and why didn’t he get off my back and worry about his own damn column, I can’t take it anymore, pushing, pushing all the time, and he said, “Hey, come on, take it easy, I’m just asking,” and I said, “It’s the voices, they’re still getting in, the tin foil on the windows isn’t stopping them anymore, and I can’t think of any ideas,” and he told me about the embassy burning down, and I said “Neat!” and started writing. And that night, when I got home, I couldn’t wait to turn on the news and get the details.
But no one had it. Not CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, no one. Not the local eleven o’clock news. Nothing. No network, no cable. I even checked the NewsRadio station, but if TV didn’t have it, why would they? They didn’t. So I shrugged and went to sleep (not necessarily in that order), and when, the next morning, I was gently nuzzled from my reverie in the usual manner by noticing our dog had climbed up on the bed and placed his rectum less than an inch from my mouth, I shuddered and retched my way into the bathroom, lunged for the Listerine, and stumbled outside to grab the papers out of the sprinkler and check them. Nothing. No headlines, no columns. Nothing on page two or three or five or fifteen. Nothing on the op-ed. Not a whisper.
On the way to work I wondered what in the world was going on here. Did this happen, or didn’t it? I knew Jonathan would never make something like this up, and send me on a wild goose chase. Not sober, anyway. Was someone playing a joke on him?
Hard to imagine. Over a sumptuous, catered breakfast at the studio (Well, come on, folks, it is Hollywood) I looked through the New York Times, and there was nothing, but then . . . There it was. Page twenty-two. No article, just a photo (“art”, as they call it in the newspaper business). I tore it out; I’m looking at it now. About four inches by seven inches. In the foreground, a handful of French firemen unrolling a hose. They needn’t have bothered. In the background, the embassy is burning with the kind of flames that tell even the layman’s eyes, “You can forget about the Queen Anne chairs on this one, boys.” Underneath the picture is a bold-type line: “Israeli Embassy Fire in Paris Appears Accidental.” And underneath that, this caption: “Paris investigators say the cause of the intense fire that gutted the Israeli Embassy shortly after 2 a.m. yesterday was probably a short circuit and not linked to Middle East violence or arson attacks on synagogues.”
Appears accidental. Probably a short circuit. Hell, that’s good enough for me. Any of you reporters have any questions? No? Yeah, didn’t figure you would. This one’s pretty open and shut. Now, you may be wondering if anyone was hurt or killed, but, come on, why dwell on the fringe questions? Heh-heh, come to think of it, looks like none of you were wondering that after all. Nah, no sense getting our underwear bunched over this one. Hey, wait a minute, we don’t wear any underwear! Where was I? Oh, yeah. Anyone for a cafe-au-lait?
The nerve of these people. All of them. The French, sure. I’ve had it with them for a long time, anyway, but the last nine months take the gateau. They look down their noses at the ticking time bomb of terror and tell us, “You do it.” Okay, I’ve got a quid for that quo. The next time the Germans run through your smelly country like Carl Lewis and you need someone to save your collaborationist butts? YOU do it.
But what about our media? Wasn’t this event, oh, sort of significant? I have no idea if anything fishy happened there, but don’t we need a tiny bit of follow up? At least enough to have an article? A paragraph? A snippet? Nothing on the news? Even after sports? I guess not. If the Saudi Embassy burned down in Paris, would the entire world of reporters just flip their spiral pads shut and say, “No story on this one”?
Yeah, it’s all pretty funny stuff. Only I’m not laughing. I can hear the laughter, though. Can you? Listen. Hear it now? Yup, that’s Saddam Hussein laughing. And Arafat. And Prince Abdullah, probably right in the middle of one of those two-hour beard manicures. And bin Laden himself. Funniest thing he’s ever heard.
Wherever he is. Even down there.
Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.
