It's Duke Time: A John Wayne Clock

For the person who has everything but taste.

I really want to talk about this John Wayne clock and instead I’m going tot alk about Bill Cosby.

When I was a little kid I loved all kinds of humor. I had books with jokes, books with riddles, and books with puns. Someone once told me that the easiest way to make friends was to make people laugh and so I would memorize as many jokes as I could and ask anyone on the school bus who would listen why firemen wore suspenders and why the woman threw her clock out the window.

And then one day my mom said “you should listen to this” and lent me one of her Bill Cosby records. She must have had ten different Cosby albums in her collection. I think, along with generic Christmas compilations, everyone who owned a record player back then was legally required to own at least one Bill Cosby album.

One of the first bits I remember hearing of his was a short piece about Superman. The gist was that Superman, dressed as Clark Kent, had ducked into a phonebooth and was in the process of changing clothes when a police office walked by and asked him what in the world he was doing! When Clark Kent said, “I’m Superman!” the officer became convinced he was crazy and called for the paddy wagon. The big punchline at the end was when Superman said, “can’t you see this big red S on my chest?” and the officer replied, “I’m going to give you a red S and a black eye!”

I spent an entire summer listening to not just that album but all the Cosby albums my mom had, and while not all of the bits clicked with me a lot of them did. All the stories he told about playing football with his friends and being in kindergarten stick with me. I listened to those albums over and over, to the point where I had many of them memorized. I don’t just mean I would have recognized them; I mean I could recite them word for word. I paused when he paused; I took a breath when he did. What an amazing thing a child’s mind is. Today I rely on Siri to make every phone call for me as I can’t remember a single phone number, but back then memorizing entire comedy albums word for word and being able to perform them at the drop of a hat was effortless.

In 1983 Bill Cosby: Himself aired on HBO. They must have shown that special a thousand times a week but I taped it anyway. I hadn’t been exposed to Richard Pryor or George Carlin yet and we were still a year or so away from Eddie Murphy taking over the world and so to me, Bill Cosby was the funniest person on the planet. There’s a bit Cosby does in Himself about fixing breakfast for his children. When his kids beg to have chocolate cake for breakfast he justifies giving it to them by the ingredients (eggs, milk, flour…). Cosby is the hero of the story until his wife discovers what he has done, at which point the kids turn on him. “Dad made us eat the chocolate cake!!”

That skit was so funny that it stuck with me, well, forever. When my kids were young and my wife would go out of town I would sing, “Dad is great! Give us the chocolate cake!” just like Cosby did in the special. My wife got the reference because she was alive in 1983. It felt like every human on the planet saw that special a hundred times.

Fast forward a lot of years — 40, perhaps. As a father, Cosby’s bits and skits and even his books about his family are even funnier to me now, because now I can relate to them. One day, when my daughter was maybe sixteen years old, I made a reference to giving her chocolate cake for breakfast. She had no idea what I was talking about — did not get the reference at all. So, as dads do, I said, “hey, watch this!” I launched YouTube on our television and brought up “Bill Cosby chocolate cake”… and before it could start playing my daughter screamed and walked out of the room as if I was about to play a video of war atrocities or animal testing.

“Don’t you know what he did?” my daughter said as she was leaving the room. And the thing is, I did know. We all know. The world knows. And all I could think to say was, “yeah but, this is from 1983, before he was a bad man!” It was not enough to convince her to watch it. One of the funniest comedy bits of all time. Ruined.

Michael Richards. Mel Gibson. Alec Baldwin. There’s a pretty long list of entertainers who have fallen from grace.

It’s an age old question — can you enjoy the art without enjoying the artist?

On a road trip one time with the family — me, my wife, and two young teens — we were listening to Michael Jackson’s Thriller when my kids started going on and on about how he was a child molester.

“Alleged,” I added.

“I think he married the Elephant Man,” my daughter said.

“How could he marry the Elephant Man when he was married to a monkey?”

Kids.

The point is, when my kids hear Michael Jackson, that’s what they think of. They think of a weirdo missing a nose who once dangled his kid over a balcony in front of reporters. And when my wife and I hear Michael Jackson, all we can think about is how much we wanted to be like him in grade school — how I spent hours/days/weeks/months perfecting my moonwalk, and how my wife begged to have a red leather jacket “just like Michael’s” for Christmas. A few years ago while visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, my wife and I got to see Michael Jackson’s glove, all sparkly and rotating on this display as if it were the Holy Grail. And in a way, it was.

So, I dunno. Can we listen to Thriller or not? Can we watch Lethal Weapon and Seinfeld without feeling guilty? Can we listen to Bill Cosby albums that were recorded sixty years ago? I don’t know the answer.

And that brings me to this John Wayne clock.

My parents loved John Wayne. My wife’s parents loved John Wayne. If you are Gen X, there’s a pretty good chance your parents loved John Wayne. John Wayne was the man. In every movie, he was the good guy. He always decked the bad guy. He always saved the girl and kissed her until she liked it.

And then there was a pretty troublesome interview with the Duke in Playboy magazine. And it turned out he was kinda racist. And he was kinda homophobic. And he was kinda a lot of things that you would expect.

And if you are Gen X, you grew up knowing those things. And if you’re a boomer, well, most couldn’t care less. Because he was John freakin’ Wayne.

I can’t imagine having a Bill Cosby clock hanging in my house, and this John Wayne clock is, I’m guessing, pretty old. I saw it for sale at a storage unit sale — the owner had died and this clock along with many other treasures were being sold tot he public in a “we gotta empty this unit before rent is due” sale.

I’m guessing that clock sold by the end of the day. Probably to someone over the age of sixty.

John Wayne once said, "Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid." I use that quote a lot, but I never tell people where I got it from.