Klarinet Archive - Posting 000119.txt from 1997/07

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: Basset horn ;)
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 1997 21:31:39 -0400

Deadly serious question: all the references to basset hounds are
being done with tongue in cheek, but is there any evidence that
the animal (with its sad face) was named that after the basset horn?

I don't know when the breed became popular, or if it is a natural
breed, but somewhere in the back of my empty skull is the story
that the dog was named after the instrument.

Let me also add, that anyone who has played basset horn at all has
been plagued with the basset hound/basset horn gag. It gets
heavy after 25,000 hearings. And to this I append the following
story.

When I was 16, my parents bought a store in Suffern, New York.
It is in Rockland County just over the NJ state line. Well,
when anyone would ask where I was from, I would give the name
of the town, and every wag would say, "Suffern? Are you
suffering?" It was very funny, the first 5,000 times, less
funny the next 10,000 times, and after that I stabbed whoever
said it in the eye with a knife. Courts always dismissed
murder charges on me because they said that multiple repetitions
of the same tired joke is valid legal grounds to kill someone.
You could look it up. See NY State vs Leeson, 1943 et al,
mudus hystericus, quam olim abrahae, Vol 34, Page 61, et seq.

And that experience taught me a valuable lesson in life: verbal
puns that are thought up on an instant's notice, particularly
those built on homonyms or sound-alikes, were probably thought
up by someone a lot earlier than I did. Therefore, if I did
it, I ran the risk of being stabbed in the eye, so I stopped
doing it and found beautiful women attracted to me because of
my brilliant social dialogue that was completely without puns
based on homonyms. Several wealthy women set me up in private
apartments in New York because of my skill at avoiding such
homonymic puns, and not an evening went by without me becoming
sexually exhausted as a result of my knowledge, which I pass
along to all those who continue to use the basset hound joke,
namely that it will run the risk of a reduced sex life and
increase the risk of knife in the eye.

One of my last jobs before retiring, was to play the Gran
Paritta in Reno. And there was this 98 year old lady
who was there, and she came up to me after the concert and
made fun of my basset horn. So I stabbed her and, due to
the notoriety of the 1943 NY State decision on NY vs. Leeson,
I wasn't even arrested, whereas the body of the 98 year old
lady was left propped up in a casino by a slot machine. She
may still be there, for all I know. And she may even be
winning, but she no longer makes basset horn jokes.

Signing off the list on Monday morning for a month of
sybaritic pleasures in the fleshpots of Europe. So, insults
following that date will not only not be acknowledged, they
won't even be read.

=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================