Tain’t The Way I Heard It! BRANDON MAGGART: I am a graduate of the University of Tennessee School of Journalism: Class of ’56. But I’ve spent most of my life singing, acting, and passably dancing on the New York stage. Moving to California twenty years ago, I settled here in Venice. Between scenes and rehearsals and down times on television series, I began to doodle. I found that I could stare at a blank canvas for hours. This was funny in itself. A meditation on line, color and story. Out of this quietness, I began to think of jokes I’d heard as a child. The very first joke that I could remember? Number16. This evolved into painting the essence of a story or a joke onto a single canvas. Soon there were dozens and dozens. I began to incorporate the paintings into a never ending theatrical piece. These paintings now form “My American Quilt of Humor” that covers most of my wall space… Not to mention my closets. Friends began to take some fun in looking at these paintings and sometimes recalling the story and storyteller from some forty or fifty years ago… or less. Sometimes a hint, a word or two, “a punch line”, might evoke a memory… a time… a place. The following are some of those:

1. Well, no wonder at these prices.

2. I don’t think so. I kinda like having a talking frog.

3.At my age, I’d better take the soup.

4. Forsake you? No, I sent a man in a boat.

5. Look bad/feel good… Says here you’re a ------!

6. Taste the soup.

7. Young Bull: Let’s run down there and have our way with one of those beauties. (earliest I remember)

8. Whoa! Whoa!... “Jesus Saves”! Whew! Oh, my goodness… “Praise the Lord”!

9.Your father is called “Standing Bear” because the morning he was born I saw a bear standing in the woods.

10. Quick, Mister! Shoot Old Blue!

11. Forty years old and you still believe in Leprechauns!

12. Where did you drop it? (Rumi)

13. Where do you think you’re going with that elephant?

14. No. You’re 100% polar bear. Why do you ask?

15. Maybe, but this one is eating my popcorn.

16. So I got up and ate the cheese. (World War 2)

17. You’d better pet him first.

18. Hammer and nails? Got any Cheetos?

19. The Tigator… Meanest animal in the world.

20. You’ve played this game before!

21. Not as close to those mountains as we thought.

22. Where’s the Italian loaf of bread?

23. Maybe we should consider a career change.

24. The actor prepares to ape a homo sapien.

25. But the gentleman in the hat is pretty much a goner.

26. Is this a joke?

27. Don’t laugh, you’re next.

NO PAINTINGS ARE FOR SALE. A Coffee-Table Book? (Interested Publishers contact me)

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