This is not the greatest photo in the world but it will have to do. When Leslie Nielsen left us recently, I wrote here about how he used to use (and pass out crates of) a little novelty item called…well, the punctuation is arguable. The one he gave me, which is lost somewhere in this house, said "Handi-Gas" on it. I've also seen it spelled "Han-D-Gas" and "Hand-i-Gas" and there are other brands with other names. A current version which I mentioned here is called the Pooter Tooter.
All of them embrace the same basic scientific principle…and if Thomas Alva Edison didn't come up with this, he should be ashamed of himself. Imagine wasting all that time inventing the light bulb when he could have been the Father of the Hand-Held Fart Sound Simulator. The idea is that you conceal the little rubber cylinder in your hand and then when you're chatting with someone or getting into an elevator, you use it to make a little fart sound and you jerk your body as if the sound came from your very own orifice and that's supposed to be funny. To some people, I guess it is. It certainly was to Mr. Nielsen, who did it everywhere he went, up to and including the upper right hand box on The Hollywood Squares.
And yes, I know there are now battery-powered digital versions of this apparatus. How friggin' lazy can you get?
Anyway, I searched for my Handi-Gas (or whatever it was called) so I could take a photo of it and slap it up here. When I couldn't find it, I searched the 'net with similar results. So I asked my pal Bob Logan, who was with me when Leslie presented me with mine and who was a previous recipient, if he could take a picture of his. There it is and that's his hand. Bob is a fine producer-director, currently working on a TV project with Paul Rodriguez which I'll tell you about one of these days here, and he directed Leslie Nielsen in a funny movie called Repossessed, which is well worth Netflixing. When Bob and I have lunch in a restaurant to which I might wish to return, I make him leave the fart machine in the car.