Got a good one for you this time. The funniest act I ever saw in Vegas — and maybe the funniest I've seen anywhere — was performed by a man named George Carl. Mr. Carl passed away in 2000 but for the fifty or so years preceding, he could be found on stages around the world doing his pantomime act. Johnny Carson called it "the funniest twenty minutes in show business" and that's about as good an endorsement as you could ever want.
What did Carl do for those twenty minutes? Well, he threw his hat in the air and caught it. He tried to play the harmonica. He struggled with a tray full of musical instruments. But mostly, he got tangled in the microphone cord.
When I saw him in Vegas in the eighties, he had honed this act to such perfection, it was like a fine ballet. He knew how to get a laugh every second he was on stage. In most cases, the rest of the show he was in featured spectacular-looking naked women but even the men in the audience were wishing there was less of the ladies and more of the sad-faced little man who couldn't work a microphone properly.
This clip runs a little more than four minutes and therefore can only give you a brief taste of what he did. Trust me: It got funnier and funnier, especially during his battle with the mike cord as things grew steadily more dysfunctional. He dropped it down his pants, he got the cord between his legs, he wrapped his face in it…he just kept surprising you with his every move. I wish I had a longer sample but you'll have to settle for just this much of the incomparable George Carl. If someone out there has any tape of his entire routine, please let me hear from you.
