This will probably amuse about six people but since I'm one of them and it's my blog, here it is. At first, it may not sound like a Tale From Costco but be patient. We'll get there.
We all have silly little words and phrases that inexplicably make us laugh. One of mine came from a comedy writer named Fred Rosenberg who, alas, is no longer with us. There are a number of Fred Rosenbergs alive and working in the entertainment industry but not the one who did the great impression of comedian Jack Carter.
It was a really dumb impression — that was kind of the point of it — but Fred did it every time I was around him and I always found it funny. He wouldn't replicate Carter's voice but he'd mimic the man's posture and frantic onstage manner. (For those of you who came in late to comedy: Jack Carter was a popular comic of the fifties and sixties, often seen on The Ed Sullivan Show and any other venue that booked stand-ups.)
So Fred would do this inane impression and it consisted of one line out of Carter's act. This is from around 1962…
These kids today with their dances! They do the Mashed Potato! They do the Baked Potato!
(And again, to translate for these kids today: The Mashed Potato was a dance somewhat like The Twist. There was probably a dance called the Baked Potato somewhere but Carter's joke was based on the assumption that there wasn't…and wasn't it absurd to think there might be? That's part of why Fred's impression was so funny to me, hauling out that silly line.)
Anyway, I laughed whenever Fred did the impression and to this day when I see mashed potatoes somewhere, I am often reminded of Fred's portrayal and I laugh. Yesterday afternoon, I was in Costco. I put a rotisserie chicken in my cart. I put a packaged Kosher-for-Passover turkey breast in my cart. I put four large bags of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda in my cart. I put a case of organic chicken broth in my cart. I put a case of canned cat food in my cart. I did not put either a large package of paper towels or toilet paper in my cart and I was wondering if they'd let me out of the building without one.
And then I spotted a big package of prepared mashed potatoes on display and it made me think of Fred Rosenberg's Jack Carter impression and I laughed. It's been more than twenty years since I last saw Fred but I heard his voice in my head and I laughed out loud. Other shoppers looked at me strangely but I didn't care.
One elderly gent who glared at me was driving around on one of those little scooters that Costco provides for shoppers who can't walk. He stared at me as if to say, "What's that idiot laughing about?" And I stared at him and thought, "Hey, I know who that is…" And I swear to God — it was Jack Carter.