Thursday, June 21, 2007

i don't want to encourage him to smoke but for this scenario it's sort of perfect

My mom came into the room when Finn was banging a wooden ball on a wooden box. She said, "Well, aren't you a playboy. Noisy little playboy."

The Noisy Little Playboy. I picture a 1950's Manhattan apartment scaled down to toddler size with the free jazz on the phonograph, and Finn with a little pencil mustache frying late night omelettes for a bevy of tiny martini-swilling dames. Meanwhile, Roger the very small accountant from upstairs is banging on the floor with a broomstick trying to get him to pipe down.

No can do, Rog.

Ladies? Camel me*.


A particularly raucous evening Chez Finn. The conga line snaked
directly to his pied-a-terre and they all decided to go for a world's record. Roger practically had a coronary.


*This is the new request Finn makes all the time. "Camel me." I love it. I don't really know what it means. It's camel, but it's more than camel. Show me a camel? Turn me into a camel? Hand me that camel? Is it like a high-five? Camel me. Oh, yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

5 comments:

Christopher said...

Hm, I seem to recall a time in the not-too-distant past when the phrase, "beer me" was frequently used to order another round of cold, frothy fermented malt beverages, but I think the expression has since gone into disuse.

The more relevent questions in this instance, however, might be: "can one have too many camels?" and "when does one know the point of too many camels has been reached?"

john said...

"Camel me" is a witty riposte often delivered The Noisy Little Playboy. The Martini Fames titter with glee whenever he says it although neither they nor he are sure if it's a punchline to a joke, an exclamation, or what. The somewhat bookish Martini Dame likes to think that it portends a latent interest The Noisy Little Playboy has in Egyptology, an interest she herself shares -- perhaps it's a way to get The Noisy Little Playboy all to herself! But to attempt to open a discussion on the subject is too risky, she could be thrown out of the circle entirely. Patience, she tells herself in a forlorn and almost weepy whisper, patience.

Anonymous said...

"I learned that handy little phrase during my stint in the French Foreign Legion, and let me tell you it turned out to be a real lifesaver. But I can see you don't want to hear another of my stories..."

"Tell, tell! Oh, Finn, you're such a man of the world. Is there no end to the adventures you've had? Sigh..."

"Well, alright ladies, if you insist. Our story begins, as they all do, with me banging a wooden ball on a wooden box. But this box happened to be -- in Algiers!"

dup said...

Oh, man. That was a great post followed by hilarious comments. Camel me, again.

Tina Rowley said...

I'm with you, Dup. I adore all of your riffs on the Noisy Little Playboy. Brilliant!

I want there now to be a whole...how you say...oeuvre of Noisy Little Playboy scenarios.