“Putty” is a perfectly good American word for any clay-like gunk used as a sealant. “Window putty” would be instantly recognized by anyone who knew anything about window repair. “Plumber’s putty” is still used on the sorts of pipe connections where it’s appropriate.
But I do like the understated indirect humor of the joke. That part is sooo British. Or seems so from way over here. Mentioning the challenges with the vaseline windows with no mention at all of the other, ahem, consequences of putty where it doesn’t belong.
The Simpsons played with that in one of the Halloween episodes, with Richard Lewis as the Golem of Prague.
“This is the voice I’ve got? I sound like I should be selling eggcreams in Brighton Beach! See, kids, that’s called Jewish humor. You don’t have to understand it, 'cause the words sound funny. MESHUGINAH!”
Window Glazing was what I gleaned from the Home Depot website. I freely admit my ignorance here. Googling the long-obsolete term “Putty” would be hard enough, but it appears that PuTTY is an app for Windows. Ouch - that didn’t help (!)
It’s actually multiply obsolete - modular windows don’t use it and in any case putty was the stuff that held single glazed windows in place fifty years ago. I probably know people who have never seen a single glazed window.
As a property management maintenance coordinator, I see plenty of them. A good number of our older properties have wooden framed single-glazed windows. When one gets broken, our window guy replaces it and holds it in place with glazier’s points and putty.
Another joke from Airplane!: “WZAZ, where disco lives forever!” Airplane knocks over the broadcast tower.
I’m sure the first time I watched the movie I at least had some inkling that disco was no longer considered cool when the movie came out, but I didn’t have the full context of the “death” of disco and the anti-disco backlash of the late 1970s.
Really, all the disco related gags really date that movie.
Oh, also the Hare Krishnas handing out flowers in the airport lobby at the beginning of the movie.
Lots of businesses (often small local shops) still use handwritten documents for financial stuff.
I currently work at one of these, and the angst when the manager running up the closing paperwork has an “oops!” moment and can’t find the White-Out is … amusing, until you realize your ass can’t leave till the mistake is fixed.
That’s certainly on way to interpret it. OTOH it could also be a non-prejudiced comment on what happens when two languages have different alphabets. Not unlike some of Victor Borge’s jokes. Although in Borge’s case, the fact that he’s making fun of his own language makes it clear it’s not meant in hate.
I told my wife that I was hijacking the elevator we were in and taking it to Cuba, I thought she was, like me, going to understand it from movie references and the like (she and I both were born in 1978, with 5 days of difference).
She didn’t get it.
I remember a line “Bebe Rebozo cant blow his nose- o” which i didnt get even back then.
Camp Grenada is timeless, as witness my famous thread about it some years ago. Same thing with “You went the wrong way old King Louie”. To be honest i dont remember many more.
Just wondering: do kids still go to summer camp? And do they still short sheet beds?
And that’s another thing! What’s the deal with all these people going for weeks (months?) to the Adirondacks? It’s the driving scenario in Dirty Dancing, but I, a Wisconsinite, just don’t get it. Why was is such A Thing? Do they still do it? And, when I got older and wiser, I ask, why is it such A Jewish Thing?
I can and did laugh at the jokes, but I don’t “get” it.
The tragic floods in central Texas last July killed 135 people, including 25 girls and two teenaged counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“Are the shoes of the fisherman made by Brunswick?”
Actually a Polish joke and only worked during the tenure of John Paul II anyway, so may not really fit the OP.
I have seen many of my university students using correction fluid to make changes to handwritten notes and artwork in class. It doesn’t come in the little bottle with a brush, though. Some use a white tape. You can find both types at Staples.
Oh yeah. Mind you they are generally more themed- Boy Scouts or Baseball camp or Space camp, etc
No air conditioning back then, or limited to theaters. Bad air in NYC. It was a fairly easy trip and moderately inexpensive. Then a trip to Florida to escape a NYC winter.
