If I could walk that way I wouldn’t need the talcum powder…
What band’s playing now?
The Band.
Yes, the band–what are they called?
The Band.
Yes! What is the name of the band?
(later, after a few more loops of the above)
Oh, great, there’s a different band on now. Who are they?
The Who.
The band.
The Who.
THE BAND!
No, the Who.
The band. on the stage. That’s who.
Yes.
It went on like that for the entire bit.
The great thing about “who’s on first” (aside from being utterly hilarious) is how much parody it has spawned.
HELP!!
One of the funniest things I’ve ever heard was a routine on 89.1 WFDU, a college radio station in Teaneck, NJ (Ike can you maybe help me here?), that goes like this:
First guy: Tell me the name of the philosopher who said “the object doesn’t make the representation possible; the representation makes the object possible”
Second guy: I. Kant
FG: Why not?
SG: Why not what?
FG: Why can’t you tell me his name?
SG: I just did.
FG: Tell me again.
SG: I. Kant
and so on.
I want to know who did it, where I can find a recording of it, the full text of it, ANYTHING. I almost crashed my car because I was laughing so hard.
1b - Who
2b - What
3b - I Don’t Know
p - Today
c - Tomorrow
(or is it the other way 'round?)
ss - I Don’t Give a Damn (or Darn)
Where’s the outfielders?
Also, one of Johnny Carson’s most requested routines for his anniversary specials was his parody of “Who’s on First” with him as President Reagan.
“Who’s on First” is one of the greatest comedy routines ever. Anyone who doesn’t recognize this has no sense of humor at all. It’s silliness is very much in the vein that Monty Python happily mined years later, and is in that sense, a real forerunner. A&C has some real classic routines (the “$28 for 7 weeks at $13/week” bit is also hilarious). Most of their movies, alas, are either dated or uneven, though I think *The Time of Their Lives[/s] is very good, if vastly atypical.
The book Abbott and Costello in Hollywood includes a printed-out rendition of Who’s On First as done in Naughty Nineties. You almost had it right.
The correct line-up:
First Base–Who
Second Base–What
Third Base–I Don’t Know
Pitcher–Tomorrow
Catcher–Today
Shortstop–I Don’t Care, or I Don’t Give a Damn/Darn
Left fielder–Why
Center Field–Because
There’s no Right Fielder in the routine.
Currently, there is a new thread in GQ asking the question Where did it originate? Someone linked this previous thread(and we still don’t know except vaudville).
But, in reading this thread, I have to share: I once asked colleagues the trivia question-Who sang 96 Tears? They gave up. I said, Question Mark and the Mysterians. They said, again, we give up, who did it? I said, Question Mark and the Mysterians! They repeated, We give up!
It never dawned on me until quite a few back-and-forths that they didn’t understand.
I had downloaded it off of NAPSTER and subsequently played it for a young friend—she sat there and laughed her ass off!
FYI— IMHO the 6.23 version is the better one. If you’ve ever seen the video tape of it from THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR–it’s that one.
My computer science teacher played the “Who’s on First” routine for our class once, and eveybody agreed that it was hilarious. There’s another routine that I vaguely remember where one of them borrows $50 from the other guy and then somehow mathematically convinces him that there’s no reason to pay it back. Does anybody else remember that one?
Most of the parodies, or at least the recent ones, are not very funny IMHO. I read one recently called “Abbott and Costello organize the MTV video collection” that used plays on band names like The Who and U2, but it just wasn’t funny.
pluto, you rock! This is my all-time favorite moment from any comedy. I’ve seen it something like 30 times, and it is still laugh-out-loud funny every time.
My apologies, no disrespect intended, but I’m kinda picky about The General. To be sure that I got this right, I fired up the old DVD and jumped to the scene in question. I goes like this: Keaton goes around a bend in the tracks and ends up trapped behind a boxcar filled with northerners, who are in the process of chopping a hole in the wall with an axe. He stops the engine just short of a side rail, pushing the boxcar onto it. He jumps off, throws the rail switch, jumps back in, and busies himself with firing the boiler. Long shot: Keaton busy throwing wood in the boiler, as the boxcar comes to the end of the side rail and back onto the main track. Finally done, he climbs up to the window, only to see the boxcar back in front of him, catching him with his mouth open in a near-perfect O. Blinks several times. Looks behind him. Looks forward again.
I laughed out loud, deep and long, just watching it for this post.
There is no Right Fielder because Abbott is filling in for Right Field. That is what starts the whole routine. When Costello asks who the rest of the team is.
Just thought you’d like to know.
You tease, there’s no link to “Who’s on First” there. You’re just trying to bump up traffic to your site so you can sell advertising, aren’t you? 
One of the best trivia questions that I’ve ever found consists of asking What two people who never played a single inning of professional baseball are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown? You can even answer questions - no, they weren’t managers, or owners, or umpires or broadcasters or organists at ball parks…It’s a smack-your-head moment when the answer is revealed,
Chef, it was there months ago when that was posted and it remained there for some months. I used to have my personal web site at homepage.com at that time and put that and other audio files at the linked page at geocities. A few months ago homepage disappeared and I moved my site to this other page, rather than open a new one.
I have placed the audio file in DivX format (326 KB) here. I have used DivX because it makes the file size much smaller. If you cannot her it it means you need to install the DivX codec which you can easily doenload and isntall.
I also remember hearing a rock band version starring David Whatever who played Squiggy, and using bands like Yes, The Guess Who, and someone else I just can’t remember right now.
Anyone remember this?
It’s David Lander, as part of the Credibility Gap with Michael Landon, Harry Shearer and the late Richard Beebe.
You can listen to it HERE. Go to the bottom and listen using Real Player.
Toward the end of A&E’s “Burlesque”, there’s Abbott & Costello doing Who’s on First, and some background on this great bit. The genisis was a bit about a worker in a nut & bolt factory, e.g.: “What do you do for a living?” “Nuttin.” Who’s on First was created in a relative’s garage; another relative heard them working on the routine and said it wouldn’t fly. I’m sure we’re all glad that they didn’t listen.