<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Sisyphus @ Feb 12 2009, 08:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div>umbrage with me?? Why sir Rhett Butler my great grand daddy would be proud!WTF....my boy, my boy!! We are indeed proof that the bar has been set rather low. What's the old joke? I don't know that I wish to be seen with anyone who would associate with the likes of me...
Not much up at the moment. How 'bout you? Staying out of trouble?
Ansley, for ONCE... I ain't gonna take umbrage with him... :P[/b]
Read the whole link for the history of the joke.....note at the end that ole honest Abe is even attributed with it. But Groucho Marxs was the man who made it famous.
In the remainder of his account, specific grievances Groucho had against the Friar's Club (alias "Delaney Club") come to light:
http://www.16-9.dk/2007-02/side11_inenglish.htm
"Some years ago, after considerable urging, I consented to join a prominent theatrical organization. By an odd coincidence, it was called the Delaney Club. Here, I thought, within these hallowed walls of Thespis, we would sit of an evening with our Napoleon brandies and long-stemmed pipes and discuss Chaucer, Charles Lamb, Ruskin, Voltaire, Booth, the Barrymores, Duse, Shakespeare, Bernhardt and all the other legendary figures of the theatre and literature. The first night I went there, I found thirty-two fellows playing gin rummy with marked cards, five members shooting loaded dice on a suspiciously bumpy carpet and four members in separate phone booths calling women who were other members' wives.
A few nights later the club had a banquet. I don't clearly remember what the occasion was. I think it was to honor one of the members who had successfully managed to evade the police for over a year. The dining tables were long and narrow, and unless you arrived around three in the afternoon you had no control over who your dinner companion was going to be. That particular night I was sitting next to a barber who had cut me many times, both socially and with a razor. At one point he looked slowly around the room, then turned to me and said, "Groucho, we're certainly getting a lousy batch of new members!"
I chose to ignore this remark and tried talking to him about Chaucer, Ruskin and Shakespeare, but he had switched to denouncing electric razors as a death blow to the tonsorial arts, so I dried up and resumed drinking. The following morning I sent the club a wire stating", PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
