Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for October 17, 2024

You can’t make an homage without breaking some eggs.

It’s a good thing we don’t need to cite every comic that originally told the joke.

“Good writers borrow. Great writers steal”—Mark Twain

When i use the ideas of others, whenever possible I include attribution. It’s just as important to acknowledge you were paying attention

He learned from the current Pres & VP.

I believe it’s called plagiarism in writing, but in jokes as well?

You might be learning the wrong things, Pig!

So those book excerpts and familiar speeches I hear are homages?

Okay, Rat. Let’s not turn this into another Carlos Mencia (aka Ned Holness) situation. We all know what happened there.

Steal from one, it’s plagiarism; steal from many, it’s research.

From the great Tom Lehrer… I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics Plagiarize Plagiarize Let no one else’s work evade your eyes Remember why the good Lord made your eyes So don’t shade your eyes But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize Only be sure always to call it please “Research”

And yet, all I hear is crickets. Not a very good stand up guy. They didn’t even smile.

Milton Berle was notorious for joke-stealing, and more-or-less admitted it. In one comedy routine, as I recall, Henny Youngman told a joke, and Berle replied, “I wish I’d said that!” Youngman’s response: “Don’t worry, you will!”

Me always pay homage to great Yogi.

Good old homage plagarizing. I wonder how you spell plagarizing. No coffee yet so not looking it up. lol, etc…….

Foxtrot did a nice riff on this when they borrowed from C&H’s snowmen.

Rat is a Tribute Comic doing covers. “A piece of string walks into a bar…”

Makes me wonder how many “homages” Stephan has put in his strip.

On an old “What’s My Line,” Red Skelton was the Mystery Guest, and Fred Allen was on the panel. Fred said, “I feel like I should know you are. Do you do your own writing?” Red said, “Yes. Actually I’ve stolen a good deal of your material.” Fred said, “Is your first name a color, by any chance?”

There use to be a guy in Chicago who tracked jokes going back to the earliest vaudeville acts. People could contact him with a joke and he could tell them who used it first.

Now he’s going to put them in a book and say he wrote them himself

I wonder what stand up comedian they are honoring.

Plagiarism.

Is it pronounced O-mage or HO-mage?

Mr. Pastis is enacting an homage [stealing] from THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, which begins with her discovering that her husband is stealing, badly, from Bob Newhart—an unbelievable situation, considering that Newhart’s album was extremely popular, and someone in the audience would’ve shouted the husband down within seconds.

Rat is “The Thief of Bad Gags”… (a nickname originally aimed at Milton Berle)

I have noticed a good many of The Three Stooges routine plots were done earlier by Laurel and Hardy, reworked to play to the Stooges’ type of comedy…

“I only steal from the best.” —Pablo Picasso

In music, it’s called “Sampling”. In my world, it’s called “Stealing”.

Hey, some of the favorite jokes of some of the greatest comedians were about how much of their material was stolen!

Soon, all Americans must realize our long slow but sure trend and give formal acknowledgment by a vassal of allegiance to his lord under feudal law.

Milton Berle still has disciples

Rat-fink that he is.

Jokes are meant to be shared. Every joke I know has been passed around and around and around. If I hear a joke and decide I want to use it for myself I will make a few alterations so it fits my style better. But I neither claim to have invented the joke myself, nor feel any obligation to credit whoever told it to me. Not least of all because I’m quite certain that whoever told it to me did not invent it from whole cloth either.

And in science, it’s called standing on the shoulder of giants.

Who wrote the first “knock knock joke” ?

Who’d you steal this idea from?

And then there’s allusion. I titled a chapter “On the Beach” as an allusion to Nevil Shute’s great novel, its title itself an allusion to TS Elliot.

Rat’s a stable genius!

Comics swap jokes like trading cards. But the original writers in the back room rarely get credit.

Copy from one source, it’s plagiarism. Copy from many, it’s research.