Surprise! Morsch Writes about The Three Stooges

Outta Leftfield: Getting creamed in a pie fight proves irresistible to knuckleheads

Published: Wednesday, May 05, 2010

By Mike Morsch
Executive Editor

A couple bets, without reading another word of this latest travesty: this article will contain at least one Three Stooges reference, and one of the titular knuckleheads will be Morsch himself. Let's see how well I know this guy.

One just doesn’t see a good pie fight anymore. In fact, one doesn’t usually see a pie fight at all, let alone a good one.

Has one ever seen an actual pie fight outside a movie or comedy sketch?

About the only place one can take in a pie fight these days is by watching the old Three Stooges films. Ya gotta admit, those guys really knew how to hurl a dessert (as well as various other fruits and farm implements).

Bingo. As Morsch himself might say, I'm batting .500 so far.

But we pie fight aficionados who live in this area are lucky. We have the Stoogeum — a shrine to everything knuckleheadish — right here in Spring House. In addition, the Fort Washington Holiday Inn has played host to the annual Three Stooges Fan Club convention for several years.

How many articles can you possibly squeeze out of the Three Stooges? A mere mortal might only be able to generate one or two, but Morsch is literally making a living on them.

So if a pie fight was going to break out anywhere, it would be right here in our own backyard.

Which is exactly what happened Sunday at the Stoogeum. Stooges impersonators — Moe (Jay Novelli of Hamilton, N.J.); Larry (Josh Silverman of Fairfax, Va.); and Curly (Jay Montagna of Carneys Point, N.J.) — hit various volunteers right in the mush with about three dozen shaving cream pies.

"Right in the mush"? What part of the human body is known as "the mush"?

At first, I was a little surprised that people would actually volunteer to get creamed with the pies. But as I watched Stooges fan after Stooges fan line up to get whacked with the pies, I found myself wanting to get in on it.

This paragraph makes me sad, somehow. First, it's a bad sign for humanity that there are so many Three Stooges fans still active. Second, I'm not surprised at all that Morsch wants take the inevitable pie to the face, which makes this yet another example of Morsch's dishonesty both with himself and with his audience.

Even more amazing to me was that both young and old women were stepping up to get “the treatment.” Guys are born knuckleheads, and as a guy, I understand the appeal of the pie fight. But women?

Writers are supposed to observe the world around them and avoid cliches. Morsch observes the TV in front of him and eagerly laps up the cliches it spews forth.

What an endearing legacy of tomfoolery.

What, you mean, this column?

Decades after the deaths of the Stooges, there are still fans out there who would willingly take a shaving cream pie in the face from Stooges impersonators … and actually like it.

Oh. It strikes me that this whole "pie fight" concept is a little diluted by the fact that they're "shaving cream pies" instead of apple or custard or something.

I find that hilarious. Do you think Moe, Larry and Curly were sitting around one day back in the 1930s and 1940s thinking up gags for their films and somebody said, “Hey, these pie fights are so great that people who aren’t even born yet will want to get hit in the face with a pie someday.”

No. No, I don't think so. Somehow I don't think Moe, Larry and Curly literally invented the concept of hitting someone with a pie. Did they also develop the eye-poke and the shin-kick?

I’d like to think they were that savvy. They certainly were silly enough to ponder the possibility.

They probably didn't care. They were probably more concerned with cranking out the next cheapy as quickly as possible so they could keep their studio jobs one more year.

The first genuine pie fight the Stooges had on film was in the 1941 short film, “In The Sweet Pie and Pie,” the 58th short subject of the 190 the boys made for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.

As was common for the Stooges in many of their films, the storyline placed them in a hoity-toity formal situation that got out of hand. And then the pies would fly.

Ah, some classic Useless Morsch Facts, topped off by the redundant use of both "common" and "in many of."

According to Larry Fine: “Sometimes we would run out of pies, so the prop man would sweep up the pie goop off the floor, complete with nails, splinters, and tacks. Another problem was pretending you didn’t know a pie was coming your way. To solve this, Jules [producer/director Jules White] would tell me ‘Now Larry, Moe is going to smack you with a pie on the count of three.’ Then Jules would tell Moe, ‘Hit Larry on the count of two!’ So when it came time to count, I never got to three, because Moe crowned me with a pie!”

These might be some interesting tidbits, but not for the comedy column that this purports to be.

My first thought after reading that description from Larry is, boy I would have liked to been on the set the day of that pie fight. It sounds like so much fun, which may explain why people wanted to engage in the shenanigans Sunday at the Stoogeum.

Really? You want to get hit in the face with used pie goop filled with nails, splinters and tacks? Really? And have it hit you when you're unprepared? Really, Morsch? I think Mr. Fine's story was to illustrate how these crazy-looking pie fights weren't all sunshine and farts. But of course, through his nostalgia-tinted glasses, MM completely misses the point.

Alas, I was in reporter mode and not knucklehead mode (OK, you wise guys, so maybe there is no difference there) and I did not participate in the pie fight, as much as I would have liked to. But plenty of people did, and it looked like a tremendous amount of fun (check out our online video of the weekend Stooges events).

That's actually a bit surprising. After all, what was Morsch really "reporting" on? It's not like whatever crappy article on the Stoogeum he churns out is going to be Pulitzer Prize material. Also, does this count as Morsch identifying himself as a knucklehead? Can I claim I went 2 for 2 on my predictions?

I called The Blonde Accountant on the way home.

“I could have used your help today. There was a pie fight at the Stoogeum and you could have taken pictures and videos while I got whacked with a pie,” I said.

“Uh … Ok … I guess,” she responded.

Question: is there really a "Blonde Accountant"? And if so, does he really have conversations with her? Because every interaction they have is horribly stilted and full of Morsch-esque comedy. Almost as though he made it up...

She apparently doesn’t appreciate just how funny a pie fight can be. I will work on enlightening her and, of course, you’ll need to wish me luck in that regard. She is not exactly a pie fight kind of wife.

If it happens again at next year’s convention, I’m in. For me, it will be easy as pie.

So at next year's convention, you won't be in reporter mode? How will next year be different than this year?

And I cannot believe he used "easy as pie." I mean, I can believe it. This is Mike Morsch. But I can't believe that someone writing a humor column about pie can use the phrase "easy as pie" and actually think it's a funny way to end the article.

I'm sure that somewhere in America, an actually funny person is sitting there, unpublished and unknown, with columns and ideas that are ten times funnier than anything Morsch has ever dreamed. Does that seem right to you?