I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus

I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus is a 1971 comedy album by the Firesign Theatre.

A personal friend told me that this album was conceived and written after the Firesign Theatre visited the Stanford AI Lab one day and Disneyworld on another. The references to PDP-10 jargon of the day (SYSTAT, Uptime, ...) support this hypothesis.

Uh, Clem

• Geez, I'm standing here like an idiot, talking to myself. Might as well walk over to the old yellow line and stand here on the yellow line like an idiot, talking to myself.

• [speaking to "The President"] Why does the porridge bird lay his egg in the air?

• [speaking to "The President"] This is worker speaking.

• Readme Doctor Memory?

• [speaking to "Artie Choke"] Listen, Chokehead, this is worker speaking. Hello.

The President

• Many busy executives ask me, "What about the job displacement market program in the city of the future?" Well, count on us to be there, uh, Clem, because, if we're lucky tomorrow, we won't have to deal with questions like yours ever again.

Artie Choke

• The future's comin', and there's no place to hide!
• I'm Artie Choke, and we're just a joke.

Future Fair

• Before the beginning, there was this turtle. And the turtle was alone. And he looked around, and he saw his neighbor, which was his mother. And he lay down on top of his neighbor, and behold! she bore him in tears an oak tree, which grew all day and then fell over -- like a bridge. And lo! under the bridge there came a catfish. And he was very big. And he was walking. And he was the biggest he had seen. And so were the fiery balls of this fish, one of which is the sun, and the other, they called the moon.

• Animals without backbones hid from each other or fell down. Clamasaurs and oysterettes appeard as appetizers. Then came the sponges, which sucked up about 10% of all life. Hundreds of years later, in the late devouring period, fish became obnoxious. Trailerbites, chiggerbites and mosquitoes collided aimlessly in the dense gas. Finally, tiny edible plants sprang up in rows giving birth to generations of insecticides and other small dying creatures.

• If you push something hard enough, it will fall over — Fudd's First Law of Opposition.

• Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law: Half of what goes in here must come out there.

(I believe he is saying "Half a Watt goes in here...must come out there." There is electricity involved. I am referring to the "Model Government" sketch. I may be wrong, but that is how I have perceived the dialog over the decades of listening. If it is scripted as "Half of What..." then I am wrong. I have never seen the script).

The actual recording says, "It comes in, it must go out. Teslacle's Deviant to Fudd's Law."

Keep in mind that in the 1970s, many of us preferred to listen to records via headphones. Many times on this album, and their others, the Firesign Theatre would pun the left ear vs. the right ear, with homophones or similar wordplay.

Recorded voices on the bus

• The future is fun! ... The future is fair! ... You may already have won! ... You may already be there!

Singing hologram

• [to the tune of "Back In the Saddle Again"] Back from the shadows again. Out where an Injun's your friend. Where the vegetables are green, and you can pee right into the stream,(Background- And that's important") we're back from the shadows again.

The Honorable Chester Cadaver

• Sure, understanding today's complex world of the future is a little like having bees live in your head. But, there they are. And like the young lady said, " I say live it, or live with it!"

Barney the Bozo

• We Bozos have a saying: 'When you put on the nose, it grows.'
• [after Clem hacks into the computer system and changes the appearance of a hologram] "Oh my duck! His pants have disappeared! Kid, everybody's watching!