Irving Finkel

There's one that I can remember.

A fly or a mosquito lands on the back of an elephant and says, am I too heavy for you?

Or something like that.

That's a Babylonian joke.

You wouldn't use it in the parboiling class.

And also, do you like Tom Lehrer?

Of course.

Okay, that's good.

That's good.

I once went to America on a lecture tour, and I ended up in a town where Dr. Werner von Braun ended up running the American rocket industry.

It doesn't matter.

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down.

That's not my department, says Werner von Braun.

But he's such a, the way he plays the piano is fantastic.

Yeah.

I think my dad recorded them off the radio on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I learned them all by heart because they were so fantastic.

But I knew a Harvard professor who, I stayed with once, who was a sumerologist, and his wife said that she knew Tom Lehrer when he was in the math department, and they used to have parties, and he always played the piano in the corner of the room.

He's just amazing, I think.

I think so.

But the paradoxical thing about Tom Leary is that when he's talking about the bomb and all that and devices and international trouble, it's so unchanged.