In California: The Life and Death of a Good Joke

Don't mess around with Mother Irony, they tell one another now at the Café Babar. When the phone rings, no one wants to answer it. Although it is more than a year since Joe Troise and Bill Glanting and the others had their big idea, the caller is more than likely to be some reporter or talk-show crocodile wanting to know about the Dull Men's Club. Dullness had everyone excited there for a while, and it kept things jumping among the regulars at the café, a neighborhood beer-and-sandwich joint in San Francisco's Mission District....

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