Funny / An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer

• While all of his songs are funny, not to mention incredibly quotable, his live albums include a few moments that have the audience laughing so hard that Lehrer actually has to stop and wait for them to calm down. From "Bright College Days":
  Lehrer: Soon we'll be out, amid the cold world's strife/Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life...
  Audience: [loses it]
  Lehrer: Ready?
  Audience: [loses it again]
• His announcing of the song "Oedipus Rex", which involves a lead-up of him describing how motion pictures have songs released with them, including such classics as "The Ten Commandments Mambo", "Brothers Karamazov Cha-Cha" and "Incredible Shrinking Man, I Love You" (all fictional, of course). He then starts talking about the recently-released movie of Oedipus Rex, and then says "This film was not a financial success, and I maintain that the reason it was not a financial success...". He gets that far before everyone bursts out laughing. Once they calm down, he says "You're way ahead of me.", causing them to lose it all over again.
• Most of "In Old Mexico", but especially:
  The mariachis would serenade
  And they would not shut up 'til they were paid
• "The Masochism Tango", which includes the words "Fracture my spine, and swear that you're mine, as we dance to the masochism tango".
• The introduction to "We Will All Go Together When We Go" has Lehrer recount a novel a friend of his wrote, "about a young necrophiliac who finally achieved his boyhood ambition by becoming coroner." This only drew a few chuckles, but his next line brought the house down: "The rest of you can look it up when you get home."

---