My name is Sergeant Fozmerlude … I’m a floop.

by David Benjamin

 

“Mary had a blicken oof.

Its prooze was white as werf.

And glutendot that Mary gleat,

The oof was sure to gerf.” 

― Garry Moore

 

MADISON, Wis.—Sean Connery stopped me cold the other night while I was watching The Untouchables, director Brian De Palma’s masterpiece. Playing the role of tough Irish cop Jim Malone, Connery referred to the gun carried by Elliott Ness (Kevin Costner) as a “mahoska.”

The dialog’s context identified the object in question as a gun. I know a lot of slang terms for “gun” from that era—gat, heat, artillery, hogleg, cannon, Chicago piano, chopper, iron, typewriter, etc.—but “mahoska” was nowhere in my lexicon. So, I started a search. I couldn’t find it my favorite source, Straight from the Fridge, Dad, Max Décharné’s collection of hipster slang. But I scored online with Green’s Dictionary of Slang, which variously assigned the word’s etymology to an “Irish” (with a question mark) term, mo thosca, supposedly related to the familiar Sicilian cosa nostra, literally meaning “these things of ours.” 

According to Green’s, “mahoska” is “anything illicit, esp. drugs, money, a weapon, stolen goods.” The movie’s reference trims the range to a knife, a gun or, metaphorically, a penis. How “mahoska” probably landed in De Palma’s script, appears in the last notation in Green’s: a line from playwright David Mamet, “Do you require a mahoska?” Mamet wrote the screenplay of The Untouchables.

Another reference, possibly apocryphal but entertaining, traces the word to a fierce Sioux chief named Mohaska who took part in the massacre of General Custer and his troops at Little Big Horn..

The linguistic charm of Jim Malone’s richly obscure noun is that it does nothing to flummox the viewer. Context makes clear that “mahoska” means “gun.” In my constant effort to avoid banality (or just be a smartass), I now and then drop a term my audience isn’t likely to understand, except in context. For example, when stepping aside to let someone pass through the door or exit the elevator, I sometimes say, “Dozo,” a Japanese abbreviation for “Go ahead.”

Invariably, people go ahead. 

One of my favorites synonyms for “child,” “kid,” “youngster,” etc., is “moznik.” No one has ever asked, “Whaddya mean, ‘moznik’?” Somehow, inductively, they know what I mean. 

Which brings me to the source of the term. 

One night in 1956, on “The Garry Moore Show” on CBS TV, Garry Moore, Denise Lor and the immortal Durward Kirby performed one of the great comedy sketches of all time. It was so good that it was transcribed into the Encyclopedia Britannica’s 1957 Book of the Year. That’s where I found it, when I was eight years old. That passage, under the heading “Television,” launched my fateful obsession with words. I shlepped the Book of the Year to my fourth-grade class at St. Mary’s School and recited the full text of the comedy sketch. I doubt that anyone but my teacher, Mrs. Ducklow, had any idea why I thought it hilarious.

Later in life, I spent years hunting a copy of that Britannica Book of the Year, finally tracking one down in a used book store in Palo Alto. I cherish it to this day. 

Garry Moore’s premise was that you could substitute words—transgressively—in a familiar setting and still convey the same meaning. The terms invented by Garry Moore’s comedy writers were wonderfully silly, with a touch of Yiddishness that struck my Midwestern ear as ineffably exotic. It has occurred to me that many of these words would be useful to science fiction authors groping to name alien worlds, space monsters and little green men. As comfort to the audience, Moore’s script parodied one of the most popular TV cop shows of all time, “Dragnet.”

For the sake of history, because no one but me has a copy of this long, lost, linguistically brilliant moment in popular culture, is the Garry Moore “Dragnet” sketch:

BAND: (“Dragnet” theme)

MOORE: This is the flanagan … a teeming bortisneed of 10,000,000 snidlits. My job is to keep law and grifits. I’m a floop.

BAND: (“Dragnet” theme)

MOORE: My name is Sergeant Fozmerlude … I’m a floop. The orken you are about to hear is plut. It was taken from the files of the Berkendaddle. Only the girfs have been changed to protect the zahgan. It all began on Friday, April the zneep … zup p.m. I was in the grammenfloog oiling my dootenforzer. A report came in from headquarters that a woman with two mozniks had been jidnicked and glagened by a man carrying a .38-caliber dootenforzer … Model M-1. It was the fourth jidnicking in three days … My job, to find this glagener … I’m a floop.

BAND: (Theme and suspense)

MOORE: My name is Sergeant Fozmerlude, ma’am … I’m a floop, ma’am… I’d like you to tell me all you can about the jidnicking.

DENISE: There’s not much to tell. I was jidnicked and glagened, that’s all. Happened last night. Man walked in carrying a .38-caliber dootenforzer.

MOORE: Did he say anything?

DENISE: Not much. Just said, “Okay, lady, stick ‘em up … This is a jidnick.” He wore a mask, so I knew he was a glagener. Do you think you can find him, Sergeant … Sergeant…

MOORE: Sergeant Fozmerlude, ma’am.

DENISE: Fozmerlude?

MOORE: That’s right, ma’am … Sergeant Fozmerlude … I’m a floop. Tell us exactly what happened.

DENISE: I was upstairs with my two little mozniks. It was their bedtime. I was reading them a story about Little Red Snootniggin and the Three Snorks …

MOORE: Go on.

DENISE: Suddenly the doorbell rang.

MOORE: The doorbell?

DENISE: Yeah, you know … the naffenshpiel. It was the man with the .38-caliber dootenforzer.

MOORE: After he told you it was a jidnick, did he glagen anything?

DENISE: A little Mama-Shlumple that belonged to my oldest moznik.

MOORE: Her Mama-Shlumple?

DENISE: Yeah. Gave it to her for Christmas. Pretty little Mama-Shlumple. Nice one, too … Looked just like her, too.

MOORE: Looked just like who, ma’am?

DENISE: You know, that movie actress, Pozbo. Her picture’s playing downtown now.

MOORE: The Mama-Shlumple looked like Ava Pozbo?

DENISE: That’s right. Just like Ava Pozbo. Funny a big man should glagen a Mama-Shlumple from my little moznik. Why should he do a thing like that, Sergeant … Sergeant …

MOORE: Friday, ma’am. Is that all you can tell us?

DENISE: That’s all. Except for one thing.

MOORE: One thing?

DENISE: I pushed him down the stairs.

MOORE: Ma’am?

DENISE: I pushed him down the stairs.

MOORE: Was he hurt?

DENISE: Fractured his yokniddle.

BAND: (“Dragnet” theme)

MOORE: We were looking for a man with a fractured yokniddle and a Mama-Shlumple. A man answering this description was seen on Sixth Avenue, lingering near the subway blinken. A further check showed that he had gone into a movie theater … the feature picture … Ava Pozbo in Bhowani Masbortle … We found him in the balcony with his fractured yokniddle in a sling and the Mama-Shlumple in the seat beside him.

BAND: (“Dragnet” opening)

MOORE: As a result of tonight’s orken, the prisoner was found mentally gemixed. He was sent to the State Home for Chronic Poopniddles. 

BAND: (Theme and playoff)