If youâre stupid enough, general knowledge seems like expertise. If youâre stupider still, puppets seem like a trick. If youâre stupider still, you are the customer base for 1987âs How to Have a Moneymaking GARAGE SALE Starring Phyllis Diller. It defies no expectations at all. Itâs 24 minutes of basic instructions for putting price tags on garbage along with several tips you couldnât possibly not already know Starring Phyllis Diller.
The tape already knows you need to have a garage sale by the nature of you owning the least necessary instructional VHS tape. How to Have a Moneymaking GARAGE SALEâs first and main purpose is to help you rid yourself of it. You need to turn Trash Into Cashâ˘, Old Into Goldâ˘, and your Precious Time into Pointless Rhymesâ˘!
Besides owning a garage, unlimited leisure time, and a retail storeâs worth of unwanted appliances, the tape also assumes you already have a strong working knowledge of Phyllis Diller. Maybe this is maybe something you could take for granted in 1987, but in 2021 most of her jokes sound like code to activate deep cover operatives. For instance, it opens with her screaming, âI havenât had this many people in my garage since the vice squad raided Fangâs Going Out of Marriage party! Sliiide whistle! Honnnk!â This was a reference to her fictional husband, Fang, who was at all times cheating on her, divorced from her, a pain in her ass, dead, or a loyal friend and provider. From Phyllisâ age and the era you might assume âFangâ had dark, racist origins, but the name was distilled down from an old ad-libbed line about a traffic accident where she called her husband âOld Fang Face.â
This was apparently such common knowledge at the time the producers of How to Have a Moneymaking GARAGE SALE figured you knew it, yet needed a VHS tape explaining how to write â25 centsâ on a box of coffee mugs.
To be clear: for anyone who needed a celebrity host for a yard sale video, Phyllis Diller was a perfectly appropriate choice. She was the right amount of famous where everyone knew her but no one would say, âHow the fuck did they get Phyllis Diller for this?â And as far as instructional videos go, no one has gotten more for their money than these producers. Phyllis Diller brings an energy to this like someone honored to be hosting the Daytime Emmy Awards. And while she does have strong acting and broadcast skills, you canât fake this kind of enthusiasm. This is a woman with a true passion for the craft of garage saling. She never stops screaming about it. âWho knows more about turning trash into cash than me? Iâve been doing it for YEARS! Wha ha ha!â She had no notes when the script called for her to barge into the room with a trash bag exclaimingâŚ
The video never misses an opportunity to add a joke, and I emphatically donât mean that as a compliment. For example, when Phyllis suggests you gather unwanted items from around your home to use in your garage sale, she opens a closet full of tumbling props and says, âThat was about a six on the Richter scale!â Then she holds up a pair of antlers and a clown nose and says, âPoor Rudolph never saw that land mine!â Iâm not saying the video would be better if it was 40 seconds of her growling, âHere is the entire one step to selling old pajamas, you stupid shits.â Iâm only saying this is very bad. I mean, for one thing, Rudolph is basically always in the air except at the north pole or on the roofs of non-naughty children. Are you telling me someone climbed onto the roof of a nice family, on Christmas, and land mined their home? An unspeakable act that killed a rare, innocent animal and presumably the magical spirit of Christmas? And this is funny to you, Phyllis!? Before we get to the yard sale, ha ha, letâs fucking molest the remains of Santaâs loyal companion!?
According to Phyllis Dillerâs handwritten list, one of the things you need to do before a garage sale is âINSURANCE AND LAWS.â So she calls her insurance agent who recognizes her voice and hangs up on her. She groans, âWrong number,â followed by a string of words delivered with the cadence of jokes but with all the meaning of a confused reindeerâs final screams. Again, it would be weirder if How to Have a Moneymaking GARAGE SALE Starring Phyllis Diller was good, but it seems a strange indulgence to write the entire script by carving the language center out of a a human brain and transcribing the shrieks of the ravens feeding on it.
Another thing you need to do before your garage sale is call your neighbors to see if they have anything to sell. Then check the paper to see if there are any big sporting or television events that might distract potential customers from your big event. You donât want to compete for a market share against ABCâs All-Star Salute to Lawns Full of Trash. Also on Phyllisâ list, and this may really tickle you is âTOM SELLECKâS PHONE NUMBER sliiiiiiide whistle.â Itâs the second of three âIâm trying to fuck Tom Selleckâ jokes in the video, and Phyllis expertly punctuates this one by circling the words âTOM SELLECKâS PHONE NUMBERâ several times and nothing else. I feel like Iâm not explaining all the subtleties, but she wants actor Tom Selleck to have sex with her and his name is Tom Selleck.
At this point, the tips come at the viewer fast. You get advice on market values, how to make signs, and why you should wash used clothes. It starts to become pretty clear from Phyllisâ excitement and the numbers getting thrown around that this isnât about the money. Even in the filmmakersâ wildest imagination, this well-organized and celebrity-promoted garage sale looks like itâs hoping to make about forty bucks. Phyllis Diller would get double the profits if she threw her trash into the ocean and asked her plastic surgeon to use generic dermal fillers. Speaking of, there are eight (8) facelift jokes in this video sliiide whistle, honk. Thatâs an average of one every three minutes, and please understand they are not a part of a long running gag. They are each distinct and less fun than the last. The side effect of learning how to hold a garage sale is that you will no longer find joy in the skin thinly stretched across Phyllis Dillerâs skull.
âWOULD YOU LOOK AT THIS PUP TENT! honk arrooooga,â is how Phyllis uses her dynamic prop comedy to tell you maternity clothes are a hot ticket item at garage sales. And while thatâs technically âknowledge,â if I was a new mother trying to get rid of stuff, it might already occur to me to include the clothes I would never wear again. This is like informing someone who already ordered lunch that soup is wet food, like the dripping holes near Tom Selleck.
Have we talked shoes yet? You should be sure to wear functional garage sale shoes. Or as Phyllis puts itâŚ
There is so much time spent on advice you couldnât conceivably not know they spend no time explaining complicated things. For instance, Phyllis walks past a homemade changing room saying, âYouâll need a ladder, a shower curtain, and a closet dowel from the lumber yard!â And instead of explaining how to MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson, yum! sliiiide whistle) together a dressing room with debris and no fasteners, she peeks into it, shatters the mirror, and screams, âYOUâD THINK AFTER FIFTEEN FACE LIFTS THAT WOULD STOP. AH HA! horrrrn sound.â Hilarious, sure, but the viewer is no closer to knowing how to build a retail space in their garage. Itâs fucked up they assume Iâm an accomplished junkyard architect maternity dress collector but I donât understand how stickers work. Theyâre more confused than Fang trying to order sushi at the Aladdin while the surgical staples behind his wifeâs ears detached!
Thereâs an entire section of the tape about the outrageous characters youâll run into at a garage sale. It is a perfect setup to comedy hijinx, but instead itâs the least fun, instructional part of this instructional video. It prepares you for the inevitability of hardnose bargaining and petty thievery that comes with turning your home into a flea market. It still has some jokes about how her face is more basketball than flesh and how her genitals are loveless deserts long since abandoned by Fang and never to be explored by Tom Selleck. Itâs frankly so far past the point of self-deprecation I looked up the writer to see how he knew Phyllis Diller well enough to dunk on her unfuckable sadness over and over like this.
It was written by someone who only had one credit on an episode of Hollywood Squares, a show Phyllis Diller was on frequently. So this may explain how they got a call with Phyllis Dillerâs agent, but not how they had the confidence to hand her this many jokes about her ancient face and vagina flesh. When youâre putting together a garage sale VHS, it takes huge balls to hand your celebrity host a script that says, âIâm a fucking gross piece of shit and hereâs how you price used paperbacks.â I should know. I was stabbed 40 times by Rob Van Winkle after he saw the script for Make Your Own Gourmet Sorbet Starring That Asshole Vanilla Ice SLIIIIIDE WHISTLE, HONK HOOOONKK.
One other type of garage sale customer to watch out for is The Nitpicker. Heâs the type of person who will yell at you for not keeping your appliances in perfect condition. He wâ wait. I think I recognize The Nitpicker. Used (Works!) COOLVIEW TV/VCR Combo, enhance:
No. N-no, it canât be.
Jesus Christ, it is! IT IS! This is fucking Master Eastwest, from The Magic of Martial Arts! Heâs a mysterious being with all the powers of the Orient who teaches children Karate in his cave, and here he is causing a scene over a garage saleâs return policy on a six inch television. He is angry, entitled, and seems to be blaming Phyllis Diller for a series of bad turns his life took. His every acting choice seems to have been made for a revenge movie about a garage sale customer pushed too far. And maybe itâs because a child-abducting Karate ghost is losing its temper on the set, but there is a serious tone change here at the end of How to Have a Moneymaking GARAGE SALE Starring Phyllis Diller. Off camera voices start demanding to use her phone and bathroom and she worriedly explains how dangerous a garage full of deal-hunting strangers can be.
Then, in what I think is a coincidence and not a potential murderer gag, a seven foot man emerges from the bargain wasteland with garden shears leveled at Phyllis Dillerâs neck. âThree dollars,â is all he says as his hands tremble ready on the handles. The point is, the two unhinged madmen brandishing deadly weapons at the star (garden shears and cave Karate) really drive home the accidental theme of the video: there is no idea worse than having a moneymaking garage sale.
10 replies on âLearning Day: How to Have a Moneymaking GARAGE SALE Starring Phyllis Diller đâ
When and where will Master EastWest ambush you again Seanbaby?! Your car, your closet orâŚ.YOUR DREAMS?!?!
Dammit, *Theyâre* allâŚ
What do âdigging through the closet,â âplowing through old boxes,â and âcleaning out the atticâ all have in common? There all on the back of this box AND euphemisms for having sex with 1987 Phyllis Diller!
BadahdumCHING!
Changing my LinkedIn header to âAccomplished Junkyard Architectâ
I can finally put my mind to rest knowing that having âmore rhymes than Phyllis Dillerâ isnât just gibberish.
A few things occur to me. Despite your hilarious efforts to the contrary, I would both readily own and cherish the advice of Ohyllis Diller on garage sales, lawn care, hell even driveway maintenance etiquette. Pure national treasure, that lady.
Second, had you made different life choices, Iâm pretty sure you could have found and assembled that missing Malaysian airliner from a few years back by now. Your skills at scavenging the charred remains of civilization remain unparalleled, sir.
What the hell is that thing the Helpful Neighbor is lugging around? At first I thought it was a child but itâs obviously some kind of umbrella⌠standee⌠duck⌠thing and now itâll never leave my nightmares.
Master Eastwest? THAT is some unexpected casting! Am I the only monster who wants to imagine Sensei Rainbow and Master Eastwest teaming up to karate a bite out of the youth vaping epidemic with every single Wilhelm scream added in?
I loved this and the rifftrax version as well!