Pegleg Pointers: A 1998 Look at the Pegleg Smith Liars Contest | Historic Borrego Sun

This column first ran ahead of the 50th annual Pegleg Smith Liars Contest in April 1998. Phil Brigandi, a longtime desert historian and four-time contest winner, died in 2019.

PEGLEG POINTERS

Phil Brigandi

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Pegleg Smith Liars Contest. Over the past 12 years I've competed ten times, and won four times (all right, all right…in 1987 I only tied for first, but I made up for it by--briefly--winning the title in absentia in '93).

My favorite story of mine is my 1987 tale, which included a penguin that Pegleg used as a compass. When Pegleg let the penguin out of its box, it always took off towards the North Pole, headin' for home. For some reason everybody picked up on the penguin, and every publication that covered the contest that year--from this paper all the way up to National Geographic Traveler magazine--all felt the need to remind their readers that penguins actually live at the South Pole! This while reporting on a liars contest.

Telling the stories is easy for me, but coming up with a good yarn year after year never seems to get any easier. It has been my goal for some time now to retire and become a judge for the contest; but whenever I bring up that idea, it has been cruelly rebuffed by the committee.

In the meantime, I guess I'll be there again this year. As I always say, I like to lie for five minutes every year, just to get it out of my system. And while I don't intend to give away all my best secrets, I thought as reigning champ, I might share a few pointers with this year's prospective prevaricators:

First of all: his name was Pegleg Smith, not Pegleg Pete. Pegleg Pete was the big, ugly guy who used to chase Mickey Mouse around. While I deplore the committee's decision a few years back to broaden the rules of the contest to include any sort of desert tale (not just Pegleg stories), if you're going to mention Pegleg, get his name right.

Second: if you're going to lie, lie sober. Drunk only works if everyone listening is also half in the bag (like with karioke), and the contest audience won't be.

Third: there's supposed to be a five-minute time limit. That doesn't mean you can't go over a little bit if you're on a roll (the most I've ever done is about seven or eight minutes), but if you ramble on too long you'll probably lose the audience--and definitely lose the judges. One guy actually brought a chair one year and sat down and did about twenty minutes before he was dragged off.

Fourth: I tend to stay away from props. They're death when they don't work.

Fifth: just because there's a microphone doesn't mean you don't have to speak up. Let the audience hear you, not some crackling speaker.

Sixth: don't do the dog joke with the Golden Retriever, it's been done to death.

Seventh: never go first. Or second. Or even third if you can help it. Nobody wants to warm up the crowd, and by the time they get through all the other stories the judges will have forgotten yours.

Finally: Dirty jokes, ethnic humor, political satire, and local editorials might get you a laugh from the audience, but they won't win you a trophy. There's more to telling a funny story than just setting up a punchline. Most of my stories don't even have a punchline, they just sort of end. (I always feel sorry for the reporters when I win, because my stories are seldom "about" anything that they can summarize in a sentence or two.)

Personally, I go in for simple plots and lots of details--like Pegleg's penguin/compass. I always tell Pegleg stories, and I always wear a costume. In other words, I'm a traditionalist when it comes to the contest; and it works for me. So does being persistent. But to really be successful, you'll have to find what works for you.

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