Bravo has been doing re-runs of Inside the Actors Studio shows, several each morning. A few days ago, Mike Myers (actor, comedian, singer, screenwriter, and film producer) was up, so the hour was packed with plenty of good-natured bad taste. A fair amount of time was devoted to Myers’s 2008 comedy The Love Guru, which aroused much critical venom when it came out (I haven’t seen it). Myers was especially pleased with an elaborate double entendre in the movie — the information, or advice:

Liquor up front, poker in back.

(That is, either there is liquor up front — in the front of this place — and poker in (the) back; or you should lick her up front and poke her in back.) Yes, tasteless.

There are variants, in particular with in (the) rear instead of in back. And you can buy mugs, t-shirts, etc. with the slogan on them. Here it’s put in Mr. Bean’s mouth:

Liquor In The Front Poker In The Rear Joke

(though I doubt that Mr. Bean ever said such a thing).

Big Dick's Halfway Inn Red-hot women and ice-cold beer Liquor in the front and poker in the rear. The founder of /r/jokes has passed away. RIP Larry Tesler, the. I was playing poker with tarot cards the other night. I got a full house and four people died. 1) Go to Las Vegas. There's a guy who lives in Ohio. One morning, he hears a voice in his head. The voice says, 'Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, and go to Las Vegas.' He ignores the voice. A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender to line him up 10 shots of his strongest liquor on the counter. The man proceeds to down all 10 shots in a matter of minutes. The bartender asks him “what’s the special occasion” and the guy responds “I just got my first blowjob”. Blonde Woman Poker Joke A blonde woman was on a girls’ weekend in Las Vegas. She stood in front of a candy machine, put in two quarters, turned the knob, and a candy bar fell out.

Myers didn’t claim to have originated the joke, only to have appreciated and disseminated it.

On the movie, from Wikipedia:

The Love Guru is a 2008 romantic comedy film directed by Marco Schnabel in his directorial debut, written and produced by Mike Myers, and starring Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Romany Malco, Meagan Good, Verne Troyer, John Oliver, Omid Djalili, and Ben Kingsley. In addition to starring in the film, Myers wrote The Love Guru with Graham Gordy and produced it with Gary Barber

Plot: Darren Roanoke, the star player of the Toronto Maple Leafs, is suffering from stress because his wife, Prudence, has left him for Jacques “Le Coq” Grandé [played by Timberlake], who is the goaltender of rival team Los Angeles Kings, his nickname apparently a nod to being exceedingly well-endowed. Roanoke’s stress causes his hand to shake, which affects his hockey performance, so team owner Jane Bullard enlists the support of Guru Maurice Pitka [played by Myers] to help Darren with his stress so that the team can hopefully break their losing streak.

Many of the characters are given preposterous bad-pun names (like drag queens): Coach Punch Cherkov, Guru Satchabigknoba, Gagandeep Singh, Guru Tugginmypudha [played by Sir Ben Kingsley]. (Meanwhile, a number of people appear as themselves, among them Mariska Hargitay, Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, and Deepak Chopra.)

A small sample of the critical reception:

Jay Stone of the National Post gave the film one star and said the film “is shockingly crass, sloppy, repetitive and thin. … mostly the film is 88 minutes of ridiculous sight gags and obscene puns.”

Obscene puns like the one above.

Last night I got thrown out of a casino… apparently I completely misunderstood the crap table.

In Vegas they’ll bet on anything. One casino was ready to let me bet on whether I’d win or lose there.

I’m going to the casino tonight. I hope I break even. I need the money.

I had nothing to do, so just for a laugh I went to the casino. In three hours I’d laughed away my car.

What is the difference between a poker player and a dog? In about ten years the dog quits whining.

What’s the difference between prayer in church and prayer in a casino? In a casino, you really mean it!

Why didn’t the elephant like to play cards in the jungle? Because there were too many cheetahs (ok that was lame).

Liquor In The Front Poker In The Rear Joke

The wife of a doctor called the casino to get her husband paged. They refused. The house doesn’t make doctor calls.