Do you realize your jokes suck?

    Though Frog reminds you of your comedic shortcomings, he also offers a three-dollar cure.

    Twenty-two years ago, Frog—or David Henry Miller, by birth—abandoned his job as an herbal flea collar salesman at Eugene’s Saturday Market to self-publish books of original and recycled jokes.

    He has since become a Eugene fixture, five days a week, rain or shine, pitching his joke books to anyone and everyone passing his haunt on the 13th Street block between Kincaid and Alder. Now Frog has 71 joke books, including his newest release, “Frog goes to Guantanamo.”

    Frog’s face is engulfed by his spectacles, knit cap, and abundant white beard. Emerging from the nebula is his weathered nose and wide, selling grin. The resulting appearance is a sort of permanent performer’s mask; Frog’s face is recognizable and trademark.

    The vaudeville street performer and the door-to-door salesman collide in Frog’s performance personality. The product—his typewritten, staple-bound, hand-illustrated joke book—has become secondary to his honed comedy routine. Like a persistent door-to-door knife salesman, Frog doesn’t wait for customers behind a storefront; he enters their sphere and demonstrates that his product—humor—is cutting.

    Frog’s rough, nasal voice, which earned him his popular nickname while he was still a high school student in Cincinnati, Ohio, challenges each passerby with a selection from a grab bag of rhetorical questions.

“Is school making you sh*t your pants?”

 “Do you realize that my afternoon beer depends on you buying my joke books?”

“Have you seen the funniest joke books the world has ever known?”

     Frog deals with the salesman’s plague of rejection; the vast majority of people who pass by play deaf or laugh nervously. But Frog is persistent, and once he discovers someone mildly curious, he knows how to hold the attention.

    “Step into my office,” Frog says to two timid men not yet familiar with “the funniest joke books the world has ever known.”  They are young and, since they have yet come across Frog, they are likely from Somewhere Else. They stop for the novelty of the situation. This will, after all, make a good story later about Eugene’s colorful street culture. Frog gestures toward the concrete slab immediately in front of his feet. He gives them a joke to read and they laugh. He proceeds to list off the titles of all 46 adult joke books (25 of the 71 are for children). The men seem genuinely intrigued, especially the younger of the two who sees “the Revolutionary Frog” and says to his friend, “Joey’s birthday is coming up.”

    Frog employs a final tactic to close the sale. He stops a seemingly random passerby and asks, “In your honest opinion, who writes the funniest joke books in the world?” A smile spreads across the woman’s face. “Frog does!” she says, and continues on her way. Frog sells two joke books to the young out-of-towners.

Or, more accurately, Frog advertises two joke books. The real sale happens a few yards away in Frog’s city-sanctioned newspaper box. After Frog hooks a buyer, the buyer must put money into a lock box and pull out the selected joke book from the bin below.

    This creative compliance with a city vendor ordinance is a final solution to an arduous legal battle that took Frog as far as the Oregon Court of Appeals. In 1990, Eugene police officers repeatedly fined Frog for violating a city ordinance that restricted vendors from selling anything other than flowers, beverages, food, or balloons on Eugene city sidewalks.

    With the help of a local attorney, Frog took the City of Eugene to court for violating his freedom of expression. Though the Oregon Court of Appeals finally ruled in Frog’s favor in April of 1993, the revised city ordinance simply limited all vending on 13th. Frog found a loophole.

Frog and his attorney figured that he had a right to vend his literature as a newspaper.

    “I notified the city prosecutor of my plans ahead of time and said, ‘Hey, tell me now if you are going to press charges so that I have time to prepare my case.’ But he let it go.”

    Frog’s unassuming appearance perhaps fools unsuspecting law-enforcement officials and consumers alike. His tactics in the court and on the street are far more sophisticated than his once-white loafers, tattooed legs, perennial shorts, and raunchy t-shirts would suggest.

    “Frog, man, where do you get your t-shirts?” says a passerby in response to a rather crude depiction of “naughty gingerbread” on Frog’s ragged, white tee.

Also contributing to Frog’s derelict appearance is his primary mode of transportation: a bicycle with a large trailer attached. The trailer, which appears to be a large cooler with wheels, means that Frog can carry his materials to work with him every day. “I have a driver’s license, but I choose to bike,” clarifies Frog. “I hate to drive. I’ll do it if I’m on a road trip with someone, but only if they ask.”

    Frog’s ragged appearance is not so much poverty as defiant negligence. He still carries the youthful pride that brought him west in the late 1970s.

    Frog relinquishes little information about his youth, except to assert that it was reasonably “normal.” He studied journalism for two years at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and worked for “a socialist newspaper and a socialist magazine.”

    In the American tradition of discontent, middle-class twenty-somethings, Frog eventually took to the road and saw the country. He moved out to Oregon in 1979 after visiting friends in Eugene.

    “It didn’t take me long to figure out why they had moved out here,” said Frog. Frog fit right into the culture of Eugene, which nurtures the creative and unconventionally employed.

    Frog did odd jobs and sold herbal flea collars at the Eugene Saturday Market until friends encouraged him to compile his extensive mental library of jokes. Another vendor told Frog, “You have so many jokes, you could write books!” So he did.

    Despite Frog’s legal struggles, he seems grateful for the Eugene/Springfield community, which offers “good live music, pretty-good micro-brew, and $1.50 movies in Springfield.” Frog enjoys what he refers to as “normal” Eugene activities. He camps, rides his bike, “hangs out at home,” and runs a political radio show on KWVA called “Left Out,” which airs at 7 p.m. on Wednesdays. The radio show encourages free expression and political discussion; Frog stressed that listeners should call in if they have ideas to share.

    After Frog’s customers purchase a book from his newspaper box, he gives them privileged access to squeeze an assortment of rubber chickens: the screeching chicken, the screaming chicken, Henrietta the especially feminine chicken, the chicken that lays an egg, and the silent chicken (“It doesn’t do shi*t,” says Frog, every time). The chicken-squeezing experience is part of Frog’s standardized product—a product perfected over two decades for consumer satisfaction.

    Frog’s customers aren’t just buying jokes. After all, Frog’s joke books are filled with tasteless humor not fit for the standard dinner party. Despite word on the street, it is possible that Frog’s joke books aren’t “the funniest joke books the world has ever known.”

    More likely Frog’s customers are paying for a public performance, for free expression, and for a community relic not soon to be forgotten. What is Frog’s favorite thing about Eugene? “Being able to stand here and do what I do,” says Frog.