Quite unpleasant I guess, this eternal quest for humor in the vile places of business, worship and governance. I ain’t talking about the stand-up comedians amongst you, who unbeknownst to themselves and to the misfortune of others have yet not discovered the Monday happy-hour open-mike at the local comedy club. You know the type folks, they stand behind the counter cracking a genuinely funny one as you push your much harried and hassled shopping cart through the cashier before she has a heart attack and keels over the scanning machine, dead as a 90s grunge band in an old-age home and suddenly you are laughing and you feel better. I am not talking about them. I am talking about the other type, the comedy-wannabes who instead of coming with an original or two, repeat what they heard at 2 AM on comedy central about the guy who walked into the bar. He doesn’t even have the decency to copy good material, say, from the 8 PM show; no, our hero waits for the loser-nobody from Alabama who comes on right between hair infomercial and the get-debt-free show at 3 and copies one or two premature comedic ejaculation samples with no bang or beginning. Then he sidles up to you at the blockbuster counter or worse, at work near the coffee machine to crack it when you least expect it.
And the joke hits you on the face like eight thousand volts. Like a Louisville slugger when you fail to show up at the budda-bing with payments to your local loan shark. Foggadaboutit man! Who don’t know what to do! Whatcha call it, motherfucker? Yeah I remember, pukey. So you try to swallow the vomit back in without making a face and force a smile. Good one, Harry, thought it up all by yourself? Now if you will excuse me, I gotta run and shove a fat finger through my eyes. Sheesh!
So here is my advice to the would-be comedians amongst you. Find your own fucking material. If not, steal it from quality books. Trying to pretend to be George Carlin ain’t gonna work because I got news for you chumpy, you ain’t him. There is something you gotta know about George. He might be a fucking alcoholic sitting out on LSD, but he knows how to fucking deliver a line. And when he does, it is funny. After Lenny Bruce, I can’t think of another one who genuinely turned angst and misery into such a moneymaking machine of humor. I last saw him in Las Vegas and had front row seats. But I am not stupid enough to try to pass off a Carlin as my own because try as I might, I don’t have the right DNA or the right face for that kinda thing.
Know your limitations Chumpy. Funny ain’t for you. Miserable may be. Sleazy, skanky, shifty, oily, sure. I can even think of disgusting. On a good day. Don’t know, I gotta ask the secretaries about that. I am sure they have a better take on this. And just because they are laughing doesn’t mean you are funny, they just know which way their bread is buttered.
Have you ever seen doctor’s offices? If you have ever been on a field-ride (this is when Pharma executive types who would ride around in the car with a sales rep once or twice a year to “know” what it is like in the “field” and to show solidarity with the schmuck that you throw into the trenches of bile and barracudas to sell your hard-on pill or baldness potion, but I digress) you know the drill. The poor sales guy schmuck, lets call him Joe shall we (or Jason, for they are all Joes and Jasons. And if they are a Minde, and yes, it is spelt that way, or Desiree then we have other problems, namely excess cleavage and thigh-age if you know what I mean.), walks in with a tray of Sandwich to the office of Dr. Tim (and this is the other little joke, all the office girls call him Dr. firstname) and is immediately ushered into the backroom. Dr. Tim is nowhere to be seen, but the assistants and nurses walk in for a free tuna-melt sandwich and a coke. If Jason is cute (and he better be, he gotta push all that hair-loss potion) and has a sense of humor, then they flirt and discreetly flash their collective cleavage at him while taking their free meal. Then Dr. Tim walks in, white coat and all, oily hair slicked back and with that yougottarespectme look, and cracks a funny one. Ho ho ho! It is always the same j-o-k-e. Get a new joke book Dr. Tim! And the girls laugh so loud you’d think you are inside a coliseum and the emperor is about to sanction the death of a poor unarmed foreigner. Anyway, Dr. Tim is satisfied and validated that he is gonna try the same joke another hundred times. Of course, he never realizes that the joke is stale and not-funny and would fall flat like a cement block on a car in the Big Dig if he were to try in on real people as opposed to his employees.
See what I mean?
This is why I don’t try funny. Except when making speeches. You have to open with a funny line when your topic is actuarial science or poly-rhythmic network algorithms (Dude, I have no idea what the fuck that is either. I just made it up) even though the nerd-patrol who’d show up to listen to such things have long given up such things as humor a long time ago, unless it is about spreadsheets with funny cells or about computers with funny circuitry or something. Made that one up too. Man I am on a roll! (Can you tell, I am morphing into the man I warned you about)?
So in a nutshell, keep your day jobs. Learn clichés. And oh yeah, when in Europe, write in that stilted English. Here is Amrika, we expect better Chumps. Put out or shut up.
