Comedy Blindspots
I was on a humor writing panel this past weekend at the Arisia science fiction convention in Boston. It was great fun and I had a blast sharing some of my favorite books, movies, TV shows, and comics, as well as getting into the theory behind “bringing the funny.” I also got great recommendations of funny things that I will be looking into. Some were new to me, but others made me wonder, “Why haven’t I read/watched/listened to that before?” And often, I had no good answer.
It got me thinking about comedy blindspots–funny stuff we would love if only we dared to give them a chance.
For example, at the conference I got an enthusiastic recommendation for the Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb. Since I have a three-year-old in the house, I’m already more familiar that I’d like to be with the Disney Channel lineup. I know the names of the Neverland Pirates, how many steps Agent Oso needs to take, what hand-motions make the Little Einsteins’ rocket go faster, and what magic words will summon Mickey Mouse’s creepy flying butler. In the process of watching these other shows, I’ve been exposed to a zillion commercials for Phineas and Ferb which, perhaps, failed to capture the quality and content of the show. If my Arisia sources are to be believed, Phineas and Ferb is one of the best-written and funniest shows of all time, but I never gave it a chance because the commercials made it look lame, derivative, and badly animated.
We shall see.
Are there any funny books, shows, or movies that you avoided for a long time because you didn’t realize how good they really were? Leave a comment and let me know!
Resolutions
I gave up making resolutions during high school, back when I never could keep my resolutions to “be popular/prettier/stylish/have better skin/figure out what in the world cuticles are and why I’m supposed to push them back.” (I still don’t know the answer to that last part, but magazines always try to sell me odd-looking tools for this purpose.)
But then in 2005, I decided to make a resolution again and since then I’ve made the same one: To laugh more.
Simple, concise, and it reminds me to not stress out or take things too seriously. Because if I don’t remind myself of this, I COMPLETELY stress out and the husband says I turn into Medusa. And Medusa is more scary than funny.
So I try to surround myself by things that make me laugh. This year I’ve started watching the new ABC Family show “Jane by Design,” which is cute and funny so far. I’m checking out the books on our inaugural Funny List for some laugh out loud reads. And maybe when temperatures warm up and I start kayaking again, I’ll take another unplanned tumble into the pond while trying to get out of my kayak. It certainly had me laughing for days last year when I did it.
What are you doing to laugh more this year?
To help me laugh more, why not go over and nominate some other funny books you know of for our Funny List?
The Gifting of the Hand
A few weeks ago, I read an article in the New York Daily News about one of my favorite gags, the longstanding joke. In 1950, Texan Acker Hanks mailed a card to his neighbor, Lee Kelley. As the two men constantly played jokes on each other, the very next year Kelley thought it’d be funny to mail the card right back to Hanks. Hanks, who found the joke hilarious, mailed the card back the following year. The tradition continued for the next sixty years, though Kelley moved across the country. When Kelley died, his widow continued the tradition. Each year, the pair included letters with the card, updating each other on their lives. Now that Kelley’s widow is in a nursing home and unable to continue the tradition, Hanks says he plans to frame the card, as it’s come to mean so much to him.
My husband’s family also has a longstanding gag that also takes place at the holidays. Several years back, when my husband’s sister was a teenager, my husband’s brother gave her a ceramic hand designed to be placed on a nightstand to hold the owner’s rings overnight.
When my sister-in-law opened the gift, she frowned at it for a few seconds before cracking up and asking, “What in the world is this thing?” It was meant as a sincere gift, but the fact she thought it was a joke started a longstanding tradition we fondly refer to in my house as The Gifting of the Hand.
The next year, my sister-in-law regifted the ceramic hand to another family member. At the same time, my husband gifted my brother-in-law with a candle formed in the shape of a hand to remind him of his creepy ceramic hand gift the previous year. In the years since, the ceramic hand continues to make sporadic appearances under the tree. The candle hand was partially burned, then regifted. A hand with a guide to palm reading appeared under the tree one year, as did a hand-shaped mug (trust me when I say that it was a thing of horror.) Everyone in the family now keeps their eyes open throughout the year for particularly odd hand-shaped items to wrap and place under the tree. With each gift presented at the holidays, we stare at the wrapping paper and wonder: Real gift or a Gifting of the Hand?
What makes longstanding gags so funny is that you know they’re going to happen, but you don’t know exactly when, or in what form, so there’s great joy in the anticipation. From year to year, we never know if a hand will appear under the Christmas tree or quite how it’ll look. I’m sure Hanks and Kelley each raced to the mailbox when it was their year to receive the card, wondering if that day would herald its arrival. Longstanding gags can bond people in ways other jokes don’t, which is what I believe makes them special.
Do you have any longstanding gags with your family and/or friends? What makes them particularly meaningful or funny for you? Give the rest of us some ideas!
Teen Traumas
One of the few surviving photos of me at school where I don't look like a complete numpty.
Why is it that I can forget what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can’t forget some of the traumas from my teen years?
(Actually I do remember, because it was turkey curry and I LOVE that but it ruins a perfectly good introduction.)
It’s fair to say that my the most hideous traumas from my our teen years involve my our desperate need to fit in.
I lived in regional Victoria, in Australia. Our nearest big town was Ballarat – which is where all the high schools were located. From memory, there was only one store in Ballarat that sold uniforms. I could be making this up.
But I’m not making this bit up: The first day of school, I didn’t know about the “sock rule”. My socks were pulled up above my knees. Everyone else’s were pushed way down to their ankles. It marked me from day one as a loony.
It got worse. A had a growth spurt in that first year and the store bought uniform didn’t fit so well. In an austerity move, my mother shoved my reputation through her brand new sewing machine and MADE A UNIFORM for me.
You cannot imagine how bad it was. Shapeless. Wonky hemmed. Pockets? Obviously I was “just trying to make life hard” for dear Mum if I wanted something as frivolous as pockets.
The true horror of the pocket-less, shapeless, wonky hemmed dress revealed itself at school the next day when one of my friends looked me up and down and said, ‘Did your mum make that?’
‘Yes’
‘She’s put the stripes the wrong way!’
Thinking back on it now, this might be when my ‘mother issues’ grew wings.
Things got worse. Mummy Dearest of the sewing machine she loved not wisely but too well, added a hem to my store-bought dress. A hem that added a further ten centimetres to the dress but did not match the correctly-striped dress’s alignment.
“There’s nothing wrong with being different,” Mum would respond every time I complained.
Excuse me while I go rock in a corner for a moment.
. . .
Back now. I’m OK.
Those real life memories come flooding back in blue-ray clarity every time I write. As horrible as they were at the time, I’m kind of glad for them now. I use those memories and emotions all the time in my books. Not play-for-play, but something like similar and non-litigious.
The cringing. The sense of being out of control. The desperate need to fit in. Oh it’s horrible, isn’t it?
And a little bit hilarious.
Are you brave enough to share your traumatic teen moments for laughs? Go on, it’s been years, you’re over it now . . .
My Desperate Limitations in Writing Funny
Just a few of my debilitating shortcomings as a comedy writer…
1. Funny accents. I love funny accents. Funny accents are funny. Funny accents can make even the worlds most unfunny sentences sound funny. One of my favourite past times is to see how long I can babble drivel at my wife in a funny accent before she finally breaks, and her stern scowl becomes an annoyed, mildly amused smirk (swiftly followed by a shake of the head, and a “You’re an idiot”). But when it comes to writing the irrefutable hilarity that is funny accents, I am faced with this problem – I hate accents written in books. HATE them! Not only are they annoying to read, but I really feel they insult the reader’s intelligence – you already told me the character’s French, I can fill in the blanks and assume that everything he says is in a French accent. I don’t want to read dialogue like – “Elleurghh! Yerr feece eez serrgh fanny lerking”!
Therefore, I am sorry to say that the comedy mediocrity that is my funny accents will have to remain a special treat solely for my wife. Much to her delight.
2. Slapstick. Few things have me giggling like Laurel & Hardy falling down ladders, accidentally whacking each other’s brains out with planks of wood, slipping on banana skins, nailing their hands to their knees… But if this can work in writing, I’m pretty sure it’s not written by me. Does anyone know of any good examples of written slapstick? (A serious, non-rhetorical, genuinely interested question).
3. Music. Not only is it difficult to get the music into the reader’s head (especially if they’ve never heard the song you’re writing about), but there are some songs that are almost impossible to put into words…
WARNING: Not quite so funny if you recently lost a parent figure who you desperately needed to purchase yuletide footwear for…
And whilst we’re on the subject of festive music that’s so bad it’s comedy genius, I couldn’t rightly leave this out…
Cracker jokes
(Image: ChristmasStockImages)
In many countries, one of this season’s traditions is to begin certain festive meals at school, work and home by snapping crackers.
We wield decorated cardboard tubes, choose a worthy opponent and play a fierce game of tug-of-war which ends in a mild explosion. This leaves in its wake a mess of gift wrap, a flimsy paper hat, an interestingly-shaped piece of plastic (or a luxury gift item, depending on cracker quality) and… a joke.
But not just any joke.
A CRACKER JOKE!
(Image: Moirabot)
(Image: Angies)
Behold, the wit of age-old puns, toned to appeal to an audience of all ages, and honed to perfection (or lack thereof) in order to elicit the desired cracker-joke response: the much-heralded GROAN.
(Image: Falling Fifth)
I have only one set of cracker-joke data so far this year, but hopefully I can add to this in the coming days. Here are a few of my recent examples:
Q: What did the guest sing at the snowman’s party?
A: Freeze a jolly good fellow.
Q: How did the human cannonball lose his job?
A: He got fired.
Q: Where do snowmen go to dance?
A: The snowball.
Q: What do you call a penguin in the desert?
A: Lost.
The final one is my favourite because it makes no sense, but this is exactly what it said:
Q: Why did the skeleton go to the New Year’s Eve party?
A: He had no body to go with.
(What exactly is going on with this skeleton? What was his true motivation for party attendance? Because this reason…? I don’t buy it.)
If you have a favourite cracker joke, I’d love to hear it.
In the meantime, Season’s Greetings from everyone at Read It And Laugh, and I’ll leave you with a seasonal scene from XKCD.
Everyday Entertainment
One of life’s joys is finding entertainment in unexpected places. When that entertainment is humor, all the better. A couple days ago, that unexpected entertainment came in the form of a manicure.
Yep, a manicure.
I would never think of a manicure as funny or amusing. (If so, there’s likely a problem!) Face it, manicures are girlie maintenance. “Relaxing” is the most positive descriptor I can imagine for the experience.
Then, when the nail technician sent me to the polish rack to select a color, I flipped over a bottle of offbeat green to read the name: The Fresh Frog of Bel-Air. Of course, I had to have it!
The nail technician told me that OPI has come out with a line of nail polish celebrating The Muppets and–no surprise–they’re wildly popular. Other colors include Gone Gonzo, Wocka Wocka, Gettin’ Miss Piggy With It, Warm & Fozzie, Animalistic, and Rainbow Connection. As my nails were painted a bright, happy green, the teenager sitting in the chair beside me decided she needed to go Animalistic. What started out as a boring afternoon, getting my nails done in between stints at the computer, ended up being an unexpected pleasure as everyone in the salon brainstormed their own Muppet-themed polish names. (Piggy in Pink or Hi-Dee-Ho Glow anyone?)
What about you? Have you discovered humor in a nail polish bottle? Or–let’s assume at least a few guys are reading this–have you discovered humor in another unexpected place?
Poop Jokes: A Scholarly Treatise
Intending to finally bring some high-brow content to this blog[1], I set out to research the history of poop jokes. This is a ripe area for anyone interested in humor. Scatological content pervades modern literature, television, and cinema, representing up to 90% by volume. Even more, if it’s a Dreamworks animated feature.
Critics generally recognize six major subgenres of poop humor:
- “What did I just step in?”
- “Don’t know nothing ’bout changing no diapers…”
- “Why did that monkey just throw chocolate pudding in my face?”
- “Help me! I’m trapped in an outhouse!”
- “Laxative brownies, anyone?” and
- “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now!”
Three of these categories were actually pioneered by William Shakespeare. Your 10th grade English teacher may have never mentioned it, but most of Shakespeare’s plays were just elaborate excuses for him to frame his favorite off-color jokes. The man was a low comedy genius but, unfortunately, not as successful in his brownie baking ventures[2].
The problem one runs into, when tracing the historical development of poop jokes, is that the meaning of the word “poop” keeps changing over time. During World War II, for example, poop was another word for news or information. “What’s the latest poop?” the soldiers would ask, and the answer would be supplied in the form of a poop-sheet: generally two-ply, absorbent, flushable, and safe for septic tanks[3].
What they called pooping in the mid-1700s would be what we’d call farting today. It would only be slightly scandalous to say, “The groom was so nervous, he pooped in his trousers three times during the wedding ceremony.” Of course, also in those days, the word groom would have referred to a servant who brushes horse tails for a living while a wedding would have been the process of gluing two sticks together. The English language sure has changed over time!
Poop only came to mean fart because it originally referred to the noise made by a bugle. Today we’d call that sound a toot, because once poop was taken no one imagined that a brand new word would also be turned into a euphemism for passing gas. In the 1600s it would have been common for a musician to put a horn to his lips and poop out a song, while it was every kid’s dream to someday poop for the king’s entertainment. The king really loved a good poop.
Even further back, in Roman times, the poop (puppis in Latin) was the back of a seagoing vessel. This is what pirates are always referring to as the poop deck, which for some reason needs to be swabbed after every use. If you ever saw a ship travelling backward in Roman times, you could say that it was pooping poop-first through the water.
I thought the pooping ship would turn out to be the oldest poop joke in history until I came across 19th Century historical linguist Max Müller and the Poo-Poo Theory of language development that he first published in 1861[4]. Müller speculated that the very first words spoken by our prehistoric ancestors might have been in response to bodily functions, and that all additional words evolved from those first utterances.
If Müller is right, every word in every language on Earth can be traced back 200,000 years to a single caveman’s bowel movement and the real joke is on all of us.
CLASSY MOTHERFREAKIN’ FOOTNOTES:
[1] – This is the first Read It and Laugh article to include footnotes. Classy motherfreakin’ footnotes!
[2] – Outside of fiction, laxative brownies can cause serious dehydration-related medical problems, and feeding them to an unknowing victim may be considered a criminal assault. This message has been sponsored by the Association for the Responsible Use of Poop-Producing Pastry.
[3] – In 1941, the Hoberg Paper Company won the first government contract to provide the military with Form 228-PS poop sheets, which were available in Ultra-Soft and Sensitive Skin varieties. Toilet paper continued to be outsourced to the Itchy Sandpaper Company of Piscataway, New Jersey.
[3] – The Poo-Poo Theory of language development is one of several competing ideas including the Bow-Wow Theory, the Ding-Dong Theory, and the Ta-Ta Theory. Shortly after these were proposed, the Linguistic Society of Paris banned further discussion on the grounds that the debate had gotten just too silly.
You Know What’s Funny?
This is a Guest Post from the fabulous (and, apparently, crafty) Lara Zielin!
You know what’s funny?
Crochet.
Needlepoint and embroidery too.
And sometimes? Knitting.
I know, I know, your grandma used to do all that stuff, and, okay, there are some really obnoxious hipsters out there who are all into too—while they wear their ironic sunglasses and talk about obscure records.
But you gotta trust me here. This stuff makes everything more hilarious.
Take Kanye’s tweets for example. Funny on their own for sure:
I hate it when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle
But then? If you go embroider those words? Next thing you know, you’re snorting milk out your nose:
This picture is from Supervelma’s Etsy site and I highly suggest you buy something from her for the holiday season because she is clearly awesome.
Oh, but we’re not done.
How about the “that’s what she said” jokes? Super overplayed, right?
Slow down, I can’t catch my breath.
Wow, that’s really big.
That’s what she said!!!!!!!
Stupid until … you embroider it! Look how awesome “that’s what she said” is now!
This is from KatieKutThroat’s Etsy site and I also recommend buying stuff from her, too, because I’m guessing you do not want to make this woman into an enemy.
Other things that are not funny? Bowling pins. But the minute you crochet one?
Blammo!
Hilarious!
You can buy that one too (made to order!)
Princess Leia hair? Kind of weird, right?
But knitted?
Kind of awesome!
There are all kinds of things we don’t think are funny but that can be if we put the right spin on them.
Omg, I have to stop or I’m going to pee my pants.
Okay, have fun putting your own spin on this. Me, I’m off to go bedazzle the dog.
The Turducken that flew round the world
Festive feasts are designed to warm our hearts, not bring them to a shuddering stop.
Today at the supermarket I saw something so frightening and gastronomically bizarre it stilled my heart. I had to stop. And stare. And take a picture with my phone. Then tweet it.
Which several helpful people then retweeted, allowing this magnificent BEAST to fly around the world in pixel form.
A frozen Turducken (I can’t help emphasising the first syllable).
Seventy dollars worth of frozen poultry. If you started thawing it now, you might have something for Boxing Day lunch.
A Turducken, in its true sense, is a de-boned chicken, cooked inside a de-boned roast duck, cooked inside a de-boned roast turkey. The cooking of which should only be attempted by the criminally insane.
But lo, the Australian version is a blancmange of three kinds of bird breast surrounding a decorative colon. Correction, ‘exotic fruit stuffing’.
Food is a subject close to my over-worked heart, but even I can’t bring myself to eat this. (And the price? whoa!) My mum and step-dad ran a restaurant in my formative years. My Ondine books are set in a family pub and food plays a huge role. Working in a restaurant, I learned so many, many things, some of them useful. I learned to wield a knife to strip the sinew off a fillet of beef by the time I was eleven. I mastered the ways of chocolate mousse before I had a Barbie doll. With sleight of hand I cleaned the cat poos from the potplants without the customers seeing me. (They don’t burn scented candles at the tables for the ambience, y’know).
This was back in the eighties, well before the internet was something you could access on your phone. Yet even the turducken was known around the world. But we had standards (ignoring the cat poo in the pot plants) and we never put anything Elvis used to eat on our menu.
We lost the fight against good taste and the savages have won. For not only does the Turducken live on, somebody has found a way to make it even more heart-stoppingly dangerous. They went and added bacon.
Now it’s your turn. What dishes – like the turducken and the legendary but apocryphal whole stuffed camel – take things too far for your tastes? What specialties are you preparing for your festive feast that could send people to casualty? I can’t wait to be put off my lunch.
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