I don’t think I’m funny anymore. Nothing is funny anymore. It’s all aggression, dressed up as humor. Maybe it always was. The feeling in the pit of my soul was resentment. Sarcasm was how I dealt with it. It’s of no use to me now. Easy enough to say that irony was destroyed by the World Wide Web, but there is a kernel of truth there. The atomization of culture by the surplus of information and viewpoints overwhelming “truth” or common culture, or what they used to call the mainstream, is not entirely bad. It comes under the heading of unexpected outcomes. Even though it has diffused culture to the point that everything is spread thin, culture reaches places it has never been before. It seems like nothing is happening from your point of view, but there is always something happening. Sometimes what is happening will escape mass culture. But it will still exist. Someone will hear it. Someone will internalize the message.
So, some snarky know it all thinks it’s dumb, and makes a joke about it. It’s never about the message in this case, it’s all about the messenger. What is your point? You have the option of ignoring it, but something about it penetrates your conciousnous. You can’t let it go. So, you make a joke to cover up your uncomfortableness. It’s about you, not the essence of what is being presented. If they laugh at you, you win.
How many Rockabilly guys does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but it takes three guys to bring in the doghouse bass.
I realize now that there is a difference between having a sense of humor, and being a comedian. When I was in high school on the speech team, I did extemporaneus speaking, and after dinner speaking. I was remarkably undisciplined. I didn’t realize that you had to write a speech, hone it, time it, practice it, and do it the same way every time. I improvised a speech around a loose framework every time. For my senior year, I wrote something, practiced it to death, and underperformed in the extreme. Because I was bored with it. Many years later I was hanging around Chico California, and my friend Trish, a fellow band person, was working as a dj at a comedy club. She told me that comedians had sets, just like bands, which they set up, paced, and followed their sets, night after night. It seemed like comedians made it up on the spot. Turns out, that was the trick. Practice it until it seemed natural, and the variations and improvisations came from conditions in place. Seemed oppressive to me at the time, however, if I had ever gotten out on the road for any length of time I’m sure I would have seen the utility of that approach.
I was an ugly child. I got lost on the beach. I asked a cop if he could find my parents. He said, 'I don't know. There's lots of places for them to hide'.-Rodney Dangerfield
I love jokes, I just can’t tell them. I can never remember punch lines. I love nonsense and shaggy dog stories that spool out in surprising ways. You ask a lot of your audience. I loved Smothers Brothers, Bob Newhart, and Bill Cosby records that I purloined from my oldest brother Tom. My other brother Jim had a sense of the absurd and an oppositional humor that was a huge influence on me. My sister Cathy had a wry sense of humor that was very self deprecating. I loved Mad Magazine, then National Lampoon, and when I was about 12 I saw the Marx Brothers for the first time. I think it was providence. In 1973 there was a four month WGA writers strike, and television stations scrambled to find programming. So, suddenly, there were a bunch of old movies and BBC programs (Monty Python) on our TV’s. I didn’t mind the old stuff. We didn’t even get a color tv until 1976, so I wasn’t pining for what I didn’t have. I would sit in front of the tv with a microphone recording dialogue from the truncated versions of the great Paramount films the Brothers made 3 decades before I was born. I wonder what was going through my families minds witnessing this? I became obsessed with big band music around this time, so it must have been surreal for them to hear all this old music and seeing all this antique comedy.
Things changed in 1976 when I met the Rochester Brothers, Kent and Mark. They were hooked into more modern culture. Very quickly I became familiar with SNL, and Steve Martin. Python were a bridge. Surreal and wordy and physical all at the same time. But Martin was huge for me. There were no punchlines, not really, and I totally got the randomness and surrealistic rhythm to the routines. My antennas were up. Saturday Night Live, to Second City TV. Martin to Andy Kaufman to Pee Wee Herman. Backwards to Pryor and Carlin. I was still into Hee Haw though.
Lady Mountback:Come in.
Enter Reg, cap in hand.
Reg:Trouble at mill.
Lady Mountback :Oh no. What sort of trouble?
Reg: One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Lady Mountback:Pardon?
Reg:One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Lady Mountback: I don't understand what you're saying.
Reg (slightly irritatedly and with exaggeratedly clear accent) :One of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treddle.
Lady Mountback:Well what on earth does that mean?
Reg: I don't know. Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
Jarring chord. The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang is just Cardinal Fang.
Ximinez: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no... amongst our weapons.... amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again. (exit and exeunt)
I’m a cosmopolitan hillbilly, who learned about culture from a plastic box and newspaper books and magazines, who sucked in the information, stored it up without context or real understanding of what was being said. But it is the basis of how I understand the world. Somewhat unrealistically I might add. So, I couldn’t relate very well. I became more adept at being on stage, being looked at, but I could never get to the point. I couldn’t write a punchline. Why the long face? Wait, a horse walks into a bar….goddamnit, I messed that up.
I’ve liked telling stories, and singing songs, and making people laugh, but I’ve often only succeeded in making myself laugh. Which is some accomplishment. But sarcasm, and irony are my baseline. Everything flows from there, the Scotch Irish disdain for putting on airs, ridiculing the self important, saying what I don’t mean, often with a straight face. It leaves me open to misinterpretation, and I’ve tried to be careful. But often I am perceived as an awful person, saying awful things. That is part of the problem, and a part of my life I want to put away. I have no deep need to be understood, but I want what I say to be useful to those I choose to say it too. I will never again tell someone what to do. I am perfectly fine with people being wrong. It is not my responsibility to save the world. I do need to save myself.
Eh…. Only joking.
Wagstaff: Where would this college be without football? Have we got a stadium?
Professor One: Yes.
Wagstaff: Have we got a college?
Professor One: Yes.
Wagstaff: Well, we can't support both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
Both professors: But professor! Where will the students sleep?
Wagstaff: Where they always sleep. In the classroom.
Cosmopolitan Hillbilly.
New song? EL Dope's actual genre? Title of your auto/biography?
For what it's worth...I've always jived with your good humor, man.