Crash Diet

I watched about 20 minutes of “The Blues Brothers” a couple of days ago. I love watching about 20 minutes of that movie. It has some of the greatest blues artists in some of the greatest performances ever filmed.

I can ONLY watch about 20 minutes at a time because director John Landis thinks car wrecks are funny.

Seriously. There’s a scene in the movie where the two Blues are driving through an indoor shopping mall. Cut to the interior of the vehicle, Belushi reads the name of a store.

Cut to exterior shot of Blues’ car crashing through that store.

Cut to interior shot. Ackroid reads out the name of a different store.

Cut to exterior shot of Blues’ car crashing through that store.

Repeat literally ad nausium.

I really don’t get this sort of thing. I mean, I love a good car chase movie as much as the next guy—but Landis actually seems to think we’re supposed to laugh at this stuff.

John Landis seems to have trouble telling the difference between violence and comedy—see his “comedy” An American Werewolf in London. (A movie I rather liked in an ‘oh my god I can’t look at the screen’ sort of way)

But there are a lot of people who seem to think that car crashes are funny…and it honestly baffles me.

Mind you, Landis DOES have a sense of humor—the man directed Kentucky Fried Movie and Animal House for heaven’s sake. There’s just this …blip…in his psyche. (Or, possibly, in mine.)

Can you set up a car crash so that it’s funny? Sure. Laurel & Hardy had several routines about destroying automobiles that were simply priceless (more on this another time). And Chuck Jones’ Road Runner cartoons are ultimately nothing but a series of violent blackout sketches. But those are funny in context (there’ that word again). There’s nothing funny about the act itself.

Am I wrong? Is a car wreck the mechanical equivalent of a pratfall? Can you point out a car wreck that is intrinsically funny?

True Lazar Tales #1

As a young man, I went away to college at a university in upstate New York.

As was the custom then (and now, I believe) all the incoming freshmen lived on campus together, in one of several hastily built dormitories. (These dormitories had been hastily built right after World War II to accommodate the influx of returning G.I.s getting their educations under the G.I. Bill. They were still standing -- mostly -- some 30 years later).

In any case, I found myself in a building with some 200 other nervous 17- and 18-year-olds, many of us away from home for the first time in our lives.

We began sorting ourselves out into groups, roughly based on our room assignments, though not entirely. Among my cronies were Dean, a Vermont kid who had never met a Jew before and was surprised that I didn’t have horns; Rich, a red-headed guy from out West who had--as far as I could tell--been stoned since the day he found his first Bic lighter; and Don, a tough Italian kid (or the Ivy League equivalent of a tough Italian kid) from New York City.

The bunch of us were standing around the Flight Deck swapping stories and insults. (The Flight Deck was the dormwide designation for our particular corridor of the building. It was so called because on weekends it was generally five or six inches higher than the rest of the dormitory.)

These exchanges, though rough, are basically innocent. They’re a way of learning about one another, and incidentally, establishing the social pecking order for the year.

In any case, after Rich and Don had sparred for five minutes or so, discussing one another’s cleanliness and sexual proclivities, it was my turn. Don turned to me and said something about my incipient moustache and what it suggested about my masculinity.

Laughing, I turned to Don and said, “Your mother…”

I don’t know what I was going to say next. I might just have left it there, in fact. But I had no air to say anything else because I found that I had been gripped firmly by the throat, raised a good foot and a half in the air, and slammed against the cinderblock wall.

By Don. Whose bright red face as perhaps an inch from mine, wearing an expression of fury such as I had never seen on a human being before. Understand, I was almost a foot taller than Don, and outweighed him by a good 80 pounds. It made no difference to the raging maniac who had me by the throat.

“My mother,” he hissed, “is a saint!”

“I…” I gasped, as well as I could with an angry Italian kid cutting off my windpipe, “I’m sure she is…”

The grip was removed from my windpipe, I crashed to the ground gasping, and the door to Don’s room slammed shut with a building-shuddering crash!

I crawled back to my own dorm room, rubbing my throat and groaning.

MORAL: ALL mothers are saints. It is a good idea to remember that.

Happy Mothers Day to Risa, Frances and all the other Saints.

A Matter of Taste

I haven’t quite made up my mind about cross-dressing.

(Boy, that came out wrong).

I’ve yet to make up my mind yet whether cross dressing is funny.

I know it’s supposed to be funny. Men dressing as women. Women dressing as men. Big yucks.

It’s been part of the comedian’s bag of tricks for hundreds of years. Shakespeare used the gag constantly, in part because men played all the women’s parts anyway. Opera is full of “trouser roles”, young male characters played by young women.

I don’t know, though. The guys of Monty Python’s Flying Circus would regularly dress up as frumpy middle-aged housewives (known as Pepperpots, for some reason).
Though the joke got old eventually, the Monty Python cast in drag was definitely funny.

(And, I have it on good authority at a six-foot-three-inch bearded guy playing a clarinet while wearing a blue evening gown is hysterical. Of course, I had a better figure back then.)

On the other hand, women dressed as men? Not so funny. Partially because there really isn’t a lot of male clothing that isn’t also worn by women. Generally, when women DO wear men’s clothes, the results are, well, kinda sexy.

Remember that scene in Bull Durham when Jenny Robinson wears a catcher’s gear and almost nothing else? (Sorry I can’t find a picture of it, but if you’ve seen the movie, it’s pretty unforgettable.)

A friend of mine who has studied these things claims that it’s all about status. When someone of a high status takes a lower status position, we think it’s funny. When someone of a low status position takes a higher status position, it isn’t funny. Since men still hold a higher status position in Western Civilization—she argues—seeing them dress as women is funny. When women dress as men, they’re taking a higher status position, and that just isn’t as funny.

My friend could be right.

On the other hand, Terry Jones dressed as a man or as a woman is pretty funny looking. Even when he’s wearing nothing at all.




On the other hand, Jenny Robinson is pretty good looking dressed as a woman or a man. Even, one would imagine, when she’s wearing nothing at all. (Although once again, sadly, photographic evidence would appear to be lacking).

What do you think? Is drag inherently funny? Or, like a lot of things, is it all in the context?

Yo La Tengo!

There’s no delicate way to put this: The New York Mets suck. They SUCK! They Suuuuuuuck!!!

I mean, stick a hose in them and you can use them to clean your carpet.

I don’t care if they DID win eight games in a row recently, they still suck. The New York Mets could win the World Series for the next three years running, and you would STILL have to say that, overall, they sucked.

Obviously, I am a long-time Mets fan.

While it’s true that the New York Mets—what was that word again? Oh yeah, SUCK-it’s also true that they are one of the funniest baseball teams that has ever existed.

Why is this? Watching someone try earnestly and fail is painful, even tragic. But at some point, it stops being painful and starts being funny. Eventually it becomes hysterical. If we stop and think about it, we probably feel bad about it. (We still laugh, but we feel bad about it.)

My usual position is that other people's pain isn't funny. But then there are Mets stories like this one:

Back in 1962, during the Mets first (and possibly most futile) season, ownership had stocked up on two kinds of players: Has-beens and never-weres. The 1962 Mets were a perfectly awful team. You could not have set out deliberately to create a team so misbegotten.

Playing center field for the Mets was an old-timer, Richie Ashburn—close to the end of his career, but still with some baseball skills. Richie Ashburn had a problem—Elio Chacon, the Mets shortstop.

You see, every time a batter would pop up a ball to short center field, Richie Ashburn would run for the ball. He then did exactly what he’d been taught to do since childhood: He shouted “I Got It! I Got It!” indicating that he could and would catch the ball.

Inevitably, right after Ashburn yelled “I got it!” he would be crashed into by Mets shortstop Chacon, who was running for the ball himself. The ball would land untouched in the grass, and the batter would usually end up on second base.

Ashburn was beside himself. What the hell was wrong with Chacon, anyway? Was he deaf?

No, Chacon wasn’t deaf. He was simply from Venezuela and had never learned to speak much English.

Ashburn sought out a bilingual teammate who agreed to act as intermediary. After talking it over with Chacon, the teammate told Ashburn that the Spanish phrase for “I got it” was “Yo La Tengo!” If Ashburn shouted that, the teammate said, Chacon would happily give way.

Dubious, Ashburn approached Chacon. “Yo La Tengo?” he asked.

“Si, si,” nodded Chacon, who had been feeling a bit frustrated himself. “Yo La Tengo!”

It was only a few days later that another pop fly was floated out to center field. Ashburn, trotting for the ball, yelled out. “Yo La Tengo! Yo La Tengo!” Chacon, who had been headed for the ball, pulled up short and gestured for Ashburn to make the catch.

Ashburn relaxed and settled under the ball. Only to be crashed into by Mets left fielder Frank Thomas, who didn’t speak Spanish.

The ball landed for a double.

Ashburn did the only sensible thing—he quit baseball at the end of the year.

(By the way, the alternative rock band “Yo La Tengo!” got their name from the incident. I don’t know why they picked the name, but their music is pretty cool.)

The Rule of Three

The president of Coors, the President of Anheuser Busch and the president of Guinness meet each other at a brewer’s convention. They fall into a conversation, and, finding one another congenial company, decide to continue the conversation at a nearby bar.

“What will it be, gents?” asks the bartender.

“I’ll have a Coors,” says the president of Coors.

“I’ll have a Budweisser,” says the president of Anheuser-Busch.

“I’ll have a Coke,” says the president of Guinness.

His two friends look at him in surprise. “A Coke?” they demand. “Why did you order a Coke?”

“Well,” the president of Guinness replies. “I figured since you boys weren’t drinking beer, I wouldn’t either!”

Notice, that was three guys walking into a bar. Not two, not four. When it comes to jokes, three is the magic number. (Cue music from Schoolhouse Rock).

A lot of humor is based on surprise. When something doesn’t happen the way we expect it--that stepping-on a-stair-that-isn’t-there feeling--one typical result is to laugh.

“Knock knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Banana”
“Banana who?”
“Banana banana”

“Knock knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Banana”
“Banana who?”
“Banana banana”

“Knock knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Orange”
“Orange who?”
“Orange you glad I didn‘t say banana?”

This “rule of three” is important--not just to jokes, but to storytelling in general. Writing an essay or a magazine article, I frequently try to come up with three examples--anything less may not support my contention. Anything more is padding.

But it’s in humor that the Rule of Three is most important….and it’s so obvious it’s almost instinctive. The first instance sets up the situation. The second instance establishes the pattern. The third instance breaks the pattern. The result is surprise, and laughter.

I don’t think that you can go so far as to say that surprise is the essence of all humor, but certainly a big part of what we think is funny is the shock of broken expectations.

A Rabbi, a priest and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “What is this, some kind of a joke?”

I told you breaking patterns is funny.

Grammar? I Hardly Touched 'Er!

Okay, here’s where I hear the Awkward Silence a lot: I think grammar jokes are funny.

Seriously. Jokes about proper English usage make me laugh out loud. You can blame my late mother, a woman who had both a wicked sense of humor and a terrible passion for correct usage. (She was a copy editor at Time Magazine, for God’s sake, back when a single published typo meant the head of the copy department had to commit hari kari.) Her bible was The Elements of Style.

Anyway, due to nature or nurture, I love grammar jokes. Almost nobody else thinks they’re funny. In fact, most people don’t get the jokes at all: after you’ve told them, you usually have to explain them. Then people get them. They still don’t LAUGH, but at least they get them.

Here are three examples:

1) Back in the 1980s, my mom was working as a managing editor for a high-tech magazine and was fighting a losing battle over usage. Specifically, the fact that one piece of data is “datum”, and that one or more pieces of “datum” were “data”.

Ultimately, she had a large sign typeset and set above her desk. The sign read:

“Data are a word that are plural!”

Well, SHE thought it was funny.

2) Bob and Joe are new emigrants to America from the non-English speaking country of your choice. The two of them diligently study English, and are constantly testing one another and correcting grammar and pronunciation.

One day, Bob comes home from work to find his wife undressed, in bed and looking a little—um, excited, let’s say. Suspicious, Bob stalks to the bedroom closet and flings the door open. There he finds, much to his shock, his friend Joe, completely naked.

“Joe,” Bob exclaims, “I am surprised!”

“No, no,” says Joe. “I am surprised. You are shocked!”

Joe is surprised because he didn’t expect Bob to open the door, see, while Bob is shocked because of WHO he found when he… Sigh.

3) A couple of men fall overboard from an ocean liner. The first one loses his head and screams “I will drown, no one shall save me!” and sinks like a stone.

The second man, a grammar pedant, cries out, “I shall drown, no one will save me!” and is promptly rescued.

You see, in the first person, ‘shall’ indicates a simple future, something that the speaker believes will happen. Whereas, in the first person, ‘will’ indicates the subjective, a determination obligation to do something. In the second and third person, the definitions of ‘shall’ and ‘will’ are reversed, with ‘shall’ indicating the subjunctive and ‘will’ the simple future.

Thus, the first man indicates that he is DETERMINED to drown, and that no one will be allowed to rescue him.

By contrast, the second man utters his belief that he will drown, and that no one will be able to rescue him. But this doesn’t mean he will not allow himself to be rescued, and so he is. Hahah!

Get it? Isn’t that a knee-slapper? Doesn’t that make you want to…

Ahhh…that Awkward Silence.

Anybody else got a grammar joke they’d like to share?

Did You Hear the One About...?

Welcome to the first posting on: “The Awkward Silence” or “Well, I thought it was funny.” It’s a blog dedicated to funny stuff. At least, as the title suggests, stuff that I think is funny.

Not everybody agrees.

Long ago, I realized that my sense of humor is a bit…skewed, at least by the usual standards. I think puns are funny, for example. I like jokes and shaggy dog stories. On the other hand, I usually don’t care for slapstick, and most stand-up comics leave me cold (Dane Cook should spend his days selling ice cream from a Good Humor truck).

Obviously, this leaves me a bit out of the mainstream—although I am very popular with Good Humor men.

Having a slightly off-center sense of humor is kind of unfortunate if, like me, you’ve spent part of the last 30 years writing humor columns and funny plays, performing as an comic actor and improv comic, and otherwise trying to tickle the public’s funny bone.

I’ve spent a lot of time waiting for the laugh.

Anyway, the idea of “The Awkward Silence” is to create a kind of forum of funny: exactly what is funny? Why is it funny? And why does Paul Murphy get more laughs telling exactly the same joke than I do?

Anyway, something to keep in mind as you read—and hopefully respond—to this blog. Please respect other people’s opinions. Humor is entirely subjective, after all. Even if—no especially—if you disagree, try to do so without attacking the individual. After all, there’s only one opinion that really matters.

Mine.

(See, that was a joke. Damned crickets.)

In closing, I’d like to explain this blog’s title.

Years back, I was directing a holiday performance of “The Shop Around the Corner” at a local theater. I had a cast of around 14 men, women and kids sitting on the stage while I spoke to them.

I told a joke. And I sat back, expectantly.

I don’t remember what the joke was—that’s not the point. I was the director. The director of a play is exactly like the boss in any office—if he tells a joke, you laugh, whether you think it’s funny or not. That’s one of the unspoken rules of capitalism.

But after I told this joke, I got nothing. Nada. Zip. Blank looks and the slight shuffling of papers.

You could almost hear the lonely howling of wolves in the distance.

After a subjective ten years, my 12 year old daughter rose to my defense. My daughter was one of a chorus of urchins that was to sing Christmas carols as various emotionally significant moments of the play. Into the middle of the yawning void, she called out the following:

“The awkward silence means it’s a joke.”