Category: anti-humor

The Unfunny Comedian: I Love to Eat

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“I love to eat. Who here loves to eat?” Barry Becker said to open his first show in Waukee, Iowa. “How many of you live to eat? I’m talking to the people who love to eat tonight. C’mon, how many of you love to eat? Let me hear you!”

“That line never gets much applause. Most applaud politely and softly, thinking, ‘I don’t know where you’re going with this, but yeah, I enjoy eating a thing or two.’ Very few people leave their seat with, “EATING! YEAH! Sing it sista!” Yet, we have to eat food to sustain life. It’s true. Look it up. In your research, you’ll find that not only does eating food sustain life, it provides the protein and vitamins we need to maintain energy levels and strength, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to rise up and scream at the top of our lungs to express our passion for it in an open forum like this one, because people will think we’re pigs

“Even those of you who were on a half-bun, ready to rise up and scream your heads off about the glory of eating, won’t do so on the first date. It’s just … It’s not a good look. Most prospective lovers won’t mind hearing that we enjoy eating, as long as we do so in moderation. They don’t want to hear about our plans for massive weight gain. “You like what you see here, babe, because there’s going to be a whole lot more of it soon. Once you start to love me, and make me more comfortable with myself and my physical appearance, it’s only a matter of time before this,” Barry said loosely circling his belly, “becomes a big mess of Frito’s and Skittles. That’s right, this is only the beginning. I love to eat hon’.”

“Women don’t demand skinny, most don’t anyway, but they don’t want us to be all hooting and woo hooing about it either. They do it, though. That’s right, they don’t mind talking about how much they love to eat, because they’re all thin and stuff. They’re not afraid to share it with the world. “I love to eat!” They say it all the time. Really? You love to eat? I don’t think you do. Here, here’s a rack of spare ribs. Prove it!

“Starting today! Right now! If you’re a little chubby, or planning to be, shout it with me. “I love to eat!” Shout it loud, shout it proud. I like sleeping, and sitting around and do nothing for unusually long, unhealthy stretches, but nothing compares to eating. 

“Have you ever had a friend say, “Let’s go grab something to eat, and then we can-” Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, there little doggie. For me, there is no and then. I don’t know what you plan to do after this meal, but the meal is the event for me, the night out, the fun. I’m sure your other plans will be a blast, but I’m old, and keeping these beautiful curves ain’t as easy as it used to be, so I’m not into your and then. If I’m only going to be able to eat two meals a day now, and one of them has to be a light one, and you’re going to tell me to reduce my sugar intake and cut back on all those delicious, salty snacks that are probably going to lead to a painfully slow, premature death, you better bring your A-game if you’re going to ask me to have a meal with you. Use your words. Seduce me.

“Hey, I want to live a long life as much as the next guy. I want to live so long that someone at my funeral whispers, “Good God he was old!” and I know I’m going to have to sacrifice some to get there. At some point, though, I’m going to have to sit down with a spreadsheet with one column titled, ‘How long do I really want to live?’ and the other titled ‘How much fun am I having here?’ where I add, multiply, subtract and divide the quality of my life from a desired quantity.

“Meals are the event of the day. They’re what we look forward to throughout the mind-numbing hours of inputting data into a computer. The meal is our reward for putting up with the family, home repairs, and the dog that we wanted so bad at one time. We do what we’re supposed to do. We drop the kids off at school on time, pick them up on time, and we work our tail off to crunch the numbers for Mr. Jamison to try to get one small smile out of him, and then we’re supposed to go home and eat a sensible salad with a side of broccoli? Screw that! I want meat. I want a steak. I want a big old artery clogging ribeye, with a side of mashed potatoes and a beer as my reward for putting up with all that.

“I’d love to eat all I want and be as slim and trim as you, so I don’t have to see all of my chins in photographs, but to do that they suggest that we might want to consider skipping a few meals, or at least think about mixing in a salad here and there. Have you heard this joke? This ‘Feel free to mix in a salad’ they say, or, ‘Have you ever heard of a salad?’ Yes, yes, I’ve heard of salad. Somebody, somewhere told me about how they ordered a salad instead of a steak at one of the finest steakhouses in our city, because he thought he could use a little more ruffage in his diet. He didn’t order it as an appetizer. It was his main course. He wanted to be healthy, and he thought it might help him live longer. You can eat salad with a side of broccoli all you want, to live longer, but I got news for you, brothers and sisters, you’re probably not going to outlive me as much as you think. I’m not going to live forever, I know that, we all know that, but while we’re here we should live like we’re going to die tomorrow, and a portion of that means I’m going to eat whatever the hell I want.

“If you don’t view meals as the event of the day, it’s because you’re not married. The first question the wife hits you with when the two of you arrive home from work is, “What do you want to eat tonight?” It happens so often, you should be prepared, but you’re not. “Ah, crap, I didn’t even think about it today, sorry.” It’s almost stressful. You answer, and she immediately vetoes.

“I don’t want to eat there, Henry. We ate there so recently.” Why is it so important to space out restaurants, because if we eat at the same place, in a too narrow a space in time, it will ruin the event of eating that particular meal. “Let’s try something else,” she says, “and I don’t want red meat tonight, and no more pizza, for God’s sakes Henry.” Ok, well, I don’t know where to eat then. You pick. “I picked last time.” This unlocks the dreaded ‘who picked last time?’ phase of the back-and-forth. Why is this important, because you both know your tailbone is on the line to pick the greatest place to eat every time out. She picked last time, and the two of you both know what an epic failure that was, and she can’t take the pressure of picking two times in a row, especially after that last one.

“Do you have these little, internecine battles with currents and undercurrents of tension flowing back and forth between your words? We all do, right? Eating is what we must do, and what we talk about nonstop. The what, when, where, and with whom are we going to eat tonight dominate all discussion topics. “I don’t want to eat at that place, because I hate their side items. The entrees are all right, I guess, but their sides are so ordinary and bland.”

“If you’re anything like me, you take such criticism personal. You have no stake in the success or failure of that restaurant. You don’t own any of the corporation’s stocks, but you love their food, and she knows it, and that agitates us, because she seems to reject everything, we hold dear. She doesn’t do it with that purpose in mind, and we know it, but we like that place so much that it’s kind of our place, and some weird part of us takes proprietary ownership of that place in our marriage to the point that any insults directed at it are personal. Yet, we abide her veto power, and we come up with another place. “I don’t want to eat there, either, the service sucks, and their bathrooms are dirty.” Their bathrooms are dirty? I’ve heard this more than twice. How did the cleanliness of a bathroom become a bullet point in this debate? What are you going to do in there? Exactly! You’re going to do your part to do your part to dirty it up. “Cleanliness of bathrooms, she says,” we mutter as the squabble comes to a close.

“Except, we don’t mutter that, because we know what starts out as a minor rebuttal can turn a back-and-forth discussion into a squabble, which can lead to a back and forth that can somehow escalate into an argument, and on rare occasions even a fight. A fight over where to eat? If that’s not a first world problem I don’t know what is. The larger point is that the two of you will never look back on the incremental progressions of this fight with a laugh, because it’s such a silly thing to fight over. You won’t, because you know that this is the meal, the hallowed parent’s night out meal. The parent’s night out meal is not just important, it’s an existential pivot point. It might not be that substantial, but we know that every time we have to choose that perfect place. If we want to continue to enjoy the freedom and fun that come with our Tuesday nights, and we hope to keep our marriage exciting and new, we know we have to do this night up right. We have to plan, discuss the details of that plan, and iron out any differences to one day, hopefully, look back on this night as that night. “You remember that night, right?” The ‘that night’ designation is the gold standard for all nights in romantic relationships, and those of us in such relationships fear we might never get back to them, and there’s no sense in trying to duplicate them either.

“Why don’t we just eat at home?” she says as we enter the ‘give up’ phase of our process. I do not want to eat at home Mildred, we always eat at home. “It’s healthier and cheaper.” It’s not healthier. Do people ever ask you that question? They ask me that all the time. ‘How often do you eat out?’ It doesn’t matter what we say. We could say we haven’t eaten out since the Coolidge administration, and they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s so unhealthy. You have to eat at home more.’ Screw you, I like to eat out. It’s special, and I’m paying them to treat me special. When they don’t, God help them, I’ll rage. When people say it’s healthier to eat at home, I say, “Doesn’t it depend on what you eat, no matter where you eat it? What if I chose a healthy entrée and healthy sides at a restaurant? Now, I don’t, I won’t, and we all know I won’t, but what if I did?  

“When we’re not talking about what we’re going to eat, we talk about what we ate, and where we ate it. Have you eaten there yet? No, OhmiGod, you must eat there, before they have to start feeding you through a tube, you’ve got to eat there. We argue about the best places to eat and what to eat, because we love to eat.

“You are what you eat. We’ve all heard that. I have a friend who won’t eat chicken. Chicken. I understand not eating red meat and pork, but chicken? She said she doesn’t like the texture. Every time I run into her, ‘How could you not like chicken?’ is the first and last thought in my head. I have more of a problem with her than I do vegetarians. I actually respect vegetarians and vegans. I could never be one, but you have to respect the amount of discipline it takes to go into a backyard brimming with all those gorgeous smells of red meat and pork and say, “I think I’ll take the beans, lentils and organic chia seeds on that side platter over there.” I take my hat off to the, because I could never do it.

“I respect you if you’ve managed to limit your diet to legumes, flax, and chia seeds, and you only drink water that comes from the finest springs in Demark. I respect anyone who can limit their diet in that manner, but my question is always why? Well, to be healthier, they say, and being healthier actually leads to more happiness. I would never say that consumption alone leads to happiness, but it’s definitely part of the equation. If you doubt that, try having someone try to take it away from you. I saw that firsthand. Someone very dear to me told his caretakers he would rather die than give up oral consumption. He went to the extreme of threatening a lawsuit over it, because when someone threatened to take eating away from him, he wrote: “I’d rather die! Eating is the only joy I have left in life, and I’d rather die than have that taken away from me.”

“Some of us who have no limits on our joy of oral consumption choose lentils and legumes over barbecued ribs and steak, because they think those decisions will help them outlive the rest of us. They might be right, if we take accidents and other freak occurrences out of the equation, but will they be happier? It’s a leading question, because I know they won’t. They can’t be happier. We’re talking about the quality of life here.

“Eat eggs,” they say. “Eat tons of them. They’re nature’s perfect food.” “Don’t eat eggs; they’re evil.” What? “It depends on how you prepare them.” Drink coffee, don’t drink coffee. Eat steak, don’t eat steak. Eat butter over substitutes, and everything your body recognizes in the digestion process. Everything in moderation: Eat less, play more.

“Various studies suggest that if you eat less, you will have more energy to play. It makes sense and it doesn’t. We need food to sustain energy levels, but if we eat too much, the digestion of it saps our energy. Even without the science we know what happens when we eat huge. To prove their point, the study brought on some fella who tight ropes the very lowest levels of caloric intake possible. He says he’s happier and healthier than he’s ever been. I don’t question the science, but I know what I know, and I know that if I go out to eat at a big steak house, and I choose salad with a side of broccoli, I’m not going to be happier. I might have more energy, and I might be healthier, but when I’m 105, playing pickleball and parcheesi, I’m still going to be thinking about all the steaks I passed on in life. Healthier? Yes. More energetic and playful, sure, with some asterisks. Happier? No.

***

“You see me here tonight. I could stand to lose what 10, 20 … 30 pounds?” Barry asked. He turned to an audience member with a smile. “You think I could stand to lose 40?” All right, I could stand to lose a lot of weight, but I’m not a glutton. Yet, I receive sensorial joy from eating delicious food, and I find going to a restaurant and eating their food eventful. I, like the distant kings and queens of yore, get to point at a menu selection, “I shall have your finest meal on this eve.” When the server walks out with my food, or what I think is my food, most of them understand how majestic we consider their arrival. The ones who do it up right, share a knowing smile with us, and they add a very subtle element of pageantry to their arrival. If you watch them, the best of them, they have it in their stride, both of us knowing our moment has arrived. They also have a big, glorious ‘your moment has arrived’ smile on their face.

“We all know this ‘your moment has arrived’ smile. When it’s directed at us, it’s glorious. I think, I think she just directed that smile at me. Praise the heavens, she did. When I was younger and more attractive, and young women gave me that ‘your moment has arrived’ smile, it meant something entirely different. It took me a while to deal with the fact that that’s over for me, but I’m okay with it now if it means food. I’m okay with it, because when I see that smile now, it comes after I saw all the other tables around me have had their moment arrive first, while I silently implored my server to bring my food.

That smile suggests she knows what we’ve been through. Even though were good little soldiers, silently waiting, she knows. We know she knows, because she a couple minutes ago she stopped by to say, “Don’t worry, your moment is near. I just checked with the cook. It will only be moments. I promise.” Then it happens. “Look, there she is! She has that big smile and that majestic stride. She knows. She knows, and she’s still young enough, and she hasn’t done this so often that she’s lost her enthusiasm. She loves this moment as much as we do. “Wait a second, did I see pork on her tray. I think I saw pork. No! God, no!” That smile was for someone else. If feels like, in a weird way, that’s hard to explain, that she’s cheating on us, when she gives that big, glorious ‘your moment has arrived’ smile to someone else.

“What the hell is going on here?” we say, rolling our head up to the heavens. “I’m going to say something.”

“Don’t,” the wife says.

“I’m sorry, I have to say something. This is getting ridiculous.”

Then the true moment arrives, and the server knows firsthand what this means after everything we’ve been through together. She has a majestic, almost parade-like stride to deliver our food. How many of us go to the bathroom, hoping, just hoping that our moment will arrive while we’re in there? We all do this right? We all think things up to pass the time until our moment arrives. We talk. We look around at our neighboring tables, and we whisper awful things about them just to waste time, until our moment arrives. We go to the bathroom, and some of the times it works, but most of the time it doesn’t.

“And you, you in your distant, ivory tower of health and nutrition, you want me to give all this up? To what? To live longer? You’re telling me that I shouldn’t go through the cinematic highs and lows of food arrival for nutritional and health reasons? Yeah, I’m not going to do that, and I’m not even going to cut back, even if it means I’ll only live to 65 as opposed to 105.

“The event today was this big, old beautiful ribeye. Ribeye was the word that popped into my head when I woke up today. Do you hate mornings? Everyone does. We hate waking up? Today, I sprang out of bed singing, “Good Day Sunshine, Good Day Sunshine!” and I was doing it with this smile on,” Barry said pointing to an exaggerated, toothy smile. “This is my ribeye-eating smile. Ribeye was the first thing I thought about when I woke up, and it was the only thing on my mind when people spoke to me. They all became a Simpsons’ jokes, talking ribeyes.

“It sang out to me, this ribeye, calling me like some evil siren beckoning me to my doom. I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I can tell you that she had a beautiful, alluring falsetto voice.  

“When our moment finally happened, the server slid that big old block of meat in front of me. I love everything about that moment, the majestic arrival, the “Who had the ribeye?” question, and the, “Right here!” answer I give with pride and joy of ownership in my voice, followed by the almost cinematic sound of a plate sliding across the table. These are a few of my favorite things.

“When I finally have that big, old before me, I cut the entire thing up into small, serving portions. I no longer have a big, huge ribeye before me. I have all these little ribeyes. It makes me think I have more ribeye. I don’t and I know it, but a secret part of me thinks I can fool myself into thinking I have more. I also want to enjoy chewing each bite as much as I possibly can, and cutting them into smaller portions allows each piece an ability to do that for me. If I don’t cut up my steak before taking a bite, I’ll either cut while I’m chewing, which diminishes my enjoyment somewhat, or I’ll be thinking about my next cut while I’m chewing. Either way, I’ve calculated that I’m diminishing my enjoyment of a chew by fractional percentages by cutting while I chew or thinking about my next cut. By cutting my steak into small pieces before I take my first bite, I also get all the work out of the way, so I can sit back and enjoy those cuts of beef without having to worry about any future cuts while I’m chewing, savoring, and soaking it all in.  

“We all know it’s not healthy to eat large portions, but when that server puts that plate of ribeye before me, I don’t see plate, fixings, or side items. It’s all ribeye. I’m not going to complain. I’m not going to tell that server, “I’m sorry, that’s too much ribeye.” Have you heard people do this? “Oh, that’s too much ribeye.” Excuse me, excuse me, what the hell is too much ribeye? I ask this not to boost a joke. I’m genuinely curious. How can there be too much ribeye? The premise of this guilt makes no sense to me.

“I really shouldn’t have eaten all that,” is another way they express guilt. Yeah, you didn’t say jack when they slid all that in front of you. Some people suffer gastrointestinal issues in the aftermath, and they say that that seductive, siren song I hear is the voice of a gargling monster in their head who says, ‘Go ahead, but you’re going regret it,’ followed by maniacal laughter. Food fights back some of the times. I know that, but I think most people say it just to say it, because they feel guilty eating too much.   

“So, the question I hear in your heads is, do I feel some guilt when I have a twelve-ounce ribeye sitting before me? Some? They stress that word some as if it will unlock some false wall we have before guilt. No! No, I don’t feel guilty. Not only do I not feel guilty, I think I’ve found my purpose in life when a ribeye sits before me. I feel guilty about a lot of things, I’m Catholic, but eating a big, juicy, medium rare ribeye is not one of them. We all think we were put here with a greater purpose in mind. “What’s my purpose?” they say. “I need to find my purpose.” “It’s your job in life to find your purpose.” We all say various forms of that. Well, I found mine. You can laugh and call it stupid and simple, all you want, but when it slides across the table at me, I know I’m going to love that piece of meat so much that I will make noises eating it. “And some of them won’t be what you classify as human noises,” I warn my date.

“They listen, they nod, and do you want to know what they say, it’s so cute, they say, “Hey, I like to eat too Barry, and we all make noises.” They think they know what they’re talking about when they say noises, but they ain’t ready, as evidenced by the fact that they’re all shushing me a couple bites in.

“Hey, I told you I love to eat,” I say, “and I told you that I make noises.”

“I know, but people are staring, Barry. They’re uncomfortable. We’re all … uncomfortable.”

“Then, some busybody saunters over to the table. You know what he looks like. I don’t even need to describe him. The minute he steps up to the table, with his phone out, you just know he’s going to drop some kind of busybody crap on you, talking about how he and his family are trying to enjoy a meal, and how his kid is crying, because she’s scared. He says all that, and then he adds something about public noise ordinances. Noise ordinances? Did you just say noise ordinances? Noise ordinances are about firecrackers, sirens, and barking dogs. It’s got nothing to do with the sounds a fella makes eating a delicious ribeye. Mr. Busybody shows me his phone, saying, “Here you go,” and he conveniently has a copy of section 27 of article 4 of the city’s noise ordinances all pulled up, “And you’ll see here,” he says with professorial authority, “that subsection C of article 4 specifically addresses public eating noises in restaurants.”   

“People like this busybody, some of my friends, and the women who state they’ll never eat with me in public with me again, think these noises are a problem, a real problem. We all know I could control myself, and these noises better, but I have to tell you that I don’t consider it a pressing issue. I wish I could find some way to enjoy eating more, and I fear that if I tried to temper my noises that might diminish my enjoyment of the meal by fractional percentages, and that’s just not a risk I’m willing to take at this point in my life. Because, as great as the meal of the day is, it doesn’t last long. I eat and what seems like a minute and a half later, I’m done. It’s all over. The whole event I looked forward to all day is … over. It was so hot and juicy that I ate it too fast. I didn’t chitchat. Chitchat ends with the sound of a plate sliding across a table. I don’t even look around the room when a big, old juicy ribeye sits before me. Taking in my surroundings is over too. I even forget, sometimes, that I have someone sitting across the table from me. I hate reaching the end of a meal and having to force down the last few lukewarm bites. I want it hot! So, I eat all of those beautiful cuts of ribeye so fast that some of the times I can’t even remember how good they were. I know I just met these delicious, little morsels, but in a strange way that’s tough to describe to those of you cringing throughout my testimonial tonight, I kind of miss them. I miss them so much that, look at me, I’m salivating. I know it’s disgusting, but I can’t help myself. I loved eating them so much that I almost wish I didn’t eat them, so I could eat them again. I apologize for getting so emotional, and I know I shouldn’t get so emotional over such a stupid thing. It’s unseemly and not very professional, I know. I just love them so much that it’s hard for me to accept that they’re gone now. All of them. They’re all gone. I just loved eating them so much.

[Standup comedian Barry Becker is The Unfunny comedian, and this is one of his sets. If you enjoy this style of comedy, there’s more available at The Unfunny.] 

Platypus People

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“Did you know that your friend’s dad is an infidel?” my friend’s mom whisper-shouted at me after opening the door, and she had her angry face on. Mrs. Finnegan was not quite right in her normal state, but when I saw that look on her face, I knew something was amiss in the Finnegan household. I could’ve just walked away, I see that now, but I was a good kid. When you’re a good kid, a vital definition of your being comes from what other kids’parents think of you. I was so concerned with her impression of me that the thought of walking away didn’t even cross my mind. Even though her angry expression put me on edge, I considered it my lot in life to endure whatever was going on beyond that door.  

I was accustomed to Mrs. Finnegan’s greeting that day, because she always greeted me in this manner when she had a pressing topic that we needed to discuss before she would permit me to hang out with her son. I called it her headline hello. “Hey, it’s mister cigarette smoker!” she said to introduce me to the Finnegan family discussion of another day, one that involved my smoking habits. “It’s the heavy metal dude!” she said to introduce me to another discussion we were going to have about my decision to wear a denim jacket, a t-shirt of whatever band I was listening to at the time, and jeans. She called my ensemble ‘the heavy metal dude gear’ in that discussion. I was fair game for these family discussions, Mrs. Finnegan informed me, because I had such a huge influence on her beloved son, and the state of my home required that I receive further guidance.  

The “Your friend’s dad is an infidel” greeting informed me that the Finnegan family discussion of the day would involve her husband’s recent business trip to Las Vegas in which “he happened to get himself some [girl]”. I substitute the word ‘girl’ here for your reading pleasure, in place of the more provocative word that Mrs. Finnegan used to describe the other party in Greg Finnegan’s act of infidelity. 

Mrs. Finnegan was a religious woman who rarely ever used profanity or vulgarity. She reserved those words for moments when she needed to severely wound the subject of her scorn, with a ‘Look what you’ve made me do,’ plea in her voice to further subject the subject of her scorn to greater shame, ‘I’m using profanity now.’

I would hear Francis Finnegan use vulgar words on this afternoon, but it wasn’t as shocking to me as hearing her initial misuse of the word infidel. As a self-described word nerd, Mrs. Finnegan prided herself on proper word usage, in even the most casual conversations. I was into it too. I was so into using proper words that she informed me on another occasion, half-joking, that I was her apprentice. She enjoyed teaching me, and I was her eager student. In the beginning, I viewed her assessment of our roles in that light. As the years went by, however, I began to believe she said that to relieve whatever guilt she may have felt for correcting every other word that came out of my mouth. It could prove so exhausting that there were times when I was almost afraid to open my mouth around her, lest she correct me, but I did enjoy our respective roles in this relationship. 

I figured that the emotional turmoil of the moment might have caused her verbal faux pas, but her diction was so proper and refined that I didn’t consider her capable of such a slip. Even during the most tumultuous Finnegan family discussions, the woman managed to mind her rules of usage well. Thus, when she made the error of attributing the word infidel to her husband’s act of infidelity, I assumed she intended to pique the interest of the listener in the manner her sparse use of profanity and vulgarity could. Either that or she was providing herself a respite from the rules to creatively conflate the incorrect use of the word, and the correct one, with an implicit suggestion that not only had her husband violated his vows to her, but his vows to God.   

My friend James was seated on the couch, next to his father, when I entered the Finnegan home. The two of them were a portrait of shame. They sat in the manner a Beagle sits in the corner of the room after making a mess on the carpet. 

James mouthed a quick ‘Hi!’ to me, as I walked by him, and he pumped his head up to accentuate that greeting. He then resumed the shamed position of looking down at the carpet. 

“Mr. Finnegan decided to go out to Las Vegas and get him some [girl]!” Mrs. Finnegan said to open the proceedings when I entered the living room. I did not have enough time to sit when she said that. When I did, I sat as slow as the tension in the room allowed. “Tell him Greg,” she added. 

“France, I don’t think we should be airing our dirty laundry in front of outsiders,” Mr. Finnegan complained. The idea that he had been crying was obvious. His eyes were rimmed red and moist. He did not look up at Francis, or me, with his complaint. He, like James, remained fixated on the carpet. 

Frances was Mrs. Finnegan’s legal name, and she hated it. Only her immediate family members addressed her with such familiarity. She may have had adult friends, but I never saw them. To everyone I knew, she was Mrs. Finnegan. She may have permitted others to call her less formal names, but I never heard it. The Mrs. Finnegan I knew was not one to permit informalities. 

“NO!” Mrs. Finnegan yelled at her husband. That yell was so forceful that had the room contained an actual Beagle, it would have scampered from it, regardless if it were the subject of her scorn. “No, they need to learn,” she said pointing at her son James and me. “They need to learn the evil of their ways.” 

A visual display followed that verbal one. It was carried into the living room by the Finnegan’s dutiful daughter. The daughter appeared as removed from this family discussion as she had the prior ones. She was more of an observer of the goings on in the Finnegan home than a participant, in my brief experiences with Finnegan family discussions. She rarely offered an opinion, unless it backed up her mother’s assessments and characterizations, and she was never the subject of her mother’s scorn. She was the dutiful daughter, and she walked into the room, carrying the display, in that vein. She carefully positioned it on the living room table and pulled out its legs, so it could stand. She then lit all of the candles in the display and sat next to her mother when it was complete. 

Mrs. Finnegan allowed the display of Greg Finnegan’s shame to rest on the living room table for a moment without comment. The display was a multi-tiered, wood framed, structure with open compartments that allowed for wallet-sized photos. The structure of the frame was a triangle, but anyone who looked around the Finnegan family home could see evidence of Mrs. Finnegan’s fondness for pyramids. Greg Finnegan purchased the triangle to feed into her obsession, but it did not have the full dimensions of a pyramid. When the daughter pulled its legs out, however, the frame rested at an angle. At that angle, the frame took appeared to be one-third of a pyramid. 

Before this discussion began, Mrs. Finnegan somehow managed to secure enough photos of the “harlot, slut, home wrecker” to fill each of the open compartments in the pyramid with unique photos of woman. Each photo had a small votive candle before it to give the shrine of Greg Finnegan’s shame an almost holy vibe. 

“It’s the pyramid of shame,” Mrs. Finnegan informed me with a confrontational smile. “It was Greg’s gift to me on my birthday. Isn’t it lovely? I’m thinking of placing it in our bedroom. I’m thinking of placing it in a just such a position that if Greg is ever forced to sex me again-” Except she did not say sex. She uttered the word, the big one, the queen mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word. “-he can look at those pictures while he’s [sexing] me. Do you think that will help your performance honey?” she asked her husband. 

In the immediate aftermath of that uncomfortable comment, the question of how far Mrs. Finnegan might go with her characterizations of her husband’s weekend was mercifully interrupted by a knock at the door. For obvious reasons, we did not see an individual approach the door, so the knock startled us. The construction of the Finnegan duplex was such that when the drapes were open the inhabitants could see the knocker if they were facing in that direction, but we were all looking at the carpet before us. The knocker was Andy, the third participant in the adventure James and I planned for the evening. 

“Welcome to the home of Greg Finnegan, adulterer and infidel,” Mrs. Finnegan said after leaping to her feet to beat everyone to the door that no one was racing her for. We were scared and shamed into staring at the carpet. “Come on in,” she said stepping back to allow Andy’s entrance. 

Andy turned around and walked back down the steps, got in his car, and drove away. Just like that, Andy escaped what I felt compelled to endure. Andy didn’t respond to Mrs. Finnegan’s greeting in anyway. He didn’t go out of his way to show any signs of respect or disrespect. He just turned and left.

I didn’t know we could do that, I thought. I turned to watch him walk away, and I turned even more to see him step off the Finnegan patio. I realized he was actually leaving, and my mouth fell open. I didn’t know we could do that.

Andy left, because he knew what Mrs. Finnegan’s headline hellos entailed. He knew what he was in for, and I did too. To my mind, his departure was not only inexplicably bold, it was so unprecedented that it set a new precedent for me.

“How could you do that?” I asked him later. 

“I didn’t want to go through all that all over again,” he said. 

“Well, of course,” I said. “Who would?” 

Andy further explained his reaction, but the gist of it was that he just didn’t want to have to sit through another Finnegan family discussion. His impulsive reaction was so simple that if he laid it all out for me beforehand, I would’ve countered that he never would’ve been able to pull it off. I’m sure he would’ve asked why, and I don’t know what I would’ve said, but it would’ve involved the inherent respect and fear we have of other people’s parents. Andy and I were good kids, and good kids consider it a testament to their character to maintain model status around other people’s parents. Good kids have even been known to lie to other people’s parents when called upon to answer those character defining questions that undermines their friends attempts to win arguments with their parents, all to keep that good kid halo that other people’s parents put around their head. I would’ve never thought Andy had it in him to so casually ignore the good kid pursuit, until I saw him do it. And when Andy did it, Mrs. Finnegan did nothing more than close the door. I watched Andy drive away, thinking I needed to do a much better job of considering my options in life. 

After Andy left and Mrs. Finnegan sat back down, she encouraged Mr. Finnegan to begin the confessional phase of the Finnegan family discussion, a phase that required Mr. Finnegan to provide explicit details of what he did, I wasn’t there to hear it. I was off in la-la land, imagining that Andy impulsive reaction to Mrs. Finnegan’s headline hello so emboldened me that I just stood up and followed him to his car. Just like that. Just like he did. I imagined the two of us driving away, laughing at the lunatics we left behind. I imagined calling the Finnegans platypus people at one point in our round of jokes, and how that might end Andy’s laughter, until I said: 

“What is a platypus, but an animal that defies categorization. One study informs the world of science that they should fall into a specific category, until more exploration reveals that the duck-billed mammal does something to contradict all of their previous assessments. Comprehensive study of the animal creates more questions than answers, until even the most seasoned naturalist throws their hands up in the air in futility. Experts in psychology might think they have a decent hold on human classifications,” I would add,“but imagine what one day in the Finnegan family home could do to them. 

“At its introduction, naturalists considered the platypus another well-played hoax on the naturalist community,” I would then add. “I say another well-played hoax because it happened. Some enterprising naturalists stitched together body parts of various parts of dead animals to lead the scientific community to believe that the hoaxer discovered an entirely new species. Thus, when someone introduced the platypus, the scientists who received it believed it was but another elaborate hoax of taxidermy. 

“Those who guarded themselves against falling for future hoaxes, even had a tough time believing the platypus was an actual species when they saw a live one,” I would add. 

Even after this afternoon concluded, and I had all the sordid details of this Finnegan Family as Platypus People story to tell, I wondered if anyone would believe me. My penchant for stitching facts together with exaggerated details to try to weave them together for an exceptional story might come back to haunt me. They might not even believe the story if Andy stuck around to corroborate the details of it, and they might not even believe it if they saw it live, I realized while Mr. Finnegan continued to offer me explicit details of his weekend. My audience might think they’re the subjects of an elaborate hoax. 

“He already confessed all of this to his children,” Mrs. Finnegan said to interrupt Mr. Finnegan’s confession, “and he will be offering detailed confessions to the mailman, a traveling salesman, and whomever happens to darken our door this evening.”

After Mr. Finnegan’s continued confession failed to meet Mrs. Finnegan’s requirements, she interrupted him again to ask a series of questions that further explored the humiliating details of Mr. Finnegan’s weekend, details he would not reveal without prompting. When that finally concluded, she forced us to acknowledge the primary reason the Finnegans married in the first place. 

“No one would play with Mr. Finnegan’s [reproductive organ],” she said, except she didn’t say reproductive organ. 

“He was lonely,” she said with tones of derision. “Mr. eighty dollars an hour consultant fee, and Mr. professional student with eight degrees would be nothing without me, because he was nothing when he met me. He was a lonely, little man who had nothing to do but play with, except his little computer products, designs, and his little reproductive organ when no one else would.” 

“That’s enough France,” Greg said standing. He stood to bolster his claim that he’d had enough, and that he was prepared to leave, but he couldn’t and Mrs. Finnegan knew that. 

“Do you play with your reproductive organ?” Mrs. Finnegan asked me, undeterred by Greg’s pleas. “Do you masturbate? Because that’s where it all starts. It all starts with young men, and their pornographic material, imagining that someday someone will want to come along and want to play with it.” 

I had no idea how this family discussion would play out, of course, but I could see Mrs. Finnegan’s confrontational demeanor building. She was a confrontational person, and I never saw her attempt to restrain herself, but this display of resentment and hostility was unprecedented for her, as far as I was concerned. She was all but spitting these questions out between bared teeth, and her nostrils flared in a manner of disgust that suggested her hostility was directed at me. 

“You think it’s about love?” she asked me, aghast at a comment I never made. She had a huge smile on her face when she asked that question, and that smile might have been more alarming than the way she asked all those previous embarrassing questions. Seeing that smile surround those angry teeth led me to wonder if she was losing control of her facilities. 

“You think every couple has a story of dating, that hallowed first kiss, and love?” she continued. “Go watch a gawdamned love conquers all movie if you want all that and once it’s over, you come to Mrs. Finnegan with your questions, and I’ll introduce you to some reality. I’ll tell you tales of young men, grown men, who marry because they’re desperate to find someone to play with their reproductive organ. Isn’t that right Mr. Finnegan?” she called after Mr. Finnegan, as he finally mustered up the courage to begin walking away from her. When he wouldn’t answer, or even turn to acknowledge her question, Mrs. Finnegan watched him leave, she looked at me, and then she tore off after him. 

Mrs. Finnegan was a deliberate woman who appeared to consider her motions before moving as carefully as the words she used to express herself, so to see this otherwise sedate woman move so quickly was a little startling, troubling, and in retrospect foreboding. 

Pushing a grown man down a flight of stairs is not the feat of strength that some might consider it. We didn’t see it, but we figured that he must have been off balance when she did it, resulting from his refusal to turn and face her in his path to the basement. She was screaming things at him from behind, and her intensity grew with each scream until we could no longer understand the words coming out of her mouth. Mr. Finnegan continued to refuse to turn around and face her, but he should’ve suspected that his wife’s intensity would lead to a conclusion against which he should guard himself. Thus, when she pushed him, he was in no position to defend himself or lessen the impact of falling down a flight of about twenty steps. 

When we ran to the top of the stairs –after the sounds of him hitting the stairs shook the house in such a manner that all three of us instinctually put a hand on the armrests of the furniture we sat in to brace ourselves– we witnessed her haul her six-foot-five, two-hundred-pound husband upstairs by his hair, one-handed.”

Mrs. Finnegan’s final scream, that which proceeded her pushing her husband down the stairs, led us to believe that whatever frayed vestige of sanity she clung to for much of her life just snapped. I couldn’t understand what Mrs. Finnegan screamed as she pulled him up the stairs by his hair, but I wasn’t sure if that was because the screams of her children, and her husband, drowned out those shrieks. 

“France!” I heard Greg scream in pain. “France, for God’s sakes!” he screamed repeatedly. 

When I saw Mrs. Finnegan’s contorted facial expression, it transfixed me. In their attempts to either help her, or break her hold on Mr. Finnegan’s hair, her children blocked most of my view of her face. I bobbed and weaved to see more. I didn’t know why my need to see her face drove me to such embarrassing lengths, but I all but shouted at those obstructing my view of it to move out of the way. 

I’ve witnessed rage a couple of times, prior to Mrs. Finnegan’s, but I couldn’t remember seeing it so vacant before. This almost unconscious display of rage was one that those who aren’t employed in various levels of civil service might see once in a lifetime.

Her body blocked any view we might have had of Mr. Finnegan, but I assumed that he was back stepping the stairs to relieve some of the pain of having his hair pulled in such a manner. We could also guess he was putting his hand on the handrail in a manner that assisted her in pulling him up. Regardless the details of the moment, it was still an impressive display of strength fueled by a scary visage of rage. 

She was in such a state that when she was finally atop the stairs, standing in the kitchen with her children trying to calm her, she couldn’t form intelligible words. Her lips were moving but no sound was coming out, and when that initial brief spell ended, the self-described word nerd could only manage gibberish, the same gibberish that proceeded her pushing her husband down the stairs, and all moments between. She later suggested that that gibberish resulted from being overcome by spirits. Once she escaped that state, she stated that the gibberish we all heard was her speaking in tongues. She believed that divine intervention prevented her from further harming her husband, in the manner divine intervention once prevented Abraham from harming his son Isaac in the Biblical narrative. I believed it too, in the heat of the moment, but I would later learn that I just witnessed my first psychotic episode. 

I don’t know what happened in the aftermath of this incident, as I never entered their home again. I do know that the Finnegan marriage survived it, and I’m sure that Mrs. Finnegan still believes that divine intervention played a role. I’m also sure that if anyone doubted her assessment, they would be greeted at the door with a “Welcome to the home of the divine intervention!” headline hello to introduce them to that Finnegan family discussion of the day. If those future visitors were to ask me for advice on this matter, I would advise them to consider their options before entering. 

The Unfunny, Influential Comedy of Andy Kaufman

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On the timeline of comedy, the subversive nature of it became so comprehensive that it became uniform, conventional, and in need of total destruction. Although the late, great Andy Kaufman may never have intended to undermine and, thus, destroy the top talent of his generation, his act revealed his contemporaries for what they were: conventional comedians operating under a like-minded banner. In doing so, Andy Kaufman created a new art form.

Some say they enjoyed Andy Kaufman’s character on Taxi, and they enjoyed some of his other performances in tightly scripted roles as a comedic actor, but his solo stage performances weren’t funny. They weren’t funny. They were unfunny, and they were so unfunny they were hilarious.  If you saw his act, and I did on tape, you knew he wasn’t going for funny. He stood on stage in the manner a typical standup comedian would, and the audience sat in their seats as a typical audience will. The lines began to blur almost immediately after Kaufman took the stage. What is the joke here? Is he telling jokes? Am I in on it? They didn’t get it, but Andy Kaufman didn’t want us to get it. After he became famous, more people started to get it, so his act evolved, naturally, to wrestling women.

After reading every book written about him, watching every YouTube video on him, and watching every VHS tape ever made with him in it, I gained some objectivity. My guess is that he wasn’t talented enough to succeed as a “conventional artist”. He didn’t have oodles of material to fall back on, and he wasn’t a prolific writer. He wasn’t a one-trick pony, but he wasn’t a thoroughbred who could have a long, multi-faceted career either. Whatever it was that he did, it was something we had to see, and he did it better than anyone else ever has. If you don’t “get it”, and few do, then you never will. That’s not intended as a slam on the reader, because he didn’t want us to get it. Andy Kaufman’s M.O. was a little bit childish and narcissistic, but in many ways his “overly simplistic” acts somehow ended up redefining and revolutionizing comedy. If you saw it back then, you see it now all over comedy. 

Those of us who had an unnatural attraction to Kaufman’s game-changing brand of unfunny comedy now know the man was oblivious to greater concerns, but we used whatever it was he created to subvert conventional subversions, until they lost their subversive quality for us.

Those “in the know” drew up very distinct, sociopolitical definitions of subversion long before Andy Kaufman. They may consider Kaufman comedic genius now, but they had no idea what he was doing while he was doing it. I can only guess that most of those who saw Kaufman’s act in its gestational period cautioned him against going overdoing it. 

“I see what you’re trying to do. I do,” I imagine them saying, “but I don’t think this will play well in Kansas. They’ll just think you’re weird, and weird doesn’t play well on the national stage, unless you’re funny-weird.”

Many of them regarded being weird, in the manner embodied by his definition of that beautiful adjective as just plain weird, even idiotic. They didn’t understand what he was doing.

Before Andy Kaufman became Andy Kaufman, and his definition of weird defined it as a transcendent art form, being weird meant going so far over-the-top that the audience felt comfortable with the notion of a comedian being weird. It required the comedic player to find a way to communicate a simple message to the audience: “I’m not really weird. I’m just acting weird.” Before Kaufman, and those influenced by his brilliance, broke the mold on weird, comedians relied on visual cues, in the form of weird facial expressions, vocal inflections, and tones so weird that the so-called less sophisticated audiences in Kansas could understand the notion of a comedic actor just being weird. Before Kaufman, comedic actors had no interest in taking audiences to uncomfortable places. They just wanted the laugh. 

One can be sure that before Andy Kaufman took to the national stage on Saturday Night Live, he heard the warnings from many corners, but for whatever reason he didn’t heed them. It’s possible that Kaufman was just that weird, and that he thought his only path to success was to let his freak flag fly. It’s also possible that this is just who Andy Kaufman was. Those who haven’t read the many books about him, watched the VHS tapes, the YouTube videos, and the podcasts had no idea what he was doing, but he had enough confidence in his act to ignore the advice from those in the know. We admirers must also concede that it’s possible Kaufman might not have been talented enough to be funny in a more conventional sense. Whatever the case, Kaufman maintained his unconventional, unfunny, idiotic characters and bits until those “in the know” declared him one of the funniest men who ever lived.

The cutting-edge, comedic intelligentsia now discuss the deceased Kaufman in a frame that suggests they were onto his act the whole time. They weren’t. They didn’t get it. I didn’t get it, but I was young, and I needed the assistance of repetition to lead me to the genius of being an authentic idiot, until I busied myself trying to carve out my own path to true idiocy, in my own little world.

Andy Kaufman may not have been the first true idiot in the pantheon of comedy, but for those of us who witnessed his hilariously unfunny, idiotic behavior, it opened us up to a completely new world. We knew how to be idiots, but we didn’t understand the finer points of the elusive art of persuading another of our inferiority until Kaufman came along, broke that door down, and showed us all his furniture.

For those who’ve never watched Andy Kaufman at work, his claim to fame did not involve jokes. His modus operandi involved situational humor. The situations he manufactured weren’t funny either, not in the traditionally conventional, subversive sense. Some of the situations he created were so unfunny and so unnerving that viewers deemed them idiotic. Kaufman was so idiotic that many believed his shows were nothing more than a series of improvised situations in which he reacted on the fly to a bunch of idiotic stuff, but what most of those in the know could not comprehend at the time was that everything he did was methodical, meticulous, and choreographed.

Being Unfunny and Idiotic in Real-life Situations

This might involve some speculative interpretation, but I think Andy Kaufman was one of the first purveyors of the knuckleball in comedy. Like the knuckleball, the manner in which situational humor evolves can grow better or worse as the game goes on, but eventual success requires unshakeable devotion to the pitch. The knuckleballer will give up a lot of walks, and home runs, and they will knock the occasional mascot down with a wild pitch, but for situational jokes to be effective, they can’t just be another pitch in our arsenal. This pitch requires a level of commitment that will become a level that eventuates into a lifestyle that even those closest to us will have a difficult time understanding.

“Why would you try to confuse people?” they will ask. “Why do you continue to say jokes that aren’t funny?” 

“I would like someone, somewhere to one day consider me an idiot,” the devoted will respond. “Any idiot can fall down a flight of stairs, trip over a heat register, and engage in the fine art of slapstick comedy, but I want to achieve a form of idiocy that leads others to believe I am a total idiot who doesn’t know any better.”

For those less confident in their modus operandi, high-minded responses might answer the question in a way that the recipient considers us more intelligent, but those responses obfuscate the truth regarding why we enjoy doing it. The truth may be that we know the path to achieving laughter from our audience through the various pitches and rhythms made available to us in movies and primetime sitcoms, but some of us reach a point when that master template begins to bore us. Others may recognize, at some point in their lives, that they don’t have the wherewithal to match the delivery that their funny friends employ, particularly those friends with gameshow host personalities. For these people, the raison d’être of Kaufman’s idiotology may offer an end run around to traditional modes of comedy. Some employ these tactics as a means of standing out and above the fray, while others enjoy the superiority-through-inferiority psychological base this mindset procures. The one certain truth is that most find themselves unable to identify the exact reason why they do what they do. They just know they enjoy it, and they will continue to pursue it no matter how many poison-tipped arrows come their way.

An acquaintance of mine learned of my devotion to this pitch when she overheard me contrast it in a conversation I had with a third party in her proximity. I did not want to have that conversation with the third party so close to her, but my devotion to the pitch was not so great that I was willing to be rude to that other person. What she overheard was a brief display of intellectual prowess that crushed her previous characterizations of me. When I turned back to her to continue the discussion she and I were having prior to the interruption, her mouth was hanging open, and her eyes were wide. The remark she made in that moment was one she repeated throughout our friendship.

“I am onto you now,” she said. “You are not as dumb as you pretend to be.”

The delicious moment of confusion occurred seconds later, when it dawned on her that what she thought she figured out made no sense in conventional constructs. 99% of conversationalists pretend to be smart, and the traditional gauge of the listener involves them defining the speaker’s perceived intelligence downward, as they continue to speak and leak their weaknesses in this regard. What I did was not reveal some jaw-dropping level intellect but a degree of knowledge that served to upend her traditional study of those around her to define their level of intelligence. 

She looked at me with pride after she figured me out, but that look faded when she digested what she thought she figured out. Who pretends to be dumb and inferior? was a thought I could see in the fade.

What are you up to? was the look she gave me every time I attempted to perpetuate ignorance thereafter. The looks she gave me led me to believe that everything she thought she figured out only brought more questions to the fore. I imagined that something of a flowchart developed in her mind to explain everything I did and said to that point, and that each flowchart ended in a rabbit hole that once entered into would place her in a variety of vulnerable positions, including the beginning. She pursued me after that, just to inform me that she was onto what I was doing, until it became obvious that she was the primary audience of her own pleas.

I’ve never thrown an actual knuckleball with any success, but watching her flail at the gradual progression of my situational joke, trying to convince me that she was now above the fray, cemented my lifelong theory: Jokes can be funny, but reactions are hilarious.

The point is that if you devote yourself to this mindset, and you try your hardest not to let your opponents see the stitches, you can convince some of the people, some of the times, that you are an idiot.

The Idiotology

Some idiots purchased every VHS tape and book we could find on Andy Kaufman, and we read every internet article that carried his name to try to unlock the mystery of what he was trying to do. We wanted those who knew him best to tell us why he chose to go against the advice of those in the know and if it was possible for us to follow his indefinable passion to some end. We followed his examples and teachings in the manner of disciples, until it became a lifestyle. Andy Kaufman led us to believe that if we could confuse the sensibilities of serious world just enough that it could lead to some seminal moments in our pursuit of the idiotic life.

If our goals were to be funny, we would’ve attempted to follow the trail laid by Jerry Seinfeld. If our aim was only to be weird-funny, we would’ve adopted the weird-funny voice Steve Martin used in The Jerk. If we wanted to be sardonic or satirical, we would have looked to George Carlin for guidance. We knew we weren’t as funny as any of those men were, but we reached a point when that didn’t matter to us. When we discovered the unfunny, subversive idiocy of Andy Kaufman, however, it filled us like water rushing down the gullet of a dehydrated man.

“How did the unfunny idiot reach the point where it no longer mattered that others considered them funny?” the reader might ask. “How did you reach the point where that bored you?” The natural inclination most might have is that we think were so funny for so long that we sought something more. This was not the case for us, as most people, especially women, never thought we were funny. The answer, if there is one, is that, like Andy Kaufman, we might not be as funny or as talented as our friends, but we choose not to see it that way of course. The unfunny idiot is just thrilled as anyone else when others find them funny, even by conventional means, but there’s something different and unusually thrilling to us when we deliver a crushing haymaker that no one finds funny, per se, and most people consider idiotic. “Okay, right there, you said it, you said it,” an especially perspicacious individual might say, “You find it unusually thrilling. Why?” When pressed to the mat, and if we do it long enough someone will call us out on it and interrogate, until they help us arrive at an answer, such as, we don’t know, but we were probably just wired a little different. 

Most of our friends considered us weird for the sake of being weird, but they don’t recognize the depth charges until they’re detonated. If we do it just right, and knuckleball slides under the bat perfectly, they’ll see it for what it is. They might not understand it, but they’ll get it. They won’t feel foolish for not getting it, because you were the idiot in that scenario, but they’ll eventually see that you weren’t being weird just for the sake of being weird.  

The Disclaimer

If the goal of the reader is to have their friends and co-workers consider them funny, adding Kaufman’s knuckleball to your repertoire will only lead to heartache and headaches. What we advise, instead, is for the reader to focus on adding more traditional beats and rhythm to their delivery, and they should learn how to incorporate them, on a situational basis, into conversations. This gets easier with practice and time. Quality humor, like quality music, must offer pleasing beats and rhythms that find a familiar home within the audience’s mind. (Some suggest that the best beats and rhythm of humor come in threes. Two is not as funny as three, and four is too much more.) To achieve familiarity, there are few resources more familiar than that which comes from sitcoms and standup comedians that everyone knows and loves. We should also copy the template our friends lay out for a definition of what’s funny. There’s nothing an audience loves more than repeating their jokes, rhythms and beats, right back at them. If the joke teller leads into the punchline with a familiar rhythm and lands on the line in a familiar beat, the audience’s reward for figuring out that beat will be a shot of dopamine, and the joke teller’s reward is the resulting laughter. To keep things fresh, the joke teller might want to consider providing their audience a slight, yet still pleasing, twist at the end. The latter can be funny as long as the punchline is a slight slide away from expectations.

If, however, the goal is to be an unfunny idiot who receives no immediate laughter, the joke teller still needs to adhere to the standardized rules of comedic beats and rhythms, and they need to know them even better than students of traditional humor do. As any gifted practitioner of the art of idiocy will tell those willing to listen, it is far more difficult to find a way to distort and destroy the perception of conventional humor than it is to abide by it. This takes practice and practice in the art of practice, as Andy Kaufman displayed.

The rewards for being a total idiot are few and far between. If we achieve total destruction or distortion of what others know to be the beats and rhythm of humor, a sympathetic soul might consider us such an idiot that they take us aside to advise us about our beats and the rhythm of our delivery. For the most part, however, the rewards idiots receive are damage to their reputations as potentially funny people. Most will dismiss us as weird, and others might even categorically dismiss us as strange. Still others will dismiss us as idiots who know nothing about making people laugh. Most will want to have little to nothing to do with us. Women, in particular, might claim they don’t want to date us, declaring, “I prefer nice, funny guys. You? I’m sorry to say this, but you’ve said so many weird things over the years that … I kind of consider you an idiot.”