Tag: comedy

Rilalities XIII

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“80% of success is showing up,” Woody Allen once said.

“So, what you’re saying is if I want to succeed, I should show up?” you ask. To answer that question, we ask another question, how many people don’t? How many apathetic and self-destructive types didn’t show up for the opportunities-of-a-lifetime Woody Allen received? Was Allan Stewart Konigsbeg (Woody Allen) the most talented person in his troupe, or did he show up so often that he got the job, the jobs, and the career that the apathetic and self-destructive did not, because they weren’t there.

In his book I’m Dying Up Here, author Arthur Knoedelseder suggests that Woody Allen’s 1978 Annie Hall winning numerous Academy Awards that year opened up all kinds of opportunities for standup comedians, comedic actors, and writers of comedy. Most of those who would land multiple picture deals would go onto be the faces of comedic humor in the ’80’s and beyond. The question is was Woody Allen funnier than those peers, or was he in the right place and the right time in Hollywood history?  

To listen to modern screenwriters tell their tale, Woody Allen’s story isn’t the type of story we enjoy. We’d much rather hear the story about “the kid,” “the natural,” or the one everyone agreed was the most talented person in the room who finally got his big break, and in the next scene, they’re asleep or dead with a heroin needle hanging from their arm. It happens so often on screen, that it’s a trope, but is it true? We’re sure it’s happened, but has it happened so often that it’s a truth, or do we just love to cringe so much that screenwriters feel compelled to write about it.

I can only imagine that the screenwriter tries to sell his script pitching about “the kid,” “the natural”, and the potential Hollywood producers asking “Okay, but where is the arc? What does the American public love more than anything else, the rise and fall. We build him up as the kid, the natural, and then, on the cusp of him finally realizing his talent on a national, worldwide scale his dysfunctional, self-destructive traits rear their ugly head. It’s the Freddie Prinze story. People love that story. They love to cringe.”  

It can be a little scary to put all of our potential to succeed, and all of our hard work, on the line. How many of us have the potential to succeed, and how many can stand before others, relatively anonymous and proverbially naked, to showcase our potential? Are you a fraud, or are you so confident that you’re just waiting for an opportunity to show your talent? Are you the type who creates your own opportunities, or do you wait for them to happen? If you’re the latter, will you not show up, because you’re afraid you’re not ready? Even if you’re “not ready” in a relative sense you’ve defined, that might just be your opinion. If Woody Allen’s quote holds any weight, it might redound to your benefit to show up anyway to see what happens.   

Some of us cringe when we hear tales of the dysfunctional and self-destructive types, others laugh, and we all feel sorry for them, but they’re the ones we replace. We’re the ones who show up and do it so often that we might overcome whatever relative level of talent we might have.

Showing up is also starting up. How many of us think about doing something, how many of us daydream, and how many of us actually do it? Showing up suggests that you’re ready to make it happen. You’ve surpassed the dream stage, and you’re there. You’ve shown up and you’re ready to work with others to make it happen.  

Stop Letting Your Bullies Bully You

There are few things that bother me more than watching a victim of bullying make their problem worse by the manner in which they deal with a bully. When I hear, read, or see a member of an audience become so offended that they’ve become outraged at something a standup comedian says, I say, “You’re going about it wrong! You’re doing it all wrong!”

There might be some exceptions to the rule, but my bet is every standup comedian was a former class clown/bully. The essence of the craft is such that it attracts guys and girls that someone, somewhere once called a class A jerk. (A class A jerk is someone other than the class D jerk who pokes fun at others for sport and backs down if anyone informs them they’re offended in anyway.) 

When real life darkened their door, most standup comedians admitted they didn’t know what to do. They were as lost, or more, as the rest of us. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if my predecessors didn’t do what they did in this craft to make it what is it today. Not only am I not good at anything else, I didn’t particularly like doing anything else.” What is it they’re doing, on stage, every night? What is it they enjoy doing so much that it saved them from the depths of despair? If we dig through all the particulars of the craft, we find that making fun of other people is the core of standup comedy. Where do you think they discovered their talent, and how did they hone it? They did it on your back, and your delicious tears told them they might be onto something. It’s what they do. It’s who they are.

One other special ingredient that defines the difference between most great comedians and the ones who never made it to the main stage, pushing boundaries. What does that mean? We think pushing boundaries is about filmmakers teaching us what we don’t want to hear, and it is, but it’s also about standup comedians telling us what we don’t want to hear. They’re mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, and the same. Tell a standup that they can do anything they want except this, and this will be the only thing they want to do. Tell them that they can make fun of everyone, except these people, and a joke about those people will probably make it into their intro. My problem is not with standup comedians. We all know who they are. They’re bullies. The problem is with the offended. If the standup comedian is wrong, tell them why, and do it from a position of power not weakness.

If we ever effectively find a way to diminish, deter, or defeat bullies as a whole, the one detriment might be our inability to deal with bullies. The only solution we’ve found at this point is to inform them that we’re offended by something they’ve said. Who cares if you’re offended? Some do, of course, and there are probably more now than ever before who aren’t afraid to say that they’re offended, but I can tell you one person who doesn’t care, the offender. I’ve been offended by something a comedian said, and I always think that’s just one man’s opinion, and it’s not an informed one. (I use the term offended, here, for the purpose of illustrating a point, because I can’t think of any comedian who has ever offended me.) You getting offended is exactly what the offender wants. It’s what their audience wants too. How many nice guys finish first in the world of standup? What is it .0001% The nature of the beast is such that if a comedian goes clean and tries to avoid offending anyone, the audience might chuckle politely, but the chuckle will be soft and almost internal, as they wait for that hurtful haymaker to punctuate the joke. Most good guy, clean comedians are widely regarded as too safe to be truly funny. We, as a whole, want our standup comedians risqué, we want them to push boundaries, and we want them to speak out against unsafe targets. Who are the unsafe targets though? That’s the question skippy, and that’s the point Howard. The unsafe targets have shifted from my guys to your guys, and from my issues to yours. We didn’t handle it well, claiming offense and outrage, and now you’re doing the same. 

If this is true, wow do we stop the mean-spirited comedian then? I don’t think you do. I think they love it so much there’s nothing we can do or say to stop them. You can see it on their face. They were born to do this, they love it, and they wouldn’t want it any other way. They define your offense as effective penetration. Their audience, comprised mostly of former bullies and class clowns, love it too. Do we get in their face and try to mow them down? Have you ever been bullied by a class A jerk? They’re unusually very good at what they do. They’re often unusually smart, and not only are they smart, they’re quick, and not only are they quick, they’re funny. It’s often that final nugget, funny, that just tears into our soul. They come up with material quick, and how do we defeat them? If it’s a class A jerk, we’re on their turf when we’re trying to outfunny them. The only way to defeat them is to switch the playing field to our internal home court and outdo them there. If we can convince them, there, that they’re not getting in, we’ll take all their fun out of it for them. That’s all I got, and I know it’s not great, but it’s obviously better than everything you’ve come up with thus far. You’re encouraging them and making them think they’re onto something when you declare that you’re offended. You’re making it worse.   

Crazy Joe Davola

Crazy Joe Davola (actor Peter Crombie) has died, and Fox News reports that his friends suggest that even though “he was cast as a bad guy on Seinfeld, and he played numerous interesting and complicated characters, including Bernard Goetz, he was very sweet in an old-school way. When not working as an actor on stage or in front of a camera, he was genuinely humble, preferring others to talk and take main stage.  He was always helpful, giving and funny. He was one [of] the kindest, soft-spoken, loving and caring people I have ever met. A gentle giant.” It’s a fitting tribute, but it’s not funny? We might not want funny to be on site forever more, but in private, on stage, I think Peter Crombie would’ve loved it if someone, someone like Lewis Black, offered Crombie a comedic sendoff. “It wasn’t much of a challenge for Peter Crombie to play the awful characters he did, because he was awful. He was an awful human being. I remember one day he saw a kid with ice cream, and he stole it. He didn’t want their ice cream. He didn’t even like ice cream. He would pitch it in the nearest receptacle. He did it just to do it. Just so he could say he did it. He said that he liked to hear kids cry. “The younger the better,” he said.”   

Review of Self-Reliance

If there’s one thing an aspiring writer can learn from the movie Self-Reliance, it’s that your audience doesn’t want anything bad to happen to the fictional characters of your stories, until they nothing does. Leaving out all of the other particulars of the plot, the primary plot of this movie is that a bored, lonely man is offered a proposition. If you can survive for thirty days, with murderers trying to murder you, we will give you $1 million dollars if they are unsuccessful. There is a catch for the murderers, however, they cannot kill him if he’s within three feet of another person. The need to have someone near him, leads the character to realize that in his life before the contest he forgot to make real, human connections throughout his life, and he forgot to live life to the fullest. That underlying theme would’ve been engaging if, IF, it was properly balanced with the character narrowly escaping harrowing threats. The problem with this movie is that this viewer (you might be different) never feels the threats are anything more than an excellent plot device to sell the movie. There are some threats made on the character’s life throughout the movie, but they are easily, too easily, vanquished. This reveals to us that the threats on the character’s life are basically ancillary to the underlying theme. It’s as if the writer said, I want to write a post-COVID script that reminds the audience of the need for human connection and companionship. The problem is how do we go about writing about that without getting too gushy? I got it. Let’s develop a contest for the character in which he needs to have people around him. All of that would be fine, except the writer/director forgot to concentrate enough on the threat therein. 

Anyone who watches this movie will realize as much as we don’t enjoy cringing, we enjoy cringing. We want to see scenes where the character stupidly gets into harrowing situations that he can’t possibly escape, until he does, and we’re awash with relief when he does. We want to experience the ups and downs of what it must feel like to have people trying to murder you. We want to scream, “Don’t go in there!” when he approaches the wrong door. We want to see pianos fall behind him while he’s talking on the phone, comically unaware of what just happened. We want to grip the arms on our chairs when a gigantic ball comes rolling after him, as he runs through a cavernous region in which there’s no lateral escape, and we want o see a poison-tipped arrow hit a guy standing somewhat near the main character after the main character bent down to pick up a piece of garbage that some rube just threw on the ground. “Hey, it’s called littering man!” The main character shouts at the litterer, as the man with the arrow in his neck, behind him, slowly falls gurgling to the ground. There can be humor intermingled in the tension, but we want/need the tension. What we get from Self-Reliance are all of the hypotheticals a man who must survive a scenario might have to go through to insure his survival. The movies is really about the social interactions a person might not go through if there wasn’t an ever-present, or in this case never-present, threat of death. My takeaways are that the movie accomplishes two things: It teaches writers what not to do with a thriller, and it leaves you with the weird, uncomfortable feeling that you actually want bad things to happen to fictional characters. Those of us who know and enjoy so many of Jake Johnson’s projects, enjoyed this one too. He’s a funny, interesting actor, and Self-Reliance is not a bad movie in anyway, except for that lack of threat, and the ending is more of a wrap-up than an exciting conclusion. The character basically tells us what happened at the end, and he shows us some shots that visualize what he’s saying. 

An Hungarian Goose

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“Listen Daphne,” the character Frasier Crane said, in an episode called We Two Kings, episode ten of season ten, “is your mom partial to a traditional Cornwall dressing, you see I’m thinking it would go splendidly with the twelve-pound Hungarian goose that I’m serving,” he adds the latter with a excited survey of the room to encourage joy. 

Niles and Daphne counter that they are planning on celebrating Christmas at their apartment to celebrate their first Christmas as a married couple, and they invite Frasier to partake in their celebration. Frasier argued that it’s been a Crane family tradition to have Christmas at his place. To which, Niles responds: 

“Frasier you’ve had Christmas for the past nine years.” 

“Yes, but we agreed we’d have Christmas here in its traditional setting.” 

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s time to start a new tradition,” Niles says. 

“But I’ve had new stockings loomed for everyone,” Frasier says. “Now there you see, you made me spoil the surprise, and did no one hear me say that I have ordered an Hungarian goose?” 

As is typical of Kelsey Grammer, he delivers a pitch perfect line. He stresses the word (‘an’), and he punctuates the word goose with a pleading tone that asks his audience (Niles and Daphne) to recognize the import of what he’s saying. We don’t know how many takes Grammer used to hit that line that perfect, but the finished product will live on in television history as far as I’m concerned, as one of the best one-liners Grammer ever delivered.   

Some proper grammar enthusiasts might argue that Grammer used improper grammar when he issued this historically hysterical line in the situation comedy Frasier. The grammatically correct use of definitive articles states that we use (‘a’) before vowels and an (‘an’) before consonants, but as with everything in the English language, there are exceptions. The letter (‘H’) is just such an exception. When the (‘H’) is silent, as it is in the word hour, we use (‘an’) even though (‘H’) is a consonant. “It will only take me an hour to complete this article.” If the (‘H’) is pronounced, as in “I always wear a hat when I write”, (‘a’) is the proper definite article to use. The exception to the (‘H’) exception occurs when the accent is not on the first syllable of a word, because the pronunciation of the (‘H’) is downplayed in words where the accentuation occurs after the first syllable, and it renders it closer to the silent (‘H’) rule. Unless, they argue, we’re using some words like historian or habitual, in which (‘a’) is the preferred variant.   

We also have other exceptions regarding the sound in certain other words. We don’t say “He has a MBA”, for example, because it sounds like a (‘E’) exists before the (‘M’), or (em-bee-ay). It just sounds wrong to say a MBA, even though the initials begin with an (‘M’). So, the rule states that if it sounds like a vowel precedes the consonant, then we use the definitive article (’an’). 

One rule of thumb on the use of definitive articles, says June Casagrande, from The Glendale Newspress, “[I]t’s a mistake to choose based on anything but sound.” So, if it sounds wrong, it probably is? Well, (‘an’) Hungarian goose doesn’t sound correct, even if the stress is found on the second syllable, and if we extend Ms. Casagrande’s quote out to other strict to casual rules of usage, so many of them just don’t sound correct.   

Anytime I sort through the rules of grammar and spelling as it pertains to the English language, I think of two people: a foreigner I knew well who told me that English might be the hardest language in the world to speak on a casual level. “I did well in my ESL (English as a Second Language) class,” she said, “but talking to English speakers in this country is so confusing. There are so many exceptions and rules, even in casual conversation, that I just want to pull my hair out. Talking to you, a writer who obsesses over such rules, is even more nerve-wracking. I don’t think I’ll ever get it,” the woman, who speaks seven other languages to near fluency, told me. The other person I think of is Norm MacDonald who, when confronted with the idea that the English language might be one of the hardest languages to learn, he said, “Really, because I think it’s pretty easy.” 

Was Kelsey Grammer grammatically correct when he said the line, “An Hungarian Goose”? The Word check program I’m using to write this article suggests that the definitive article (‘an’) is incorrect in this case. Yet it allows me to write both ‘a historian’ and ‘an historian’ without notification of error. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but the stress on Hungarian falls on the second (gar) syllable, and if that’s the case doesn’t it render the (‘H’) equivalent to silent in the phrase and an (‘an’) is more correct in this case?” signed Confused.    

On the surface, it appears that only skilled comedians and comedic actors can explain why some words are funnier than others. They don’t know squat, I suggest, until they try it out. Standup comedians test their material constantly, and comedic actors sort through their numerous takes, with directors and writers, to find the right sentence, the perfect pitch, and everything else that produces a finished product to which we marvel. We can only wonder how many takes it took Grammer to try to hit that line perfect, but when he hit a hard (‘an’) in the line and punctuated the word goose with a distinct plea in his voice, I think it was as close to comedic perfection as the skilled comedic actor ever achieved. Steve Martin suggests that comedy is similar to music in that what works in comedy is often based on rhythms and beats. In this frame, the syllables involved in the words an Hungarian goose are funnier than Danish hen ever could be, even if Grammer dropped the line in the exact same manner. So, if anyone who wants to debate whether Grammer should’ve said (‘a’) Hungarian goose, I would introduce them to another exception to the rule, and I regard this an exception to all rules of usage in the English language, “If it works, and it’s that funny, you can go ahead and throw all of your rules of usage right out the window.

Falling Down Manholes

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“Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.” –Mel Brooks

I’ve never fallen down a manhole, but I have to imagine that it hurts. “Um, yeah,” Mel might say, “That’s what makes it funny.” So, to be truly funny, someone has to get hurt. “Well, you put it like that, it sounds sadistic. It’s not sadistic, it’s human nature. It’s the fuzzy line between comedy and tragedy that dates back to Aristotle and Ancient Greece.”

It might be a little humorous to see a faceless entity falling into a manhole on one of those video montages, but what if we know the guy? Does that make it funnier or more tragic, or is there a middle ground that reveals this unusual relationship between comedy and tragedy? If we find a tragic incident like that funny, what is funny, what’s tragedy, and what’s the difference?

Laughing at other people’s pain is just kind of what we do. We might not want to admit it, but in many cases it’s so funny that when someone calls us a heartless SOB, we can only laugh with acknowledgement. Is it our dark side coming out, or is it just human nature?

I’ve met the opposite, the few, the proud who don’t laugh, because they don’t think it’s funny. They don’t even smile or joke about it later. They’re not virtue-signaling either. They just don’t think it’s funny. One of the few I met was a first responder who she witnessed so much pain and sorrow that she no longer considered even trips and stumbles humorous. What’s the difference between a first responder and the rest of us, they run into a burning building, and we run away. There are very very few who would actually stand outside a burning building and laugh, but seeing another’s worst moment can be so shocking that some of the times we don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and laughter is our go-to. If we worked with tragedy as often as first responders, would it lead to a certain diminishment of this shock factor, or are those who deal with tragedy on a daily basis attracted to their professions because they are inherently more compassionate?

I’ve never seen someone fall down a manhole, but odds are against them falling clean, in the manner Yosemite Sam does, and most of them aren’t mumbling comedic swear words on the way down either. Most of them fear that they are going to damage something severely by the time they hit bottom, and that fear will probably produce blood-curdling screams. They might not have enough time to fear death, but anyone who has fallen from a decent height knows that it’s scary, and they probably aren’t going to be able to laugh about it for quite some time. The question is will we, the witnesses of the event, be laughing? If we weren’t there, and our only attachment to their incident is their harrowing retelling of the moment, will we be laughing? 

If our friend walks away from the fall with some superficial bumps and bruises, that might be funny, but what if he chipped a tooth? What if he took a nasty knock on the head, or broke an ankle? What if his injuries were so severe that he required first responders to free him? Does the severity of the moment, and the eventual injuries, align with the comedy, the tragedy, or does it brush up against our definition of the fuzzy line that we try to erect between the two to try to keep them separated?

Before you answer, think about how you might retell the story. When we tell a story, we might not always be looking for a laugh, but we want a reaction. To get the best reactions, standup comedians advise to always be closing. A great closing involves a great punchline of course. If punchline is the wrong word, how about punctuation, and what better punctuation would there be than adding that the subject of our story was forced to endure a prolonged hospital stay that involved tubes and machines to keep the victim alive? “They’re saying that the nasty knock on the head could leave him mentally impaired for the rest of his life?” That might be extreme, as few would find mental impairment funny, but where is the line or the lines of demarcation that define comedy and tragedy in this matter?

The initial sight of Jed lying at the bottom of the sewer might be funny, unless he’s screaming. What if he’s hurt? How can he not be? We laugh. We don’t mean to laugh. We don’t want to find this funny, but we can’t stop. Some of us might wait to find out if Jed’s okay before we laugh, and some of us might wait until he’s not around, so when we can retell the story of his fall and laugh with others. Most of us will laugh at some point though. It’s our natural reaction to something tragic.

Laughing, or otherwise enjoying, another person’s pain is so common, that the Germans, developed a specific term for it: schadenfreude. Is our laughter fueled by the relief that it’s not happening to us, is it human nature, or is it the result of comedies and comedians molding our definition of what’s humorous by twisting dark, tragic themes into something funny? The advent of slapstick comedy occurred long before we were alive, but I don’t think anyone would argue that comedy has grown darker and more violent over the decades. We now consider some truly brutal acts hilarious. Have comedy writers changed our definition of humor, or are they reflecting the changes in society? It’s an age-old question. Would the Abbot and Costello fan consider it hilarious if someone fell in a manhole, what would the Mel Brooks fan think, or a Will Farell fan? Are such incidents funny in a timeless manner, or have comedians upped the ante so much, and so often, that our definition has darkened with it? Whatever the case is, incidents such as these reveal the relative nature of humor, the fuzzy line between tragedy and comedy, and how we find comedy in others’ tragedies. The purposeful melding of the two even has its own genre now: tragicomedy.

Emergency: Tongue Stuck on Pole

My personal experience with the fuzzy line between comedy and tragedy, didn’t involve falling into a manhole, but licking a pole. I was in the fifth or sixth grade, old enough and smart enough to know better, but young enough and dumb enough to do it anyway on one of the coldest days in February. I wasn’t old enough, or sophisticated enough, to consider the fuzzy, philosophical line between comedy and tragedy, but I knew everyone would be laughing uproariously if they saw me stuck on that pole. I also knew an overwhelming number of my classmates would not share a “Well, at least you’re okay” sentiment when it was over. I knew this wasn’t one of those types of mistakes. I didn’t know a whole lot about human nature, but I knew how much we all crave stories of pain and humiliation, because I did. I laughed harder than anyone else when Andy walked into a pole, and he hit it with such force that the impact broke his glasses in two. I just happened to be in the perfect position to see the incremental progressions of Andy’s instinctual reactions. I saw Andy’s eyes close on impact, followed by the scrunched expression of pain. In the midst of my laughter, Andy’s face turned from pained to embarrassed as everyone else attempted to soothe and coo him back to respectability. Andy’s embarrassed expression focused on me, the only person laughing, and I couldn’t stop. When his embarrassed expression evolved to one pleading me to stop, I just walked away, because for reasons endemic to my evil nature his mental emotional pain proved more hilarious to me than the physical.   

Some might call it heartless, others might suggest that anyone who would even smile at such a thing is lacking some levels of compassion, but I think it’s just kind of who were are and what we do to one another, and we don’t always do it with malice either. Some of the times, we laugh because that’s just what we do. 

I didn’t stand there and think about all this while stuck in the moment of course. The only things I thought about were how am I going to rip myself free and how much is it going to hurt? When I thought about the physical pain, though, I knew it would pale in comparison to the emotional and mental anguish that would occur soon after someone saw me like that. I ripped my tongue off the pole. I don’t remember exactly how long my it hurt after I ended up ripping several layers of my tongue off, but it hurt so bad that I thought I should’ve given more thought to an alternative. I also thought that even if I went on to accomplish historically great things, and I came back to my grade school to meet my classmates, one of them would’ve said, “Weren’t you the guy who was stuck on a pole when we were kids?”

I’ve since read local news stories of other kids stuck on a pole, and they always include a photo or a video of the kid from The Christmas Story in it. One of these stories involved a kid notifying his teacher, and the teacher, who presumably failed to consider the idea that a warm cup of water could free the kid, ended up calling first responders to set the kid free. I still cringe when I put myself in that kid’s place, and I think of all the people standing around this kid. I cringe when I think about the teachers who would never forget this incident, and while they may have been more compassionate in the moment, they probably couldn’t help but laugh behind a hand every time they saw him. This information would’ve eventually filtered out to the students, because how many times does a big old fire engine pull up to a school, and when it does everyone would want to know why, and someone would find out. The first and last question I’d have for this kid if I ever met him is, what were you thinking?

I have to imagine that this victim was either much younger than I was at the time, or that the severity of his incident was much worse. For if all of the circumstances were even somewhat similar, then I have to ask him why he didn’t just rip themselves free? My empathy goes out to him if he feared how painful that would be, but he had to consider all the ridicule, teasing, and bullying he would endure in the aftermath. Even if he feared the pain so much that he wanted an adult to come along and find a less painful solution for them, I would love to ask him if it was worth it. 

Does getting a tongue stuck on a pole compare to falling down a manhole? It does not, when comparing the possible injuries, or other painful consequences, but I would submit that it does when it comes to the probability of embarrassment. I write that because the embarrassment of getting your tongue stuck to a pole has a storied tradition of humor, a tradition enhanced by the movie A Christmas Story. The humor is now an agreed upon universal, further enhanced by the relatively minor, but painful lessons attached to it.  

One of the first faces I pictured when I got stuck to that pole was Steve’s. I knew Steve would be waiting with bated breath for any details of my tragedy, and I knew his audience wouldn’t be able to restrain themselves from laughing at his displays of cruel and clever creativity. I didn’t know what nicknames or limericks Steve would develop, but I knew he would develop something. Steve was our class clown, and he was always developing material on someone. I considered all the excruciating pain I experienced in the aftermath of ripping off layers of my tongue off worth it for all the reasons listed above, but most of all I knew Steve wouldn’t have this material on me.

We’ve all heard talk show guests talk about how they were the class clown in their school. We all smile knowingly, picturing them as children dancing with a lampshade on their head and coming up with the perfect sarcastic responses to the teacher that even the teacher considered hilarious. When we hear this, we nod, because we figure he was the class clown, because no one gets that funny overnight. They explain that they discovered an internal need to hear laughter, by whatever means necessary, at a very young age. Those of us who knew a class clown, like Steve, saw some of this good-natured humor, but we also saw what happened when Steve ran out of good-natured and fun material. We all knew the minute Steve ran out of material, he would begin looking around for victims, and I was always one of his favorite targets. Anyone who has spent time around a class clown, or a group of class clowns, knows that their stock and trade involves insults. I didn’t spend ten seconds stuck on that pole, but picturing Steve’s mean-spirited smile, after delivering a dagger that had its tip dipped in this material was the image that consumed me and convinced me that I made the right decision later.    

We all enjoy making people laugh, but some of us have a deep psychological need to make people laugh, and they don’t care who has to get hurt in the process. Based on my experiences with class clowns, I can only guess that those who would fashion a career out of it, such that they were so successful that they ended up in a late night talk show chair talking about it, probably learned early on that no matter how you slice it, if someone falls down a manhole, or gets their tongue stuck to a pole, there’s comedy gold in there waiting to be excavated. They may be too young to know anything about the complexities inherent in the symbiotic relationship between comedy and tragedy at the time, but at some point they realized that anyone can get a laugh. To separate themselves from the pack of those vying for the title class clown, those who would use that title to future success in comedy learned that they would have to spend decades learning the intricacies and complexities of their craft, as everyone from the Ancient jesters to Mel Brooks did. They also learned that for all of the complexities involved in comedy, one simple truth they learned in fifth to sixth grade remains, if one wants to go from humorous titters to side-splitting laughter someone has to get hurt.