Everything I learned in life, I learned from Comedians

(With my apologies to Robert Fulghum for spinning his title.) Don't worry, I don't plan to go through a similar list of how they taught me to observe the daily nuances and to make fun of others. But, it's true. Sadly, but definitely in truth, I say that there have been times in my life where what I learned about the world was from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Or even rarer, Saturday Night Live. There's a war? There's a budget deficit? But, boy was that a funny way of explaining it, huh? And I think back on all of the comedians that I have enjoyed and admired through the years and how much of their material I can recite and how much I have just flat out stolen and spun into my own... It's scary. I used to have dreams of going into comedy and now I realize it would have been to perform someone else's routine! And like one of those Last Comic Standing people, I would have been called to the carpet by Jay Mohr or Buddy Hackett or whoever for just being a plagiarizing pariah. (I really just wanted another 'p' word to go with plagiarizing -- I'm on this alliteration kick lately, becaue I am a HUGE dork -- or huge half-wit or strapping spaz or ponderous pinhead!)

Anyways, I came to this realization last night because Ellen deGeneres was on HBO. I completely forgot how funny she is because there was all this BS wrapped around her coming out. So, she's a lesbian -- at least she's not a butchy lesbian...

[Sidebar: I, frankly, don't have a problem with anyone that's gay or lesbian. Whatever you want to do, it's all good. I have some issues with lesbians ONLY because I don't understand why they have to look like lesbians. What is that about? You're saying that you would rather roll around with another woman and then you both have to make yourselves look like men? Seriously. I could buy the whole lesbian thing with women LOOKING like women because let's face -- women are way sexier than men. I'm not attracted to women in general and even I can see where it would be more appealing. But that's another blog. All I'm saying is that -- I don't get the bull-dyke phenomenon.]

So, Ellen. She is friggin' hysterical. It was scary though because there were so many things that she said that I could hear myself saying and it occurs to me that I must not have a whole lot of original thought. Plus, she takes it one step further. For example, we both have a running commentary about how lazy our society is (although mine usually leans more towards how DISPOSABLE our society is), but she took it down to the breath strip level. We're too lazy for breath mints, we need the strips to just dissolve. "We're too lazy to suck!" (Not to harp on the lesbian thing again, but an ironic comment is it not?) We're too lazy to flush the toilet, we need the automatic flusher. And then she did this routine where you shake your hand in front of the sensor and try to fake sitting down and getting up again because it won't flush and I almost pulled a muscle laughing because I had done all of those things. She also had this very poignant speech about how music is such an important part of our lives and how in an instant there's a song that can take you back to that time in 5th grade when you knew all the words and there are all kinds of feelings and memories evoked from that. She then stated that song was Shoop by Salt n Pepa -- and then proceeded to recite the song like it was a poem. I really did almost wet the bed at that point. But by far, I think the FUNNIEST thing she talked about was how we forget what we're going to say just before we say it. "And you know... Well, I don't because I have NO idea what I was just going to say." Or how we'll be in the middle of making a point or expressing an opinion and we'll be busy congratulating ourselves for HAVING an opinion that we then forget what the point of our opinion was. I do this ALL the time. You can read it in past blogs. I will be writing about something and then can't remember how I got there and next thing you know I am ALL across the page.

And that's the thing with comedians, the good ones. They find these simple truths, these nuggets of quirky things that we as humans do and they will expose them to light. No one ever stops to think that these things are strange until they are pointed out. That's the beauty of it. IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT IS TRUE. That's why I don't laugh at fart jokes or find Tom Green stuff humorous. I can't relate to that. Sure, I fart but I don't think it's funny. Of course, when I see that written down it sure SOUNDS funny, doesn't it? Stop laughing at the farts, that's a serious release of gas into the ozone boy. Don't you know your children will be living in bubbles because of your over-indulgence at Taco Bell today?? Maybe I just don't think fart jokes are funny because I don't make them, because Lord knows I think EVERYTHING I say is funny. Even some of the stuff that's not supposed to be funny.

Well, all of this comedian lauding has wound up over-shadowing the news that I finished Harry Potter! Yay! I won't give any details for those readers (my regular audience seems to have grown to 5 instead of 3, so welcome new Head addicts) who haven't read it but plan to. It was good as always, but nowhere near the level of Book 4. I'm not sure why. Book 4 just had so much detail and so many interesting characters introduced and so many little twists and turns and...

What was I saying? What was I going to say?? :-)

HP