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Seriously Funny
by Cameron Koo
Seriously funny? Arguably the most ridiculous pairing of two words since Calista and Flockhart - an oxymoron if you please. Then again, maybe not. You see, not all humorists are funny all of the time. It can also be argued that some are
never funny. But those who are funny can be deadly serious while those who are deadly serious find funny a stretch. Those who aren't either deadly serious or funny can be recognized by their surrounding impenetrable forcefields which are designed to keep new and ingenious ideas from penetrating - better known as society columnists.
For this week's offering, I'd like to continue the theme of what makes a humorist tick. For those who were paralyzed by last week's analgesic to the senses, which in some quarters was described as a vanilla flavored column that spun its wheels, spat into the wind and rolled snake eyes for its 1,032 words of utter cliched tedium, please do not read on.
Even though I have no typing skills to speak of, (my fingers are all thumbs) I've always wanted to write humor, despite the fact that I've had a long time secret desire to be David Hasselhoff - but who hasn't? Even though my first attempts at humor writing could have been composed by Hercazoid, the half wit, deaf and dumb sideshow freak, I persisted and I'm now finally comfortable with my literal lackluster and phrasal failings.
Not everyone can be funny, though. For example, one wouldn't expect say, Jeffrey Dahmer (the mass murderer who was put to death by lethal reruns of 'Hangin' With Mr. Cooper') to have been a funny guy. I could imagine his dinner party witticisms to be about as mirth-provoking as pouring battery acid over your genitals.
You see, we are all different - even humorists don't all come off the same rack. Our common denominator though is that we are a breed apart - smug, presumptuous, insolent and emotionally double parked in a parallel dimension. We don't play well with others, we slip in and out of creative comas, we are able to fire cliches like ballistic missiles, we can debate Satan in hell without cracking a sweat and our egos can only be measured by those giant scales that can weigh a marlin, or even a Brando - shameless examples of walking, talking, wise cracking, scruple-free zones.
Generally, we humorists don't write for an audience who have been trained by television sit-coms to laugh on
cue; we write for people who have a refined sense of humor and who aren't afraid to be confronted with acerbic and defamatory observations. Let's face it, we humor writers do our thing because we love amusing ourselves. The creative process is to fancy our tickle as we massacre some fool's lack of character, or his/her general lack of anything that can bleed a laugh.
We live in a realm where making money can be as easy as securing eternal damnation - a residence where one can vanquish their creative indigestion - success being about having at least one purposeless proficiency up one's sleeve. I do realize that this confession of sins may have you shifting restlessly like you've been sleeping in a bed full of dog biscuit crumbs, but let's face it, fact is stranger than Dan Quayle.
However, being a humorist is not all peaches and cream you know. As we negotiate the brutal minefield of delivering spiteful personal denunciations, we must be careful not to get too brazen or indeed audaciously brassbound because familiarity breeds contempt, or does contempt breeds familiarity, either way it's a dangerous familiarity where slanderous indignities are all over you like a cheap liable suit - and we ethical ones just don't make anyway near enough money to have our day in court.
So what's the secret to humorist success? One word: consistency. Consistency is the key because negative word of mouth will kill your career quicker than a starlet getting laid at a conference of film producers. There is very little worse or more tragic than words which are nothing more than moldy grits and mushy oatmeal trying to be poignant.
Some say we are tools of exposition where moronic tirades batter the senses until one finds oneself participating in open supplication praying that lightning will strike him right between the eyes. Others say we are faithfully obstinate in our determination to hop, step and jump to a whimsical conclusion no matter how contrived or irrational it may be - leaps of logic that Carl Lewis could never have made even with rocket powered Nikes.
Either way, we are well versed in babble which will have readers at a complete loss to explain perfectly good words arranged in such a bizarre way which is then passed off as social commentary. But it will be funny.
Is contrived humor a valid form of expression? Of course it is. Being a humorist is about the battle between light and sound. We must appear bright in case we have to speak. You see, if speaking was our forte, we'd all be doing stand-up instead of sit-down behind our personal computers.
If we could face our victims we'd deny ourselves the snide cheapshot ringing out from the bleachers and let's be honest here, the heckle secures most of our laughs. Besides, we spend most of our time looking for ways to confirm our doubts and fears while being more than capable of sinking our own ship.
So as we witness our thus termed calling in life constantly capsizing into the sea of dismembered dreams, we have to make a choice and make it fast. Do we go through life sulking like we didn't get the right Power Ranger for Christmas, or do we try and come to terms with our innermost psychopath? A study of my contemporaries will reveal examples of both.
At the end of the day, our applause will always come from the heart and vitriol is never personal. You can all stop laughing now while budding humorists please take my advise - why not, I never use it. Keep persisting, because success will be luscious indeed. You will have made it with nothing, which is really cool, because you would have been used to working with less.
Copyright: Cameron Koo, May 2000
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