For me, funny and sad go together kind of like chocolate and peanut butter. They enhance one another and for me the saddest books are the ones that have wit and humor because I think through humor you get those flashes of what makes life glorious and mysterious.
So the first band director in middle school made me the drum major, right? So my job was to keep time with my gate, right? Which was a terrible idea, right? So then in high school they moved that to we're going to put the tuba on the field and you'll march in place while everybody else goes in planetary orbit around you.
There is only one moment in every person's life when they have a vibration rate of zero, and that is on their fifth birthday, when they blow out the candle.
I think it really molded me into a person who had a lot of fear about whether or not the world was even safe. The world never felt safe to me from kindergarten on because I got bullied so much, and I responded by getting a sense of humor.
But if we're all in this together for the good, we're definitely all in this together for the bad. Heat waves, wildfire smog, explosive diarrhea, political minations between the US and FIFA. I can't help but wonder, are we the drama?
We are never above a laugh. There's nothing that's grave enough for us not to laugh about because that's how we process our pain. It's like we laugh through death and sickness and sadness.
A guy came up to the mic right over there and he said, 'My wife left me because she said I wasn't you.' ... But the gentleman stopped and then he said, 'And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.' And he literally dropped the mic and I thought that kind of covers the whole gamut.
A guy came up to the mic right over there and he said, 'My wife left me because she said I wasn't you.' And he literally dropped the mic and I thought that kind of covers the whole gamut.
Humor is kind of the opposite of toxic positivity where you're like, there's a bright side to everything. Don't worry, every cloud has a silver lining. Like, sometimes that's just not true at all. And I think what I love about humor is that you can find something to laugh at without denying the overwhelming negativity or or violence or frustration or pain, right? You don't have to ignore that. You can laugh in that moment.
Will Rogers had a way of saying things that made people laugh, and then think. He understood that humor could be a Trojan horse — a way of sneaking past people's defenses to deliver an uncomfortable truth.
I was on Interstate 5 in over in the Pacific Northwest where I live and one of those big trucks that's got all the chickens in it like bombing down the highway and I looked at it and a chicken looked into my soul.
I would watch the bands from a window in the kitchen. You know, I would like peek out as a 13-, 14-, 15-year-old working weekends and summers making fruit cup and salads, and, you know, I played high school football, but I had red fingernails from the cherries that I put on the fruit cups.
The story of black comedy, it has always moved through contradictions like that. Moments of limitation that eventually open the door for something bigger and something better.
I almost feel bad for this generation, you know, cuz they had to go through like Zoom school and then prom was social distance and now they can't go to Mexico and get their first STD.
Well, I was trying to act all serious and say, you know, I'm not a petty person. And then I checked myself and I said, in this case, I'm petty as hell.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
