It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

When I first began blogging I used to get a lot of these emails: "I'm sorry I didn't leave a funny comment."

It appeared that because I was a comedian, some people felt an obligation to be funny. Of course I hadn't even noticed. I don't grade people's comments although I might start now.

Suddenly everyone wants to be funny over everything else. Not smart, not even attractive trumps this juggernaut of a personality trait. We used to want people with a sense of humor. I haven't heard that expression in years. Now everyone wants someone who's funny.

And that's just not possible.

Mainly because very few people are funny. I see a lot of blog headers and Twitter bios of people claiming they're funny. If you have to announce that? I'm not sure you are. It's like telling a woman you're going to sleep with that you have a big dick. It can be proved wrong, eventually.

A recent convert to Twitter told me months ago that she didn't want to go on Twitter because she'd be constantly trying to think up one-liners. That's a job best left to comedians because good one liners are hard to write. The going rate on The Tonight Show used to be $100 per joke. Someone waiting on a big gig just offered me $5,000 to write ten new minutes for her if she got the job. As much as I would love the money? That ten minutes, approximately 30 jokes, is not going to be written in an afternoon. I only knew one person who could do that and he now writes for Joan Rivers. And the other person who can crank them out is head writer for The Oscars. And they're both brilliant at it.

So go on Twitter and be interesting. Believe me, that's hard enough.

Why is it so important to be funny?

Funny is subjective. Look no further than sitcoms, romantic comedies and books. The Liar's Club, by Mary Karr, has this notation on the back of the book: "The choice in the book is between howling misery and howling laughter, and the reader veers towards laughter." And the back cover also proclaims "A wickedly funny account of an apocalyptic childhood."

I'm a huge fan of Ms. Karr and that book is an apocalyptic tale, but funny? No. But I'm sure there's someone reading this who will violently disagree with my assessment of the laughter quotient in that book. And like those blog and Twitter headers and bios, you set yourself up to judgement if you say something is funny. Say humorous (completely different than funny) or amusing (also different) but don't say funny unless you want people to pick you apart like a King Crab leg.

Which brings me to dying. One person I talked about a lot in the beginning of this blog has died. I heard it third hand a few weeks ago. I referred to him as The Impotentate in this blog and he once told me the reason he was first attracted to me was because I was funny. That may have been what he thought was the reason but the real reason was that he thought HE was funny. Maybe he thought I could get him on TV? In the movies? Who knows. But I do remember this story.

One night he told me one of the oldest jokes in the history of joke writing:

A father walks into his son's room and sees the son is masturbating. He tells the son that if he keeps doing that he's going to go blind and the son replies, "Over here, Dad."

I didn't laugh. And he got mad.

For starters, comedians don't laugh at jokes. Usually not when a civilian tells it. They'll leave out a word, or their timing is off or they forget the punchline. Or the joke sucks. Comics barely laugh at each other. If I say to you, "That's funny," that's as big as it's going to get.  Comedians know too much about the business of joke construction. We can pinpoint with alarming NASA like accuracy where that punchline will land. Occupational hazard.

I like to point out when something is funny. I'm not threatened by someone else's success in this area. If you wrote a funny book, told a funny speech and it made me laugh, I'll tell you. I'm not insecure about who I am in that regard. And you not telling me when I'm funny makes me think YOU might be insecure and think you're funnier than me, or that I'm not funny at all, but that's another day and our hour is almost up.

NOT FUNNY AT ALL WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUT?

So The Impotentate and I broke up many, many times and on one of our reconciliations, we were driving up north. I had a gig and we were going to spend the night at a nearby hotel. On the way up he told me the SAME masturbating joke he had told me years earlier. I realized he had no recollection of telling me the joke in the first place.

But this time I laughed. Because he was trying so hard to impress me with this lame joke. That he thought was funny.

Was it wrong that I laughed? Does it diminish the time I told you that you said something funny? Will you ever trust a compliment from me again?

Let's not forget The Impotentate was a man. Their egos don't allow them to believe they're not funny. I'm sure Albert Schweitzer thought he was a laugh riot.

So the Bite Me Award of the Week goes to everyone who thinks they're funny. But really aren't.

End of chat.