2002-08-26 2:44 p.m.
funny?

"Humor...is such a subjective thing."

--Emperor Cartagia (after ordering his court jester killed) on Babylon 5

Comedy.

This is a subject that drives me nuts sometimes (and makes my sides split sometimes), because, like so many other things (film/music/theater/paella), it comes down to taste. And as Rob Gordon asks in High Fidelity, how can it be wrong to state a preference?

My answer? You're not wrong to state your preference, but it tells other people something about you.

A friend of mine, who hasn't mentioned her comedic tastes to me before, just told me she's ecstatic because Jerry Seinfeld's going to tour to two cities near her.

In case you didn't know...

...Seinfeld makes me want to puke blood.

I find him banal, unimaginative, and schticky in the worst Catskills sense. (Which makes sense, because half of the senior citizens in NY flock to see him.)

No development of routines, no freakin' commentary on life except in the shallowest sense, nothing but crap observational humor, total LCD.

So it makes me sad when someone describes a guy like Seinfeld as a comedic genius...because not only am I then afraid to show them anyone I feel is a comedic genius, I realize that, when coupled with other cultural tastes (e.g. if that person doesn't read much/at all, doesn't listen to music except Top 40, isn't interested in much else than junk food culture), a glass ceiling on how intellectual you can get with that person has appeared. Which is a depressing notion.

I don't need to have deep and moving conversations with everyone in my life. (Jesus, if I did, I'd be Morrissey or Ethan Hawke or Alan Moore.) But it's really important to me to get that kind of connection from somewhere, and it's sad when you realize you're not going to get that with someone you like.

I saw a one-man show a month or so ago with my friend Mimi (a stand-up comic of no small talent) by a guy named, for the sake of anonymity, Murray. He's a Jewish comic who came of age in the Catskills. He's skinny, got a big nose, is unbelievably unmasculine (and this coming from me), and every freakin' punchline is followed by a mind's-ear badda-bing!

Murray's show was about his 27 years in stand-up comedy, how he's barely had gigs over the years, despite promoting himself like a madman, and how he's never made it. Ever. He goes into graphic, horrifying detail of the night he was about to be discovered by Johnny Carson during a set at The Improv in LA...when, in the middle of his set, he got heckled by his agent's son.

The point of the experience? (Personally, I didn't think there was one, other than to paint the picture of a man who was both a masochist and a lover of what he felt was comedy.) Since the show was free (at HERE, a surprisingly versatile arts/performing space) and the audience was made up of agents, talent scouts, and, for the most part, comics, he must have been trying to inspire, to teach, to tell a younger generation to hold fast to their dream and keep plugging away, which is the lesson Mimi said she took away from it (while I bit my tongue til it bled).

I'm not a cruel and capricious person, but I was really surprised that this guy, chock-full of rim shots and really awful puns and one-liners, didn't bring a gun up on the stage, stick it in his mouth, and blow his brains out on the final night.

Maybe a free show is self-promotion, or maybe it's what you do when you've got nothing else to do.

I admit, it was very brave of him to get up there and tell what must have been a tale of the deepest heartache in the style of comedy that he's held fast to all these years.

But I walked out of there wanting to buy that man a round or ten of very stiff drinks, and leave before he started into them.

I don't want to be him.

I don't need to be a success at what I do...hell, I could write ten novels and never have one bought, or have the first one sell twenty years from now, and still feel some pride from the act of creation, or self-publish my first novel myself.

But I don't want to look up at the end of a 27-year career of performing and have a show like that be all I have to say for myself. I'd rather keep my mouth shut.