The things that make me laugh are sometimes difficult to nail down. My Dad’s side of the family has a rather odd and dark sense of humour.
Things like the plethora of sitcoms on television these days just are NOT funny! To me the last really funny sitcom was “M*A*S*H”. Alan Alda has a warped sense of humour like my Dad and was allowed to use it frequently during the show. His rants and one liners were often epic! There were even scripts that instead of dialog read “Alan goes off here” and he adlibbed the scene. The real genius was that the rest of the cast could keep up with him.
Proudly unpolitically correct Lewis Black and the duo Williams and Ree could get a laugh while making you think. I was not fond of Black’s profuse use of profanity (especially the F word) but his political humour will definitely get you to going hmmmmmm.
Williams and Ree were also known as the “Indian and the White Guy” met in college and spent over 50 years on the road as a comedy duo until the recent death of Terry Ree. Like the moniker says – the Indian and the White Guy – was a true description of who they were; Terry Ree was a member of the Sioux Nation and Bruce Williams is Caucasian. They would take the stage armed with their guitars and one of the guys would make a remark on something – usually politically charged – and they were off with a full 90 minute show completely adlibbed!
A distant cousin, Robert Fulghum truly has the family sense of humour and his books are always good for a laugh. He likes to use Cheer laundry detergent because he likes the idea of a happy wash!
I have been known to hear something and start laughing because it hit me as funny; usually drawing some strange looks. Years ago I was on the bus heading home. It happened to be around the time the children get out of school and many of the older ones used the mass transit system to get home instead of the yellow buses. I’m heading home when a group of kids get on the bus. A full load, they stood next to me. I’m not sure who or what the topic of discussion was but all I heard was that somebody had about 20 pounds of weed and were going to smoke themselves stupid. I bus out laughing, the boys looked down at me…and broke out laughing.
Working at a TV studio in college, I had the audio board that day. I never talked on the headsets so didn’t bother to check whether the mic is on…well, it was. We were doing a garden show and the guy was taking about mushrooms and how some of them can make you hallucinate. Thinking no one would hear me, I said yeah, you can take a trip and never leave the farm.
The control room lost it! The lady running the graphics board nearly fell out of her chair. The director was laughing so hard that he couldn’t call the camera shots and the camera crew – who have to remain quiet on the studio floor – were snickering into their hands. Well, after the filming we had to explain to the garden guy what had happened. He got a good chuckle out of it too.
I don’t like profanity filled jokes, things that are gross, crass, or crude; but I love some good off beat humour!
This post feels like an old radio playing all the right kinds of noise. Not the polished, fake kind—but the messy, real kind that makes you stop and smile.
Your humor is like black coffee. Bitter to some, perfect to others. But always strong. It wakes up parts of the mind most people leave sleeping.
You showed that laughter doesn’t have to wear makeup. It can wear scars and still be beautiful. Thank you for reminding us that real comedy doesn’t always come from jokes—it comes from truth dressed in wild colors.