Explaning Comedy
Explaining Comedy ©
By Michael Casey
Well I decided a day or two ago to revisit Explaining Comedy, and today we had Donald Trump boasting as only he can, the man with the Midas Touch in Reverse. And then the whole world laughed at him, which is Irony and they say Americans don’t get irony. I’ve also said before he is like the Emperor in the Emperor’s new clothes, and that we were just waiting for a child to laugh at him and then the crowd would, well perhaps today was that day.
Humour arrives at the strangest moment, for example at my aunty Delia’s funeral in the 1980s, she was a great big woman, a massive character and a wonderful spirit. At her funeral as the coffin was taken to the graveyard they met another funeral procession. Now in the crowd following the other funeral was the dead man’s wife and his new girlfriend. The two women in his life were fighting at his death, because he’d changed his Will, so the two loves of his life were arguing as to who should have got his dough. My aunty would have laughed at the sport of it all. So my aunty Delia went to Heaven laughing, I hope she’s still laughing now, God Bless her.
If you ever read my comic novel The Butcher The Baker & The Undertaker there you’ll find some black humour, and for those of you reading this in Vietnam or Greece, you were spotted today, so hello. Well black humour, is not just Eddie Murphy, it’s also a term for humour shrouded in darkness or unhappiness. Such as mentioned in my comic novel, though I do also have to say that Percy the Undertaker is also a poet, and that is ironic because poetry in the main is about life, but Percy Frost is an undertaker, dealing with death. The Ethos behind Percy is actually based on an undertaking firm I know of, how all undertakers should be. Remember too in the Bible, Jesus wept for his dead friend, then he raised him from the dead.
Back to comedy, when my mother died we had the meal after the funeral in the local Irish club, all the foot laid out on the snooker table. When my sister booked it she was asked did she want the 1.99 or the 3.99 food. All I remember was that it was great, six holes on a snooker table after we’d come back from the cemetery which was full of holes, and the green green grass, compared to the green baize of the snooker table.
Humour is what you see, and it’s the angle you have on life that makes things humorous. It’s very easy to be unhappy, especially if your life is hard, so you need “trick” yourself into being happy. That’s where word association and puns, and even outright filth will keep you going. I heard once that on Nuclear Submarines, because they are away for 3 months at a time, there is a porn mag written by the crew that does the rounds. You have to keep moral up after all.
Though this could just be a lie that Putin told me when we were down the pub drinking Stella Artois together, as we laughed at the girl Trump who never drank at all. What kind of man is that asked Putin as he laughed up his kilt. Now Vietnamese readers this does not mean Putin had his head up Trump’s kilt or anything like that. It is a figure of speech, my own dad used to use it. It means they were mocking, or taking the mick out of somebody.
Comedy happens because you take one thing and twist it, Shakespeare uses it all the time. You see something and then you deliberately turn it around, to have a comic meaning. Think of your own examples. Like pound for pound I’m a great husband. Now obviously that is true. So that could be the first joke or lie, but because I am 248pounds, pound per pound I must be a great husband. Just like down the fish market and you pay per pound, as I’m so heavy I’m a bargain. Though my wife might say I just stink.
We all have friends and they are like the good, the bad and the ugly. Michael Casey has film star looks, he should be in horror movies, or his wife is right he really does stink, he should be buried. With concrete on top, like Charlie Chaplin, just to make sure nobody digs him up. Though his humour is so old it has been resurrected. And so it has because there are influences going back to silent films that I’ve absorbed, so you all get the benefit of all my sucking up of material and influences over my chequered life.
I need to pop out to the Polish shop for pop, so I’ll finish now but I hope you can all understand where all or at least some of the ideas come from. Though my diet can make my windy at times, so perhaps my wife is right, I do stink. But I am an expert on toilet paper I’ll have you know. I am after all, soft and strong but very very long.
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