Other peoples comedy fails to launch (No Somalian short stories though)

I feel a bit bad for the person who found this blog by googling Somalian short stories - I do apologize, maybe one day I'll get to that. Today though - this. One of my many pet hates in life (apart from Metro Station, Akons association with Lady Gaga, how much crap you have to go through to get a song on an IPOD, Jason Mraz, anyone white jamming with black guys in a video clip, Erik Thomson and of course, Metro Station) is when people try and make jokes when they aren't funny. I don't mind the genuinely unfunny, if there's a self deprecating awareness or admission that the person isn't good at telling jokes, but when people die and genuinely think they are hilarious...well, this isn't a pet hate, but it does always make me feel incredibly uncomfortable - like watching Friends in 2008, it's just a horrible experience to watch someone attempt to pass off some wit and wisdom when they aren't funny or just don't have the timing. I'm lucky, I have good comic timing, even if I know if I did stand up I'd just lapse into doing ten minutes of Rodney Dangerfield material. My boss today tried to draw on a farewell card some funny drawings, and it just didn't work, and it was distinctly uncomfortable. It happens to the best of us though - my Mum, the cynical Glaswegian of "ye've got tae sleep sometime" renown, often references a time just after we moved back to Penguin when I was sitting watching our two channel television (keep in mind I'd just from Scotland where we had every channel in Europe, yes, including the filthy Danish ones) and something like, I don't know, Dinosaurs or Perfect Strangers came on Southern Cross and I rather whimsically said in a sort of comedy Peter Ustinov droll voice "Huh (no joke should start with a grunted huh)...I call it Southern Dross!" - you see, dross rhymes with cross, and hold your tomatoes in the stalls thankyou. She gave me like ten seconds to hang myself and then just went "you.....twat" - which was fair enough I thought. Believe me, since that day I've kept my opinions of contemporary television to myself around my Mother, even my true opinions on Packed to the Rafters, just in case I make a droll aside. But honestly, you should have seen these drawings, I mean...so much effort, so little hilarity...maybe my boss could work on Fred Bassett?

As Fred Bassett descends into my consciousness today, thinking of people who can't cross the humour divide always reminds of the quasi-comic farce (google that Somalians) that was 1994s attempt to cross pollinate our school culture - the year that we got a foreign exchange student at our school called John, an American from somewhere in America, big of reputation and big of mouth. I think John was possibly the first American that I ever met in my life - a perpetually shifting about the world kid devoid of roots (steady) who made up for his lack of time in any one place by deciding to smash the system with a desperate mix of crude innuendo, bravado over homework and perennial bragging about his long record of car theft. Naturally, everyone at first thought he was cool, as they had me, until my incredibly dorky 1993 and my total lack of sporting skills (I was still well dressed). After all, nothing says cool like souping up a 1987 Nissan and scooting around West Park does it? He had, in his quieter moments, quite a wistful melancholy about him, as if he realised that true friendships were never going to formed in a single, brief term or two before he had to move on, but he wasn't quiet for very long, bounding hyper-energetically through each day, ever louder, ever more annoying. Probably his lasting contribution to my consciousness was that every single day he would loudly announce to the class which girl he would like to sleep with (I've obviously cleaned it up) and for how long - then he would chuckle to himself as if he'd told the worlds funniest joke, and put his hand up for a high five. He would also tell a lot of jokes, mostly about genies, and parts of the human body, and genies enlarging parts of the human body. This was obviously only ever going to end in some kind of complaint related disaster, and sure enough, one day he slapped a girl on the arse, told her that baby she wanted it, and was suspended. He was funny once though - challenged on his sexuality in a particularly cruel way by one of school cool kids (is that an oxymoron in Burnie?) he flexed a bicep and said "Shut up man I'm cool...I'm strong...." - which neither answered the question, nor was a valid or true statement, but it was definitely the biggest laugh he got (way bigger than any genie joke)...

I'm a big afficionado of stand up comedy, but I still feel the need to leave if the "turn" (as we say in Scotland) is dying - case in point was probably when me and my best friend went to the casino to see Peter Helliar (no please, don't throw tomatoes) in Rove 99/pre Strauchanie career mode. Brilliantly, our radio toolshiners Kim and Dave did some stand up to warm up the crowd, which involved a bit of Les Dawson "how fat is my fat wife!" material, and then on came Peter Helliars warm up act. I can't remember his name, but he had about ten minutes of material on the fresh and out there topic of what happened when he took his kid to the zoo - I know, it's a crazy angle I know, but go with him - and saw the elephants and his kid asked about elephants genitalia...well, didn't that just lead to some hilarious hijinks. And about 212 swear words, which really impressed my best friend, who hates swearing - oddly she hates swearing, but likes dating complete bozos, aint life just a quirk fest. Suffice to say we were pretty much pining by the end of the routine for some "how fat is my fat wife!" material. Just so I could shout out "how fat is she!" and get involved. As for Peter Helliar, well, he was OK, I mean he's a Collingwood supporter, give him that. We actually went and spoke to Peter Helliar (no, stop, think of the children) after the gig (when you are in comedy it's called a gig) and my friend, who is a pretty subtle girl, said "your support act was shithouse!" - Pete was a little taken aback at this assessment, and at first tried to defend someone who clearly was his friend, blaming the acoustics, the poor warm up work of Kim and Dave ("how fat is she!"), the poor crowd...however, as we walked away after having a lovely old chat, he looked rather sadly and depressingly into his glass of juice, and said "and don't be too hard on the support guy, it's a tough gig, he's doing it tough...he's thinking of becoming a dentist you know" - and we walked off, pondering exactly Peter Helliar felt the need to drum up support act sympathy through mentioning that a change of career was in the offing. My friend thinks he thought we were newspaper critics, but I think we were just saying what Peter was really thinking...his support act was terrible (he needed a fat wife)...

Probably if I think about it, the worst comedy corpse I've ever seen would probably be some sort of teacher related sketch - or where I work, perhaps the end of year "skits" done in the name of gags. Teacher related sketches are never promising - at our school, it was widely assumed that the teachers would perform, although my Dad remained splendidly aloof from zany stunting until his latter days raising money for Amnesty. At the battle of the bands thing we had that I mentioned in a previous post, the one with the death metal John Williamson tribute act taking on the Portishead angel who ended up being a bogan car thief, in between those two acts, there was a teachers band, obviously put together over too many Nescafes in the teachers lounge. The teachers had got together, decided to form a comedy jugband (no, no teachers, you can't emulate Emmett Otter, you just can't) complete with that jug you blow in, a washboard, and the lead singer teacher dressed in flannel and with big comedy teeth. He came to the front of the stage, really proud of his hilarity, and stomped his feet and began singing some sort of jugband parody of Silverchairs Tomorrow. You might think the surrealist absurdity of this moment might have provoked some hilarity, but of course, it didn't. Rarely has such failure been witnessed on such an epic scale (and that was an assembly hall that had seen someone play Jesus in a Carlton jumper) - which was quite poetic, because they were only one song into a triple stack back to back all your favourite hits set to jugband music Rocktober triple play. And incidentally, the second song was Epic by Faith No More. I can still remember feeling quite pained as at one point he actually said (please god no) "are you all having fun!" - silence that pure really doesn't resonate in a story, but it was pretty evident that the herded in children really weren't having fun. As we pondered our own existence in the world, and the set mercifully dwindled to a hoe-pless finish, it was left to our bogan girl compere to conjure up the phrase we were all feeling ("how fat was she"...stop it!) - she watched the teachers slink off defeated, turned to face the audience, and said, what to this day I always maintain was "thank god for Philip Nitschke" - however, since my attention span was on the girl in the Portishead mood, I would accept, given her limited vocab and limited grasp of current affairs, I presume it was actually "my god that really shitty", but perhaps I underestimated her. After all, this was a girl who got a study scholarship from Dominos Pizza...an intellect not to be messed with I'd think...

Three different comedy deaths, and yet, not any of them more painful than Southern Dross....still, how fat is she...