Funny

I had a horrible weekend with devastating things happen, and in the process of trying to work through the emotions I decided to think about funny things. "Funny" is such a relative term; all the time online in the comment forums for blogs and news items, somebody like Conan O'Brien will be the subject and some people will say, "Well, he's not funny" while others talk about how funny this bit and that bit are. I think a sense of humor says a lot about a person; the way we develop that sense shapes what we will and will not accept into our laugh zone.

I remember first discovering Woody Allen's first books, and Steve Martin's early work like Cruel Shoes. They were simultaneously different and exotic and slapsticky and silly. In both cases, there was obviously an intellect working behind the yucks. Their movies, too, exhibited that same kind of thing; even though The Jerk's Navin Johnson is clearly an idiot, the film that features him is very clever. Allen's early films are very absurd and Jewish and intellectual in nature; it took me years to get some of the references, and there a few I still don't get. I used to get that same sense from Dennis Miller before he stopped being a comic and started being a political hack. He used to be mean-spirited about and to everybody, and I thought that was funny. Now he's picked a side, and he sounds like an erudite Rush Limbaugh. Not as purely funny.

I like intelligent humor that takes whole worlds into account. I can watch a Larry the Cable Guy concert, but I don't really laugh much. He's funny sometimes, but his schtick gets old for me. And his movies are awful, just one bodily function joke after another. I have known people who like that sort of thing, but I have very little in common with them.

Then again, I've never cared for Jerry Seinfeld. His whole "observational" thing is very 70s to me. I watched his show a few times and had the same reaction I had to Friends: "OK. Next!" I do, however, love Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm. I know it's the same guy producing both shows, but Curb just does it for me. The show where he goes to heaven and meets his dead mother (played by the wonderful, late Bea Arthur) is hysterical.

I think standup comedy has gotten old and overexposed. There's just too much of it on TV anymore, and they all sound alike. Unless it's somebody like Lewis Black, who is unique and fresh, I'm more than likely bored. Do we really want to watch somebody stand there and tell jokes? I don't think I really like jokes very much. Situations, maybe. Stories. Things with layers.