Two things I never could’ve dreamed up appeared online today:
1. Comedian Eddie Izzard has been running marathons around the UK all summer. I mean, he has run one every day, six days a week. Amazing. You can read the story with a couple side interviews here.
I came to enjoy Izzard’s stand-up humor almost against my will. He’s irresistible, though, his imagination making connections everyplace as he rants about computers and describes queuing up at the supermarket. There’s cussing, yeah, his f-word is an adjective. But by the time I got sucked in to the videos of his my kids were watching, I’d become much more comfortable with our cultural, colorful word phenomenon than I used to be. I’d made some conscious decisions about what I think language is doing in different circumstances. Now, what a guy is doing in heels onstage may be another matter, maybe. But at least he had the good sense not to run in them. Go, Eddie!
2. A post, over on Fresca’s blog, about, um, Cheesus. It turns quite thoughtful regarding ignorant arrogance and, as often do things at her site, serves up a perspective free from blind obedience to one cultural/political side or another. But the opening and the close are at least as funny as Izzard’s best. You kinda have to see it.
I guess a good question of the week might be:
What sort of stuff brings out your best belly laughs, providing as good a workout as a London marathon in the rain?
an odd turn of phrase or funny bit, smack in the middle of something that wasn’t funny at all.
Terry Prachett’s discworld series is good at that.
And occasionally a really good pun, told in a completely deadpan way. :)
Good ones, Jodi. It’s all in the timing, isn’t it? :o)
Hey Deanna, three computers later I have found your website again because you commented on mine. I am looking forward to catching up on your great, insightful an of life writing.
You are a great writer and I have a lot to catch up on. Fun!
Hi, Annette! I sure like what you’re doing on your blog. Keep having fun. :o)
Do you have a post about writers block? I would like to know because you are such a prolific writer. And I can’t get a word out today too!
I don’t know about ever being blocked, per se. I’ve been stuck on an essay, usually after getting feedback and not knowing what to do with it, or if I should change anything (decisions foil me). More often, I think I’ve had “writer’s urge”, as in wanting time to write but needing to wait to do so.
You might just be referring to blogging, though, and if so, I am not one who can find pithy things to say every day. I get tons of ideas but have (mostly) learned which ones to weed out before sharing them with everybody. I’ve found a commitment to posting something at least twice a week works for me, usually on Mondays and Wednesdays. Then my brain is processing for that ahead, sort of. Is this any help?
(And thanks, Annette, for calling me prolific. I think many others fit that description better, but maybe I’m getting closer to it. :o))
Deanna! I am THRILLED to be mentioned in the same post as the most excellent Eddie Izzard. (I wouldn’t have taken him for a marathon runner…) “Cheesus” was just too funny to pass up.
I wish I could figure out what makes me laugh. Absurdity, I guess, is big. Like Monty Python’s “ex-parrot” sketch. But it’s so many things—like timing, as you say, and having a keen intelligence as the engine powering the humor (somehow this peeks through even in “stupid” skits), and of course, surprise–not the same old, same old. (I’ve noticed that in improv performances–a lot of lame sketches fall flat because they take the predicable route.) I’ll have to think more on this.
Ah, Monty Python. Things that surprise, incongruity, yes, Fresca, good stuff. Any more thoughts will be fun to hear. (I love the ex-parrot sketch, the cheese shop, spam, all that lot…)