Humor is My Genre discussion
Humor
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I´m not sure about the origin of ¨BLOG¨ myself, but thanks for inviting me to yours. In the humor category, I enjoy Terry Pratchett, Robert Asprin, and the older Richard Armour and James Thurber books. There is a difference between humor writing and just telling jokes. I hope we can have some interesting talks.
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"Sprawl"--I like that term, Seth. My favorite parts of Prairie Home Companion are the times when Garrison Keillor sprawls and the sound effects fellow scrambles to keep up with him. That layering of details, growing in outrageousness to comic effect (as in Red's sample above) sustains the humor over the stretch of a Saturday afternoon radio program or the length of a comic novel. Years have gone by since I read The Confedracy of Dunces, but Ignatius Riley is still my standard for comic sprawl and comic outrage.
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I’m 49 years old and I’ve been married four times, not to four different women, but one woman with four different hairstyles. She was dirty blond at the first wedding, brunette at the second and Lucile Ball redhead at the third. You see, all of my nuptials involved my current wife Ethania Priscilla, nee Oswald whose hair was almost canary yellow at the fourth wedding. She has again filed for divorce. I just found that out so if I seem a little edgy about it, well, hell, I am edgy about it.
I cannot go through another divorce, followed by another athletic endeavor and a fifth hairstyle which may turn out to be M&M purple. Damn it all to hell, four is a damn ‘nough!
I stared angrily at the dirty yellow manila envelope knowing what it was since I had seen a similar one three times previously. It was delivered just like the other three, not by a mailman, FEDEX guy or a fat man in shorts who drives a brown truck. It came by special messenger. The law firm sent their most junior attorney in a Sears business suit to deliver and make me sign for it.
When I asked him what it was all about, he shrugged his shoulders and smirked, the little twit. I asked him why he was chosen to make the delivery. He said all the junior attorneys had delivered one to me. “They make us do it as part of our orientation. It was my turn.” He said and then added with an ironic smile, “Sign right here, Mr. Broadmore.”
“What if I don’t sign for it?”
“I’ll have no choice but to kill you, sir.”
“Shit!” I signed with as much flourish as I could muster.
It’s not fair! I did football for the damn woman, then baseball, then competitive water skiing, tennis and even ran myself into fallen arches on the basketball court so Ethania would marry me again ...and again.
I know what you’re thinking; that I must be crazy, weak, dumb, an idiot. Well, I’m none of those, except maybe a little weak when it comes to Ethania.
I’m a smart man. I graduated high school and junior college in the top ten of my classes. I would display my high school diploma in my office except that Bluto Feldman snuck into the principal’s office the night before graduation and stamped “MAKE LOVE NOT WAR” on mine. On some diplomas, he stamped “TASTES GREAT!” or “LESS FILLING!” He swears even today that he was a secret agent of the Miller Brewing Company, “I was on loan from the CIA.” He said.
When the students and parents slipped off the red ribbons and unrolled those diplomas, they became an angry mob. Because he failed to prevent a riot in the assembly hall, the principal was demoted to school crossing guard.
Bluto Feldman became a prankster legend who will someday be enshrined in the High Jinks Hall of Fame. In the meantime, in a foaming washtub of Coors Lite, we canonized him. In fact, we almost drowned him.
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So here is my first real blog. I've been wondering something though, doesn't "B-L-O-G" sound ... well obscene. The dog blogged on my carpet the little snert!