Thursday, April 28, 2011

Paul Ryan's Sick Joke

 
“A Senior walks into a hospital looking for treatment and steps up to the nurse’s desk. The Nurse asks, ‘May I help you?’ The Senior says, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m coughing up blood and my Paul Ryan-Medicare substitute voucher’s out of money, can you help me?’ The Nurse says, ‘I have some good news and I have some bad news.’ The Senior says, ‘What’s the good news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The good news is I know what’s wrong. You have cancer.’ The Senior says, ‘That’s the good news?? What’s the bad news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The bad news is we could cure you but your voucher’s out of money.’
 
Because of all the hits yesterday's blog received, I decided to put the joke in its proper context.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Playing the Ol' Class Card

What’s the future of America, and the world for that matter, when it comes to the widening gulf between the rich and poor?

The recent and continuing attempts to throw off the yoke of dictators, whether Middle Eastern, or Wisconsin anti-union means the “man” ain’t gonna be too happy until they get everyone under submission again.

When Martin Luther King Jr. became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement the concept of “playing the race card” had not been invented because the Civil Rights Movement was creating a whole new deck for a whole new game. Since the 70s, to my memory, there were many times when blacks—and whites for that matter—were accused of “playing the race card”.

The lack of respect for the needs of poor and vulnerable is reaching a fevered pitch in this country. It seems that the time may not be far off when politicians and activists in talking about their concern for poor people and complaining about the lack of respect that Republicans, and some Democrats, have for them that they will be accused of playing the “class card”, or the “poor card”.

For two years, racist jokes about our first black president have been making the circuit on the internet and through emails. And with contempt for the poor and the vulnerable so obvious in the GOP’s push to privatize Medicare, it seems to me we are not far from seeing classist jokes from being discovered in Congressmen’s emails.

For example, jokes like, “A Senior walks into a hospital looking for treatment and steps up to the nurse’s desk. The Nurse asks, ‘May I help you?’ The Senior says, ‘I can’t breathe, I’m coughing up blood and my Paul Ryan-Medicare substitute voucher’s out of money, can you help me?’ The Nurse says, ‘I have some good news and I have some bad news.’ The Senior says, ‘What’s the good news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The good news is I know what’s wrong. You have cancer.’ The Senior says, ‘That’s the good news?? What’s the bad news?’ The Nurse says, ‘The bad news is we could cure you but your voucher’s out of money.’”

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

God Tells Me


God tells me that when He created the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, He originally thought to call it the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Kinda Bad but realized that “kinda bad” spelled backward was “dabadnik”, which in Lithuanian means “transmission repair”, and wasn’t as cool as the “evil"/“live” thing.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Lenny Bruce


For more than 30 years I’ve had some Lenny Bruce albums: “Thank You Masked Man”, “The Berkeley Concert”, “The Law, the Language and Lenny Bruce”. I think I also had “The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce”, but I believe that got stolen and sold by a heroin addict I used to live with in New York back in 1985.

Ah, those were great days.

Inspired by my friend Dennis Perrin’s stand-up comedy endeavors, and my desire to re-experience my nostalgia-colored “better times”, lately I’ve been buying late-50s early-60s comedy records. There is something about the times. Despite the racism, sexism and other isms back then, there was a sense of style and sophistication in the air. Nightclubs were not discos. Men wore suits and ties, women wore dresses. The ever-present swirl of cigarette smoke gave everything a mystique that Mad Men captures very well, but you had to be there to really understand. Going out then had a specialness to it that seems to be missing in today’s miasmic culture.

The comedians of the time were considered by Time Magazine in an article titled, “COMEDIANS: The Third Campaign”, to be intelligent, insightful and funny. That may seem shocking today, but that’s because it’s been a whole half century of comedy between now and then. And it was those comedians who first inspired and created a more cerebral approach to comedy that led to Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and  others.

I have three Mort Sahl albums with another on the way. And I’m seeing, thirty years after falling in love with Lenny Bruce, that I never gave Mort Sahl the credit or exploration he was due. A comparison of Lenny and Mort can be made which would easily complement both. Both were intelligent, instinctual, philosophical, Jewish and quick, but Lenny was more conceptual while Mort was more of a straight commentator and analyst. Lenny did voices and characters. Mort did not. Lenny did heroin. Mort did not.

The world is different today. But it hasn’t changed that much in fifty years. And there are enough problems of today that comedy today would have enough material to talk about with meaning and laughs. I would love to see a renaissance of a type of comedy that was intelligent and philosophical and funny. But comedy today is ruled by forces I don’t understand. It’s too controlled and sanitized in this 21st century way. Comedy in the Fifties was sanitized too. My point is maybe that renaissance of intelligent, topical, philosophical comedy may be just over the horizon.

So, for all you future comedians of the renaissance, let me do my part by saying: explore Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory and Lenny Bruce see how they did it. I will write a post about Sahl and Gregory in the near future, but this is about Lenny.

Lenny was impish. He had a child-like quality about him. He had fun being in front of an audience. He did funny voices and made himself laugh. But Lenny was deep. He would do bits about kids sniffing airplane glue to get high. No one did that back then. That gave Lenny an air of danger that made him—what that’s word everyone loves to use?—oh, yeah, Lenny was “controversial”.

Lenny did bits about religion, racism, sex, drugs and popular culture. And these were structured bits with a narrative. Observational humor is great, but Lenny’s “Religions Incorporated” is a classic comedy bit no matter who did it. “How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties” was genius because the character Lenny played in the bit said everything every white person was thinking who went to an integrated party in the late 50s, early 60s. The Carnegie Hall Concert is my favorite because Lenny is so relaxed and philosophical. And he isn’t chasing after laughs. He is preaching with humor.

Lenny became a target of the popular culture and they drove him to his death. As detailed in the HBO documentary Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, Lenny exposed an offer of a bribe, which was a basis of the persecution he suffered. However, his ideas must have been the wood society built at his feet when they burned Lenny at the stake. That’s what they did to heretics in the old days. And they considered Lenny a heretic because Lenny was effective.

So much has been written about Lenny, there is nothing I can add of value. All I can say is Lenny feels very comfortable like an old friend. He reminds me of a time when I was young and hopeful and amazed by so much of the world.

Here are a few of what is available of Lenny on YouTube. The first is Lenny on Steve Allen.


This is the first of seven parts of the Lenny Bruce Performance Film which was performed shortly before Lenny died and is available on DVD.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Remi Gaillard


In my opinion, the best humor has an element of anarchy to it. About a month ago, my friend Guillaume wanted me to watch some videos of Remi Gaillard, beginning more than ten years ago. I’m naturally skeptical when someone wants me to see something because they think I will like it, but, as with my friend Dennis and Lily Tomlin’s “Glenna--A Child of the 60s” back in the winter of 1982, I found myself laughing very hard.

Gaillard is French and very talented with a soccer ball. In fact, his most notable prank was participating in the victorious celebrations from a soccer game disguised as a player and meeting then-president of France, Jacques Chirac. And as this video, titled “Foot”, shows, his talent for kicking a ball is in many ways as skilled and amazing as Will Rogers talent with a rope.

 
But the anarchy comes when Gaillard takes his talent for kicking a soccer ball and applies it to the police. Watch the Montpelier gendarmes chase Gaillard down the street, only to give up.


Gaillard has been arrested many times. But he doesn’t rely solely on his skill with a ball to get laughs or amaze. And, like good slapstick, what makes Gaillard’s comedy so funny is that the pain is real, as you will see with the police at the end of this video.

The sight of two policemen tackling and restraining a man dressed in a butterfly outfit is hilarious. But the seriousness of the situation, which is even funnier to me, is underscored when the cameraman begins running away.


But Gaillard’s anarchy is not just perpetrated upon the police; it has also been perpetrated upon one of America’s most world-famous multi-national corporations.


Even French people and establishments were targets of Gaillard and his associates. And again, it’s funnier when you know the pain is real.


It beats the hell out of “Jackass”, don’t ya think?


If you’re interested in seeing more Remi Gaillard videos, visit his website.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Happy April Fool's

At the meeting pictured above exactly one year ago today, Obama reportedly said to Qaddafi: "In one year I'm going to bomb your country--just kidding, April Fool's!!!"

Lately, I've been having a desire to return to the blog I left so abruptly nearly a year and a half ago. Some things in my life, like the death of my father, to whom a Father's Day tribute launched this endeavor, have changed. Some things have not changed so much.

There is nothing special about this particular post except to reintroduce me to the process. Happy April Fool's Day, everybody.