What Makes You So Funny?

What Makes You So Funny?

 

Yeah there’s going to be some egomania in this one.  Perhaps.  But I’ve been listening to a lot of old stand up recently and have been thinking of how my sense of humor developed.  And, after all, the blog is really my musings.  By the way, I am honestly asked that question a lot.

 

I’ve always considered my sense of humor more of the verbal and cerebral sort, as opposed to the physical.  Though I do like to pick up on physical characteristics of others and mimic them, I’m really more about the words.  This becomes obvious as I consider who my main sources of influence have been.

 

George Carlin was an early influence for me.  I memorized his albums FM & AM and Class Clown at a young age.  They taught me what was funny and a bit of timing.  Woody Allen came into my life a few years later.  More through his films and plays and then ultimately his stand up.  He taught me (unwittingly I might add) about word usage and irony, as well as the benefit of self deprecating humor.   As a kid I also listened to a lot of Bill Cosby.  Stand up routines, especially on records, really taught me about the verbal conveyance of ideas and timing.  Things I wasn’t learning through more visual media.  Add in the Marx Brothers (specifically Groucho) to assist in developing wordplay.

In my later years (and well after their introduction to the US) was Monty Python.  Here was irony and to an extent verbal farce.  I learned that a joke didn’t need to have an ending and didn’t need to even make sense.  These were my professional influences.

In my real life, my greatest influence was my Mom.  My mother had quite a biting wit.  She could cut through all of the layers and go, as they say, directly for the jugular.  Though my Father had a great sense of humor he was more of a charmer.  I think I’m able to combine the two so that I can pretty much say what I need to in order to get a laugh yet still leave the offended party (at least a good part of the time) in on the joke as opposed to being the butt.

I also have a good memory for useless information.  And I have a pretty quick ability to access it.  This is what I attribute a lot of my wit to.  I generally would consider myself a quick wit though I am (most of the time) able to filter it for appropriateness.  At one point when asked how I come up with those comments so quickly, I responded, without giving it much thought, that I have a book at home with a funny thing to say in any situation, and I memorized it.  Think about it.

It really is about the words for me.  The only area in which I find physical humor part of my makeup is in facial gestures and expressions.  Often I will hear a comment and make a very slight facial gesture and the full meaning of what is going through my head is conveyed.  This really is the case with people who have gotten to know me.

 

“You should be a comedian!”  How often I’ve heard that over the years.  Unfortunately it is not my style (though I did think about it when I was much younger).  It’s just not the kind of funny I am.  I think I would work best “on the couch” like they had on the old talk shows.  Just kind of chatting and joking.  This is where the wit comes in.  I also tend too much to storytelling.  Whenever I have considered doing stand up and putting a routine together I find that I am much too verbose, taking quite awhile to get to the payoff.  If one expects a story teller, one is more accepting of that style.  If one expects a stand up, they want a series of quick laughs, not a build.

 

 

And yes, I am well aware that everything I try to make a joke of is just not funny.  Let me rephrase that.  I am aware that there are things that I may say in order to elicit a laugh that won’t, that aren’t funny at all.  Or funny to most.  This has an interesting evolution.  Back in High School I was a real humor snob.  If I didn’t find something funny (or even just mildly funny) I wouldn’t laugh.  Not even crack a smile.  Friends actually would go out of their way to see if they could get me to laugh and usually to no avail.  It was quite a compliment if someone got a smile out of me.  An actual laugh, a grand slam.  And I was very particular in what jokes I would tell.  It had to be funny to me for the words to come out of my mouth.  Interesting and kind of related sidebar.  I got pretty good at getting people to get milk to come out of their noses in the school cafeteria.  It’s really more an issue of timing than anything else.  People tried to do it to me, but never.  The only time I ever had anything come out my nose from laughing was ice tea.  I was home alone, just took a nice big swig of ice tea and thought of something funny.  I t was cold and gross ad a bit embarrassing.    Anyway, back to the story.  After a long stint of being a humor snob it struck me that people laugh at different things and in certain contexts just about anything can be funny to someone.  I changed my whole attitude and started blurting out just about everything that either I found funny or I figured somebody, somewhere, would laugh at.  The less funny I thought it was, the harder I pushed it and add self congratulatory laughter.  I’ll admit some of the snobbery has stayed with me.  I love the look of joy and surprise on my kids’ faces when they say something and I actually laugh out loud at it. 

 

Here’s something I find interesting that comes up a lot as well.  People tell me they just don’t get me.  They laugh because some of the stuff is pretty straightforward but some of the obscure stuff has a funny feel to it, whether it is understood or not.  I recently had this conversation with a friend.  I thought maybe I should create a Buzz Feed survey “How much do you GET Gregg?”  She got that!!

 

I have a very good friend for a long, long time now.  He and I share very similar senses of humor.  Our conversations are usually way out there and it’s honestly for us and not an audience of any kind.  I have a very similar relationship with my nephew as well.  The interesting thing with both of these guys is that it’s like watching a comedy team with no straight man.  It’s like guerilla comedy; just nonstop jokes.  Well, not exactly jokes, just funny stuff.  These are two people who have the ability to make me genuinely laugh as well.   On a regular basis.  The three of us have never had a conversation together but I would be afraid for anyone within earshot of that discussion.  I once asked this friend why people reacted to us the way they did.   They would just sit back and watch us talk (yes watch is the appropriate verb here).  He told me it’s because they want to be in on the joke.  What joke I inquired.  “The joke they think just the two of us know.”  And that made perfect sense to me.

 

So there you have it.  Do I think I am funny?  Yes.  Some of the time.  Do I enjoy making people laugh?  Yes, but then I am a performer at heart.  Do I think this blog is blatantly ego?  No, not really.  As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve been listening to a lot of stand up recently.  Old stand up.  And I got thinking about how much I was influenced by some of the masters.  Just wanted to get it all down.

 

So thanks to –

Mom, Dad, George Carlin, Rich, Gaeson, Groucho, Woody, Max, Hawkeye, Monty Python, Tom Lehrer, Alan Sherman, Rowan & Martin . . .

. . . and all the people out there that I have had the privilege of observing for all these years.  You are really the ones who have made me funny.

 

And a special thank you to all of my family and friends who really just put up with it.  I know it can be a challenge.