Day 3: Comedy

Well, today I didn't really think about what I was going to do because yesterday I pretty much settled on what I was going to write today. That's not entirely true. I was going to do comics but that term can refer to several things so I decided I should specify that I'm going to actually write about comedians. Then, I thought about it for two more seconds and just decided to write about comedy, which is incredibly broad so strap in cause this might take a while.

I think comedy is actually too broad to sit and write a couple paragraphs about. So, I'll try to hone in on what I love about comedy. I guess one thing about comedy is that it's usually positive. Often times, a sense of humor is what keeps people, myself included, from completely self-destructing. Christopher Titus, one of my favorite comedians, comes from a terrifyingly broken home. His mother was literally insane but incredibly genius-level gifted. She also murdered his stepfather. His father was half-insane and abusive and yet he became a person who makes a living by making other people laugh. Specifically, he makes people laugh at how bad his life was. The same can be said about several of my favorite comedians. David Cross, Patton Oswalt and even Dane Cook are people who dig down and find these horrible, depressing stories about growing up or about what's happening in the world and turn them into something funny. I always admired that about any comedian.

That brings me back to comedy. I love comedy that involves the absurd. When I was a kid, the first joke I ever learned was "Why did the elephant step on the marshmallow? Because he didn't want to fall in the hot chocolate." Every time I think about that joke, there's some new dimension that adds to why it's funny. The weird thing about most people's brains, though, is that everyone immediately recognizes how ridiculous the whole thing is and the only reaction that seems appropriate is to laugh. I think that's why I love comedy so much; it's a good analogy for life. I mentioned earlier that comedy keeps people safe from themselves. I think with a good enough sense of humor, a person could survive anything. Sometimes I think that if Sylvia Plath or Kurt Cobain learned to crack a joke, maybe they wouldn't have gone out the way they did. But maybe that's not fair to them. Anyway, I think I'm diluting my point.

Comedy is the absurd but it's also the serious made silly. It's the pope in over-sized sunglasses or a break dancing Stephen Hawking or... well, to be honest, I think by attempting to define comedy, I'm taking away from the essence of comedy. Part of something being funny is the spontaneity of it, the "you had to be there" moments that really can't be explained. A joke is always the best the first time you hear it. Surprise is the most important factor in comedy. So to try to define comedy, to try to separate the absurd and ridiculous elements of life, is like dumping bottled water into a cup of tap water and then trying to only drink the bottled water.