Learn To Be Funny With These 742 Easy Tips!

Public speaking is a racket. I am nearly certain that the very instant a certain particular breed of human being overcame their innate and rightful fear of standing up and talking in front of large groups of strangers, the vocations of politician and comedian were born, forever changing the manner in which the vast majority of our species would be led and/or entertained. And for those who had neither the ability to lead nor make people laugh, but still had a knack for orating without fear, the more mundane avenue of informative public speaking began to claw its way into being.

Be it religious caterwauling or the latest symposium on the current influx of the dung beetle into the ecosystem of the Great Plains, public speaking has found a comfortable niche in society, filling a certain void left by a shortage of decent comedians, silver-tongued politicians and quality summer re-runs on the television.

Before profitable public speaking made its way into the mainstream, it cut its profitable teeth on the college circuit, with universities in the glory days of College Public Speaking paying big dollars to aging film icons, such as Groucho Marx, who had gained a late-life resurgence in popularity, to take the stage, share witty anecdotes and field questions from stoned college-aged fans.

Mark Twain famously used a series of public speaking engagements at the turn of the century to not only bail himself out of extreme financial hardship caused by horrible business investments, but to also facilitate a few weeks of relaxing travel on a luxury intercontinental steamship. Savvy. So it began.

But I digress. Now, it has blossomed into a cottage-industry which seemingly has no bounds in terms of subject or audience.

Recently (well, last year - perhaps the year before... Time passes so quickly these days), I had the opportunity to attend an hour and a half presentation on storytelling. It was aimed for salespeople and business folk that would perhaps appreciate a little insight on the art of conversing with a client or colleague in a delightful, colorful manner. It was all fine and dandy until the jacket and tie-wearing huckster threw out the nugget that being funny could be taught. I was roused from the semi-doze to which I had succumbed, mentally fatigued from the internal battle that was being waged in my brain on whether I would have a salad for lunch, or drive over to Wendy's for a Single With Cheese, Fries and a small Frosty (after all, I'm not an animal - a large Frosty would be nothing more than a deep-knee-bend curtsy to my lizard brain). Wait, I thought. What's that you say? Funny can be taught? Well, this was a preposterous notion as far as I was concerned and I had to restrain myself from bursting out with a hearty "the fuck you say!" After all, he was being paid a courtly sum to lecture us on public speaking and I was but a non-paying, presumably appreciative attendee.

But this curveball wound me up inside in a manner that made me feel most uncomfortable. Not only could funny be taught, you could purchase his thin, overpriced, self-published paperback (and I know thin, self-published paperbacks), which would show you in a few easy, repeatable steps how to be a fully-functional, witty, public-speaking smoothy, entrancing audiences around the country - nay, the world - and be highly paid to do so.

I looked around me and observed that no one else in the room was engulfed in a similar outrage to my own - in fact, most seemed relatively engaged and some even nodded their heads in agreement with this outlandish notion. I folded my arms in front of me and smoldered for the rest of the session and left as quickly as I could, turning my nose up at the table of thin, overpriced, self-published paperbacks. I returned to my place in front of my computer monitor with its colorful spreadsheets and documents, but I felt distracted. I turned to my co-worker across the aisle, who was not distracted and had resumed whatever tasks that consumed her day with apparently no lingering disgust at the idea that funny could be learned.

I was not to be distracted alone, so I intruded into her business with the question, "Do you think that being funny can be taught?" She shrugged. "Why not?" "Why not???" I asked. "Well," she said. "I think most things can be taught, right?" She outlined her opinion that one could be taught how to tell a joke. "You could write the joke, teach them where to pause and they could learn how to tell the joke in a funny way..." I highly disagreed.

There are formulas in humor. Gags can be written around the classic triad - something repeated twice, to establish pattern, with a twist thrown in on the third repetition. Hilarity ensues - everyone feels smart at the expense of our comedic foil. There are setups, situations and payoffs. Comedy can indeed be written, in fact some of the best comedy performances are written by someone other than the performer.

But there is a reason those writers aren't performing the acts in most cases-  because the funny people are.  Funny is in the bones. Funny is in the manner with which the performer elevates the written material, transforms it into something relatable and ironic. A facial expression, a tone of voice, a quick trigger that allows the audience into the mind of the performer and transforms a written sentence or an improvised thought into comedic gold. For that one moment, often built on a flimsy idea or flight of whimsy, the thought turns funny.

Personally, I have had the tremendous good fortune to know a handful of people with funny bones. These people have left my stomach sore and my jaws aching from hours of unbridled joy and laughter. Their turn of phrase and ability to take the most inane of conversations and turn them into a colorful, often ribald tale of misfortune, blasphemy or outrageous consequence have given me hours and hours of wonderful memories.

Funny is in the bones and if I had thought of it, I would have followed our intrepid speaker to the parking lot and given him a humorous thrashing for insinuating otherwise. So, my conclusion is this - funny cannot be taught. A person is funny or they are not. There are those that fall somewhere in the middle and they mostly host parties in their homes. But if funny cannot be taught, I'll bet there is a handsome living to be made traveling around the country - nay, the world - talking about it. Hopefully by someone with funny bones.

An Excerpt from "Speaking of Michelangelo"

Prologue

The Death of Basie

Dinsdale Carruthers was in a particularly foul mood. It was hot, as it was every day in July and for that matter, most of the Goddamned year, and Dinsdale hated the heat. He hated the heat only slightly less than he hated his wife, Doreen, and that was a pocketful. He sat on the porch, even though it was cooler inside the trailer, because at least out on the porch he wasn’t badgered by his wife’s constant yammering.
Dinsdale watched as Basie sniffed around the gazanias, as he always did when he searched for a suitable place to piss. It wasn’t a big yard, but it was fenced in and over the years, Dinsdale was certain that Basie, even though he weighed only three and a half pounds, had probably pissed on every square inch of it at least once, more than likely twice. The dog was nearly ten years old and his eyes were going bad and his legs were stiff—but he sure could piss.
Basie went about his business—the gazanias had proved unsuitable—and Dinsdale wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He looked at the trailers that surrounded him. Most of the residents didn’t come out much in the heat of the day. Mountain Palms was a retirement “village” located on the outskirts of Mesa, Arizona, and not many of the old folks could stomach the heat. Dinsdale didn’t care much for it, but by all rights watching a dog piss in the heat still beat Doreen’s yammering. He didn’t talk much to his neighbors and didn’t much care what they thought about him sitting outside in the heat. In a village full of senile, grumpy, overheated retirees, Dinsdale was among the most obstinate of them all—a “King Prick”, as Harry Collins used to say, back in the days when Dinsdale blew lead alto sax in the Collins band during the war.
Now, nearing sixty-eight, he was afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis and cataracts—he had more in common with his surly little dog than Doreen—and saddled with a wife he couldn’t stand and hadn’t been able to stand for most of the years they had been married. Dinsdale, or Denny as his pals used to call him back when he was a hepcat, had given up life on the road, living out of a smelly trailer with twelve other men, to settle down and marry. The Collins band had been based out of Lincoln, Nebraska and the travel had been brutal and the pay meager, but those years on the road had been the happiest in Dinsdale’s life. That’s how it had been. Playing dance halls at night, then grabbing a post-gig meal at a local greasy spoon—if they could find one that was still open, before piling into the trailer and sleeping the miles away. If you were lucky, maybe some Betty would come back to the bus with you for a few minutes of the Cha Cha Cha while the other musicians ate.
Basie pissed on the hibiscus and Dinsdale smiled as he thought of the signal used by the bandmates—hanging a white towel on the doorknob of the band’s bus let the others know to clear off for a bit while the Cha Cha Cha was danced in the bunks inside.
Dinsdale often thought of the good times. Blowing sax in the Collins band for $9.00 a night and travelling around the Midwest—it beat trimming back the honeysuckle and picking up dog shit while Doreen sat in the trailer reading her trashy romance novels. His world had come crashing down on him that day in 1950 when Doreen had tracked him down at a barn dance in Omaha to tell him that she was “in the family way”. Then a pleasant, mousy old maid of twenty-seven, she had matured into a hateful, cold woman as the years went by, no doubt spurred by Dinsdale’s indifference to her and their daughter. Doing the honorable thing, Dinsdale had quit the band, married Doreen went to work for her father at his farm-supply store, selling tractors and plows and settled down for a life of Midwestern convention.
The years went by slowly at first, as Doreen raised their colicky, irritable baby and Dinsdale worked seventeen hours a day to try and make ends meet. Eventually, Dinsdale became the store manager, and when the old man died, Dinsdale took over completely. The child grew up, went to school and moved away, as children sometimes do. Without their daughter to raise, Doreen had become sullen and mean-tempered. She had constantly badgered Dinsdale about the long hours he put in at the store, and he reminded her often that he had given up the only thing he had truly loved—his music—to run the Goddamned store in the first place. She had driven him to the arms and beds of other women and he was sure she had done the same, the hateful bitch.
Glen Miller. When Dinsdale needed peace, he would pull out his hi-fi albums and play the music of the big bands. Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade” was his favorite and he wore the record out. It drove his wife and daughter nuts over the years, and that in itself made it worth the price of a new record. The years gained steam as Dinsdale approached his fifties—he battled a drinking problem and tried to gain a handle on his extra-marital dalliances, all the while attempting to keep the store in the black. Every problem had seemed so important then, and even thoughts of forming his own swing band had eventually evaporated. Eventually, his hi-fi records were his only link to the past, his glory days.
His fifties had come and gone, then his sixties and suddenly, it was all over. All the work, all the troubles. His drinking, the affairs, the countless hours worrying over money all seemed like a bad dream, someone else’s life. Now there was only arthritis and bad eyes. And the dog. He sold the store, invested the profits and moved with his wife to the endless sunshine of the great West—Arizona. He lived in a hot little tin can in the middle of the desert, surrounded by other bad-tempered retirees, all waiting to get in the box. For Dinsdale, given the hibiscus, the dogshit and Doreen’s sour disposition, the outlook was bleak. But there was Basie—a Yorkshire terrier and the pride of Dinsdale’s baleful existence.
Named after Count Basie, the little dog had been given to Dinsdale by Doreen on his fifty-eighth birthday and Dinsdale had taken immediately to the little critter. At times it seemed that he and Basie were soulmates. The dog had little use for humans in general and barely tolerated Doreen. Dinsdale felt much the same way. When Basie felt like it, he would hop into Dinsdale’s lap and breathe a heavy sigh before lying down in the comfortable hollow between Dinsdale’s legs. But more often than not, he preferred to prowl the yard, peering through the chain link fence that surrounded it and barking at the passersby.
This day was hotter than most and Dinsdale regretted, as he often did, the decision to move to Mesa year-round. It was a hot, dry, miserable desert populated by snotty-assed, horn-blowing nincompoops for whom Dinsdale had no use. It’s not that he had any desire to return to the muggy, mosquito haven of the Midwest, he just didn’t particularly care for Arizona, or its people.
Basie moved slowly about the yard, his stiff, ten year-old legs shuffling beneath him, his tongue hanging from his mouth, nose to the sky, searching the airstream for strangers at whom to yap. Dinsdale, still grumpy and hot, saw the mailman approaching and got up to fetch the stack of bills he had prepared for mailing the previous evening. He shook his head as he turned the doorknob, once again briefly thinking of the old white towel signal of the Cha Cha Cha. How things had turned out, he thought. Sixty-eight and still paying a stack of bills every two weeks, trying to stretch every penny to it’s fullest. The screen door slammed behind him and he heard Doreen stir in the living room—the hateful bitch.

40 vs. 50 - A Parable

Wednesday, August 18, 2010
40 vs. 50 - A Parable
Current mood: Handsome
Category: Blogging

I recently turned 50. I have long held the position that a birthday is just another day. I felt so little for the celebration of the event that I once handed it over to my daughters, who had the misfortune of being born on December 23, which is simply unfair. With the pomp and circumstance that surrounds the Christmas holiday, a birthday in the vicinity is inevitably overlooked, leading to a dearth of gifts and attention beyond that wrapped in colorful paper decorated with holly. I figured we could celebrate the girls’ half-birthday in July, giving them a chance to recoup some valuable lucre and I would not have to age beyond 43. It has been a sporadic success at best, but this is not the point of this piece.

My fiftieth birthday came and went with little fanfare, just the way I like it. Friends who had recently gone through the same “milestone” had told me that this was the big one – the one I would really feel as it approached and feel even more as it passed. I found, however, that I had determined my fortieth to be the more significant event. I even had an epiphany that would lead me to write my book “A Bunny Screaming”. As I stepped over the threshold of my fortieth year, I realized that the older I got, the more it seemed that I was turning into my father. He was a curmudgeon of world-class standards and a recluse of note. I found myself following these same lines with an alarming sense of comfort. Once gnawing at the bit on any given Friday night to go and seize the weekend and shake it to a memorable and violent death, I now found myself looking forward to a good book or a long nap. And if anyone wanted to see me, they could stop by. I would let them in, but with a healthy dose of grumpy. Those that found this unacceptable could go on their way with my colorful blessing.

I thought this revelation might make a fine tale and began outlining my life to this point, with all the stories that had been passed my way through parents and aunts and uncles and memories I had managed to cultivate on my own. Rather than put them in a pure book form, I decided to incorporate a variety of styles with which to relay the story, which took the form of a middle-aged man named Jerry struggling with the fact that he was turning both into his father and forty years old with equal struggle. I managed to weave screenplay format, short story, essay and stage-play forms into the manuscript along with the straight narrative and came up with what I felt was an enjoyable reading experience. All of my real-life experiences were woven into a fictional storyline and when I struggled to find an ending, my real-life father died and provided me with not only a means to end the book, but a way to attempt to voice my need for closure. Writing had always been therapeutic for me and I have long used the line that writing books has actually helped keep me out of therapy. Not that I couldn’t still use some therapy, but a good line is a good line.

The cover of the book is a moose’s head, which makes little sense, given the title “A Bunny Screaming”. Perhaps a nice screaming bunny would have been more apt, but I had a hard time finding a photo of that on the internet. Google “screaming bunny” and you will be appalled, yet strangely intrigued by the glut of disturbing triple-X websites that might pop up. The moose-head was actually a part of the fictional storyline, while the title of the book had a more personal base. As I explain in the novel, I once heard a noise coming from beneath our porch as a boy in Ohio and when I looked through the latticework that framed our crawlspace, I saw that a cat had trapped a baby rabbit in a dark corner and was toying with the bunny, using its claws and teeth to torture the animal. I was appalled and screamed and cried and beat at the lattice with my fists to little effect. Before it died, the bunny screamed. Now, obviously, for a seven year-old boy, this was quite traumatic. I didn’t even know rabbits were capable such things. I managed to block the entire episode out of my mind for years, holding cats in contempt without a real plausible reason in my mind aside from their innate sneakiness and tendency to be lazy. In my thirties, I eventually dreamed of the episode and the memories all came flooding back to me. I now knew why I didn’t like cats. And that was nice. But more importantly, I felt the image of the trapped bunny screaming was an apt metaphor for a life stuck in a depressing transition, so I used it for the book.

By the time I finished the book and moved toward yet another decade, I found that I was content making it through my forties and looked forward to the years ahead. So, Bring It On, Bitch, I say. We’ll see how it all shakes out – maybe I’ll get another book out of it.

Purchase “A Bunny Screaming” at: http://www.lulu.com/jeraldford

The Dark Bond of Sin - Prologue

Prologue


He watched the Mustang pull out of the parking lot and weave onto the street, moving slowly as it headed on its way, the brake lights flickering every few feet and he imagined the driver trying to focus his bleary, drunken eyes. He smiled and fumbled in his trouser pockets for his keys. He dropped the keys and stooped to pick them up, nearly stumbling into the door. “Whoa,” he said to himself as he tried to clear his vision enough to guide the key to the lock.
He should have been dropped off at the rented house, where his wife waited and would clean him up and put him to bed, but he had the feeling that tonight was going to be a long one. That’s why he had the driver drop him here, at the “secret place”. He had rented this apartment as soon as he got to town, so he would have a place to carry on without having to deal with motels and such. After all, he was a famous man; he didn’t need rumors to begin flying about his off-duty escapades. He had been in the business too long—he knew how be discreet.
Sex had always been easy for him to procure, his deviant tastes a bit more difficult, but for a man in his position, certainly not impossible. He liked it rough and he liked it kinky. The advent of the home videotape cameras had been a Godsend—there was nothing he enjoyed more than viewing himself administering a brutal once-over to a helpless woman. If not him, then Pete. He had gone out and purchased one of the first home units on the market, paying far too much for the cumbersome machine. He had upgraded many times over the years, always buying top of the line—he craved quality. He loved to watch them squirm in discomfort on the screen as he stood over them, his famous face betraying no mercy—cold and unforgiving, the face that had made him one of the biggest box-office draws of the 80’s. Sometimes they cried, sometimes they begged and eventually they were allowed to go on their way, usually none worse for the wear, always captured on tape. Now there were computers, DVDs and high-definition televisions and cameras the size of a pack of cigarettes. There was no more hauling around of heavy, bulky equipment – he could fit everything he needed in a carry-on bag. Laptop, camera and accessories, all in a single, lightweight bag.
He let himself into the room—it was a studio apartment with a kitchenette—his needs here were very specific, and excess space was not one of them. He shuffled past a large flat screen high definition television and a small, expensive video camera mounted on a tripod and accidentally kicked over a stack of pornographic DVDs on the floor.
He sat on the bed and kicked off his shoes. He reached for the bottle of Chivas on the bedside table and poured himself a tall drink into a dirty glass that sat by the bottle. He drank half the scotch and removed his shirt and pants, throwing them on the chair in the corner. He stood up and weaved to the bathroom, nearly running into the digital camera and tripod on his way. “Careful,” he slurred to himself. “That would probably hurt…”
He giggled and made it to the bathroom and leaned over the toilet, one hand on the wall and tried to focus as he urinated, missing the bowl for the first two or three seconds, managing to soak his socks. “Fuck,” he muttered and tucked his meat back into his drawers, stroking it through the silk boxers out of sheer habit as he stumbled back into the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed like that for a few minutes, rubbing his dick, waiting for the spins to let up. He took a deep breath, then reached for the glass of scotch and the telephone. He dragged the phone onto the bed and drained the booze and tried to recall Pete’s number. “947…” He closed his eyes and didn’t like all the motion that was going on behind the lids. He fought off a sudden wave of nausea and set the glass down on the table by the bottle, where it had sat before.
He dialed a number on the phone and listened to it ring for a full minute before lying back on the covers, receiver to his ear. “Come on Petey,” he mumbled. “Goddamn it…” His eyes began to close and he was near passing out when a knock came to the door. He shot upright and nearly pitched forward. The room was spinning and he stood uncertainly and began to lurch toward the door. “That’s more like it,” he shouted, kicking the stack of DVDs once more with one piss-soaked sock. He opened the door and focused on the form before him. “Hey,” he said, breathing deeply, attempting to regain his equilibrium. The visitor swung a tire iron and too late, he raised his arm to defend himself. The metal bar caught him on the temple and he stumbled backward over the pile of DVDs, tripping over the camera and tripod on his way down. The next blow hit him in the mouth and he swallowed several teeth as he gasped for air. The third hit him over the eye and the room began to spin at a dizzying rate. The pain was tremendous and each swing of the tire iron felt like an explosion in his head. Again and again the iron came down, smashing his nose, then his finely-chiseled cheeks. At first, he was too shocked and drunk to resist, now he was simply battered beyond voluntary movement. The blood flowed down his face into his eyes and he choked on the blood running down his throat. The room grew quiet, save for the sound of his assailant’s heavy breathing. He coughed up blood and began to lose consciousness. His eyes tried to focus and he heard the door close and tried to scream, but only spit up more blood. Things went dark and within moments, Cash Decker was dead.