"What is funny? A guide to comical writing"
Piece performed Dec 3.
(Jesse stand alone in the middle of the stage, clad in a professorly suit.
He is holding a dictionary and a pipe, from which he occasionaly takes puffs
for emphasis)

What is funny? Webster's dictionary defines funny as "Causing laughter or
amusement or intended or designed to amuse." But really, is that funny? I
didn't hear any of you laughing. For funny is not
to be found in the dictionary, or an encyclopedia, or even in a computing
box, unless of course that computing box is dropped onto an elderly man's
crotch while he's teaching his grandson to play
baseball. That is quite funny. Rather, funny is to be found in the real
world. Eggs are funny. They're so round, and full of cholesterol. I defy you
to look at an egg and not be instantaneuosly filled with mirth. Old timey
words are funny. Say the word "fisticuffs" the next time you would normally
use the word "fight", and I garauntee you will be met with amus-ed laghter.
Jesus is funny. That guy can do nothing wrong! Put a top hat on him, and you
have Abraham Lincoln, possibly the funniest head of state the world has ever
seen. Slavery is not funny. If you laugh at slavery, you are a bad person.
Everyone who just laughed at that sentence is a bad person. Jews are funny.
Not the Jerry Seinfeld type that TRY to
be funny, but rather the real ones. The holocaust was not funny. Hitler,
however, was funny. That guy is the anti-Lincoln. He didn't even have a
beard. He only had a moustache, which is the second funniest form of facial
hair, behind only the mutton chop. If Hitler had had a long curly moustahce,
he would have been the funnniest man to have ever lived. He was not. The
funniest man who has ever lived is Bill Keane, creator of Family Circus.
That's right, Dolly, your maternal grandmother is such a good cook because
she measures in "grams". The word "grams" in that sentence was in quotation
marks, because it as actually a delicious play on the short form of the word
"grandmother", and a standard cooking measurement. The elderly are funny.
Lok at them trying to act like humans. Puppies are funny. And
precious. Cats are precious, but are not funny. Brittish accents are funny,
because they should know how to speak the language,but they keep messing it
up for whatever reason. Eggplant is funny, but not
for the same reason as eggs are. It is merely a coincidence that they are
both funny. Double entendres refferencing the genitals are funny. That
largely goes without saying. A fish being out of water
is funny only in the metaphorical sense. An actual fish out of water is sad.
Finally, bricks are funny. That about covers it. Oh, did I mention the
elderly? I did? Well, they are just really, really funny. This list of
subjects is all that you will ever need to become a successful comical
writer. For those that disagree, you are free to meet me in the parking lot
after the show for a rousing match of fisticuffs.

• December 3, 2004 - No Shame Cedar Falls
  

  Performed by Jesse Wozniak

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