Dennis O'Toole
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Highlights

Shock: the lowest form of comedy

3/27/2015

0 Comments

 
A few years ago I met a guy in a bar--a friend of a friend--who was loud and confident and obnoxious and, at the moment, hanging out with his father-in-law. Within a few minutes of our meeting he made a joke about how his wife liked to give oral sex.* Everyone laughed, including his father-in-law, because MAN! That guy will say anything.

I politely forced a smile since I had not yet mastered an expression of patrician disapproval. Plus I wanted to be nice. I mean, I had just met him. Maybe his next sentence was gonna be about how he met his beloved on a Doctor's Without Borders mission and that the physical act of love was a small bit of solace in this broken world. It wasn't, though. Just more off-color jokes and swears and non-insult insults because we're all friends here, right assholes? He wasn't my type.

I'm not a prude. I have probably said grosser things than you have ever thought, and I have said them onstage before Republican strangers in rural areas. Back when I was an improviser, I often had to point this out to other performers when we debated the subtle art of when to go blue onstage. My belief is embedded in that sentence--that it is a subtle art. Not thinking that every moment was right for a sperm joke usually earned me the rep of "team prude." 

One of my teammates once told me that swearing and sex jokes were integral to his style. "I bring thunder," he said, and italicized thunder with his voice and fist. He sort of gathered his fingers into one as he uttered the syllables. I thought he played to the childish in the audience, and did not so much surprise people with his language as shock them. Unfunny people, then, confuse this moment of shock with the surprise that is so central to comedy. His shock winds up derailing the show with inorganic choices. The rest of us must then mop up, shall we say, all that spilled sperm. (I remember this conversation because it was a particularly bitter argument amongst the whole team, and I was really only in a support role on the less-is-more side.)

The ironic thing about shock is that after a very short while it fades. It winds up appealing only to bullies and loudmouths, neither of whom are funny and neither of whom could possibly be surprised or shocked after much of it. They just like it because it's a taboo being said out loud. But for the rest of an audience, it's not a great choice. Dice Clay, the bawdy nursery rhyme man who now seems as remote as a character in one, became like piano-key tie patterns and couches made out of the back-seats of cars--something that makes us think of the 1980s, but that did not make it out. You can do blue material well, of course. But there has to be a strong emotional element to it and a logic that fits the rest of the piece, like with my fantastic joke about mopping up sperm in the paragraph above. 

I thought of this since that friend-of-a-friend is in the paper today. Figuratively speaking-- his business is featured in an article on a website, and I thought, "Hey, that's the guy who told his father-in-law about his daughter's sexual preferences." I wondered what he is up to. My guess is that he is still a total nut, saying all the things the rest of us Sallies wouldn't dare to. I bet he tells people about his wife's boning habits and swears around kids and jabs at his friends. Shock is about that predictable.



*It's all in the language, of course. If he had said it exactly like that, "My wife likes to give oral sex," then it would have been funny.
0 Comments

Teach Me How to Huggy

3/18/2015

0 Comments

 
PictureEarly modern "backwards-wipe" method
The night after my daughter was born, I had an urge to call my brother with a warning. An order, really.

Find a baby, I’d hiss into the phone. Change its diaper. Do it again and again and again. Do it until you are good at it.

And then, I would hang up. If my brother was smart, he’d walk to the nearest maternity ward and get started.

Before that day, I’d never changed a diaper. I had no experience as a baby sitter. Even when merely holding a baby, I was incompetent. I’d sort of hug them at chest level like I might hold a greased duffel bag full of sand. My wife, Angela, with seventeen nieces and nephews, was an old pro. I figured I’d watch her for a few years and by the time I got the knack, my daughter would be driving herself to the store for diapers.

A C-section nixed that plan. Angela now had orders to stay in bed, and you know, take it easy. “Just take these here pills and groove,” the doctor said. “Let your husband do all the diaper changing for the first few days.



Read More
0 Comments
    About Dennis

    Dennis O'Toole is a all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime.  He lives in Chicago. 

    If you need to reach me, dial:
    denotoole AT SYMBOL gmail PERIOD CHARACTER co LETTER M.  



    https://twitter.com/deeohtee

    Categories

    All
    Audio
    Chicago Sun Times
    Chicago Sun-Times
    Chicago Tribune
    Comedy
    Essay
    Fiction
    Media Filter
    Morning News
    N.P.R.
    Poetry Corner
    Religion
    Tales Of Adventure
    W.B.E.Z.

    Archives

    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    August 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    August 2007

    RSS Feed