Joking & Disasters
Okay, so the east coast now experienced
what the west coast has been exposed to for years – EARTHQUAKES!!! I’m originally from VA now living in CA, so I had to laugh at all the “check ins”. . “are you okay???” that people were doing. I’ve woken up in my bed during a quake when it’s been shaking like a linda blair exorcist movie . . .and then turned over and gone back to sleep (okay, that time it took me a few minutes AND I went through a really fast scenario in my head about selling my place and how much do I have in savings to put down on a down payment for a new place. . .).
But now that the east coast quake has passed,
all 20 seconds of it, can we joke? The answer is YES! And how do I know? Well, there are some signs that you can joke about something serious. Namely that it wasn’t really a disaster. As far as I know, no one died – they were shaken a bit, but no real injuries – so no harm. Of course we will never be able to make New Orleans jokes or Joplin, MO jokes because those were devastating – but this “quake” was not. ALSO the people involved were joking. My friend Ron who “lived through it” had a joke on his Facebook page about a house dropping on Nancy Pelosi. . . very funny wicked witch reference regardless of what side of the aisle you’re on.
But if you’re still worried about offending people
who are in therapy over the quake, then you don’t have to joke about the actually quake. You can joke around it.
- joke about what caused it. A stampede for the Denny’s blue light special? The economy collapsing? Make up a funny cause.
- the aftermath. My friend Ron, with the Nancy Pelosi joke above, also posted a picture of lawn chairs tipped over with the words “we can rebuild” next to them. Just pretending it was a disaster and all the over reaction to it. . .getting FEMA aid or maybe NOT getting FEMA aid on time are all fair game.
- people’s reactions to it. The news has been doing this for 24 hours already. . and it’s getting old. But you can come up with funnier reactions to this earth shaking event if you really think about it.
- -the length of it. I think it lasted 20 seconds. What other bad things last 20 seconds – the happiness in your first marriage, your daughter being homesick from college. What bad things last more than 20 seconds – a speeding ticket, a root canal, you mother-in-law visiting. There’s all sorts of ways you can joke about how long it lasted.
Sure this quake was serious. . .but you can still have fun with it if you want.
Jan
(survivor of about a million of these quakes. . .)
The HOW of Writing Great Jokes
I’ve talked about asking questions
when trying to come up with a killer punch line for your jokes, and one of the best questions is “how.” How would someone do something, how would this happen, how ELSE could you do that, how, how, how. The more you ask the question, the more you’ll keep coming up with funny “hows.”
At a recent awards dinner,
one of the recipients was a young 20ish something woman who had just received a scholarship check to help pay for her to go back to college. Of course everyone in the room presumed that the check was for tuition – but I thought “how else would a college student use that money?” Answers included buying clothes, eating, and drinking. . .aha! That’s it! I came up with “they gave you a check for college – that is gonna buy an awful lot of shooters! I remember what I did with MY money in college.” It got a great laugh and gave the woman some extra recognition for her hard work.
Many of my jokes,
and in fact many jokes that you’ll hear from other comics, are really answering the question “how could you do that if you could do that anyway at all?” Maybe you’ll even find something that’s doable AND funny!
Jan
Getting Help With Joke Writing
What???
You mean you don’t do it all yourself??? Well, yes and no. I DO write my jokes, but sometimes even I need someone else’s perspective. For example, for a long time, in my Finding the Funny in Change program I mentioned that we’re getting too “green,” and all this environmentally friendly stuff is going to the extreme. For example, they’re now offering “green burials”. . .being buried without a casket. Now, that’s funny, but I never really had a punchline nor did I think much of it. . it was more of a passing funny observation than a joke.
But a comedian friend of mine
heard it, and he really honed in on it and told me that it’s funny and I should do something with it. . .we bantered around a few ideas, and nothing came up. But the next day, I thought of it from a different angle. . .if you’re buried without a casket, what do the pall bearers hold onto??? That got a laugh at my show last week, AND a woman came up after my show and gave me a callback to it when she heard another joke of mine about not having life insurance. So now, after letting this “green burial” line sit for over a year, I’ve got jokes and callbacks and it’s actually a funny theme I can weave through my act.
So listen to others. . .
Definitely write your own material, but you can get ideas from friends, colleagues, and audience members. Sometimes your listeners don’t come up after the show and blatantly tell you a line. Instead, you need to listen as you’re saying the line. On several jokes of mine, I’ve heard the audience laughing during the set-up. And because I’m listening to them, I realize that there’s another joke in there if I pause.
Getting help doesn’t mean
you have someone write your whole comedy routine or speech – you can if you want to, but what might be even better is to partner with someone so that you get different viewpoints on the set-up, and then listen to your audience when you deliver it. This will give you some great material and may even breathe life into current stuff you’ve already been saying.
Jan
- i visted the louisville slugger plant where they make the bats – cool! I wrote some good jokes too!
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