Chuckles

Comedy. It's a funny thing.

Maybe not something I profess to understand, but certainly a subject of interest to me. I do like to laugh you know? And the ability to make someone laugh, chuckle, giggle, or guffaw on your terms instead of theirs is a skill worth having. People need the occasional side-splitter to get through their days, and fame and glory can be your yours if you have the strength and capacity to deliver it. It's something that seems easy until a bunch of people are staring straight faced at you, not laughing.

I'm not going to sit here and claim I've figured out the rules of comedy, that would be lying. The rules are probably so deep and detailed, not even a roomful of the smartest bastards out there could figure it out. That's assuming, that there are rules to it, which I won't do either. Nope, comedy is quite the mystery to me.

However...

After a few long sleepless nights and much drink, I did stumble across one of the wacky ironies inherent to comedy. Yes sir, it hit me like a ton of bricks. And while I'm fairly confident that most comedy occurs on an individual level, seeing how people react to these rules with sitcoms and bad comedians makes me feel pretty positive that these bylaws are true:

• Smart people being smart are not funny
• Dumb people being dumb are also not funny

However, hilarity ensues when...

• Smart people do dumb things
• Dumb people do dumb things in a smart way

For example, watching Fraiser can often be an exercise in pretentiousness. Upper class snobby folks talking about the things that make them so much better than us can be downright painful. That is, of course, until shit hits the fan. Suddenly things go completely screwy, as they tend to do at least once per episode, and our intellectual protagonists end up running around like idiots. Now, the wacky antics of the elite are absolutely hilarious.

On the other side of the coin would be a program like Beavis and Butthead. A classic in the world of comedy these days. However, a couple of less-than-sharp kids watching TV all day and laughing at nothing just can't hold the interest for more than a few minutes. After that, things get pretty obnoxious. But people don't watch the program for that now do they? Nope, they watch it for the well-crafted intellectual gems that are fashioned by stupidity. For example, like referring to an entire race of people as the "Hispandex." It's like watching the light bulb turn on, then explode in the middle of a crowd, causing collateral damage.

I feel this is some of the basic laws that we all abide by and laugh to, though few ever stop to think about it. One of those strange conundrums about the universe that we naturally subscribe to. Keep an eye on it in your own lives, see if it holds true.

Ah, the healing power of laughter is damned confusing.