What's so funny?

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert just breathed its last, and what is there to say? Late night talk shows started as a way to be amused in the hours where you couldn't quite get to sleep, and as long as they hewed to that purpose they were in good shape. When they started functioning as a validation of the politics of part of their audience that was the beginning of the end. I think this is coming to be generally acknowledged.

Anyway, it's in relation that event that this post has resurfaced. Feser has some pretty solid ideas of what comedy is and isn't. 

The problem is not that the progressives in question look at humor through the wrong political lens.  The problem is that looking at humor through any political lens, including the right one, is simply to misunderstand the nature of humor.  The fact is that there does not seem to be any essential connection at all between something’s being funny and it’s conveying some truth, uncomfortable or otherwise. 

There is much truth to this. Duck Soup is often remembered as a masterful satire on the absurdities of war, and sure you can take that message from it. But if that's really what the Marx Brothers were trying to do, rather than―as Groucho put it―"four Jews trying to be funny", it probably would be a lot less watchable.

As for black comedy, I think that is funny because of the relief factor. The very fact that you're not supposed to make jokes about certain subjects makes it funnier when you do.

Just a li―l

A while ago a friend told me that a linguist had told him that there was something about the dialect in Rhode Island that this expert wasn't aware of anywhere else. That is, Rhode Islanders frequently drop the T sound in words and replace it with a glottal stop.

Well, not to malign the expertise of this linguist, but I had to point out that this was also a practice in much of England. His wife's friend backed me up, pointing out that it was a subplot in Love, Actually.

I didn't say or even necessarily think this at the time, but it seems likely that my introduction to this dialect quirk was the Kinks. There's a good chance that Ray Davies was playing it up, but there'd have to be something real to play up to begin with.

Tuxedos

 

Maybe my mind is just wandering to places that are less muggy, especially around this time of year. New Zealand is deep into autumn at this point.

And the South Island has penguins, which is cool in a couple pf senses. The catch, of course, is that if you have a dog you definitely need to keep it leashed. There are always tradeoffs.

∞🐒

From what I understand, the infinite monkey theorem―that a monkey given infinite time at a typewriter will produce the entire works of Shakespeare―is not mean to discount the Bard's specialness and importance. In fact, if Borges was correct, some form of the theorem existed for more than a millennium before Shakespeare was born. It's intended to prove that given an infinite amount of time, seemingly impossible or at least improbable events will occur. Of course monkeys tend to have a short attention span. In the real world, there's always a limiter.

Don't want to sign off without noting that the Mekons made a pretty funny visual joke about it.

Strange is your language and I have no decoder

 Writing about characters with amnesia is tricky. Full-on, "who am I" amnesia especially. You spin characters out from what they do, say, and think. The absence of knowledge about who they are is toubh to build on. Tougher than it looks.

Then too, there's the danger that the mystery about their identity will be too absorbing. If the main thing about them is that they're a big question mark, might not the answers be a letdown?

Patrick Quentin's Puzzle for Fiends takes an interesting approach to the subject. In a brief prologue, he introduces his hero Peter Duluth in his own life with his own wife before a smash cut to him being bedridden with three women telling him he's someone else. And Duluth had appeared in several books before this. So there's really no mystery about his identity, at least not for the reader. Unlike Duluth, we know that. Like him, we don't know how he got from there to here.

I haven't finished the book yet, so I couldn't say how it turns out even if I wanted to. The setup is pretty engaging, though.

Germ of an idea

Some tentative good news. If they were trying to make hantavirus the new COVID, it doesn't look to be working. It is a nasty disease to those who get it, but it's not a credible pandemic. And I think for much of the population there's a feeling of "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." Maybe I'm wrong, but I hope not.

There's some irony in me writing this post while sick. It's just some kind of cold, though. I'm hoping to send it packing within a couple of days.

He sure is

Okay, I know I'm leaning a little hard on video posts lately. Still.

This song I've heard in the past couple of days. Not for the first time, but everything about it hit me this time. The shouts (barks) Muddy's band let out, maybe inspired by church revivals but mostly just adding to the immediacy. The very authoritative drumming. This came out in 1955. Rock 'n' roll mostly wouldn't rock this hard for some time. Just imagine how this must have sounded and felt back then. It still packs a charge.

Interesting to note that "Mannish Boy" was cowritten by Bo Diddley. Years later, George Thorogood would write the very similar "Bad to the Bone." The song's video shows a pool match between George and Bo.