Keeping Up With The Holsbys

I’ve been feeling decidedly un-funny lately. I love busting out a witty, quippy blog, but lately, I’ve not had a lot of meat on my funny bone.

I’m not sure, exactly, where my mirth went.

If funny is like serotonin, perhaps the last few months of amusing posts have been the equivalent of a three-day E bender and I’m in the midst of a funny come-down?
Surely, I haven’t used it up for good, cos it would suck if I had to go through life being profoundly un-funny.
Un-funny people are widely known to be bland, and please God, give me anything but bland.

I suppose, though, that humour is quite a subjective thing.

For instance, there are a number of very popular sit-coms that I have just never been about to get my head around. Big Bang Theory is one such show.

Many people, whose sense of humour I respect and chortle at, have said it’s actually very clever and I should give it a chance.
I simply cannot see the funny. A smirk? Maybe, but it ain’t Arrested Development.

Now, that’s funny.

A Never-Nude who wears denim shorts in the shower, a frozen banana stand and a magic show with ‘The Final Countdown’ as a soundtrack?
That shit is gold………and as much as I love it, Mister H doesn’t dig it.

He doesn’t think it’s funny.

So, it kind of begs the question; What is funny?

Why does one person think one thing is hilarious and someone else just doesn’t dig it? Is it intellect? Upbringing? Culture?

I personally find humor in the unexpected and the absurd……and farts. Also, I really hate canned laughter in comedies. Being told when to laugh is suggesting that I’m stupid. That I can’t work it out on my own. Who came up with that idea, to spell it out?
Somebody unconfident with their jocular prowess, no doubt.

E.B. White once wrote that “humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

You know yourself that trying to explain a joke to someone just completely kills every little element of surprise, which is the thing that holds the amusement. So, you finish explaining it to them and they go ‘Ah ha’ and generally still don’t laugh because although now they understand the joke, they don’t get it. Which was the issue in the first place.

Let’s have a look at radio, which is a bit of a hot topic at the moment.

Are prank calls funny? Well, I’d sincerely love to look down my nose and say, nooooooooo, prank calls are for chumps, but the answer there is yes. It’s not high-brow humor, but it can be side-splitting.
I can remember spending hours making prank calls as a kid…. and nearly wetting my dacks with laughter.

I once heard of one where a husband rang the radio station on air and had to answer some questions about his marriage. Then they called his wife and if her answers corresponded with her husband’s, then the lucky couple won a holiday.

The final question was ‘Where did you last have sex?’

The hubby got all embarrassed and explained that it was a bit kooky because his mother-in-law is staying with them at the moment and while she was in the shower, this very morning, they had a quicky on the kitchen table.

They called the wife and she breezed through all of the questions and then they got to the final question of their last coital encounter.

She balked. She went all awkward. She stuttered and stammered and she queried whether her husband had really told them that detail?

Her husband assured her, just tell the DJ the truth, and they were home and hosed on their tropical vacation.

She took a deep breath, and with a little giggle, she responded -

‘Up the arse’.

The DJ couldn’t speak for a full two minutes. The rumor is, he laughed so hard he thought he was having a heart attack. The couple won the holiday though. Presumably for not suing the radio station for the mortifying joke they had just become.

I can’t speak for you guys, but I think that’s pretty funny. It’s funny because it was totally unexpected…..and embarrassing.

I do find other people’s embarrassment funny……does that make me a monster?

Naaaaaah.

What of this latest 2DayFM gag?

Just in case you live in a tent it was where the DJ’s rang the English hospital that was treating Kate Middleton for chronic morning sickness and they posed as the Queen. The nurse on duty divulged personal information about the Duchess and in the subsequent shit-storm allegedly took her own life.

There is no way anyone could have known what would happen in that phone conversation, and I dare say they would have been hoping for something unexpected and/or absurd. I’m not going to pass judgement on this situation, the whole world appears to have judged them enough.

I’m sad that the DJ’s are now getting death threats. That’s hardly going to fix things.

Anyway, I feel like a lot of unfunny things have been going on lately, and I reckon I’m not far away from pulling a rubber chicken on the Universe and waving it wildly.
Life is funny.

Even many of the shit bits are funny eventually.

Tags: humor, humour, jokes, life, media, radio