Damn Spam!

Can you believe it?! I’m passing through Austin, Minnesota (dashing through the slush) on my way to a gig in La Crosse, Wisconsin. (At the Starlite Lounge, quite a groovy joint.) I try to go to the Spam Museum and it’s closed! Because of snow! In Minnesota!

I was driving in it. Me, a desert dweller. In a rented FWD Mitsubishi. Twice I spun out and steered into the skid and recovered, avoiding the ditches. Twice! And the Minnesotans who manned the Spam? They stayed home! I was shocked! And oh so disappointed.

Lucky for me the gift shop was open and I bought a souvenir shot glass–from a place I never visited. Oh well, here’s slush (and Spam) in your eye!

Jokes and the Jokers Who Write Them

Every day it seems I get a joke, or worse yet, pages of them in my email. Most I’ve heard (read) before, some of them in grade school. Some I’m not familiar with. Some amuse me; most don’t. But every once in a while one actually gets me laughing.

Certainly you’re familiar with what I’m talking about. But you’ve probably never asked yourself; Where do these jokes come from? I’ll tell you. Usually from stand up comedians. Sometimes from comedy writers who write but for whatever reason don’t do stand-up. Hardly ever from comics who describe themselves as “high energy.” Although someone who jumps around and makes faces can be entertaining (ask any parent of a 3-year-old), these folks usually aren’t proficient and are never prolific joke writers. Need an example?

Quick! Rattle off a Jerry Lewis line. Okay, but “Hey, Lady!” really isn’t a joke.

So how do the jokes get from the comedian to your computer screen? From what I can gather, someone either hears a line on TV or live at a comedy club and starts sending it around. And since jokes aren’t copyrightable they instantly become public domain. And usually, unless the teller is famous like Jay Leno or Goerge Carlin, the author and/or original teller of the joke is never known nor credited. That’s what happened with the couple of jokes I wrote.

So what I’m going to do here is give comedians and joke writers a chance to post on the comments jokes they wrote and an opportunity to get credit for their “intellectual property.” I’ll start first. (Hey, it’s my blog!) Here’s a joke I wrote and performed on An Evening at the Improv way back during the comedy boom. It’s a joke that I not only have received several times via email, but have also seen printed on apparel. Here goes:

“For my 21st birthday my frends chipped in and bought me a sweater. I would have preferred a screamer or a moaner."–James R. Zingelman

Okay, comedy guys and gals, it’s your turn. (All jokes claimed as original will be subject to verification by a third party.)

Senior Citizen Somnambulism

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of doing my hypnotism show at a senior center here in New Mexico. Of course I was a bit aprehensive about taking this booking and initially tried to talk the center director into another form of entertainment.

That would have been a mistake! We had loads of fun. The audience was polite and attentive. I’m not sure that they all could see or hear me, but most of them laughed in the right places. The volunteers on stage were great (although one of them was only up there for a nap) and besides tailoring my show to be easy on brittle bones and weaker muscles, not much else was different.

Stuart Cumberland (a Canadian mentalist) www.mental-list.com has been telling beginning entertainers to work senior gatherings as a way to get experience. That’s not a bad idea. I’d also recommend experienced entertainers to work for seniors as a way to “give back” and to get a sense of where they’ll be chronologically before they know it.

Gotta go. I’m missing Matlock. Besides that, I gotta go.