Captain Digital

Random musings on politics, society, and pop culture from the Internet's marketing curmudgeon.

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Humor

I’m still here. Um…there.

If you’d asked me three months ago if I’d still be in Shreveport, taking care of my dad, I would have said something like “hie thee to an asylum…you must be mad.” Yet, here I sit.

Taking care of an aging parent is a lot of things – a responsibility. A challenge. A privilege. But a burden it is not. I love my dad, and he needs my help. Unfortunately, It’s played havoc with my family, and for circumstances beyond my control, there’s little I can do about that, at least for now.

If you’re reading this blog, thanks for stopping by. I don’t really have time to post right now – soon, I hope. but let me encourage you to follow me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/captaindigital, natch). Since it’s just 140 characters at a time, and I can do it from my iPhone, I do seem to be able to fit that into my day.

Thanks, and talk to you soon.

– The Captain

[BLEEP] This.

I was surfing around my Dad’s satellite service last night, and stumbled on a rebroadcast of Blazing Saddles on AMC. Several years ago, I made a list of what I thought were the ten funniest movies ever made (in no particular order). As I recall, the list went something like this, give or take:

  • Blazing Saddles (Brooks/Little/Wilder)
  • Young Frankenstein (Brooks/Wilder/Feldman)
  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Monty Python)
  • Arsenic & Old Lace (Cary Grant)
  • The Producers (Brooks/Mostel/Wilder)
  • Animal House (Landis/Belushi)
  • A Night at the Opera (Marx Brothers)
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Stoppard/Oldman/Roth)
  • Airplane! (Abrams/Zucker/Abrams)
  • Duck Soup (Marx Brothers)

When you watch a great movie, you’re watching a collaborative effort, but one that SOMEbody (usually the director) oversees and marks with his or her creative stamp. In comedies, more so that any other art form, timing is essential. Just one frame (a 24th of a second) can make a recognizable difference in the timing of a joke.

That brings me to the hatchet job AMC did on Blazing Saddles. [Read more…] about [BLEEP] This.

A Guide to Making Apologies.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you might have heard about the current troubles of David Letterman, and his serial apologies he’s made regarding the “joke”(s) he told regarding Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and her daughters. Last night, Letterman made yet again another attempt at contrition. Color me “unimpressed.” You see, when you apologize, there are a couple of things you must do – and at least one that you must not do:

  1. Say “I’m sorry.”
  2. Say “I was wrong.”
  3. Say “It’s my fault…I accept responsibility for the mistake.”
  4. Say “I beg your forgiveness.”
  5. Say “I will do my best to do better, and not make the same mistake again.”
  6. Do NOT say “I’m sorry, but…” and then go on to offer any excuse.

When you offer an excuse, you’re essentially saying “what I did wasn’t that bad,” “it wasn’t really my fault,” or other weasel-words that attempt to deflect responsibility. [Read more…] about A Guide to Making Apologies.

Hey, Letterman…didn’t you used to be funny?

The (only) funny thing about the jokes made by David Letterman at the expense of Governor Sarah Palin is that they make laughable the claims of those on the left, that the media – both the news media and the entertainment business – is unbiased. Imagine the outcry if, say some “comedian” made some similarly tasteless remark about one of Obama’s daughters. I don’t think anybody on the right would be laughing. And I know the reaction of those on the left – outrage, anger, and a call for the guilty party to be imprisoned or shot.

That’s the way life goes in the ObamaNation. Understand, I’m NOT blaming Obama for Letterman’s behavior. (He has plenty to atone for on his own.) Sarah Palin is a public figure. While I believe the “jokes” Letterman regaled his audience with were disgusting, Gov. Palin is well able to defend herself. Her daughter, however, is NOT a public figure, nor should she be subjected to the kind of vile crap that Letterman spews. [Read more…] about Hey, Letterman…didn’t you used to be funny?

On humor.

Believe it or not, I get a lot of questions about humor – more specifically, “how do you come up with funny stuff when you write?” Funny you should ask.  Interesting question. Like many people that work creatively, I don’t think a lot about how I do what I do. But since I get this question so often, I think it’s high time to start thinking about it.

What is funny? Experts have argued over that question for as long as there have been jokes. (The oldest known joke is – naturally – a fart joke that dates back to Etruscan times.) I’m not going to deal with the question of the nature of humor here. I’ll limit myself to a discussion of how I inject humor into my writing. [Read more…] about On humor.

Barney (the less than) Frank.

There are a couple of things that just drive me absolutely nuts. Boredom. Laziness. Lying. And number one with a bullet on my hit list of things I hate: weaselness. I define “weaselness” as a behavior where the weasel in question acts in a way so as to make life easier for themselves at the expense of the rest of the world, usually by twisting the truth beyond recognition, ducking responsibility, and blamestorming.

Barney Frank is a weasel. [Read more…] about Barney (the less than) Frank.

Be Careful What You Wish For.

First of all, let me go on record by stating that I was NOT wishing for a blizzard. Evidently, I was out-voted. As I write this (at around 6:35 PM CDT), we are being hit with some snow that I would characterize as “relentless.” As to the “blizzard” classification, let’s go to the authorities at Answers.com:

bliz·zard (blĭz‘ərd) n.

    1. A violent snowstorm with winds blowing at a minimum speed of 35 miles (56 kilometers) per hour and visibility of less than one-quarter mile (400 meters) for three hours.
    2. A very heavy snowstorm with high winds.
  2. A torrent; a superabundance: a blizzard of phone calls. [Read more…] about Be Careful What You Wish For.

Snow Job.

Let it snow. But not much.
Let it snow. But not much.

As I write this, it is about 68 degrees and overcast, here in Amarillo, Centrally Located Between Two Oceans!™ It’s been in the 70s and even up into the 80s over the past couple of weeks. Lows have been in the high 30s and 40s. I mention this because I’ve just learned that the brain trust at the Amarillo Independent School District have unilaterally decreed that school will be canceled for all of Amarillo tomorrow. This is due to the prediction by the National Weather Service of a blizzard (!) where they forecast between one and two feet of snow for us tomorrow.

Pause with me for a nanosecond, whilst I rage against the unfairness of weather here in the Panhandle. [Read more…] about Snow Job.

Bosses from Hell.

My 11-year-old daughter asked me today to tell her a story. No big. But she wanted to know about stupid people that I’ve known and worked for. I’ve actually been pretty lucky…although I’ve worked WITH a lot of stupid people, most of the people I’ve worked for have not been stupid. Mind you, I’ve worked for people that have DONE a lot of stupid things. (And when I say “a lot” I mean, take the biggest number you can think of, double it, and then raise it by the next order of magnitude, and you’ll have an idea of how many stupid things.)

As you might expect, I’m not at a loss to regail my kid with stories about stupid things I’ve seen at work. The story that sprung to mind today is a true story. (I swear!) I’m changing the names to protect the guilty, the innocent bystanders, the quick, and the dead. So…

What seems like a lifetime ago, I worked for a guy who had a pointed stomach. Seriously. He’d herniated the muscle wall of his midriff, and his stomach (already a large part of his physical presence) became somewhat conical in shape. Think of one of Madonna’s B-52 nosecone bras, deduct one cup, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what his stomach looked like. (At one time, in a civil disobedient mood, I decided to write a book as a rip-off homage to the then hot, new book – A Hundred and One Uses for a Dead Cat, that I planned to call A Hundred and One Uses for a Pointed Stomach. Use #1: Breakdancing.)

Anyway, this guy, aside from having the world’s only pointed stomache, had a history…and what a history it was. Early in his life, he’d gotten involved in the music biz, and all the associated evils therein, specifically drugs and alcohol. One day, he awoke, and decided to get clean and sober. Unfortunately, he also had a learning disability that required him to have to repeat things at least three times, before he could remember them.

I worked for him as the Creative Director, and did a bunch of copywriting, feature story writing, and editing as well. As such, it was my lot to review his writing, and edit it. Remember that learning disability thing? When he’d write something, he’d make liberal use of quotes. And use the same quote three or four times, within the same page. I’d edit out the duplications. He’d put them back in (and yell a lot).

After a number of failed projects, he decided to turn his attention to writing a book. And not just any book. No, this was going to be his magnum opus on Christianity. You see, he believed that the only thing wrong with Christianity was organized religion. And he was determined to write a book that explained the Bible to the unwashed masses – sort of a “cut out the middleman,” where churches represent the middleman.

Keep in mind, not many theologians take up the gauntlet on this one. Few people feel that they are sufficiently learned to tackle a project this large – the Christian equivalent of writing the Unified Field Theory. For someone who hadn’t even so much as one semester of divinity school.

I tried to gently point out that there were a number of worthwhile volumes on the market, filled with insightful analysis on the meaning of the Bible. He was not to be deterred. He genuinely believed that not just some, but ALL the theology books on the market had missed the point, and he was the Only One Qualified To Explain the Bible.

I pointed out to him that the Bible (other than the King James Version) is a copyrighted work, and you just can’t quote willy-nilly from it without paying a royalty. His workaround? Paraphrase, essentially coming up with his ‘own’ translation.

I tried to edit out his liberal use (and reuse) of the same quotes, several times on each page. He refused.

Did I mention how his learning disability affected conversations? He once came to me with another of his patented “brilliant ideas.” The exchange went something like this…

BOSS
“…now I want you to stop…I want you to stop what you’re doing…

ME
“Okay. What can I do for you?”

BOSS
“Okay, I want you to stop…and stop what you’re doing. And I want you to print…now pay attention now, I want you to stop everything, and print everything you’re doing on pink paper.”

ME
“Um…pink paper?”

BOSS
“Now I want you to stop…and are you listening? I want you to print everything on pink paper…cause pink is a…now I want you to stop and listen to this, cause it’s important…cause pink is a response color.”

Well…maybe it is in San Francisco, but even after explaining the difficulties of trying to print four-color process on pink paper, he was still keen on the idea. But that was not enough. Just when I’d seemingly exhausted ways to make it better – or mock the project in such a way so that everyone would get the joke but him…my prayers were answered. He shared with me the title of the book.

Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? Are you resting comfortably? Okay. Here goes:

The Thoughts of Jesus Christ

by __________(INSERT NAME OF BOSS)

Pause with me for a nanosecond, whilst we explore the colossal enormity of this title. Most theologians would demur, rather than presume to be able to read the mind of the Son of God. Even more outrageous, to put one’s name on such a work could be considered sacrilegious at best, insane at worst. Of course, it could have been worse, word-wise. I suppose, “Jesus Christ…What was He thinking?” would have been over the top.

With a title like that, I was all but at a loss as to how to design the dust cover. I mean, I could have spent billions of dollars in conventional weapons, but this demanded something that was sarcastic in the extreme…something that scaled the heights of Olympus in satire. Something that would at once scream “Theatre of the Absurd” while keeping the author completely in the dark.

Now I’m not a joker, a smoker, nor a a midnight toker, for that matter. Never have been, never will be. But I have seen a package of Zig-Zag cigarette papers in my time. (See illustration above.) It struck me that a product that is most closely associated with stoner culture has a mascot that would look remarkably like the popular conceptions of what Christ might have looked like. Sans the joint in his mouth, of course. And what better way to say “this book is one big joke” than to slap a slightly-modified version of the Zig-Zag logo on the dust jacket. So I did. The boss, of course, didn’t have a clue (a leitmotif that ran through most of his input during my employment there.)

The book, of course, never saw the light of day. Which is just as well. But it does make a great story, about the pointy-stomached boss and his goal of better theology through repetition.