By Tony Deyal
“Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for the best live shows from the funniest stand-up comedians, ranging from witty and irrelevant to deeply raunchy.”
Well, I look for that in both ways- one, because I loved humour almost from birth, and secondly, thirdly, fourthly, and more, I love humour so much that I don’t joke about it at all, at all. After all, according to a bunch of Ph.D.’s, Doctors, and other people with Health & Wellness, “laughter is the best medicine.”
It draws people together in ways that trigger healthy physical and emotional changes in the body, strengthens your immune system, and protects you from the damaging effects of stress. The part that I remember even now is that as children we used to laugh hundreds of times a day in school, home and on the way to and from, back and forth, and even fight, shout, quarrel and, for boys, tell you things about your mother, sisters, female teachers and even neighbours, especially if your friends heard them calling you out by your name.
What was interesting is that the boys would rush together to the side of the school to stand up and let go of the “water” from inside them to outside in the drain. I was lucky because the boys had to joke about what they thought about our sizes, width, colours, thin and mashup, or things about who your mother went out with to get a “so and so” that was you.
Fortunately, by the time I had children, especially the younger two who were born in Barbados and lived in several Caribbean countries by the time they were 10, the kids were lucky enough to mix the hard-core humour about women and race with what I had grown to like as humour. Some quickies were like, “What did the hat say to the scarf?” You hang around, and I will go on ahead. Or “What did one tomato say to the other tomato?” You go ahead and I’ll ketchup. Then, as they get into it and look forward, I went for, “What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?” Since we had one of each, they had no problem, “A Carrot, daddy.” I responded, “You call me a Carrot again and I will call you brats!” Then there is, “What’s the difference between a teacher and a book?” You can shut a book up.
Most times, I always returned with, “Who granted the fish a wish?” and when they stopped joking, “You do that” or “Must be the dog. He likes to catch them but not eat them,” I said, “It’s the fairy cod-mother.” Then I asked, “Where do fish keep their money? In a riverbank, and if you don’t do your homework, you’re ending up there too!” And when they had no school and I had to head out for work, I used to go for something like, “What do you call a fly?” and without waiting for them to say anything, I picked up my bag and headed to the car with, “A walk.”
In my case, as a writer-type comedian, I see no reason to go on stage. They will laugh at me, with or without. More, because of the things said by my friends about women, I will start with the top female comedians. Even though she was born on July 18, 1917, and died on August 20, 2012, the most successful of all was Phyllis Diller. His humorous quotes were in many areas like “Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance?”- “Old age is when the liver spots show through our gloves.” – “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. I want to move in with them.”: “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” – “I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do,” and one I know very well, “We spend the first 12 months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk about the next 12 telling them to sit down and shut up.”
For me, the second at the top was Lucille Ball. She is remembered as paving the way for so many women in comedy. She was an American actress, comedian, producer, and studio executive. She was born on August 6, 1911, and died when I was just over forty years old on April 26, 1989. Like her (from one of her favourite lines) was, “One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.”
That is very true, if only for me, but I know many of you, my readers, feel the same. Then she said, “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” She also went with this: “Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.” – “Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and faithful in our national heritage,” and my favourite, “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really must love yourself to get anything done in the world.”
Heading to the men and remembering my friends at school, I will start with Kevin Hart, an American comedian and actor who has received the Mark Twain Prize for Humour and nominations for two Grammy Awards and four Primetime Emmy awards. His humour though, is different like heck. In his “Poop Puns,” when asked, “Ready for a poop joke?” he replied, “Nope, they stink.” And “Poop jokes aren’t my favourite jokes. But they’re a solid number two.” Under “Fatherly,” he said, “Did you hear about the constipated accountant?” He just couldn’t budget.” – “Did you hear about the constipated movie? It never came out.” Then he said, “I ate four cans of alphabet soup yesterday. Then I had probably the biggest vowel movement ever,” and in another, “Why couldn’t the police officers find the toilet thief? Because they had nothing to go on.”
As the final of the bunch, and no alphabet lunch, Jerry Seinfeld, as expected a comedian, actor, but also a specialist in observational comedy. He’s still around and, being born on April 29, 1954, he is nine years younger than me, and I hope he will continue to add humour and value to us all. Here are what make him different: “You need talent, you need brains, and you need confidence. These are the three things you need to do virtually anything. Confidence is a fascinating commodity. There’s no upper limit on the usefulness of it, as long as it doesn’t bleed into arrogance.” The advice I would give the younger me- or any young person- would be “Keep your head up in failure and your head down in success.”
*Tony Deyal is ending with a Jerry Seinfeld: “It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
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