On the road again, meeting the folks

The Column: 04.29.24

I went out West to Idaho and Washington to do my show in Boise (soft s) and Spokane, and was surprised by how vibrant, bustling, handsome both cities are, and walked out onstage and sang Van Morrison’s “These are the days of the endless summer, these are the days, the time is now” and they seemed to like it okay, so I hummed a note and they sang “America the Beautiful” with me and then we did “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” for the Republicans in the crowd and they sang it full-out, four parts, and then, for contrast, “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” and we were on our way.

It’s an age of dread, the news perpetually discouraging, TV and media merchandising ugliness, and either you join the Greek chorus of gloom or you go with the American choir of cheerful resolve, and I choose cheerfulness. I am capable of dismay: I’m dismayed by the Working From Home syndrome that is leaving our big office buildings half empty. I call up an office to get answers to difficult questions and I hear Death Chute singing “Vanilla Windows” and a guy says, “Yeah?” and a dog barks and a woman yells, “Put it on headphones!” This is what Allied Federated has come to. I’d prefer to get a woman named Mildred who is an authority on health coverage and who is looking at me across her desk. But never mind me, I’m old.

There is plenty to be gloomy about. Friends of mine are nearing the end, going through the Seven Stages of Dying: Dismay, Distress, Dread of Cheerful Visitors, Demanding More Drugs, and Delivery Into Divine Paradise, Discovering They’re All Catholics, Devoting Oneself to Daily Rosary Recitation. All the more reason to love jokes. Half of all people are below average and we are the ones who really appreciate a joke. Of course, men and women are different. Men pass gas more than women because women talk more so the pressure never builds up. Except for one of our ex-Presidents. Such a talker. He should pay himself hush money.

My darling daughter loves jokes, especially the anthropomorphic — Why do gorillas have large fingers? Because they have large nostrils. I hope to introduce her to the knock-knock joke, such as “Sam and Janet” Who? “Sam and Janet Evening” or “Eskimo Christians” Who? “Eskimo Christians and I’ll tell you no lies.” Most of the knock-knockers have departed this world but the jokes still work.

There are jokes in Holy Scripture: “Whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow.” That’s a joke — a scream at one time. They heard that and the pomegranates came out their noses.

Solomon said, “The thing that has been is the thing that shall be, and the thing that is done is that which shall be done: there is nothing new under the sun.”

Joke.

Eighty-one is a joke. I used to be cool but I got over it. Now I work at staying upright. I’m a stand-up comic, one of the oldest in the trade. I have a poor sense of balance, double-vision, a pig valve in my heart, but I gave good value out West and in the middle of my Spokane show, there was a medical emergency and I saw EMTs attending a woman and I got the audience to sing “It Is Well With My Soul” quietly and “We Shall Overcome” — could Jerry Seinfeld have done that? No, he would’ve said, “I came here to kill but I wasn’t thinking it’d be YOU.”

It was not a New York crowd. Lots of hefty gals and men with big beards. Maybe they had AR-15s in the pickup, had driven into town from their concrete blockhouses in the woods with freezers full of fresh venison where they wait for the Revolution. But I gave them a good time.

(So Ole took his boy deer hunting and as they snuck through the woods, Ole said, “Son, this is your first deer hunt, an important time in your life, marking your passage into manhood. Do you have any questions?” And the boy said, “Yes. If you die of a heart attack, how do I get home?”)

And the morning after Spokane, I sat down to breakfast at the hotel with six people who’d been to the show and their three little kids and we talked about everything under the sun for two hours and also about the afterlife. It was a delight. When members of your audience want to have breakfast with you, you know you did a very good show.

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