Steve Martin’s memoir Born Standing Up is a sweet, controlled book starting basically with Martin's first job in the magic shop of Disneyland and continuing through his explosive Saturday Night Live days. He writes about developing his act through endless practice, gigging, performing. He makes it clear that funny is a matter of work, and luck, too.
Sweet Potato’s working on her funny. She’s disposed to the unexpected, the absurd, and the non-existent (maybe well characterized as a humor of disappointment). She'll say, I'ne not looken atchoo! and turn away. The gag is to get her to turn around. I'll say, Hey big girl, I have a present for you! It’s a pretty butterfly! I have another present for you! It’s a lot of delicious chocolate ice cream, and I’m eating it all by myself! And on and on, describing all the things she likes, until she turns around; then she has a look of total delight, and laughs her head off. She also likes laughing in the dark. Sweet Potato will carry her step stool to the light switch, climb up and turn the light off. Then we take turns describing ourselves: I have a big mouth that says SNAP! and rough skin, and pointy feet, and a big strong tail! Then Sweet Potato flips on the light, and we shout, just pretend!
She tries to categorize things as “funny”: I did a behy-fahp -- is deht fah-nee? She sings a lot of songs, and substitutes words: Ohd Nik-DEHDEE hed a fohm, ee-ai-ee-ai-DEHDEE!! She said her favorite daycare teacher is Miss Alice, because szee’s funny and tahlks a lot!
She’s tuning in to the social side of funny, working on different laughs and sounds, rolling her eyes, making goofy sounds (kazoos, speaking through toilet paper rolls). When Beeb and I laugh, she asks why we’re laughing, then contributes a laugh to ours. She also uses her physical shtick defensively: she sometimes goes into it when we want her to do something she would prefer not to, like put on her shoes or get ready for bed.
I was perpetually interested in funny throughout my childhood. Part of it was my love of the books, and finding kids’ jokebooks in the libraries of the many schools I attended. One book that seemed to be in every library was called The Big Red Rock Eater. Its titular joke was, what’s big and red and eats rocks? A big red rock eater! Elephant jokes were a breakthrough for me: How are an elephant and a grape the same? They’re both purple fruit, except the elephant. That’s funny, man. The tautological joke still gets mileage around here. Beeb the Mom’s favorite: What’s brown and sticky? A stick. (Cf. What’s brown and sounds like a bell? Dung.) Anyway, there’s the internal funny, and the external funny. I loved the leap and the click of jokes, the way the ideas sparked together. I also thought it would be great to share laughs with people, but I succeeded less in sharing my funny than in just laying my dorkiness on everyone real thick: I would just memorize jokes out of books, and tell them to various people, over and over. You know that knock-knock joke about Amos’n’Andy? I probably told that a thousand times over the course of my third grade year or thereabouts, and never until a couple of years ago knew what Amos’n’Andy were. I kept telling it, even though I always knew it couldn’t really be funny. Same thing with that one that goes orange you glad I didn’t say banana again? I was just testing the joke -- what was it? -- trying to figure out where the funny was, socially. Why is this a joke?
Another bomb was the acquisition of some racist jokebooks, and some Playboy jokebooks, which, with my earnest bookworm delivery and my age (11 or 12?) … actually finally seems funny.
I did eventually learn a great knock-knock joke: I know a great knock-knock joke; you start it. The other person automatically says, knock knock. You go, Who’s there?
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