Category Archives: humor

How To Be Funny

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Years ago, after a heartbreak (the first of many), I decided to stretch myself. I learned then that, of all things, fear can boost you out of the hole. Fear trumps all other emotions – logically I guess, as a survival mechanism. 

I had worked at and frequented comedy clubs for years, so I went that route of fear: performing (not, say, cliff diving.)  After said heartbreak, I took a comedy class (lame), attempted standup (terrifying; developed periscope-like tunnel vision of audience), and somehow got into an improv group (practice sessions riotous, even though I never got to “play,” as improvers call it, on show nights, my motorcycle constantly croaking in sketchy NYC neighborhoods after shows). 

Anyway, here goes: How To Be Funny

Hang Out with Funny People

Imagine if you ate breakfast every day with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. That was Rob Reiner’s youth. No way he (the director of the fake “rockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap) was not going to grow up to be funny.

Callbacks

This is when you refer to something mentioned earlier in your “set” – or conversation – that made people laugh the first time. Everyone loves callbacks. They’re like, “Oh, I remember that funny thing; that was funny, even funnier now, HAW, how clever!” This is not your classic callback, but close enough, and funny as hell.

Footnotes and Parenthetical Insertions

Use for unexpected laffs. The weirder the better, I find.

Sarcasm

Growing up, our parents used sarcasm to great comedic effect, especially while driving. “Yo Einstein, find a parking spot already, it’s not that complicated.” “Hey Quicksilver, the pedal on the right is for the GAS.” I later learned that my favorite aged kid is eight, because they’ve learned sarcasm but still respect authority. This doesn’t last. Well, the sarcasm does.

And my personal favorite…

The Absurd

Example: Rodentologist and author of “Raising Hamsters Right” urges owners to guide their rodents with a firm hand from the get-go. “Establishing dominance is the name of the game. Letting your hamster think it’s in charge can have disastrous effects.” (Point being: Who can train a hamster?)

Be Like My Dad

He recently had a flu shot and his shoulder hurt. I said,”You should probably be drinking a lot of water.” His reply: “I’ll probably be drinking a lot of gin.”

See Live Comedy and Improvisational Comedy

Best viewed with a group, IMHO. Get a posse and go. GREAT standup show coming up at Randolph’s Chandler in October called the Ivy League of Comedy. Go! Saw them twice and they so rocked. Anyone who knows where to find good improv locally, I’m all ears. My contact info below. Nothing is funnier than improv. You’ll LERV it.

Create a Flash Mob

While working banquet at a stranger’s wedding? Bar mitzvah?

Or, If Unmotivated…

Watch flash mobs on YouTube. The bystanders’ reactions are priceless.

Tell Disgusting True Stories

Like how when I lived in a tiny walk-up in SoHo, New York, I subsisted on take-out pizza, sushi, and bagels. Never cooked. One day after 2 years I opened my oven and an absolute waterfall of cockroaches cascaded out. (They call that The Nest.) My neighbors thought I was being murdered, from the screaming. Imagine if you passed out, and they’d scrambled all over you? This story always gets a laugh and amusing faces of disgust. Note parenthetical insertion.

Tell Flagrant Lies to Amuse Self and Friends

At a boring party? Spice it up. Haul your friend over to someone you both don’t know. Ask the person what they do for a living (very American). Acknowledge their work. Then say, “Sheila here is a rodentologist studying the rat population of minor cities. She started out as a trapeze artist, didn’t you, Sheila? It will be Sheila’s job to keep a straight face and elaborate. (Note: This is a callback in two ways: the hamster reference, plus this game is straight out of improvisational comedy.)

Watch Funny Shows/Movies

I know a cosmic person who says his secret to inner peace is meditation and watching funny movies. With his mom.

I’ve been thinking, since recent flicks “Barbie” and “Theater Camp” had me howling, that what the world needs now (besides love*) is funny, yes, funny. Come on writers and directors, crank out those comedies — highbrow, lowbrow, we don’t care. Bring it awn. Go see comedies in the theater. The shared experience crushes home viewing.

Suggested Movies: A Short and Largely Obscure List of Comedic Brilliance

Not necessarily entirely comedies, but mega-comical moments:

Bridesmaids, Go (clever ensemble piece; the Amway scene!), Wonder Boys, Mother (Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds GEM), After Hours (Linda Fiorentino hottt!). Barbie is worth it for the dance numbers with Ryan Gosling, a former New Mickey Mouse Club alum who can DANCE.

Mel Brooks: Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and High Anxiety.

Forget Paris: the pigeon scene with Debra Winger

Stuber: So, so good. You won’t regret. Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista!

The Spy Who Dumped Me: the chase scene alone…Milla Kunis and Kate McKinnon

Three Woody Allen movies you may not have seen that kill: Small Time Crooks (Tracy Ullman), Hollywood Ending (absurd plot, luminescent Tea Leoni), Manhattan Murder Mystery (Diane Keaton)

Cricket On The Hearth: old-school animated Christmas movie my nieces love.

Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion (when they ask for a Business Woman’s lunch)

Pink Panther flicks (“It’s not my phaone.”)

Bill Murray: Scrooged and Caddyshack

Groundhog Day: romantic to boot!

The Royal Tenenbaums

Overboard: I’ve seen it 10 times and I do not re-watch movies.

Anchorman (I’ve never seen)

Christopher Guest: Best in Show

Napoleon Dynamite: The dance sequence, you’ll be afire

Alan Arkin (total god): Glen Gary Glenross, Little Miss Sunshine, The Russians Are Coming The Russians are Coming

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: another old nugget

Meet the Fockers (I’ll tell you a funny story if you ask at contact info below)

Shows: Maybe another column, with Dear Reader’s input? Your call. Good day.

*Nod to Burt Bacharach

Ann Aikens has released a darkly comical yet uplifting book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, available on Amazon and local Vermont shops. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Information at annaikens.com.

Cutie pie Ginger! At top is Marshmallow; RIP our classic darling. You brought only joy.

Know Anyone in Tunbridge Likes to Laff? This Friday!

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Come and go as you please from 6-7:30 for reading, signing, plus pizza & childcare thanks to goddess librarian, Mariah. Bring your book or get one there for cash or check!

Yo, Will the People of the Land Please Nicen Up?

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It has been on ongoing observation, since COVID, just how rude Americans have become. From workplace conversations to articles everywhere, people are asking, “What the heck is going on?” People hide behind the shield of social media to act horribly. Parents and students both often treat teachers poorly; many schools don’t back teachers up.  Nurses are quitting due to hostile patients.  Who could ever work in customer service or airports, the way those poor people are treated? There are 27 theories, including David Brooks’ in the The Atlantic recently.

My own guess is this rude irritability stems from frustration with just about everything: money, politics, wars, weather, disasters, understaffing, social media, homelessness, inhumane prisons, lazy workers just dialing it in, supply chain issues, gas prices, grocery prices, price gouging. How about low-paying jobs plus overpriced housing squeezing workers? Might that make one short-tempered? Ticks ruining our outdoors, COVID ruining our plans anew, floods ruining Vermont’s rivers, overwhelm and loneliness ruining our moods. 

Technology keeps changing so we cannot possibly keep up with it, while the Customer Service we need (a human, please!), to make techy things work, goes ever faster down the flusher. And don’t get me going on the impending A-I Armageddon (call me alarmist). I’m sure you have your own ranklers. You’d have to be living entirely off the grid to not notice. Or on another planet.

David Brooks has a much-quoted theory: “The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.”

Of all the triggers, this is to me the gloomiest. The others are enormously complicated and out of our control. But basic human kindness can and must be taught – and learned!

Personally, I have found flight attendants to be far less pleasant, possibly due to ongoing abuse by rude travelers. I’ve noticed little kids being less friendly, maybe due to hours on devices, with masking during their critical developmental years, plus a long stretch of limited interaction with people outside their families. When I meet a friendly child, I’m overjoyed! How’d that kid make it through, I wonder?

Happily, the crime rate has recently dropped. And I’ve been on flights where passengers were remarkably kind to each other despite painful delays – special kudos to the Young People who were very polite indeed. Maybe they’re used to all this adversity?

Those tidbits aside: Come on people. Teach your children well. And, okay, maybe your elders didn’t teach you to be nice, but isn’t it common sense to treat others as you wish to be treated? Teach down! Learn up! Teach up, if you have to.

One role model: Chip Milnor. If you missed it, read Maryellen Apelquist’s lovely paean to Chip on the front page of the August 17th White River Valley Herald. It’s moving in part because Chip is so missed, gone too soon, and in part because his type is so rare these days, it seems. Someone who went routinely out of his way to help others, with no need for accolades, and enjoyed, I suspect, every minute of doing so.  

Chips are an otherworldly breed who inspire awe. One idea for the rest of us: go out of your way to feel good and to relax – in order to be able to be nice. Try it. Make an effort to calm yourself, have fun. Do whatever it takes. Me, I get in water. Sleep. Amuse self. Feel good … to be nice.

My tiny, grass-roots initiative is to spread laffs. Laughter is good for what ails our knockout planet. Make time for your clever friends and shows! Might I suggest taking a posse to “Theater Camp” – our audience was hooting. A blend of Christopher Guest, Ru Paul, and The Office. Perverse premise, lines well delivered, with solid pacing. Go laugh!

In closing, a funny story. I have a friend who’s noticing the first physical limitations of aging. He’s 40-something. That’s when it starts. For the first time in public, he used the steps on the back of his pickup truck. As he fairly skipped up them to impress a boy watching him, the kid said dryly, “I’ve never seen anyone have to use those.”

I’m not certain what my friend thought yet didn’t say in response, but I am sure it was rich. Reminds me of the old gem The Russians Are Coming, The Russians are Coming, when Carl Reiner’s son waxes bratty. A ripsnorter worth renting, if outdated.

Go get yourself the last days of summer. Good laffs to you, good moods, good niceness, and good (Labor) Day.

Ann Aikens has published a darkly humorous book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, available at Vermont shops and Amazon. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. List of shops, email signup for events, and more of her writing at annaikens.com.

And If This Doesn’t Make Ya Nervous

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…when your name is on it, you’re very confident indeed.

Tonight at Kimball Public Library in Randolph! Please, God, make somebody attend.

If You Want to Give a Writer a Gift

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No, not the peony or candle or the cylindrical packaging ~ the fountain pen, Silly.

Yes, those other things make a nice gift, but a writer digs a good pen. This is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Makes you want to WRITE. Its beautiful pattern is by the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris.

And it’s heavy. You know something is well made when it’s heavy.

THANK YOU for Getting My Book these Aws Stats!

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Thanks so much for participating in or forwarding my free eBook “sale”!

By doing so, you kicked me up to the top of 3 categories, so when people searched that category over the 4th, my book showed up as at left. And many “strangers” are now reading it.

I beat out some heavy hitters, THX!

FREE eBOOKS & RAFFLE thru THURSDAY!

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Download a free eBook of A Young Woman’s Guide to Life. On Amazon, click BUY NOW and the price will show up as $0.00 at Checkout. Forward this if you wish!

If you SUBSCRIBE at www.annaikens.com or Forward this, LMK and I’ll do another COOL LIGHTER giveaway. (See it at SURPRISES on above website).
I may do a free hardcover raffle as well? Why not!

What Are You Afraid Of?

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This question is asked in different ways for different reasons. Sometimes it’s asked by someone in an arch manner, a manner that challenges “Hey, Sissy…what are you afraid of?” Or a shrink asks softly, “What are you afraid of?” to find out why you’re not taking a certain step, such as confronting someone who has wronged you or getting yourself out of a rut. There can be something compelling or even a little creepy about these five words, no?

For our purposes, I’m just interested in what people are actually afraid of. In part because Fears can be so different, just like the kinds of Lucks people have. And in part because I have developed three very real fears worth fretting about. These three since the disastrous Ukraine invasion (only one year ago), when I hadn’t felt strongly such imminence of danger other than in the early months of the pandemic when we didn’t know anything. People forget how terrifying that was. It seems long ago, no? Now I feel ascared anew.

Off to others’ fears!  This honest and at times comical list was contributed by the usual suspects: the nutters I call friends. And whomever on my author email list* answered the question, “What Are You Afraid Of?” Here we go, in no particular order: 

Snakes and Scorpions • Heights • Bats • Cats • Wind • Disappointing the people I love • Snakes…hate snakes! • Strangers • Public speaking • Cooking shows • My own anger • Riptides • Bugs with many, many legs • Getting poked in the eye with a fork • Not living my life to the fullest before I die • Exploding peonies • Our health • Disease or an accident • Global warming • Further division in the US • World war • Birds.

Some went longer: We are going on a cruise soon – what if I was to walk alone on the upper deck at night and some deranged person pushed me over the edge; that would be something to be afraid of! • I’m afraid we’re going to destroy this planet and take all innocent life with us (plants, animals, insects); we have the tools and understanding to avoid it but that may not be enough…scares the hell out of me • Suffering, with regards to physical health; seems like turning 60 amped this shit UP! • Anything bad happening to my kids is what I would be most afraid of • Fear of my child never launching • I fear developing a disease that will change my life for the worse. • Losing my husband • I put return address labels on small objects when I fly so if the plane blows to smithereens, people will know I was on the plane. • Because I live alone, I’m afraid of choking on a sandwich and dying. I did start choking on one once, and thought to run into the street waving my arms, but what if no one saw me? • I am afraid of getting run over by a messenger bike while crossing the street in NYC. • I end with this cheering one:  Seems I am afraid of less and less as I age.

Thank you, nutters! What am I afraid of? I don’t like bugs with many, many legs or dead mice, but I don’t fear those or even, particularly, death. Mostly, I’m afraid of three uncontrollable things: people being hurt by other people (esp. despots and lone gunmen), ticks, and Artificial Intelligence. When killer A.I. robots start walking down the street, I’m heading directly for the next level. Who wants to see that?

No, really. As widely reported, more than 1,000 tech leaders signed an open letter in March about A.I.’s “profound risks to society and humanity.” When those who invented something are telling you it’s extremely dangerous, head for the hills.

There was a brilliant cartoon in the New Yorker where an older man is depicted from high above, reading the paper at home. He cries to no one something like, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?! CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!”

If anyone can tell me what the hell is going on here, please report in as able. Good tick-checking, good despot/killer robot avoidance, and good day.

*Join my email list at annaikens.com to get asked my next question.

A Happy Father

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Nothing made my father happier this year, I think, than when I unexpectedly handed him a hardcover of my book.

I told him I had a surprise for him. He said, “It’s a book.” I said, “Yes, I wrote it.”

He watched with me as my numbers rose on Amazon, and was my total champion. He has always been and wanted me to be a writer since he gave me a copy of “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” as a child, likening me to Francie.

A fiction writer I’m not, but when he said, “Your mother thought this would have happened 30 years ago,” I felt good, not bad. It’s never too late to please your parents. Dead or alive, in my opinion.