Comedic Time Out

The other day I was complaining to a friend about worship music and I ended the line with, "as long as we never begin singing, 'I will give you all my worship...' I'll stick around." This reminded me of an interesting story that springs from that worship song and others similar to it. When I was in college I was on a campus comedy team that put on live shows for the students once a month. One of the skits we did was your basic "Deeper Thoughts" rip off. These rip offs are okay as long as the "thoughts" are original. As far as I'm concerned, the "Deeper thought" idea at large is public domain, just not the thoughts themselves.

Anyways, it reminded me of a time we were sitting around trying to come up with "thoughts" for the skit. One of the more witty team members finally came out with one of the most amazing thoughts I've ever heard. "I know one" he started out. "It goes as follows, 'hey wouldn't it be cool if one day after everyone makes all those crazy promises to God in a worship service, they actually go and fulfill them?'" Everyone sat around the room in silence and then slowly the laughter began to build, and build, and build. Minutes of unbroken laughter ensued. This is what comedy is all about in my mind. Not slap stick, not punch line, but straight, raw truth. This was one of those moments. This member had stumbled upon an amazing observation of truth and single-handedly, in one short, simple sentence, unpacked and fleshed out at least one of the aspects that is wrong with much of the contemporary worship scene and song.

After the laughter died down depression was next to follow as we all, one by one, individually, unanimously, reluctantly came to another truth; being that we could never actually perform that "thought." It was not to be used, ever, by anyone. It was too much, to real, too honest. There is a point that can be reached in comedy which is too right. Too right is wrong because it disposes of and ignores all sense of political engagement and, honestly, it is a tell tale sign of being ignorant of one's audience. It ignores what the audience is not ready to hear, at least not in that potent of a form.

Truths like that must be diluted and spread out. Articles and books must be written with that line in mind, which attempt to safely unpack it. It's like a bomb. One way to show what a bomb does is to detonate it, but that could blow up the very individual that was supposed to have learned about what a bomb does in order that they never allow it to do what it does. A better way would be to take it all apart, showcase the parts, show how they work together, eventually maybe even show what order they're supposed to be arranged in in order to create a successful detonation.

There have been many of these in my life (many not out of my head). These things that can never be repeated. These perfect lines, perfect observations, perfect ideas which cannot be let out to see the light of day. These things are all placed in the lock box. They're okay to laugh over and think through in the still loneliness of the night, when all is still and quiet and no one is listening, but they must never find their way on stage or into debate. These things are banished, locked away somewhere deep in the unsearchable corners of the Disney vault.

Another we came up with one night during writing for the same campus group was a reoccurring character called "Stigmata Steve." Kind of like a "Massive Head Wound Harry" but with a sac religious bent. The guy would walk into a party with blood stains on his wrists and feet, sometimes his head too. Sometimes another party goer would make some silly comment like, "whoa Steve, looks like the stigmata's flaring up on you again, that sucks." Again, we all thought this was utterly funny, but as the laugh died down, the creator was ordered to march over to the nether edge of the room and place the idea deep into oblivion.

The other day a friend mentioned in the midst of a conversation about homelessness that he had a possible solution. "Well you know how most of them are probably addicted to drugs, and if we keep giving them these little amount of money here and there nothing will ever change. They'll just keep spending it on something that doesn't help them and the next day want more having gotten nowhere. Well, I say we give them $5,000 each. They're all sure to run out and buy the biggest score of their life and then, smack, OD. That takes care of that problem." I looked at him with a smirk, then quietly, pointed and he walked over to the edge of the room, and it was placed safely away into oblivion never to show up in some comedy routine or government paper or random blog one reads while innocently surfing the internet using the word combo "solutions to homelessness."

Someday someone with a name that is some form of "Pandora" is going to stumble upon this box, wherever it is and we all know what happens from there. From then on, there will be so much more to worry about than what sacred thing Family Guy is going to parody next or the comedians who use the "F" word ever other line.