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Humor: Torment Behind the Art

Edward L. Flaim

Ordinary People, Ordinary Lives and Exaggeration: A Recipe for Humor

I am an ordinary person. If I were not, I would recognize the author of this well-known quotation, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” ¹ This desperation transcends wealth, intellect and other characterizations we use to create a sense of uniqueness and distinguish the cast of characters on stage in the play called life. However, our commonalities exceed many folds our differences. We are born, we live, and we die. Life is merely a means of biding time while awaiting death. Although there may be a form of existence beyond death, none of us wish to resolve this question soon.

For those few who read this humor column, you're certainly wondering why the hyperlink purportedly reaching this column connected instead with the Realm of Hell. No, this is still a humor column with its depressing thoughts leading to the creation and necessity of humor to avoid insanity.

As stated in previous columns, or if not stated, it should have been, humor emerges from pain, anguish and frustration. Often the amateur humorist focuses on pain, anguish and frustration in others, leaving the audience to feel the humorist is devoid of these feelings, thus quickly alienating the audience as he is not one of them.  The successful humorist, even when ostensibly directing his humor at another person, never fails to leave the audience with the impression that he is the butt of the joke as well. He has lived the experience, identifies with the experience and is hence also the “victim” of his externally directed humor.

The ideal self-deprecating humorist was the late Rodney Dangerfield, with his tag lines of “never getting any respect.” “My wife asked our son to walk the dog. He put a collar around my neck and walked me to the park. At least I was amongst trees.” Most people except those lacking emotions can empathize with a lack of respect. Rodney, by exaggerating this phenomenon, made us laugh.

Humorists such as Art Buchwald, Jules Feiffer and Gary Trudeau utilized humor in an effort to remove President Nixon in a manner more effective than the serious political columnists during that crisis in government. In so doing, they continuously noted that the joke was on us and them, a joke potentially capable of destroying us. They eliminated the barrier between the “serious” political commentator and the humorist. Humor is now a highly valued political tool. They reached ordinary people with ordinary lives through exaggeration. In so doing, they never became pompous. They were part of the family, sitting at dinner tables and barstools with ordinary people like me and made their points.

I won’t try to emulate the humor of Dangerfield, Buchwald, Feiffer and Trudeau in this column. It’s not that I don’t have the time. It is rather the simple fact that each person has a unique style. I will try to write a brief story on a common event utilizing exaggeration. For the first time, I ask whatever audience I have to do the same and email your stories to me at Ed@wvu.org. I would like to show some of these unique styles by including a sampling of your stories in this column.

Here is my attempt to write humor by exaggerating fact. For a change of pace, I wrote this fact-based story as a journal entry to myself:

Journal of Ed Flaim and His Countless MPD Alters

Hey Fruit Loop!

It’s good to see you this morning. Not that you have much of a choice. As one of my thousands of alters that emerge regularly due to the greatly expanded need to produce more patients for psychiatrists, psychologists and others in the mental health field, who proliferate quicker than bunnies, you and my other alters are necessary to keep these cretins employed.

Well, Fruit Loop, I’ve had worse nights in my life. The time I was busted at the entrance to the Jersey Turnpike comes immediately to mind. However, I’ve had few, if any, more boring than my son’s graduation ceremony at the University of Minnesota’s undergraduate School of Technology. Christ! Thousands of people packed into an auditorium, forced to endure pompous academic pustules for hours before getting a fleeting glimpse of their nemesis children sliding across stage to receive a blank book. Hoping like hell that an honest-to-god diploma will ultimately follow that blank book. As soon as my son, Sean, stumbled and shook the hand of some devil dude with a red dress on, I needed to get out. Feet don’t fail me now! They didn’t and I dashed—yes, even I can occasionally dash—down three flights of stairs and shouldered my way through the door outside, too dazed to even smoke, collapsing to the sidewalk. I managed to crawl to a free concession stand adorned with moldy pastry and some blood red liquid in a cracked plastic punch bowl, but no relief there. Some mongoloid purportedly serving this crap said no punch ‘til the ceremony is over. Knowing that I couldn’t go without fluids for another 20 or so hours, I mugged a cyclist and peddled off to Coffman Union, bought a Diet Coke and reflected on the evening’s events.

I mean, Fruit Loop, there I had been, crunched into a massive auditorium with thousands of folks whose armpits spouted putrid waterfalls, glazed eyes staring at the supposedly best and the brightest technology had to offer, and not one of those suckers, even their gifted professors, had had the foresight to switch on the air conditioning! Hell, even I, philosopher, lawyer, drunk, know how to flick a switch! As folks leaped off balconies onto prostrate bodies below to escape the heat agony through a merciful death, these imbeciles droned on and on about their virtues and wisdom, giving meaningless awards to each other that no one gave a damn about. From time to time, one of the pompous profs would tack some poor nonagenarian geezer lady to a skate board and shove her to the podium, where she would hand some parchment, after drooling on the sacred document, to its revered recipient, who had made such great advancements to civilization as giving a few mil to refurbish the Dean’s mistress’ condo. God, the pomp and circumstance of higher education!

I don’t know how it ended. I’d like to believe they all became victims of the geezer’s ooze, slipping and sliding to a painful death on the drool-drenched stage. Highly unlikely, but a pleasant thought nonetheless.

Far from a masterpiece, I look forward to your essays to see how the sane will deal with this format and formulae.

¹ Actually I know the author of this well known quotation—or rather, I know the name of the author of this quotation, who has been worm- and weevil-infested since 1862—which would remove me from the mass of ordinary people but for one irrelevant fact: I cheated. I was going to tell you the author was Henry David Thoreau but thought it more instructive for you to look it up. Either that, or determine whether the name provided is indeed the author’s name.  A devious smile crinkles my cheeks. Will they or won’t they? Not even The Shadow knows.

About the Author
Ed was born in 1950. He entered the world butt-first and has since viewed the world primarily through this vertical eye. As most of those who survived the turbulent sixties, he faced several choices: death, prison, insanity or law. He chose both law and insanity. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1984 after touring the world's asylums.

He was a well-established and recognized practitioner when diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1993. He continued to actively practice law until 1998, when his physical and mental condition said, "Screw this," and he returned to Maryland. In Maryland he vegetated until he came upon WVU and attempted to write fiction.

Ed has published hundreds if not thousands of his writings. That's only because every document he has ever filed with the courts is considered published. Thus far, publishers have been kind and printed one of his 300 story submissions. He's waiting anxiously to see what will happen with number 301, hoping it might bring him wealth and fame like Stephen King. Or at the very least, a cookie.