GLS 592: Laughing Matters: Contemporary American Humor
Instructor: Mike Wentworth
“Laugh, laugh, I thought I’d die,
It seemed so funny to me . . . “
“A funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum.”
Regardless of the expression “laughing like a hyena,” laughter is supposedly unique to the human species. So it would seem, if only in terms of the human condition, that “laughing matters.” Come to think of it, we all enjoy a good laugh, whether the source of such voluble risibility is an off-color limerick, another befuddling day in the life of Homer Simpson, Cosmo Kramer’s latest “brilliant brain-scheme,” the “funny papers,” or, in the case of our course, the manic adolescent escapades of “King Dork,” George Carlin’s “brain droppings,” the assorted true-life misadventures of David Sedaris and Beth Lisick, or Dave Barry’s reflections on the absolutely worst American pop song lyrics ever written—all of which should confirm beyond a doubt that, indeed, “laughter is the best medicine” to cure those dispiriting “summertime blues.”
Just to whet your appetite, what follows is a partial inventory of our featured forays into contemporary American humor.
Meet Tom Henderson (aka King Dork, Chi-mo, Hender-fag, and Sheepie), a typical American high school loser (zero athletic skills, a non-existent social life, and an inexhaustible supply of rock-and-roll dreams), who, upon discovering a copy of Catcher in the Rye, becomes enmeshed in the middle of several interlocking conspiracies and at least half a dozen mysteries involving dead people, naked people, fake people, ESP, blood, guitars, monks, witchcraft, the Bible, girls, the Crusades, a devil head, and rock and roll.
Eavesdrop on the bizarre and hilarious misadventures of David Sedaris (whose tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son’s nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers), as he recalls his unnerving discovery that “he likes guys,” his stint of Kerouackian wandering undertaken with a quadriplegic companion, and his awkwardly revealing weekend layover at a nudist trailer park.
Then again, check out Beth Lisick’s “true tales,” which include “My Way or the Bi-Way,” in which a series of girl-on-girl fiascos from UC Santa Cruz confirm her suspicions that she’s just a straight girl with a positive attitude who’d give anything the old college try; “The Lowly Hustle,” in which she takes on a litany of odd jobs to make ends meet (“I was like a college student designing my own major, except I was 35 and designing my own minimum-wage job”); and “The One,” in which she recounts her “courtship” with her now husband Eli, who impresses her with a spastic rendition of a song called “The Wack-Ass Caucasian Two Step Chicken” and invites her to his Mission District warehouse space—a world of feral raccoons and exploding sewage pipes when it becomes clear to Lisick that he’s “The One.”
Or let’s not overlook Paul Feig, who, in Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence (a veritable nostalgia trip for the inner geek in all of us), recalls the humiliating “pleasures” of American kidhood and adolescence, including the life-threatening perils of gym class, romantic “crushes,” ill-fated prom dates, throwing up, hellish school bus rides, “mis”-playing sports, unsolicited nicknames (that ignominiously “stick”), and, incredibly enough, that’s just the beginning.
So, as Randy Jackson says, “Check it out, dog” as well as the complete list of texts that follows:
- Dave Barry, Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs
- Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
- George Carlin, Brain Droppings
- Paul Feig, Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence
- Beth Lisick, Everybody into the Pool: True Tales
- Frank Portman, King Dork
- David Sedaris, Naked
- Jean Shepherd, Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters
- Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli
Last Update: February 10, 2008
