I have decided that I need put my finger on the pulse. I live in New York City, the center of the universe, and it’s a waste of my time and my audience (ha!) to spend my career (double ha!) making jokes about boobs and zombies (please note: both are still awesome).
To that end, I have started to read the Google news feed at work and attempt to crank out five topical jokes a day. This effort has produced a lot of crap, a few gems and a great wave of depression.
Update: the world, when you study it minute by minute, is a terribly shallow and misguided place. For example, I have read something about Spencer and Heidi Pratt EVERY DAY since I started this project. If you are one of my friends who lives in the woods or on a farm and remains blissfully unaware of their existence, they are the blond couple from “The Hills” who have somehow managed to perpetuate fame based on NOTHING into something almost resembling a career. They will do anything to stay in the headlines: pose nude, cut rap albums, even talk shit to Al Roker, widely acknowledged as the NICEST MAN ALIVE. In case you can’t tell by my liberal use of capital letters, I consider them both tan, vapid heralds of the apocalypse.
Even more disturbing is the kerfuffle between David Letterman and Sarah Palin. As a quick re-cap, Letterman made a joke last week about Palin’s daughter getting knocked up by Alex Rodriguez at a Yankees game. Unfortunately Letterman’s fact-checkers were remise in discovering that it was Palin’s 14-year old daughter that accompanied her to the game, not her 18-year old daughter. This transformed the joke from one about a girl who is internationally famous for getting knocked up to a joke about statutory rape. Most comedians will tell you that rape, much like aids, incest and race (if you’re white) is one of those few topics that are rarely fair game. Consequently, Palin’s disturbingly large amount of followers have spent the last week crucifying Letterman in the media and demanding his dismissal.
My refuffle (rebuttal of kerfuffle) is as follows: Letterman made a joke. He didn’t intend it as it was interpreted and most people understand that jokes are by definition not factual claims. In Palin’s response, she said that he was a “sexist pervert” and that it would be unwise to let him near her underage daughter. So Palin can make the factual claim the David Letterman is a sex offender, smearing the reputation of a good man and a new father himself, while Letterman’s comment, no matter how you interpret it, was clearly over-the-top humor that no one could possibly believe to be true. And yet it’s his job that’s on the line. He had to cross a picket line to get to work yesterday, blocks from my office. On Monday he begged her forgiveness on air. It don’t know what’s scarier: Palin’s political machine or America’s sense of humor. Either way we’re in trouble.
Last night at an open mic I considered starting a counter-protest, encouraging the comics to march down to Letterman’s studio and demand that people comprehend the difference between snickering and slander. However it then occurred to me that comics would make pretty lousy protestors. Work is scarce, and while we might fight tooth and nail for the rights of Letterman and his writers, if they did get the ax we’d be the first to apply for their jobs. And you can bet we’d shut the fuck up about Sarah Palin.
So to that end, here’s my opening bid for Letterman’s job: the top five topical jokes that I’ve written in the last couple of weeks:
Teenager Kavya Shivashankar won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, becoming the seventh Indian-American in eleven years to claim the title. In light of this, Bee officials are revising a rule that requires contestants to spell their opponent’s last names.
According to Forbes Magazine, Angelina Jolie replaced Oprah Winfrey this year as the most powerful celebrity in the world. While Oprah still made much more money, the balance of power shifted when Angelina adopted her.
Millvina Dean, the last remaining survivor of the famous “Titanic” cruise ship, died on Sunday. She takes with her the only memories of the terrible, foolish, avoidable tragedy of naming a baby Millvina.
The daughter of Cher and Sonny Bono announced that she is having a sex change and becoming a man. When the surgery is complete, Chastity Bono will become the first heterosexual man who likes Cher.
This week Facebook officially became the #1 social networking site in the US, dethroning MySpace, which was forced to layoff 400 workers. Facebook’s press release stated, “We’re sorry for the lost jobs, but we didn’t get into this business to make friend requests.”
I hope my fans (triple ha!) got a grin out of those. I think that might be the only way to validate the emotional price I’m paying for taking a good, hard look at the world, minute by minute.