Thank The Comedy

6.)  Comedy.  Yesterday I was inspired to write a very long [well, not that long, come on, really is our attention span that short we cannot take time to read maybe fifteen minutes worth of text?  Bet if it had a cute picture of a cat, you might.] thankful message about Music, ranking it #5 in my November Month of Thankfulness, my friend had written about the effects of comedy and music in her life…citing George Carlin for inspiration.  Comedy has always played a role in my life as well, and this friend, she inspired me to not only examine music's role in the soundtrack of my life but the effects comedy had on my life.  So, long story short, it's Comedy…Number Six for 2013 is Comedy for me, I am Thankful for Comedy [you can stop here and shuffle on to the next status post about kittens, pandas, dolphins or whales…historical memes, funny pictures, or yard sale post, but if you want to take a chance…follow along, but it's not for the feint of hearts].

 

The first comedian who's adult humor first came to my attention was not George Carlin, like my friend, but Redd Foxx.  Yes, Fred G. Sanford from the popular sitcom Sanford & Son was one of my first, true comedy heroes.  His character on the sitcom was gruff, sarcastic, bombastic, a true junk yard showman without the stage, although surprisingly look back over the seasons, they sure figured many a ways to highlight Foxx's stage talents; singing, dancing, clowning.  But it was not Foxx's work on Sanford & Son that inspired me, it was an old 8-track tape my Father had, Redd Foxx in a Nutshell.  The 8-track was black with a red cover, it had an image of the man himself on it. 

My Father owned his own businesses; a produce market, a donut shop, a restaurant, and several thrift stores and he would drive his own truck; panel trucks, small delivery trucks, 18-wheeler big rigs, anything to save himself money on picking up inventory.  While he was gone on one of his many travels to Florida, Arkansas, Indiana…we kids would snoop.  We found the 8-track and when I say "we" it was my older brothers Joe and Harold, along with little brother Jeffery.  The words coming out of the speakers transformed me.  It was not the clean, top rated American sitcom humor, it was the back alley, dark lit raunchy comedy of the street, and I was immediately hooked. 

From Redd Foxx it wasn't far to stroll to Richard Pryor, from Pryor to Eddie Murphy to Carrot Top.  Yeah, I'm not pleased with that last one either.  Damon Wayans, Dave Chappelle.  George Carlin, George Burns.  Jerry Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld.  Comedy reigned supreme in my life.  A good joke could get you out of a tight situation.  It allowed people to feel more comfortable around you.  I was often the "new kid" at schools, as our family moved, gypsy-like…like roaming carnival folk, and it was difficult to make new friends by being myself, I didn't know who, what I was.  But comedy, that would break the ice. 

Jimmy Carter.  I began doing impersonations of Jimmy Carter on the playground in Elementary School.  It got laughs.  It was gold.  Later it was darker comedy.  But Comedy was there.  I was an avid, and still am, avid student of comedy.  Abbott and Costello.  Burns and Allen.  Hope and Crosby.  The Marx Brothers.  Fatty Arbuckle.  Charles Chaplin.  My education was immense.  Martin and Lewis.  The Smothers Brothers.  Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau.  Lenny Bruce, although to be honest I have never heard a Lenny Bruce act, I respected for what he stood for; that sometimes the best comedy comes from those awkward, nasty, dirty, filthy aspects of life that everyone experiences, to one extent or another across all of the world.  In Living Color.  Mad Magazine.  Cracked Magazine.  Animal House.  National Lampoon.  Pauley Shore [again, not happy about it but will still watch Encinco Man or The Son-in-Law anytime it's on]. 

Ronald Reagan.  Now, I know what you are thinking, how was Reagan funny?  Well, remember the Genesis video?  The puppets?  Kills me everytime.  So, on this the Sixth Day of November…I want to recognize how thankful I am for Comedy.  It would ease my pain.  When stuff wasn't going right in my life, when times were dark…when I thought my world would end [usually over some woman, that's how it is when you are a young romantic], I could throw in a Road Movie or Duck Soup and I would end up laughing. 

I still prefer Comedies over Dramas.  Comedies over Science Fiction even.  Give me a Comedic Science Fiction Sitcom…whoa Baby I am there.  So, today, dear Reader…take a moment and think of the comedians and the comedy that has played in your life.  I once saw Emo Phillips in concert at a Funny Bone, I also once met the Russian Female Comedian Ivana Humpalot.  [Not really, just hope you got the joke.]

Thank The Music

Music.  Plain and simply, I am thankful for music.  Music has played a very significant role in my life, and I believe in the lives of most.  I was raised on Elvis Presley and Bobby Darrin, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra all from my mother, my father contributed 1970s country and western music (when I type those words "country and western", I cannot help but think of the way the lady bartender in The Blues Brothers says it when questioned on what kind of music usually plays at Bob's Country Bunker…"we have both kinds; country AND western", see this is my point, which I will inevitably make somewhere); the works of Freddy Fender, Hank Williams, Tanya Tucker and Razzy Bailey and Mel Tillis…this was the music of my youth.  I remember listening around the family stereo; the record player/8-track/AM-FM stereo where Mom would play her Elvis records.  I would sing along, and then I began to perform.  I would pretend to be Elvis, lip syncing before it was cool. 

Eventually, it came the time in a young man's life and I bought my first album, well, actually my younger brother and I combined our savings and we, together, bought our first album…Michael Jackson's Thriller, heaven forgive me, but no, I will not feel bad about it.  It was 1983, we had just moved to a new town and Motown was celebrating an anniversary and the Jacksons performed, and Michael introduced the Moonwalk.  Jeffery and I took our change, rode our bicycles to the local music store and we purchased the album.  We used the family stereo, now moved from the Elvis lip syncing (strange MJ and the King's little Princess Lisa Marie [my childhood crush, and fantasy Sugar Momma] would later marry) days of our Breese, Illinois home to our new place across from the abandoned hat factory, the music of Motown was flowing into our home.  My father wasn't happy about it; raised by a bigoted father and grandparents, Pops wasn't a fan of the music, nor it's affect on our culture, he believed, Archie Bunker-style, to stick to the classics. 

It wasn't too many years and I got my next significant album, from one of my best friends, a cassette of the Ghostbusters soundtrack.  The saying "soundtrack" of my life is so true; we each have our own soundtrack, unique to us.  Music gives us that.  I worked, if you could call it that, as a disc jokey a few times, working parties in German-Greek neighborhood bars and American Sports Bars, and I learned from my mentor, a crazy mad man in his own right, that music touches on deep emotions.  A song, just the hint of it, the first few notes, can transport you back to a place in your life, you see that moment, that time frame, almost like through a crystal ball, the clouds of years having hid it from daily use.  We get entrapped with our lives we forget the music of our youth.  My children, thank them so much and bless their hearts, have introduced me to newer music, but of course, by me liking the songs it ruins it for them.  Robin Thicke is cool until Dad wants to sing the song.  That Korean lepruchan was cool until Mom and Dad start doing the Gamora Dance, or whatever it was called.  From the Macarena and the Electric Slide to the Cotton-Eyed Joe, the dances and the music have only changed the performers and the beats, but the music lives in; from the plastic bands, the pre-fabricated industry controlled Uzbekistan's Got Music Challenges to the garage musicians, teenagers trying to make a break for themselves.  Music moves our lives. 

I went to many concerts; The Monkees (my first, with my Home Economics teacher), U2 the year the Cardinals had won a World Series and Bono came onstage in a red, Cardinals jacket, there was Nazareth and Kansas in a German School Gymnasium, .38 Special in a bar called (no kidding) The Flaming Mug, Night Ranger, Steve Miller Band, Waylon Jennings, Dwight Yoakum, but the greatest concert experience was The Rolling Stones.  Again, music drove my life, my German girlfriend was a fan, bought tickets to the show at the Munich Olympic Stadium.  I listened to every album the Stones had recorded; I found gems I had never heard of, I was well versed in every song they had produced.  The concert was insane.  The performance inspired.  I will never forget, well…maybe should say, I hope to never forget.  Today, having drifted away from my love of music of late…hearing the strains of Honky Tonk Woman will make me want to belt out in song.  I've done karaoke in my younger days, I've performed on stage with musicians…I cannot carry a note in a bucket with a handle, but the fire is in me.  The music is in me.  The music is in all of us.  We carry it, inside, the song of our people, the song of our lives, the song of our journey. 

So, very long post extremely overdone, I am most thankful for Music…and the role it has always played in my life.