A Kick in the Career: "What's funny about me?"

Thank you for all the responses to my blog! Since I have a
background in comedy, I’m especially gratified by the comments
on my humor posting (“What’s so funny” April 9, 2015.) So let’s
explore that topic a little further, shall we, ladies and gentlemen?
Anybody here from Jersey?

The worst feeling in the world – maybe not the worst, but definitely a very bad feeling – is telling a joke and nobody gets it. You’re really helpless when that happens, and it’s best to simply accept the helplessness. If you try to “explain” the joke, you’ll just make everything worse.

You see, once a joke has failed, it’s failed permanently. You can’t explain a joke in order to make it funny. Jokes can be analyzed, both funny jokes and unfunny ones, but that’s a different process. It should happen later, after the joke has succeeded or failed.

I used to visit with Jerry Seinfeld when he was on tour. Once, after watching his act from backstage, I was able to speak with him about a joke he’d used.

He was talking about how life can suck in general, and then he said to the audience, "All our lives suck, but mine sucks a little bit less than yours.”

Is that funny? Well, he got a huge laugh. I told him I thought it was a risky joke because it referenced the advantages of fame and money that many in his audience probably didn’t share. Usually a comedian wants sympathy and identification. Condescension is anathema to creating the trust from the audience that the performer needs to have.

That’s the conventional wisdom -- and though it really is conventional, it also really is wisdom. But Seinfeld’s joke worked because he had a deeper understanding of why the joke would be funny. The humor lay not in the content of what he said, but in the fact that he was being socially inappropriate, and doing it blatantly.

Jerry understood the conventional expectations of the audience, and then he audaciously trumped those expectations. The audience rewarded him for not pulling his punches with false modesty, and laughed at his temerity in stating the truth.

Well, we can't all be Seinfeld, not even Jimmy Kimmel. The joke was a superb strategy for Jerry, but I was not wrong in pointing out its riskiness. Whether you’re doing standup or trying to sign an important new client, it’s best to throw the ball over the middle of the plate…unless you’re sure you can hit it out of the park.

Wait a minute, does that make sense? If you’re the pitcher, you can’t also be the batter. But I won’t try to explain it! Anybody here from Jersey?