jbg
Active Member
The New York Times print edition, today, had an article, On Comedy, That’s the Funny Thing About Grief -A new generation of stand-ups is mining the heartbreaking loss of a loved one for ambitious shows. How did we get here? (link). Here are some excerpts:
A few months later I read Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One, a parody of the funeral home industry. I felt both appropriate to the circumstances. My conclusion is that this kind of humor is not new; it is as old as the hills.
My only disagreement with the article is that the turning point was far before 2012. Here's a personal flashback. On Friday, December 15, 1972 my mother "officially" told me my Dad was dying. In fact I had figured that out long before. The next weekend I took a bus into White Plains to run a few errands. I was 15 and couldn't drive. I picked up a copy of National Lampoon from a newsstand and furled it up to read on the bus back to my home town. When I opened the magazine, it's theme was humor about death. This included lots of jokes about funeral parlors, embalming and the like. Less funny was, on January 4, 1973 another high school student, Ken, overheard me telling a then-close friend, Bob, that my Dad was likely to die that night (he did). Ken turned to me and said "it served him right for smoking." Bob had to pull me off Ken. Ken had earlier called my house in the wee hours to ask if I was "palsied." A few months later he mocked another student because he was Asian.
A few months later I read Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One, a parody of the funeral home industry. I felt both appropriate to the circumstances. My conclusion is that this kind of humor is not new; it is as old as the hills.
