The Cheap Joke and Expensive Humor

December 13, 1985  (I was 41)

The Cheap Joke and Expensive Humor

         The cheap joke is called gag, bit, fluff and other

snub capsulations to play upon its brevity, but also to

to hint at the ease, the convention, the banality.  It is

non-judgmentally coarse.  It is direct and overt.  It may

humiliate, arouse or both.  To those who like such things,

it works best when it is unexpected and inappropriate

(not like in church where such things are commonplace).

It goes over best with an audience that is stupid, drunk

or smugly patriotic (stupid and drunk).

         Expensive humor is called art.  It is based upon

perception and attitudes toward perception.  It is point

of view established and evolved.  It is stylistic approach

established and evolved.  It is patient insistence upon

laughter at last.  It is not over until the listener laughs,

and the listener does not know it is over until he laughs.

This insistence is the tension.  The story ends, the laugher

laughs, has to laugh; timing it is called.  It is the tumble

down wave that should have been predicted before it

knocked us silly up the beach.  And threatened to pull us

out to sea.