Ho, ho, ho

Jolly my butt, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

To give you an idea how much rain we have in California, today thirty illegal immigrants accidentally washed back to Mexico.

It is officially wetter in Los Angeles than John Boehner’s hanky after watching “Old Yeller.”

It is so wet in L.A., Lady Gaga wore a dress made out of buoys.

It is so wet, Beverly Hills women are getting Botox injected into their pruny finger tips.

In Los Angeles the freeways are so slick and treacherous, drivers aren’t sending text messages so they can concentrate on loading their guns.

It is so wet in Los Angeles, gang members are exchanging their automatic rifles with spear guns.

It is so wet in Sacramento, Arnold Schwarzenegger learned how to pronounce amphibious.

It is so wet in Los Angeles, Angelina Jolie had her lips declared as a floatation device.

It is so wet in LA, the hookers on Santa Monica Blvd are charging $100 for a blow-dry job.

Deadspin.com reports New York Jets coach Rex Ryan’s wife, Michelle, appears in a foot fetish video. This helps explain why the controversial Ryan is always putting his foot in his mouth.

And here I thought football was a game of inches, it turns out to be a game of feet.

Another serious injury has set back the “Spiderman” Broadway musical. In fact the production is so expensive and has been such a disaster they’re thinking of calling it the New York Giants.

I’m worried about this text message I got from a friend. It said; “Hey, Lex, text-messaging while driving on the wet freeway isn’t as dangerous as they ”

Since you asked:
One of the fascinating aspects of creating monologues is choosing the topic. Choosing jokes topics is tricky business, especially these days when taking offense to anything seems to be some people’s priority.

Political jokes are tricky at a time when even regular republicans can’t get along with tea party republicans. While I admire politically out comedians like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, I would rather not wear my politics on my sleeve. Unlike them, I’m not funny enough to kill 50% of a potential audience.

Writing the cleverest joke in the world about some obscure congressional committee’s vote doesn’t matter if people don’t care about it. When a joke begins “Today Barack Obama met with a special subcommittee of …” You can practically feel people sighing with disinterest.

In comedy, disinterested sighing is tough to follow.

But start a joke with “A man in Australia married his Labrador retriever named Honey” and you can feel people perk up. It’s not that average folks are not smart or not informed. But if you are out of a job all day or working hard all day for less money, how much do you want to hear about that at night when you’re trying to relax and laugh?

One thing that couldn’t happen before the Internet was our being able to follow stories the mainstream news companies missed. When it was just the big three, CBS, ABC and NBC reporting the news, we got what they gave us and that was it. Often their news editors were elitist and snotty about their higher calling of journalism and shoved stories down our throats we didn’t care about.

Believe me, editors can be snotty and humorless. One summer I got to write a Friday sports joke column for the second biggest paper in San Diego (which is like being the second best player on the Clippers, no offense to the fine "San Diego Union Tribune", but there was quite a drop down to #2)) This despite the strong objections of a news editor who felt comedy was beneath the dignity of a noble newspaper.

The column did better and better and got more and more readers and fan mail. The sports editor said he thought there was enough interest from other papers there was a chance, down the road, we could try to get it syndicated. That would have meant actual income instead of chump change.

Just when I thought it was going great, the sports editor called me and said;

"Look, I am sorry we are going to have to stop the column. It is funny and people like it, I just am sick of fighting this news editor over it."

Now we have YouTube and Google and countless other outlets to read and see the topics we really are interested in. That is great news for comedy writers. Sometimes people don’t want to hear a lengthy diatribe about the unemployment statistics. Sometimes they want to see a cat playing the piano.

Again, that is not because people aren’t smart, they are. In fact, people know more about what they want than a lot of allegedly smart arrogant news editors and TV producers who are growing increasingly out of touch from their audience. It happens. As a musician, Sting had all the talent in the world, but when he started writing songs about tantric sex and being on his private Mediterranean island, he lost most of us.

Conan O'Brien went out on the road and did shows. Guess what? He came back funnier than ever and sharper than ever.

Picking a joke’s topic requires water cooler savvy. What are normal folks talking about during breaks at work? What are normal folks talking about at cocktail and dinner parties? But if the topic that is trending the most is a tragedy or a death, obviously, in most cases, you can’t write joke about it.

There are some big shot joke writers out there who might have lost that gift of knowing what average folks want to hear joked about.

Clearly my bank account and lack of celebrity will attest that I am not the greatest comedy writer who ever lived, but I think I am good. But what I do feel I am really good at is having a sense of what regular folks want to hear joked about and what they don’t. Yes, taste-wise sometimes I push it, but I think that is required. And yes, my interests seem to lead to sports and some politics.

There is no better feeling in stand up comedy than getting a good laugh from a joke’s set up. You can just feel yourself thinking, “Oh, you thought that was funny? Well it’s coming now.” It must be like how a pitcher feels when a batter misses late on his cut fastball.

Like I admitted, I am not the greatest comedy writer in the world. But the greatest comedy writer in the world could not write a funny joke about a life insurance company quarterly earnings report. A good joke about an interesting topic is better than a great joke about something nobody knows nor cares about.

Take the rain in Southern California. That is a great topic. There are so many celebrities in California to goof on by simply adding lots of water. For example:

It rained so much in California, at the Betty Ford Center, some water actually got into Lindsay Lohan’s Bourbon and water.

Practically writes itself.

Californians want to joke about the rain because they experienced it and the rest of the country wants to laugh at California for finally getting something resembling winter weather.

I counted three talk shows with a joke about Charlie Sheen locking a mermaid in his bathroom.

That is why I thought the New York Jets Rex Ryan foot fetish video was such a slam dunk. The only person in the country who doesn’t think that’s funny is Rex Ryan. And maybe his wife. But neither of the holy triumvirate of Letterman, Leno nor O’Brien did anything on it last night.

Here are the topics I think folks want to hear about now:

Bad weather, especially in California.

Christmas related jokes.

A couple, but not too many, jokes about the tough economy.

The repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

And Rex Ryan putting a foot fetish video of his wife on the Internet.

But what the hell do I know?