12/11/93

Confessions of a Laughingstock

This is a serious newspaper. The last thing we
need is humor ...
... by Sam Orbaum

    Maybe you think that all a guy has to do to write a humor column is sit down in front of a piece of paper, rub up a pencil, tickle himself and, yalla, he's a barrel of laughs. Well, that's what I thought. That was until I got my big chance.
    "Hey, you."
    It was the boss and he had some nerve. I was right in the middle of the crossword puzzle.
    "How much you earning here?"
    "Minimum plus a percentage of the profits."
    "But the paper's losing money."
   "I know. So it works out I'm making minimum minus a percentage of the losses. I write ג€˜em a check every month."
    "You want to make some extra money?"
    "You mean, cut my losses?"
    "As you know, this is a serious paper. Very serious. We don't have a Page 3 girlie picture. We keep sports to a minimum. No horoscope. And the only comics we have aren't funny. We don't believe in humor. But the readers want jokes. So we're gonna give it to them, and you're gonna do it and it's gonna be so bad they're gonna beg us to can the comedy and put in more analysis, more news, more pictures of Rabin and Peres and tree-planting ceremonies. Get started."
    I called my mother and told her the good news. She begged me to use a pseudonym.
    "Thank God," my wife responded, "I don't know anybody who reads the paper."
    I decided I was going to show 'em.
    But ... show 'em what? I had forged my journalistic career as perhaps the country's most veteran column-tucker. Every day for 23 years it was my job to check that all the lines of text in each column on every page aligned at the same vertical place, and if any letters jutted over into the white space between the columns I had to push them in. I was a pro. And I was damn proud of my work. We had lots of writers, but only one guy working the vital blank areas where the writers aren't allowed. (When you read between the lines, it's me you're reading.)
    And now they wanted me to write. Jokes.  
    Truth is, I really didn't want to go into comedy at all. I enjoy tragedy much more. It's so much easier. Humor is funny only if you're apt to be humored; it is subjective and vulnerable. But a beautiful virgin tripping over her handsome courtier's foot and falling over a cliff is tragic even if you're in a good mood.
    Problem is, there aren't many openings for tragedy columnists. That stuff belongs in books. But I can't write books. As I see it, the difference between a columnist and a novelist is like the difference between a quickie and marriage.
    I had seen humorists come and go here at the Post, and I got nervous. So I called my old war buddy Ephraim Kishon and asked him: ג€œDo humorists necessarily have to be manic-depressive lycanthropes?'' And he said, ג€œYes. You'll do fine.'' Good old Eph. On the spot I decided to take on the column, and the Gashash Hahiver threw a wild Valium party in my honor. I had a hangunder all the next morning.
   Came the moment I had to sit down and finally come up with the laughs. I tried to conjure up images of all the funny things I had ever seen. My life flashed before my eyes, Fellini directing, but it turned out to be a training video for welders. There were few funny moments. One outstanding clip was the time I saw a chicken slip on a banana peel crossing the street to get to the other side.
   When you come right down to it, what's really funny about life? Osteoporosis is happening every day to each of us, and I don't hear anybody laughing about it.
   I began to think of my editor, and I got nervous and threw up. I lit up a cigarette and gagged on a glass of my favorite Oriental drink, a jin-and-tonic. 
        Deadline approached. Desperation set in. Doom, O, doom, why me?
    I cast about for inspiration, for guidance, for an infusion of faith and hope. I went to shul, which the neighborhood rabbi can tell you is the first funny thing I've said here yet. I understood that if ever there was a time for religion, this was it.
   It was too late for services, too late, even, for discotheques to be open. It was the time of day when all the traffic lights are flashing yellow. When the moon is whitest because the sky is so black. When you can actually hear the muezzin snoring if he forgot to turn off his microphone. I mean, it was late.
   I pushed open the door of the synagogue and made for the solemn inner sanctum. It was so quiet that behind my footsteps I could hear the carpet piles swish back into place.
   In the dark I found the ark, with its dozen-or-so Tora scrolls dressed like so many old Tunisian women. In front of the ark stood nine men. Nine humor writers, and they needed a 10th. One of them spoke. ג€œHave you davened yet?'' ג€œNot since 1969,'' I answered.
   The beadle, a washed-up stand-up comic from Turkmenistan, handed me a tallit and a dog-eared thesaurus, and we commenced to pray. After a few minutes it became obvious that my prayers were not being answered, because I still couldn't think of anything funny. It occurred to me that maybe God didn't understand, so I switched to Yiddish.
    ג€œOy!'' I geshreyed. ג€œGott in himmel! Oy, Aybishter!'' Then I got down to the real spirituals. I chanted. ג€œShabbos, shatnes, shachris, shnozz; sheigetz, shmatta, sha-na-na!ג€ I couldn't have done better to impress upon God -- if he really did exist that night -- that I was counting on him to help me write this first column. Just this once, I promised Him; afterwards, I'll hire someone.
   I don't know if God heard me, but the other nine men did.
   ג€œI pay my analyst a fortune to play God, and this character thinks he can get it for free,'' one thin, red-haired New Yorker whined.
   ג€œI tell ya, you don't get no respect like dat,'' added a bug-eyed man in a wrinkled white shirt.
   ג€œIt'll never woik,'' said a man wearing a borscht belt. ג€œToo Jewish.''
   Another spoke up. ג€œI told Mrs. Madcap I couldn't write today, I had a mental block, and she threw me a No. 38 Glare and reminded me she had a sewage block if I wasn't too busy. Like a flash I had an idea.''
   I could almost swear I heard a voice from above say, ג€œCome up and see me sometime.''
   Of course, I was a fool to think I could find my muse in the House of the Lord. After all, if I was created in His image, then He was the last thing I needed right now.
   The Lord doesn't do gags. Just ask any Satmar satirist.
   I was on my own. Me against the Jerusalem Post readers,  all those depressed people looking to this page for a few sunny minutes of happiness. Humor, it dawned on me, was not a job for a serious person like me.