Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach

Author:Geoff Herbach
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2011-07-10T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26: THINKING ABOUT COMEDY AGAIN

People who don’t like you don’t find you funny. (For example, when nobody liked me in seventh grade, they booed when I did Jerry Seinfeld.) People who like you find you funny, sometimes even when you’re not trying to be funny.

How do I know? Suddenly, lots of people laughed whenever I made a joke (and sometimes when I didn’t make a joke). Aleah laughed. The honkies? I seriously made them cry. Even a poop-stinker lineman or two would crack a smile when I joked in the weight room.

If Ken Johnson didn’t show up at weights, which was about half the time, I’d joke along with Karpinski (bad jokes). So a bare-boobed blond with a parrot on her shoulder walks into a bar…I’d spend most of my evenings driving around with Cody and Karpinski, letting whatever ridiculous stupid dumb thing that popped in my head slide right out. I called Karpinski FishButtBoy because his name sounds like Polish for fish butt. He didn’t think it was funny, but Cody did, so I called Karpinski FishButtBoy all the time, repeatedly, over and over, even whispering it under my breath when no one else was talking. Like when all the honky backs and receivers were at Steve’s Pizza or at Subway or out at Walmart and were eating, not talking, me chewing and whispering at the same time—FishButtBoy—until Karpinski freaked and grabbed my head and told me he was going to punch me in the nuts if I didn’t shut up (everyone just dying).

Repetition, I realized, is the key to honky humor (if the honkies like you—Gus probably wouldn’t have success with this technique). Be annoying! Don’t stop at any cost! FishButtBoy FishButtBoy Fish Butt Boy. The honkies would die laughing.

I’d become a honky, so it was funny.

With Aleah, I had to use a subtler, smarter humor—well, maybe not that subtle.

“I used to think pianists had something to do with penises, like the fact Andrew wanted to be a pianist meant that he’d be touching himself all the time. I pictured him on stage playing piano with no pants on, and when he’d stand to take a bow, he’d throw back his head and hands, revealing his privates, and the crowd would ooh and ahh because he’s such a great pianist.”

“Shut up!” Aleah shouted, laughing.

Aleah constantly laughed and told me to shut up. She’d cry from laughing.

“You should be a standup comic,” Aleah said one night while we sat on her couch, while I made jokes, while tears of 100% pure blueberry joy rolled down her pretty face.

“I used to think that,” I said.

“No, you really should!”

***

People who don’t like you don’t find you funny, and chances are you don’t find them funny either. Like Gus, for example (not that I don’t like him, but I was mad—and he was mad). After two weeks of not hearing from him at all, he wrote: why you never say a word? you just replace me?

I responded: you only say stuff

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