Today is one of those days I am just writing and we will see where we end. If you are like me, then you probably remember the campy 1980s movies with titles like Caddyshack, Airplane, Police Academy, Vacation and the list goes on. Given my age, this was a very impressionable time in my life (5-15). I don’t know what the specific trigger was, but I have been very influenced by comedy.
It wasn’t just movies but also TV and print. We weren’t generally not allowed to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live or the late shows but for when we might be over at a friend’s house. I remember checking out Garfield compilations in grade school at the library. A daily read was the comic section in the newspaper.
It was a great day when I could get my hands on a Mad magazine. My mom was really kind of against them because they were crass but we had a handful of them anyway, usually purchased at the used book store. Funny story, one of them had a parody lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s song called ‘Porn in the USA’. My brother and I would yell it out at the top of our lungs when we heard the actual song. It was only about ten years ago when I was thinking about that moment that I actually realized what I was saying. I am kind of shocked that my mom never said anything when we were doing it.
Later as I went into my middle school years, my interest in humor got more dark following the Mad magazine vein. I started to make sure that daily newspaper reading got political cartoons as well. In fact, the used book store we occasionally frequented had a free monthly that compiled political cartoons throughout the country that I liked to read. I started skipping all the strips that never made me laugh. But there were a handful that I liked such as BC, Calvin and Hobbes and and especially The Far Side.
This is actually what triggered me to write about humor. I was a huge fan of The Far Side. I still have the Best Of’s volume 1-3. Unfortunately for me, Larson decided that he had reached his pinnacle in 1994 and it was over. Incidentally, 1995 was also the last year of Calvin and Hobbes syndication so it was kind of a difficult time in my humor journey. That’s OK because I was in college, so TV took over.
We had very strict TV limits when we were kids. It was a handful of approved shows until we got into middle school. That means that we watched the most popular shows but that was it. I remember some of my parents friends persuaded them to allow us to watch The Cosby Show. What stuck out for me was actually a show called Night Court. Sure, Cosby was cutesy but Night Court made me laugh. I found myself re-watching episodes when I was not working in 2019. I wrote about this show in 2020. Ironically, there is a reboot of Night Court coming to NBC very soon.
There were three other sitcoms that I consider brilliant. That was Seinfeld, That 70’s Show and The Office (the Steve Carrell years although I have given the later years a chance recently and found them better than I remember). There were other shows that I found entertaining but never planned my evening around like The Simpsons (and all of their spin-offs), Southpark and the ‘adult cartoons’.
I would say that we are in the post TV era at this point. I don’t really watch TV anymore and my wife watches them via streaming platforms. My kids don’t watch TV at all. I am talking like the over the air, nightly line-up like we did growing up. But there was a couple of years that I had an XM Serious subscription. Most of the time, the station was tuned to Raw Dog Comedy.
I would say that my early 30s were the genre of stand up comedy. Raw Dog is the unfiltered station and pretty much anything goes. You know that I love Norm MacDonald and of course, I loved the big acts. But I found some others that really clicked with me like Todd Berry and David Cross. It takes me back to those days of listening to Eddy Murphy on cassette. That was some good stuff.
From the mid thirties onward, it was podcasts over everything else. I do like the ones that make me laugh as much as the serious ones, like Adam Carolla shows. I would say today, I spend my time primarily serious entertainment like reading books. But, my wife bought me this Far Side Calendar for Christmas. So, I have a daily dose of an old friend when I turn on the lights in the middle of the night. It brings me back to a simpler time.
End Your Programming Routine: I guess where we ended up was me rambling about all the content that I liked. I suppose this a window into my soul. I believe that humor is important in health and happiness, not just for entertainment. I have just been letting Todd Berry autoplay while I write this, I am having a hard time finishing because I am laughing so hard. I am going to sign off so I can keep listening.
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