I'm not a funny man, never been. My roommate BB will tell me jokingly that I'm a funny man but that's because he's out of his mind and doesn't know what he's talking about. He also says that I'm great with women, probably, so that tells you all you need to know about his judgment. Poor, very poor.
It's not that I don't try, please I've tried being funnier harder than I've tried I've tried learning to swim to save my life which admittedly is not that much but being alive is more important than being funny but honestly is it really thaaat much more important? Comedy writing ala David Sedaris, Dave Barry, Terry Prattchett, Ellie Kemper, Simon Rich, other miscellaneous writers from an online humor mag I used to follow a long time ago, I've tried following all of their footsteps. Tried cribbing them, copying them, outright copying them. Nothing has helped. A tiny turn of phrase will screw it up -- imagine a master baker with this masterpiece of a cake and a rookie comes in a plops of spoonful of cowshit on top for edginess. You can tell which one is which. Always the cowshit guy here, always.
There was a time some ten years ago or so when I thought I could be funny if I tried. It grew tiring real fast. There's only so many times you can Charlie Brown the reader -- dangle the football in front of them, and then switch it at the last moment with an unexpected turn of phrase or emotion -- before they realize your pattern and think better of it. It gets boring, boring really, unless you want to follow a template like Borowitz. Not that I'm saying I'd become better than a New Yorker contributor who was bought out for millions of dollars. Just that I'm not into it, and couldn't be there even if I wanted, and I'm too disciplined to get there. What I want to do really is to write novels, tv shows, movies, something that makes people think. I'm a big failure in that obviously, not that I mind, but I'm not much better with making people laugh either. It's a craft, and a craft needs constant honing and practice and you need to be disciplined no matter what people say, and it's a lot of effort and energy and discipline and it's unclear if I have it in me, you know.
Let's be honest to ourselves here though, if I can puke out three thousand words of puke right here right now with no coherence or logic and honestly not much content, I can definitely get my shit in order to write in a genre of my preference that I'm relatively better at than other genres? Except I've forgotten how I attempted to be funny and what I got right and what I got wrong and what my deal even was. I'm afraid me being funny was just being mean to other people, but honest meanness with an understanding with the targets that it's not ill-intentioned that you really do love and care for them and you're doing this just to be funny could make it better. Or is it just an asshole trying to make amends, an unfunny and insecure asshole who has nothing better happening than poor humor? It wouldn't be much worse than where I'm right now, things would actually be better, really.
What's even there to be funny about? I know funny people, and I know people being funny, and it's all fun and games; it's all context dependent unfortunately for me you can't just stand up and tell a joke about a rabbi, a monk and an imam who walk to a bar and expect your readers to find it amusing. Who's reading? Who's this meant for? What's the point? Is it just empty calories or is there deeper satire, an exploration of philosophy and epistemology? What even is epistemology and should I improve my vocabulary if I want to be funny or is my reader-base as stupid as I am? Who knows. Some questions will remain unanswered I guess.
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