Hot jester pantyhose. If this blogging thing works, they’re mine.
I was never the class clown. I am not remembered as being funny at all, by any of my childhood friends. In fact, after about a year of writing my humor blog, my husband turned to me one day and said, “What’s with the funny writing? You never used to be funny.”
“I know!” I said. “I don’t know how this is happening. I’m still not funny.” Yet I continue to churn out this blog three times a week.
It’s because of this lack of self confidence that I’m a little bit nervous about my new role as humorist at the scholarly, erudite Web site Florida Thinks. I was asked to contribute some humor under “Just for Fun” on the otherwise serious-as-a-heart-attack site. (Example: Besides “Just for Fun,” the other topic headings are “Taxation and Budgeting,” “Growth Management” and “Haiti,” just to name a few.)
Florida Thinks is aimed at cerebral eggheads who know who their congressman is. People who use words like “discourse” and “global innovation economy” and “off shore drilling.” People who don’t watch American Idol and don’t know about the Pants on the Ground guy. People who are not spending hours a day playing Bejeweled on Facebook.
I feel like I’m the court jester sent in to cheer up the King after one of his wives was beheaded. It’s a huge responsibility, making smart people laugh. Maybe it’s a stereotype, but I think that most really smart people are harder to humor. I know some severely smart people who don’t even smile very much.
And then there’s the fact that humor is highly subjective. There are people who laugh when Mo cracks Curly and Larry’s heads together but will watch our old VHS tape of Kevin Meany doing his Big Pants People routine and sit there stone-faced while my husband and I have to hold each other up, we’re laughing so hard.
I’m facing this new assignment the way you might expect. I’m telling yoga fart jokes and talking about my trips to the grocery store, my life as a suburban housewife, shopping at Goodwill, and my very uneventful childhood in Mayberry USA.
I hope all of my faithful readers will go over to Florida Thinks every once in a while and let me know how I’m doing. If you’re smart and you think it’s funny, please say so. It’ll do wonders for my self esteem.
Emails without big words in them can be sent to Diane Laney Fitzpatrick at diane.laney.fitzpatrick@gmail.com.Labels: best humor blog, florida thinks, just humor me, smart people, the three stooges
