Archive for the 'personal' Category

Merry Christmas all. Hope you’ve all had a good one so far.

I’ve had a few blog posts in my head lately but FMPMSPD has been here for the last week so I’ve not had any time. Some were inspired by the whacky dreams I’ve been having. Multiple times. I should have made notes.

One was a bunch of deep (for me) thoughts about culture, language and humour and the intricacies of a joke. What the audience needs to know to be able to get the joke.

If I may indulge myself for a moment and be introspective (as I have been lately – looking for my passion) – for me, making people laugh is a big part of me, or at least attempting a bit of humour. Not really cracking jokes – if you asked me to tell a joke, I’d have about three – “Ask me if I’m an orange…”, “What’s the difference between peanut butter and jam?” … so, make that only two. Oh, I could reel off a load of Tommy Cooper gags.

[BTW - the peanut butter/jam joke is one of the filthiest jokes. I, er, pretended it was the joke in my cracker on Christmas Day. Rule One: Know your audience - don't tell that joke in front of a mate's girlfriend who you've only met once!]

Anyway, not really jokes, more stories, wise-cracks, lines, things I can use in certain situations, well-timed lines stolen from others reapplied to the current situation.

An example: I saved this photo for 3 months, waiting for the perfect moment, waiting for one of my friends to say something to tee it up:

3 months!

My mum told me that I would laugh my way into a girl’s heart faster than impressing her and who would you rather spend your life with – a dull super hot girl or someone who made you laugh every day? My mum’s tips are legendary – “Never run after a man or a bus” for example. “Never take the girlie bar superstar”, “You’ll be fine after six [pints]” (I may have made the last two up).

Annnnnnnyway, before I go too deep and give too much away … I like to have laughter around me.

I guess all these thoughts were driven by having FMPMSPD here and that most of my jokes went over her head. “I want to Google all over your Facebook.” All the ingredients right? Topical tech and social media, wordplay and sexual innuendo! Got nothing. I admit, it’s not that funny and was badly timed.

Trying to get to the point …

FMPMSPD is in no way stupid, in fact I love her mind and the way she thinks. Spike called her my Karl Pilkington. Some of my friends want me to make podcasts of her. She can be so innocent and child-like sometimes. A blank canvas. Then so profound, intuitive and prescient other times.

So the issue I’m verbosely trying to explain is not down to intelligence, more likely it’s language, experience and knowledge. She was only educated to the age of 16 and never properly learned English. She’s picked it all up. Along with Cantonese, Javanese, Bahasa and Arabic. I just can’t imagine the linguistic connections in her brain. Listening to her talking on the phone to her other Indonesian friends here in HK – they switch between Bahasa, Cantonese and English.

I’d say her order of competency is: Javanese, Bahasa, Cantonese, English, Arabic.

She speaks very fast in all languages, including English, and you have to get tuned into it. I have obviously, but not my friends, so I sometimes see blank looks on their faces and I have to repeat what she said. Just sometimes, it’s not inhibitive.

What is my point? “Chibba chabba” FMPMSPD would say. Meaning “Jibber jabber”.

My point is that she doesn’t get all my jokes. Or I have to explain. Yeah, yeah, I am the best:

To be honest I think you’re mad to let me and Finchy on the bleedin’ telly. We’re like Morecambe and Wise when we’re together. No, not Morecambe and Wise, because there’s no straight man, there’s no dead wood. I’m more sort of character based, and he’s more of a gag man. I do gags as well. But we’re good together, by now. We sort of read each other’s minds – we’ll be doing a bit of schtick and we’ll just start cracking up, and people watching will go ‘Why’s that funny?’ and we tell them why and they go ‘Oh yeah, yeah, you are the best.’ It’s their opinion.

— from The Office Series 1, Episode 3

I can make her laugh, but it’s impressions, silly words, funny voices etc. Not jokes. This is kinda getting to me.

So all this got me thinking about what makes a joke. What makes people get it? Remember Private Dancer Doris? [Oh, more on her later ....] One of the things about her that completely blew my mind was how she got all my jokes. Not only got them, but sometimes added to them. I couldn’t figure out how she got them. Then over time I realised her English was phenomenal and we had both been exposed to American TV and movies.

All of this utter amateur thinking led me to:

You need language, cultural understanding and shared experiences to get a joke.

And dag gummit … I had a joke in my head broken down and analysed, noting the words you needed to know and the shared knowledge/experiences, but it’s slipped my mind! Dag gummit!! [I'm sure it will come to me later - will update this post if it does - anyway, I hope you get what I'm trying to say]

FMPMSPD and I are poles apart when it comes to knowledge, experiences and culture.

I’m trying to figure out if this lack of shared humour really should be such a big deal to me.

[End Jibber Jabber]