The tools I had at my disposal in jail were comically primitive — golf pencils, looseleaf paper, and a cramped, uncomfortable desk. Writing without a computer — without even a pen¹ — felt like some kind of stone age exercise, and the process of sending letters to people outside was so slow and archaic that I might as well have been banging rocks together to light a fire and send smoke signals.

Sending letters from jail is about as efficient as lighting the beacons of Gondor.²

And any project that required sustained concentration, like writing a story, was even more of a challenge. Major distractions constantly lurked just beyond my peripheral vision: nineteen other perpetually bored inmates in the same tank as me, in various states of constant activity, for 24 hours a day. The ones I became friendly with were actually the worst, because they’d interrupt me all the time to play cards or draw me into the latest drama or just to chat, or whatever else, to pass the time. I eventually put up a little passive aggressive note on the desk that said:

If you see me WRITING
Please leave me ALONE!

Several days after it went up, my bunkie³ tried to start a conversation with me while I was in the middle of writing, resulting in me giving an exasperated sigh and jabbing a finger at the sign.

“Nigga stop trippin’,” he exclaimed. And by the way, is there anything more downright bourgeois-pathetic than the small surge of pride a white person⁴ feels when a brother casually includes them with that sobriquet? No, there is not. Anyway, he went on: “You ain’t writing, you’re just sitting there staring off into space!”

He and I were already friendly, by this point, so I was able to jokingly explain to him that what looks to the untrained non-writer’s eye like merely staring off into space is, in fact, writing.

He was amused by this, and suggested that I change the desk note to make this point clear, offering several profanity-laced amendments to the note which frankly weren’t made in very good faith, considering their insulting tone toward the note’s author. Then another nearby acquaintance joined in, and they spent a while having some more fun at my expense, and I have to admit it was all pretty funny.

But then I went back to writing!

1. Pens, apparently, being potentially dangerous weapons.
2. While this is one of my favorite scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies, I can’t help but marvel at how bad it would suck to be one of the dudes who has to live up on top of Mt. fuckin’ Everest, on the off chance that the assholes down south feel like getting in touch. Talk about catching a shit detail. As for the immense nerdiness of this whole digression, yes, I know, thanks. Here’s me upping the ante with something even nerdier. (And yes, I tended to keep any LOTR-based thoughts and commentary like this to myself, in jail.)
3. Jail slang for the guy who sleeps in the bunk directly above or below you. You quickly learn the necessity of either making friends or developing some other sort of peaceful coexistence your bunkie.
4. Yes, I know that being half Puerto Rican means that I’m not, technically, white.

In fact, every joke is basically a short story — even one-liners — and our strongest, most visceral reactions come when we relate to the emotions behind the story. That’s why puns and other straight-up wordplay merely makes us chuckle, while someone making an absurd fool of themselves can unleash our bladder. Try to heighten the emotional conflict wherever possible.

I was recently in a brainstorming meeting with a group of talented local comedy writers and actors, preparing for an upcoming comedy show that will include live sketches. Eventually the time came for the writers to divvy up rough draft assignments from the sketch ideas on the whiteboard.

The premise for one of the sketches was Parents fighting at a toddler’s birthday party and using silly euphemisms instead of curse words. The writer who volunteered to write it made a comment that assumed the parents would be divorced. “Oh, I didn’t think they’re necessarily divorced…” said the person who originally pitched the idea, and we proceeded to have an interesting back-and-forth about whether or not the parents were, for the purposes of this sketch, divorced.

To me the answer was blindingly obvious: of course the parents are divorced! Think of all the emotional shorthand you get to cram into the setup with just that simple detail — the seething resentment, the bitter history with the extended family, the conflicting prerogatives for the future¹. There are so many jokes and insults available for a divorced couple who hate each other that simply wouldn’t work for a married couple who has to go home together at night. It might not be pretty, but it sure can be funny.

1. Yes, there are plenty of perfectly amicable divorces that don’t involve any of this — believe me, I know — but we’re painting with a broad brush, here.

The most significant fact of the 20th century will be that the North Americans speak English.

I’m feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about the English language these days.

I recently watched a fantastic BBC program — I think those fruits would call it a programme — called The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language (link goes to the first full episode). It tells the story of English as though it were a person, starting with the language’s Germanic origins as the crumbling Roman Empire receded and Flemish tribes migrated to Britain. From there, English adapted through a succession of Danish and Viking invasions that altered and nearly eradicated it, followed by a massive infusion of French during the Norman occupation, and then it variously co-opted and shamelessly stole words from Welsh, Gaelic, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Arabic, Indian¹, Carribean, and Native American sources, among others, on its way to becoming the international lingua franca.

The fact that English is such a pastiche of other languages makes it difficult to learn, if it’s not your first tongue. The flip side of that coin is its vast vocabulary, which allows us to express ourselves in wonderfully precise and varied ways.

I think we take for granted, sometimes, just how many shadings of meaning we can deploy by finding the right words. For example, I could describe myself as happy, and that would get the basic point across. But English also gifts us with dozens of words that mean the same basic thing, with subtle yet important differences. I could also describe myself as being content, which is very different than if I’m feeling ecstatic — or cheerful, sanguine, peppy, grateful, or exultant.

One of my other favorite examples² comes from the synonyms for the word alone. We could also say solitary or isolated and in both cases, we mean very different things. Solitary has the sound of a sort of voluntary nobility, a whiff of the heroic. Thoreau was a solitary figure at Walden pond. Isolated, on the other hand, sounds involuntary and a little sad – maybe even pathetic. The Unabomber nursed his deranged grievances in isolation, not in solitude.

Hey, isn’t this blog supposed to be about comedy?

The richness of the English language is a bounty for comedians, because we can almost always find a funnier word to get our point across.

For example, the words dick and cock are perfectly serviceable ways to reference male genitalia, but the old fashioned penis (or slang peener) often sounds funnier up on stage. Dong is even funnier, and so far wang has given me the best mileage out of all of them, substituted into the exact same jokes. Groin linguistics!

1. The word “jungle,” among many others, is originally from India. So is “bandanna.”
2. I didn’t come up with this example myself, but nor can I remember who I heard it from. John August, maybe?