Editor’s note: For years, island impresario Kevin Joyce has authored an occasional series of humor commentaries for The Beachcomber. This holiday season, he is predictably more cantankerous than ever.
I don’t actually know what the headline of this column is; they always surprise me. I was going to call it, “The Holidays, COVID, and the Death of Comedy, but I thought you might be like, “ew, bummer.”
But stay with me, dear reader. Firstly, because we haven’t seen each other in well over a year, so this is nice; and secondly, because I need you to “ground” me, as the locals say.
The thing is, I’ve been suffering a common COVID symptom: loss of a sense of humor. Literally, nothing seems funny; and what’s worse, I’m not allowed to MAKE fun of anything or anyone anymore! Even saying THAT will upset people. Sheesh, what happened back there?
For example, funny accents are a no-no. This is terrible for me! During COVID, I’ve been practicing accents from every country, alone in my room, like an inmate trying to maintain his sanity whilst going slowly insane.
Ironically, it’s still apparently okay to make fun of the British and the French, the problem being, they’re not even that funny! See? There I go, demeaning our oldest allies.
Anyway, Happy Freakin’ Holidays! My goodness, you deserve some good cheer and eggnog (oatnog, probably). Come over and sing carols — but fair warning: many of the classics have been renamed to avoid offending, and they’re not quite as fun: Frosty the Snowperson, I Saw Mommy and Santa Claus Talking, and Rudolph May Have Been Drinking.
The holidays should be a time for laughter, but it’s complicated. Last week I made a joke about Christmas elves, and someone got so upset she started a non-profit called People for the Earth Religions of Vashon, but the acronym (PERV) was too problematic, and now she’s even more upset!
Everyone is on edge, and it’s so easy to set them off. I can’t even sing one of my old funny songs, written in a time when you could ask honest questions through comedy. It’s called “If Jesus was a Jew, Why’d he have a Spanish Name?” It’s a reasonable question, but simply too provocative in these times. I only sing it within a secret coven that practices the old ways, around a fire in the woods, sipping the sacred tequila.
Publicly, then, we are left with the arduous task of fully-vetted, non-offensive comedy. Here’s a thought: we could set up a committee, and all islanders, regardless of age or actual funniness, would be required to serve – like jury duty.
A preschooler, a Rotarian and a hippie walk into a boardroom. Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? Wrong! It’s the END of a joke. It’s the slippery slope of lowest common denominator humor, created by that terrible hypothetical tyrannical committee which I’m sorry I even mentioned. It would probably be called something like “We Are Not Kidding” (again with the bad acronym!).
But there is another way. And once again, it is Vashon as a petri dish, experimenting on the edges of culture. What if we were to create separate-but-equal comedy tribes, each with their own dress codes, approved potluck menus, and, of course, predictable and controllable humor? We could respect each other’s right to bad jokes, but keep our distance.
They’d have weekly “parties,” but rotate venues, for fairness. This Tuesday, the Hallmark Hilarity tribe is in the McMurrary gym, while Juvenile Jokesters are at the Havurah, Portage Punsters are at Sporty’s, and the Solstice Sarcastics are again, weirdly, in Island Center Forest.
Wait, what, stop! See what I mean about unhinged? Where did this horrible social engineering idea even come from? It’s 20 months of isolation and quasi-quarantine, rotting an otherwise healthy imagination.
Scratch that whole idea. It’s the holidays, so let’s just get together and sing rousing versions of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like December Weather” and “Oh Nice Night.”
I don’t care where we meet, or who comes. Bring your goofy preschooler, a bad pun, a Hallmark card, your mom, and I’ll see you at Ruby Brink. We can remove our masks between bites and laugh so hard noodles come out of our noses. Which will make us laugh even harder, the way old friends do. I can’t wait.
Kevin Joyce is a writer, performer, teacher, and Islander since 1989. He runs EnJoy Production with partner Martha Enson.
