Marlow's Musings 8/17/24
Stuff running though my head.
Audio narration by David Marlow
For this week's musing, I'm going to do something a little different starting with a quote from Stephen Wright. It'll sort of set the tone for the whole thing.
Right now, I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.
Steven Wright
A reader asked if everything I wrote was serious and focused on deep thinking or reflection.
In my answer, I worked in a story that…
“I recently discovered that Ike and Tina Turner had a daughter named Paige.
Turns out she’s one of my favorite authors. I love her books, I can’t put them down.”
That’s pretty much how my mind works. All day long, things come to me…old jokes, bad puns, quotes, ideas.
It’s part of the reason I write. To get them out, to connect them to something tangible, to quiet my mind.
It could be why comedian Steven Wright appeals to me. The seemingly disconnected ideas come together, though not quite right, which is the juncture where humor lives.
When I was a radio disc jockey, I sat in a room for six hours a day and told jokes to myself. In theory, there were tens of thousands of people listening at any given time.
I never saw them.
No immediate feedback.
No idea what was or wasn’t funny.
How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
Steven Wright
A neighbor of Steven Wright’s served with me in the Marine Corps. His older brother was friends with the comedian. I thought maybe the dry, deadpan humor was an act. According to my friend, that’s the real him.
For years, Ace Hardware Stores have been staffed with ‘old guys’ who knew everything about fixing things around the house. You could go in there with a problem, and they would point you to everything you needed to get the job done.
I’ve reached a point in life where now I’m the old guy, and I know more than any of the people who work in hardware stores today. If I don’t know what I need, I’m in trouble.
No one told me there would be a transition like that.
I was lost in a forest, trying to find my way out using a compass.
I was going in circles, then realized I was using the wrong type of compass.
David Marlow
My grandson E and I love to swap puns. He liked the one about the compass.
It’s fun to see the moment of realization when he understands the humourous part of a joke or pun.
It seems he was born with a highly developed sense of humor, and it has only gotten sharper over time. I told him he wasn’t ready yet for dad jokes. Not until he got older.
“Why?” he asked.
Dad jokes can only be told when you’re full groan.
“Oh, Grandpa…that’s a good one.”
I hope we always share a love of jokes together.
In the coming months, there will be presidential debates. It strikes me that we can’t have real debates anymore. Between gotcha questions and bullet point pre-planned answers, there is almost no value in the exercise. This is true for both parties, I’m not taking sides here.
The late William Buckley years ago proposed a thought experiment, and my mind went to it last night.
We could randomly select names from a phone book1 (I told you it was years ago) and fill the seats in Congress and the White House and do just as well, if not better.
I think he was right.
Random thought: Does anyone else get breath and breathe mixed up when writing them?
I do it all the time.
I’ve noticed in the past few months the same issue with, ironically enough, past and passed.
I swear I had to Google a sentence to see which form I should use. It was like my brain locked up.
Please tell me it isn’t only me.
My granddaughter C told me recently that she loves to draw. “And I love to draw with you, Grandpa.”
A while back, one of the kids at school told her all she could do was scribble, and so she quit drawing.
Buckminster Fuller said,
"Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them."
It’s like the world works overtime to de-genius kids. If it’s not other kids, it's parents; if not them, it’s the school. If they miraculously survive with their creativity intact from school, it’s corporations.
I asked her if she wanted to learn to draw, and she didn’t. So, I started drawing all on my own.
Then I showed her how ‘I’ made a square, starting with 4 dots and connecting with lines. She wanted to do that.
We moved on to triangles and then put them together to draw a simple house.
The next time she came over, she wanted me to ‘make the dots’ again.
Now, C loves to draw, and she made me a happy snail.
Anyone trying to de-genius that beautiful little girl is going to have to answer to me!
My friend Yonason, who happens to be a rabbi, shared a thought with me.
“The sages teach not to scorn any person and do not disdain any thing; for there is no person who does not have his hour, and there is no thing that does not have its place.”
If that is true, then perhaps there is even a place for random thoughts of a former disc jockey about stoic comedians, dad jokes, 1,000-mile runs, and drawing with a kid.
I hope so because that’s all I’ve got today.
Quest well
“I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” Buckley initially made this reference and then went on to propose a broader thought experiment. https://www.johnlocke.org/what-was-it-that-buckley-said-about-the-boston-phone-book/
Thank you. This started my Sunday with a smile. And yes. I've been writing for years, and I still trip over the correct homonym choice and spelling occasionally.
Steven Wright is hilarious. I'm often thinking about jokes, and sometimes I crack myself up. When I get to speak at our internal quality conferences - I start with stand-up comedy (makes my bosses a bit nervous) but I love doing it and people laugh hard. Downside is I tend to run short on time. I've also done several sermons - I think the best ones have great humor - laughter relaxes us and releases endorphins and that helps us to be receptive (and less distracted) to the message. I really love The Chosen, in large part, because Jesus has a great sense of humor. I've seriously thought of doing stand-up. I do know someone who is a writer for Kevin Hart, I have a few that would be perfect for him. "Laughter is the best medicine" - at least one of the best.