Wanting to be Funny by Werewolf

Posted by werewolf | Blog, Reader Submissions | Posted on October 20th, 2007

When you watch a stupid high school movie from Hollywood you see all the teenage stereotypes: geeks, sluts, jocks, nerds, and so on. Each group seems to hang with its own, with limited cross-group contact. Growing up, I was hard to categorize. I was a very good student (geek), I was tall & strong and played three sports (jock), but I also had a bad haircut and thick glasses (nerd).

As I passed through high school there were two things I wanted for myself:

  1. I wanted to have a lot of sex with pretty girls; and
  2. I wanted to be funny

I think the reasons for number one are obvious to all heterosexual men and most lesbians and don’t require further explanation here. The reason for number two was that I noticed that funny guys were welcome everywhere and they were friends with everybody. In short, they were popular. I envied them, and I wanted to be funny, myself.

Unfortunately, I didn’t accomplish either of these dreams in high school.

Moving to Bangkok thirty years later has resolved the sex-with-pretty-girls issue, but I continue to be frustrated by my inability to be funny.

I’m a serious guy. Anyone who sees me can tell from my face. Everyone who knows me would probably list it first in any discussion of my character. Sure, I can be amusing at times, and when I relate true stories about my life there are some people who find me downright fascinating. But I’m not particularly inventive, I don’t have a talent for witty phrasing, and I don’t really know how to make people laugh.

It’s not from lack of trying. As I left my high school years behind I tried to emulate the popular jokers I had known in my life. The effect was gruesome. Far from being popular, people started thinking I was weird and my attempts to make them laugh simply made them want to keep their distance. I finally gave up the effort.

So, why this piece of self-revelation in this blog?

Well, I really enjoy reading other people’s writing, and lately I’ve been particularly impressed with OnNutter’s ?10 things I hate about Bangkok ”. Inspired, I decided to set about writing a comic piece of my own.

When you have a limited talent, a good place to start is to copy success. OnNutter’s part 4 was published a while ago, and part 5 hadn’t made an appearance. I thought I might be able to slip in a piece called ?Ten reasons to move to Thailand ” without too many cries of plagiarism being leveled at me.

I set to work on it, but found that – even with a successful template by a more talented writer – I wasn’t up to the task. Here’s a sample of the garbage that was appearing on my computer screen:

Top Ten Reasons for moving to Bangkok

  1. It seems like a good way to escape those nasty pedophile accusations that have been appearing in your local paper.
  2. You want to let that nasty bitch ex-wife of yours spend as much cash as possible paying lawyers and private investigators to collect those ridiculous alimony payments.
  3. No snow.
  4. Four words: RSVP
  5. You’ve always wanted to live in ?The Venice of the East?
  6. You’ve always wanted to be with a lady boy, and Bangkok seemed like the best place to do it.
  7. You’ve always wanted to be a lady boy, and Bangkok seemed like the best place to become one.
  8. You’re 53, fat, balding and have bad breath, but you still want to have sex with beautiful 23 year old girls every day.
  9. You’re intrigued by the idea of a ball-massage.
  10. You’ve always had a burning desire to be an English teacher.

Okay, so it looked more like a bad David Letterman show than OnNutter, but at least I had the good sense to recognize that it just wasn’t funny.

Undaunted, I came up with a more original idea. I could write a quiz of the sort that you find in monthly magazines, where you answer 12 questions designed to rate yourself in relation to a topic. I figured I could do a quiz about the misunderstandings that arise when Ferangs are faced with Thai culture.

Two days of hastily scribbled notes and an hour at the computer produced the following tripe:

  1. In a small Thai restaurant with plastic stools and aluminum tables, you order Pork with basil and chili. When the food is delivered to your table, the waitress has mistakenly brought you Green Curry Chicken. When you try to explain the problem, you’re not sure if the waitress doesn’t understand, or is just being difficult, but you’re making no progress. You can eat curry, but you don’t particularly like it. What would you do?
    1. Think of the opportunity to expand your culinary horizons, and happily eat the curry
    2. Eat your food, but leave no tip
    3. Loudly demand the waitress bring your pork dish ?or else”
    4. Yell at the waitress and the lady who looks like the manager, then storm out of the restaurant without eating your food or paying your bill

I gave up the attempt before bothering to question 2. Obviously this shit wasn’t funny.

I didn’t give up on the idea though. I wrote several situations that I thought could form the basis for a funny blog. Here are two examples that are typical of what I produced:

  • Your girl has suggested a night out with several of her friends or family. It turns into dinner, a couple of bottles of whiskey, karaoke and a good time. At the end of the night, the waiter brings you the check for all the food and beverage. This is a surprise, since you assumed that you were just one of many guests, and not the host.
  • You’ve invited your current girl, a beautiful dark-skinned 24 year old from Ubon Ratchatani, to a cocktail party this Thursday evening. She tells you that it would be better for you to go alone, saying it will be ‘hi-so’ and she won’t be comfortable there. What would you do?

This was getting worse, not better! What was supposed to be a light-hearted look at Thai-Western cultural responses was sounding more like the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Then, yesterday, OnNutter published part 5 of his series. I read the following passage with chagrin:

I recently had a very unnerving lunch at the Sizzler chain’s Bangna branch. I was the only customer and every move I made was scrutinised by the 10 staff lined up in front of me. It was like being a condemned man eating his last meal before being executed. Each time I sipped my iced tea, the iced tea supervisor came rushing over to top up my drink. When I went to the salad counter, six staff followed me. I know they were just trying to help and were grateful to have a customer, but it was a truly scary experience.

I realized that I was defeated. I need to face it; I’m not funny. I’ve never been funny. I never will be funny. I’m condemned to a life of humorless analysis and observation… destined forever to sit on the sidelines and cheer on those who have the gift. OnNutter (damn him!) has the gift that I don’t have.

It’s a sad day for me; a day to realize that one of the great dreams of my youth will never be realized. I can think of no better way to deal with this than to pursue my other dream to the fullest. To deal with the shattering truth about my comic inabilities I have decided that I will focus on having sex with a dozen or so beautiful girls this week in order to remind myself that childhood dreams – at least some of them – can be realized.

Anyone looking for me this week should be able to find me in the Sukhumvit area in the company of a bevy of go-go girls and freelancers whose only real desire in life seems to be to help me make my dreams come true.

13 comments
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13 Responses to “Wanting to be Funny by Werewolf”

  1. Jack Dawson says:
    October 20, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    By the way, every sentence you write doesn’t have to start with or include the word “I”.

    View all comments by Jack Dawson

  2. werewolf says:
    October 20, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    @JD: Thanks for the feedback, but it’s difficult to avoid the use of “I” when writing about one’s self. However, this example shows that it was successfully managed in the blog above (you’ll note that two consecutive sentences use “me” and “my” instead of “I”). ;)

    “Anyone who sees me can tell from my face. Everyone who knows me would probably list it first in any discussion of my character.”

    Have a great day. :)

    View all comments by werewolf

  3. Thongsuk says:
    October 20, 2007 at 4:50 pm

    @ Werewolf: A well structured essay/depth-piece after what must have been, at this very difficult and painful stage in your self-actualization process, a period of personal epiphany. (This is not really a sentence, there’s no verb in the principal clause, but we’ll let it go, won’t we?)

    And being an extremely funny person myself, doesn’t prevent me from offering encouragement :-) (Actually, those who know me and are privy to my considered opinions on absolutely everything accept that nothing would stop me from telling somebody how to assess their life.)

    So here’s the thing, here in Bangkok: (and remember: I read, write and speak Thai, so I know everything ;-) What Bangkok lacks in properly executed public works: roads, sewers, fire, ambulance, police, city planning, social services, building standards, zoning, public buildings and footpaths is amply compensated for by what it’s really famous for: a community of world-renown therapeutic and support professionals that are here for you and those like you. The unfunny.
    (This is a complex thought. It’s a complex thought. It’s not just some facile one-line brain fart from an illiterate pup who believes his cryptic, distilled insights, although they may merely be the opinions of one man, to be the last word on absolutely everything that floats past him.
    Anyway this is free for Christ’s sake, so it has to be true.
    Gimme a fucking break. (brrp- Where was I? When’s happy hour?)

    As you observe, you and the others: the angst-ridden and un-funny in our midst, do manage to get on after a fashion. I see plenty of smiling expat faces here for whom living in the bars, brothels, hong shorts and gathering places of the capital, in short, living anew among a community of enlightened therapists, has, indeed, proven to be nothing short of redemptive.
    (Bit wordy, and far too many commas but take my word for it: you should definitely comb through the whole unruly farm-girl-pubic-patch of this last paragraph to glean the nits of knowledge and the hard-earned crablets of wisdom :-)

    Your exploration of the difference between tongue-in-cheek and tongue-in-cheeks was long overdue.
    The two seem NOT to be mutually exclusive.

    View all comments by Thongsuk

  4. Orion says:
    October 20, 2007 at 4:52 pm

    I was just starting to feel sorry for you and then I read: “Actually I hear Osama’s teaching English at a school near Soi 3.” which got quite a laugh out of me :D

    View all comments by Orion

  5. Young Royal says:
    October 21, 2007 at 1:13 am

    JD – I would love to see you write a piece. I not having a pop, I like your one liners and think you should show us some more of JD.

    View all comments by Young Royal

  6. deaner says:
    October 21, 2007 at 7:19 am

    I thought your piece was funny as hell. More like Bill Bryson than Dave Berry. :P

    View all comments by deaner

  7. fountainhead says:
    October 21, 2007 at 8:03 am

    werewolf, as i see it, you’re in good shape.

    you had 2 goals, 1) sex with lots of pretty girls, and 2) being funny.

    in baseball, .500 is a damn good average.

    and given your goals, you should realize that nearly every other man on earth is batting 0.000.

    be thankful for what you have… which is .5 more than most other men.

    View all comments by fountainhead

  8. Jack B says:
    October 21, 2007 at 11:28 am

    I agree 100% with fountainhead that batting .500 is way, WAY above average. Thus, don’t be so hard on yourself, Werewolf!

    As for humor, I find it’s the most subjective commonly observable human trait. For example, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Thais have seemingly no sense of irony, although satire seems to be somewhat appreciated. Yet slapstick/Keystone Kops idiot-humor seems to send most Thais into fits of laughter.

    You describe yourself as a serious person, and we all have stuff hard-coded into our DNA we can’t very well reboot, right? So if you’re more serious than most, OK, accept that. Now, let’s see what we can do to find that Humor Gland and exercise it.

    You’ve got to find SOMETHING funny. I argue that spending two days to write one joke is not all that constructive, so maybe try this: write down what YOU find funny. ANYthing: comedians, movies, weird English on signs, badly dressed people, bizarre food they sell on the streets, whatever. Just write it down, and do NOT dawdle–write fast, don’t think, ANYthing that is on that paper is OK. Put it aside and don’t look at it for a couple of days.

    Now, you may have a favorite girl or two (it can be hazardous to get too close to a Thai girl but that’s a different subject). Next time you get together, spend some time playing with her: sexplay of course, but in between bouts, some FUN play. How this will pan out depends to some extent on language-skills (both hers and yours), but all Thai girls love laughing/joking and some are fanatically funny. Ask her what she finds funny. Maybe put on a not-too-cerebral comedy and get the mood going.

    Yes you have a goal here, Werewolf. You are going to start a pillowfight.

    You read that right. I presume that, as a child, you were not too serious to engage in pillowfights, right? You know the basic rules (attack opponent with pillow, no hitting in the face, fight ends when both opponents are convulsed with laughter)? When’s the last time you had a pillowfight with a Thai girl?

    These are my suggestions, and it’s over to you. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, and it’s your call. But: ya wanna be funny? Personally, I think that’s a commendable goal (I think of all the pinch-faced guys in the USA or Western Europe slaving away at jobs they hate, or greedy corporate types who work 20-hour days to make money so they can buy more useless crap they don’t need, and I think, here’s a guy who wants to be funny and he’s got MORE sense). So:

    1) make a list, don’t think, put it aside, check it later
    2) work your way towards a pillowfight.

    Note that pillowfights are usually spontaneous, and deliberately setting one up is a bit odd, I admit. Just make sure you have plenty of fluffy pillows handy, maybe a funny movie on DVD, and when you find things gravitating towards pillow-warfare, go for it. Just remember, no face-hitting. Them’s da rulez.

    JtB

    View all comments by Jack B

  9. werewolf says:
    October 21, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    “JD – I would love to see you write a piece. I not having a pop, I like your one liners and think you should show us some more of JD.”

    Jack Dawson — the Henny Youngman of the internet!

    JD… now he’s a funny guy

    :)

    View all comments by werewolf

  10. cookoo says:
    October 21, 2007 at 8:57 pm

    ” 1. I wanted to have a lot of sex with pretty girls; and
    2. I wanted to be funny”

    Just as long as you realise most funny guys develop their humour in order to help them get sex with pretty girls ;)

    View all comments by cookoo

  11. Combover says:
    October 23, 2007 at 10:43 am

    At least Bangkok is a good place to feel funny. I find that people regularly welcome me with a cry of ‘dahkling!’ whilst giggling furiously, or laugh along with me when I step pale and sweating onto a crowded Sky Train. Warms the cockles it does.

    Or perhaps the Thai sitcom is a good place to look for funniness. I reckon if you were to wear only primary colours, whilst puntuating incidents in your daily life with ‘boi-yoi-yoing!’, fart and whistle noises you’d cause a comedic riot.

    View all comments by Combover

  12. Thongsuk says:
    October 23, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    @ Combover: Geez, what is it about that “Hello daek(t)ling remark (besides the fact that it unequivocally means monkey-arse) that pisses you off? For me, it is that sideways glance over to their gaggle to check if any of her posse has heard her call you a monkey-arsed doofus.
    That’s a bad bar to start the evening in. And if I’m in the mood to practice smiling through a roiling rage and my cathouse Thai, I’ll take it right to the “mamasan”

    Alternatively, one can respond with daek(t)kwai or daek(t)men and although it’s a bit of work for them some actually get it soon enough once they get over the initial shock that their revered “auntie” back in the village was dead wrong about all of us being wai-prone, cunt-struck, dumb-asses. (Okay, well, maybe a wee bit cunt-struck ;-)

    Re Irony: When I meet a bi-cultural Thai, I sometimes ask about irony. They all assure me that they know exactly what it is but that it’s easier to be ironic in English.
    “Are you just being polite ?” I ask them.
    “No, I’m just being ironic,” they reply. More of an indication that they know what I’m talking about and that clever use of irony comes with education and wit than a real gut-splitter.
    But it’s good enough for me.

    They “get” good short jokes though. . . . and love ‘em.

    View all comments by Thongsuk

  13. Combover says:
    October 24, 2007 at 8:48 am

    I think this thread is an excellent opportunity for Kenny to give us an extended analysis on how to be funny.

    View all comments by Combover

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