A review of the screwball comedy Penniless Hearts, by Eve
Gaal:
Bad Is Funny
SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
Okay, which
of these is funny? The first:
While
picking up a pharmacy prescription I noticed soda on sale, and caffeine is my
favorite over the counter drug. An employee pointed out that if I used the
store’s card at a scanning station, it would give me a coupon to make the pop
even cheaper. It was a little thing, but she didn’t have to trouble herself
with saving me some money; I’d have never known.
Or the second:
New York
City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was involved in a minor car crash in
Manhattan. Police say he managed to
drive straight while texting, but lost control of his vehicle during pants
removal.
The answer
to which is funny seems clear, unless you’re a fan of Weiner, who at the time
had a 9.7% approval rating. If almost ten percent of the people in New York
still thought he had the good judgment to be their mayor, maybe they deserved
him.
On the
other hand, could he be worse than Bloomberg, who recently unleashed an
initiative to ban sweet tea from the city? “Sugar is very bad for you,” he
said. “No, no. Bad. Also, tea can discolor your teeth, so the NYPD will do inspections
to make sure everyone brushes at bedtime.”
From time
to time I talk about how we mine humor from real life. It’s all subjective, and
I’m sure some people don’t think anything I write is humorous. (I’d just as
soon not hear from you people. Besides, why the heck are you reading this,
anyway?)
If there’s
one thing my father’s illness taught me, it’s that there are some things you
can’t make funny. But there is a pattern that I think is universal: Bad things
are easier to make fun of than good things.
I should point
out the very close relationship between “bad” and “stupid”.
That
pharmacy employee did me a solid for no reason other than to be nice. You don’t
hear about stuff like that, because good stuff’s not news and not funny.
Michael
Bloomberg, who said on a radio show that the key to success is taking fewer
bathroom breaks? He’s hilarious. I can go on about him for hours.
You know
who’s even more hilarious? Anthony Weiner, who for a time was the most visible
politician around thanks to the fact that he never met a cell phone camera he
didn’t like. I could write twenty columns about him, but unfortunately every
comic in the free world has already mined his – ahem – shortcomings for jokes
that are cheap and easy, just like him.
I wonder
why Bloomberg never tried to ban Weiner? Eye pollution!
You know
what’s not funny? Earlier this year my wife and I found a table on clearance
for 1/3 the normal price. We’d been looking for something to replace our
dilapidated old table, which was built during the Nixon administration using
pulp from shredded Presidential documents.
This one
was perfect: Looked good, right size, and almost within our price range if I
sold more plasma. (Assembly required, though … that’s another column.) So we
borrowed my step-father’s SUV (on a related note, he could have said no), and
set out for Fort Wayne, a 45 minute trip.
Unfortunately,
when the salesperson (Cathy) contacted the storeroom, she discovered they were
sold out. Cathy gave us a rain check, but we’d borrowed a bigger vehicle just
to carry the thing, and it was going to be an incredible pain to borrow it
again and get over there after the new stock arrived, but before the sale
ended.
We hadn’t
even made it back to the car when the phone rang. Cathy, for no reason other
than to be thorough, checked the stockroom herself, and found the misplaced tables.
She could have put it out of her mind until we came back the next week, but
instead she grabbed a phone and called us before we could leave.
What kind
of world would it be if that kind of story led on the evening news, instead of
a starlet’s latest trip to rehab or a politician’s attempt to gain power and
screw with people? Maybe we’d all walk around a lot happier. (By the way, my
wife called the store to let them know exactly how we felt – something else
that usually only happens when it’s bad.)
You won’t
hear me tell that story, because it’s not funny. Well, you just did hear me
tell that story, but only to make the point that it’s not funny. That
argument’s so circular, it should be the subject of a government funded
scientific study.
What you
will hear me make fun of is Congress. Now, the US Congress really is not funny, in that they’ve joined many
others in Washington, D.C., to do the maximum possible damage to America and
its people. But you see, that’s exactly my point: Bad things are easier to make
fun of.
How bad? At
this point, Congressional approval ratings are at minus 7%. That’s right, it’s
actually reached the minus category, because Congress is doing such a dismal
job that disgruntled voters are coming back from the dead to answer the polls.
Luckily for
our Senators and Representatives, most voters still think their Congressmen are doing just fine – it’s all the rest who are awful.
You can bet those voters who came back from the dead in Chicago will vote for
the incumbent.
And that’s
just bad. But I’ll make it funny.
A Storm Chaser Snippet
Chapter One of Storm
Chaser is available to preview on Amazon.com and the Whiskey Creek Press
website. But here’s a glimpse from near the beginning of Chapter Two, where we
meet the mysterious, disaster prone Luther Magee in an Indianapolis motel room:
“…A tornado from one of those isolated storm cells brought a close call
to a state trooper, who narrowly escaped being caught while tracking the
twister.”
The picture showed a solemn
officer, blond hair mussed as if from a high wind, standing stiffly next to his
patrol car. “My car approached to within
about one hundred yards of the funnel…” A face peered out from behind the
officer’s broad back, for just an instant. Magee started, then leaned so close
to the screen that he almost tumbled off the bed.
The scene cut to a young reporter
with concern written across his face. “How
long before you escaped the danger?”
The camera caught a close up of
the trooper in mid sentence. “…about ten
minutes…”
The reporter’s voice droned on,
but Magee concentrated on the trooper, and the girl he led away from the
camera. She peeked back only once, but that was all it took.
Bingo.
http://www.markrhunter.com/books.html
Secret Agent, Man
Feeling that I’m not balancing
enough in my life, I’ve sent a query and sample chapters of my YA humor/mystery
novel, Red Is For Ick, to an agent. That makes six works I’ve got out
making the rounds – three novels and three short stories – assuming one doesn’t
come back by the time you read this.
Of course, only one – The Notorious Ian Grant – is actually sold. The
rest are simply submissions, one after a request for edits and the other four
in slush pile purgatory. Still, one thing I’ve heard often remains true in
today’s publishing world: The reason most manuscripts are never published is
because they’re not finished and sent out.
Books for Christmas, or: Shameless Plug
It’s time to buy Christmas presents.
Feeling the pressure yet? Me, too.
You might expect me to try and talk
you into buying one of my books, and who am I not to meet your expectations?
Think of it this way: Storm Chaser
and most of Storm Chaser Shorts are
set in the middle of a summer heat wave. Readers who hate summer will say, “I’m
so glad it’s winter!” Readers who love summer will say, “Thank goodness –
something to take my mind off winter!” It’s win-win, and since Storm Chaser is an
action-adventure-romantic comedy-mystery, and the short stories in my
collection also cover a wide range, they can appeal to readers of many genres.
And if that
doesn’t work, remember that you have to catch up on what’s going on before the
sequel comes out next year
Of course, if you’re
a history fan there’s always Smoky Days
and Sleepless Nights: A Century Or So With The Albion Fire Department,
which covers … well, I guess the subtitle pretty much covers what it covers.
Check all my
works out on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Mark-R-Hunter/e/B0058CL6OO/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1385889612&sr=8-1
Or on my
website at www.markrhunter.com.
Or you can get
the first two works of the Storm Chaser
series at my publisher’s website, http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&zenid=65467e827cfad278855ce5ffdc962026&keyword=mark+r+hunter
(it’s a series!) and at Barnes and Noble:
And
Storm Chaser is even online at
Fictionwise: http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/a67096/Mark-R-Hunter/?
Finally, print copies of Storm Chaser and Smoky Days can be found at the Albion New Era and Churubusco News offices,
and the latter at the Brick Ark Inn, while Storm
Chaser should also be available at Summer’s Stories in Kendallville and The
Bookmark in Fort Wayne.
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