Weeks 47-48: The H-Word

Episode 31 – Weeks 47-48:  The H-Word

In which the podcaster explains the tragedy of humankind and you can’t stop laughing.

LINKS & INFO

The B-52s  

“Rock Lobster” on YouTube  

https://www.howitworksdaily.com/how-do-we-laugh/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter 

O Brother, Where Art Thou?  

Doctor Strangelove 

Waiting for Guffman 

Galaxy Quest  

Marx Brothers  

What’s Up Doc?  

Mack Sennett 

Rick & Morty 

Madge & Bisket 

Equus 

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Transcript

MY 12-MONTH VIDEO FAST

EPISODE 31 – WEEKS 47-48: The H-Word

This is Richard Loranger and welcome to Episode 31, covering Weeks 47 and 48 of “My 12-Month Video Fast” – and we are getting close to the finish line! But since this is neither a race nor a competition in any way, it might be more on point to say that we’re getting closer to the same set of shadows. So on to the topic at hand, whatever that is.

If you’ve been listening along, you might recall that my apartment, three stories above street level in North Oakland, California, has a front room that looks out from the east side at the Oakland Hills receding into the distance and at downtown Oakland and beyond to the south. You might further recall that in the front left corner beside some bookshelves is gathered a group of musical instruments, practically a combo [♫♫], which last summer were in a mood somewhere between irate and indignant at lack of use, and who are now, with limited use due to my arthritis, a bit more content making their own sounds for the while – though the balafon is still getting some airplay, which cheers everyone up. Front and center, possibly unmentioned here before, is my lavish and resplendent peace-lily Edgar, who was two leaves in a pot when I brought them home 28 years ago this month [VOICES: Happy B-day, Edgar!] and has resided with me in seven apartments in four states (and counting), and is currently displaying five flowers (Woo!). In the right front corner, adjacent to my wooden Victrola music box and shelves o’ tunes, and a little makeshift writing desk beside the front window, currently stacked with books and notebooks, is an empty patch of shag carpeting (yes I said shag, and yes it was my purchase), which used to contain a moving-picture screen surrounded by video-playing machines and magic gaming boxes, all gone, and is now the locale of semi-weekly dance parties thrown by Edgar and myself. (Ed loves to do the Rock Lobster [♫].) By the south wall window is a comfy media-observation and joystick-yanking cum reading chair, behind which is ensconced my stoic if underused bicycle, described at great if unfulfilled length in Episode 15, “Cycle”, which doubles these days as a coffee filter drying rack. Flipping to the west wall we find a doorless doorway to the breakfast nook and kitchen, and along that back wall, my intrepid and somewhat broken futon-frame bed. That’s as far as I’ve described in the past, because my living space has always been on a need-to-know basis – but now that I’ve blurted out practically everything else about myself (except for the fact that I cut my own hair and have saved the trimmings for decades in a big box), I might as well map out the rest. And besides, you might now have a need to know.

Following that west wall across the bed (please step around if you’re wearing shoes) brings us to a walk-in closet that runs the length of the room behind the north wall and contains approximately 20,000 items (including a box of hair). Across from the closet entrance is another doorway (doored and everything) that heads in the same direction as the kitchen but dumps you into a mini-hallway with the kitchen on the left and the apartment door on the right. I call it my foyer, just because I like saying that word, in which I store a variety of sundry pragmatica (umbrellas, tools, walking sticks, keys, dust-covered jars of coins…) A few feet further, the “hallway” takes a turn to the left; in that corner are a series of bookshelves stacked 8 feet to the ceiling with a couple thousand poetry books, journals, and anthologies. If you don’t turn left then you’ll walk into the bathroom, and if you do you’ll enter the sanctum sanctorum a.k.a. what’s usually the bedroom in these cribs, but which I use as my home office, where all the magic (I mean keystrokes) happen. That room is fairly small and simple, with more windows along the far side (this place is window heaven), a homemade daybed to the left (yes I know how to use saws and screws), and a huge-ass makeshift desk to the right constructed of, basically, carefully balanced detritus. Oh, and books and files everywhere. And finally, if you look closely enough, you’ll notice tucked back behind a bookshelf in the right corner a rectangular shape wrapped in a sheet that used to be called a television.

Why am I telling you all this? What need do you have to know it? Because it’s the setting, mostly mundane I’ll admit, in which the catalyzing event of this episode occurred. 

A few years ago I was sitting one afternoon in the sanctum at that precariously teetery desk doing some particularly dull work – I don’t recall what exactly, maybe trademark checks on dozens of names but who knows (whatever they used to pay me for), when my mind wandered to the state of the world as it was (and is), the idiot things we mutant apes get into, our jaw-dropping destruction and folly and arrogance, and the Keystone Kops absurdity of the species in general, which all coagulated in my brain into the word…[laughing starts]…listen closely ‘cause it might be hard to hear and this is exactly what happened…I thought the word…hu-, hu-, hub~~~~~~~~~~~!~~~~~~~~~~~~~¡~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[ENACT HUBRIS]

And…WTF was that? What in the deep organic gaggle of the world IS that reaction?

• In the face, the zygomaticus major and minor anchor at the cheekbones and stretch down towards the jaw to pull the facial expression upward; on top of this, the zygomaticus major also pulls the upper lip upward and outward.
• The sound is produced by the lungs and the larynx. When we’re breathing normally, air from the lungs passes freely through the completely open vocal cords in the larynx. When they close, air cannot pass; however when they’re partially open, they generate some form of sound. Laughter is the result when we exhale while the vocal cords close, with the respiratory muscles periodically activating to produce the characteristic rhythmic sound.

That, from howitworksdaily.com, doesn’t really tell us anything. I’m not even sure that’s the right answer to the question. Just to clarify, let’s try Wikipedia and see what they have to say.

• Laughter is a pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, usually audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter can rise from such activities as being tickled, or from humorous stories, imagery, videos or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered an auditory expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness or relief. On some occasions, however, it may be caused by contrary emotional states such as embarrassment, surprise, or confusion such as nervous laughter or courtesy laugh.
• When laughing, the brain releases endorphins that can relieve some physical pain. Laughter also boosts the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T-cells, leading to a stronger immune system. 

In other words, and feel free to do some better research yourself, science knows a bit of what laughter does but not what it is or where it comes from. And whereas I still don’t think this is what I was asking about a minute ago, it is helping to calm me down and it’s kinda interesting, so let’s take it a little further and see where it goes.

I could start by asking, what makes me laugh? (Besides the H-word – we’ll get around that that eventually.) Taking a peek in my thick binder of comedy DVDs, it’s immediately clear that I laugh at bumbling people, especially those who surmount all odds or who do or achieve momentous and unexpected things. There’s Chaplin’s The Tramp, I guess, and some of my faves like the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which features not one but three tramps (okay, chain-gang escapees), making their way through an absurdist Depression-era South which is somehow also Homer’s Odyssey, understanding little and surviving much. (Enthusiastically recommended, btw, if you haven’t seen it). Into this subgenre also falls a few more of my fave comedies, for instance Doctor Strangelove and Waiting for Guffman (and I can’t not mention Galaxy Quest). And of course the idea of genres is ridiculous because everything blends in the end, don’t you know it.

I actually employ humor on a daily basis, an hourly one, really – I make jokes pretty much all day and can’t live without them. Maybe you’ve noticed one or two in the podcasts. It’s a survival mechanism – no exagg there – that keeps the wolves of depression at bay, quite effectively. I do have friends who find this a little…challenging – actually no I don’t (or not for long).

What can I say, absurd shit really sparks me, and there are so many flavors. Take the “clown at the ball” conceit, for instance – which points us to the Marx Brothers, who somehow manage to float above agency and rationality and generally make it through the chaos they produce unscathed and occasionally enriched. Chaos is another yukker-upper, eschewed by Shakespeare in his comedies of errors – see the light-hearted 1975 Barbra Streisand-Ryan O’Neal farce What’s Up Doc? as a fine contemporary(ish) example, with four identical overnight bags in a posh San Francisco hotel containing, respectively, top-secret documents, lavish jewelry, prehistoric rocks, and underwear – what could go wrong? – that get continually and repeatedly mixed up, stolen, and re-stolen, resulting in one of the more outlandish chase sequences ever put to film. That sequence, I’d like to note, despite my unflagging fondness, employs an oft-used form of comedy that never works for me, which is the destruction of random people’s cars and other property during a “slapstick” event. Not sure if this is still common in comedies but it sure was back then and for some decades, and it only makes me feel bad for the (I imagine) hard-working person whose property has been kablammed. I know, what a liberal.

I am big on incongruity, though – ridiculous situations, clashing perspectives (as humor – there’s the Marx Brothers again), exaggeration as satire, non-sequiturs… What was I saying in the last episode? “Actions are the key to the jellybean garden.” And I meant it. Of course, that also means that my humor in public situations is not always exactly understood. As the great silent film director Mack Sennett noted, “When the audience is confused, it doesn’t laugh.” (Personally I just put people who don’t get my sense of humor on a list to send the worst quips their way. Okay, maybe not, but I do these days wear around a 1968 presidential campaign button that says “Nixon Now” to help sort them out quickly. And in truth one of my favorite In-groups is called “The Six People Who Get My Jokes”.) But of course Mack Sennett, so concerned with clarity, also invented the Keystone Kops, who smashed up a shitload of bystanders’ cars (and fell down a lot of manholes). Ouch. Yet I’m okay (more than okay) with the animated series Rick & Morty, whose entire plots are sometimes non-sequiturs and who destroy entire planets and civilizations with an ill-timed belch. But the show is also incredibly irreverent, which tickles my ideology-mincing tendencies. Speaking of irreverent, I recently came across an Instagram channel called Madge and Bisket (and yes, I’m still Insta-ing, and I will give you an overdue report on all that in the final episode) – anyway I came across these two drag queens Madge and Bisket who seem ostensibly determined to sit out the next four years tippling at their basement bar, and pretty much sit around torturing Alexa and making incredibly inappropriate quips. I spent the better part of an hour the other night going through most of their (60-second or less) episodes and laughed harder than I had in a long time. (Note: I hadn’t tried saying the H-word in a while.) Then I slept very well. So bully for M&B. In one ep, to illustrate their, uh, theatricality, Bisket announces that they’re about to watch a musical performance, to which Madge replies, “I’d rather shit in my hands and clap.” (hehe) It took me a few minutes to get over that one. And pardon if you don’t care for poop jokes – I realize that they’re a bit too incongruous (or icky) for some, but they’re also terrifically disarming and can be used to great effect. There’s a famous scene in Jaws, for example, where Chief Brody is in the stern of the boat slapping chum into the water (and no, you don’t get a summary), and says, “Shit” in disgust, and we all chuckle. It’s in fact the only time that word is used in the film, and within a second the shark’s gigantic head bursts from the water right in front of him – first time we see it up close – and we scream all the harder. And what were we laughing at then? His disgust, I guess, and our discomfort at how gross the chum looks and how bad it must stink – to him, haha, not us.

So, it seems, there are many things that make us laugh and many opinions on what laughter is. No surprise there. Nietzsche for instance thought that laughter was a reaction to existential dread, but Nietzsche. One thing for certain, it’s an uncontrolled and generally salubrious release of tension – even Freud thought that, and he understood everything – right, Mom? But how much intuitive sense do you need to have to figure that one out? I mean, even I did, maybe because that’s what everything in existence does – constrict, let go, constrict, let go, you know, like (ahem) breathing, like sleep and waking, like a beating heart, like breeze pulsing through trees, like zigging and zagging from a gunman, like light. It’s a basic waveform, and everything goes in waves. And if that sounds like a reversal after all my disavowment of dualism in the previous episode, know this: a pendulum, a wave is not a dualism; it’s a spasm. It’s the condition of being. Spaz.

So much stricture and release, in so many ways, countless, as if the universe were chortling in a decillion directions and manners at once.  The throat opens, then closes in fear or need or compulsion.  Weather drifts, gathers, bursts, scatters.  Stars pulse and don’t deny it.  And the emotions we live, ludicrous, unimagined, commanding, pulse our days every bit as much as the solar blare.  Grieving, bathing, breakfast, passing out, the nature of everything shoved in a shuck, bladder made of pores, a delicate bubble that suddenly laughs out loud and remains, drifting on, as if to show that things do pass through, and the tensile sphere, the flesh abides, or so we say. Until, that is, we do something to burst our own bubbles.

Which brings us FINALLY, and Jeez-o-Pizza that took a while, to the question that I tried to ask toward the start of this melee, then seemingly avoided or ignored. Which was: Why did I and do I still tend to laugh so hard at the word hu-, hu-, ~~~~~~~~~~~!~~~~~~~~~~~~~¡…at the H-word: What is that about? What is happening when I do that?

I suppose it might help to take a look at what the word means, you know, H-U-B-R-I-S. The def along with the etymology are pretty straightforward: excessive pride or arrogance; in Ancient Greece it means “excess,” with the presumption that we know the characteristic or behavior to which it is attached. But there’s a twist – in Greek literature and culture, that excess, that insolence was seen as the cause of the transgressor’s ruin. It’s the fatal vanity of ego, adamantine short-sightedness, the incapacity to believe that one could possibly be wrong – sound familiar? And I ask you, what’s not funny about that? I mean it’s the dumbest, most infantile googoogaga ever. It is a (or the) tragedy of the human mind, so sadly limited by the whole human part. [INSERT FROM BLADE RUNNER: “Then we’re stupid and we’ll die.”]

So it seems to be a case of laughing at horror or tragedy, and damn straight on that. There’s a line from the play Equus that’s always stuck with me (though I’ve only seen the excellent 1977 film version by Sidney Lumet). In it, Richard Burton plays a psychiatrist who is trying to figure out why a mild-mannered teen blinded six horses. The boy’s conservative working-class parents are shaken and befuddled by the incident, and when the doctor first interviews them, the mom nearly breaks down and needs to be comforted by her husband. In his awkward embrace, she says, “Laugh, laugh as you do.” This play has many memorable lines, and though that seems like one which might be easily passed over by audiences as exposition, it breaks my heart every time I hear it. Because of course he laughs about it in nervous fits, and she may as well, though I suspect what they’re laughing from is existential terror (go Nietzsche!). 

That’s a bit of why the H-word takes me away, but it also feels so fucking funny at the same time. It is, after all, a comedy of fumblethumbs. “Doh!” yells Homer Simpson, dropping the uranium rod. Oh, Homer. And though he does somewhat represent a pinnacle of American Doh!, blissfully unaware of most everything around him, he is at base a satire of exaggeration, and thankfully there aren’t too many people out there who exist at quite that level of innate bluh-bluh-bluh – at least I hope not. And maybe I’m a bit bluh-bluh-bluh myself, but I don’t think that Americans and people in general are by nature stupid, though they (we) may be easily trained and manipulated, especially by those with the good ol’ know-how. But I suspect, generally, on an individual level and left to their own means, most people are capable of critical thinkage and smartnitude. Yeah, yeah, what a liberal (whatever that means).

To blithely sidestep (sort of) the blood-drooling core of American politics today, let’s take as an example the effects of consumerism. And I can only speak of Americans, since that’s mostly what I’ve observed. (For background on my egregious lack of international travel, see Episode 7, “In the Middle of Nowhere”.) Basically, and if this isn’t obvious I don’t know what is, American consumerism is a behemoth vacuum machine sucking up global resources at a sumptuous rate. We’re talking forests, vast stretches of vegetation, minerals, fossil fuels (uh, plastic, anyone?), fresh water, arable soil, just for a start. Not to mention that waste products from all those pilfered materials destroy the air and atmosphere (doh!); fill our oceans (and bodies) with plastics (the Smithsonian published in early February – just before being taken over and compromised – that recent studies show you can find up to seven grams of microplastics, the mass of a plastic spoon, in the human brain at this time); they poison our food and water; and, while science and medicine work to extend our life spans, generally assure that our final decade(s) will be riveted by cancers and other environmental diseases. But we need those coffee pods right now, don’t we?

Early last year I found myself in southern New Jersey to attend my brother’s funeral without appropriate attire (which isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse). The family decided I’d be fine with a button-down sweater, so I went out to find one. Ended up at a TJ Maxx in the small town of Cape May Courthouse, and was shocked to see about twenty carts in line overflowing with…I have no idea what…on a Wednesday afternoon in February (in this tiny town). I literally could say nothing but “Wow.” Thankfully I didn’t have to brave the line because the store only had about five sweaters (in February), all pullovers with Christmas patterns. The poor young sales associate was even confused by my question: “A sweater…with buttons?” saying she’d never seen an item like that in the store. No judge on her but that’s kind of astounding. Perhaps my favorite real-life meme of consumerism-in-action, which I felt privileged to witness and has remained burned in my memory, was several years ago near where I live now in Oakland, CA. I was pulling into a public parking lot by the Piedmont Avenue commercial district when I encountered another car driving slowly toward me the wrong way down the lane. As he was squeezing past, I witnessed the driver shoving an entire slice of pizza into his mouth while flinging the empty pizza box out the passenger window like a frisbee. Whoosh! it went over the parked cars and into the next lane. That was definitely another “Wow” moment. Humans.

Most everyone has heard about the “carbon footprint,” which many carry around in a guilt basket. Less people, though, are aware of a somewhat parallel concept in sustainability called the “ecological footprint,” which has also been around for several decades. This represents, in simple terms, the amount of resources that we use compared to the amount that we replace or can be replenished. There’s a benchmark called “Earth Overshoot Day” which in any given year notes the date at which we’ve used more resources than we can replace, scoring a depletion after that point. (I’ve put a link in the episode notes in case you’d like to know more.) In 1971, the earliest year that it’s been measured, Earth Overshoot Day was in late December, right at the end of the year. In 2024, it was on August 1.

Ludicrous as it sounds, I actually think consumerism could be slowed, despite the deep training, especially amongst those with lesser means, that owning more and more things demonstrates a higher status quo, rather than, say, an increase in personal debt. If you glance at the Overshoot link, you’ll see that date moving steadily earlier in the year except for just a few, including the first year of COVID. I don’t suspect that shows that people in general were buying fewer non-essentials during that year (ask Jeff Fucking Besos), but that there were fewer with the means to do so; and I’m guessing that at least some people got retrained by that to “need” less. I say that because I did – despite being a fairly crappy consumer to begin with, I had to noticeably tighten my budget then, and a lot of those practices have stayed with me (which is very useful amidst my current dearth of work due to other circumstance). And whereas I’m sure that breaking a shopping habit has its withdrawals (don’t they all), I doubt they approach anything like those for fentanyl or gambling (or maybe streaming video). Of course it helps to have an impetus to snap that habit, maybe something crazy like empty store shelves. Like maybe next month, for instance.

So where does all this compulsive behavior come from – the needless shopping, the toxic ego and competition, the act or human tendency of having to believe you’re right? I think we know. The control strategies of making people believe they are lacking, whether in status, stature, notoriety, beauty, power, or material wealth, is just as effective and perhaps more so than keeping people actually in need of necessities (i.e. poor as fuck). (At least the gaslit ones are still feeding the coffers of the rich.) And these aren’t trial and error tactics – the powers-that-be have thousands of years of practice. They are good at this shit. And y’know, whereas it is point blank correct for the marginalized to seek empowerment, the idea of the mind of a human being clamped onto the need to be in the spotlight, to be number one, to have the latest everything, the prettiest petunias or the sexiest shade of eye shadow, to have the most followers, to be the boss, to win – none of that makes me want to laugh, in any way. It’s the result of a con game, and it all feels, to be honest, so needy and insecure – so locked inside – so unnecessary, and on a personal level that just makes me sad. And I wonder which one of those I’m trapped in at any given moment.

But when I step back, step way back, and look at all of us bumblebutts bumping into each other and taking selfies with tsunamis and dancing off cliffs and burning the meatloaf and falling into a tub of pudding and staggering about in a vast comic array, I fill up with so much aghastness, so much incredulity that I just have to say Fuck You to hopelessness – and I laugh, laugh like hell, laugh to tears, because that’s all there’s left to do, because everything’s condensed into this one huge push, and my body knows, I know, that I’m pulled toward the sun, and the surge comes on, and the face lifts, and the chemistry lifts, and the whole damn plasma shoots through the top of my skull, spewing into space, into air, all over you, and the chair, and everything around.  Sorry about the mess.  And when it’s finally done, and I sit breathing slow, gasping a little, water streaming down my face, I’m better because it’s finally cracked, the seal is cracked, and I’m no longer trapped in apparent flesh, pounding at the gibbous walls, but loosed, transversant, leaking, streaming out, and ready to address whatever I can with agency.

And it’s not uncommon for me, in those moments of release and clarity, to look around and see so many locked in and I want to shake them, like something might have shaken me, and say, Break out of it! Can you please let go? Don’t let them tell you want you are and what you need. You know these things. You are what you are and you’re beautiful and you’re hurting yourself, so fucking stop it! But usually I don’t, something reminds me that it’s not my place, or it’s the wrong time and place, or it might make things worse, so instead, instead I often just want to make them laugh, because laughing loosens the skin, loosens the bonds, loosens the stricture and helps one move toward release, where you’re less locked in old narratives and more likely to step out of your own accord.

And that’s one thing we do for each other, isn’t it – help each other through strictures and release, through the ongoing pulse, or it’s certainly something we can do, especially in these fraught times. And it’s easier to stay unlocked around others who are, and we’re gonna need some clear fucking heads as we move ahead and some honest human hunkering and some new ways of thinking, and that means really keeping unlocked, keeping loose and alert and humble in the knowledge that while confidence is essential, excess and you-know-what will only drag us down.

So hey, if you’re feeling loose, let’s take a walk, get some fresh air, and have a little hunt for a few good H-words that we’ve harvested before: honesty, humanity, humility, and see what new paths we find out there.

This has been episode 31, covering Weeks 47 and 48 of My 12-Month Video Fast.

Believe it or not, we’ve got only two episodes left before this cast is cast for good. Next time I’m thinking we might continue our little walk and see where that gets us, or what that gets us, or what gets us, or what we get, or where and how we get. Get me?

Thanks so much for listening! Please go boldly, and try not to trip over that hu-, hu-, hubri~~~~~~~~~~~!~~~~~~~~~~~~~¡~~~~~~~~~~~~~~