Wednesday, 3/15

For something I knew I wasn't gonna use, I sure spent a lot of time on it.

Yesterday, I was writing about how I notice the style of two comedians—Chris Rock & George Carlin—in a lot of what I do. I freely admit it; I mean, if you're gonna steal form someone, why not steal from the best, right? It became apparent in another way this weekend, too, as I was writing the “Life in the 906” I did Monday night.

I almost crossed the line with a joke.

Actually, I don't know if it would have crossed the line. I have a feeling both comedians—especially Carlin—might have done the joke, and not cared what people thought. And as it turned out, the way I wrote the bit I didn't use the joke.

But I considered it, and spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the rhythm of it, just like George Carlin would have done.

The conceit behind it was this—because I was going to talk about St Urho's Day and St Patrick's Day and ethnic ancestry, I was thinking of proposing taking the three biggest chunks of who you are, ancestry-wise, and combining them into one big activity. For instance, if you were Finnish and English and Italian, you could wear purple and eat pizza while driving on the wrong side of the road.

Something like that.

In the piece, I was going to combine three of my biggest ancestral chunks into an example. And since those three are Irish, Swedish, and German, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the first thing that pops into your head when you think of each country. The first two were easy; however, Germany caused a few problems. I could think of a few German stereotypes—no sense of humor, eating pretzels—bur none of them really fit the rhythm of the gag.

None of them flowed together with the perfect pacing I was looking for.

Until, of course, after rolling it around in my brain for over a day, I did think of something. It's something that rolled off the tongue, that fit in the sentence like a cold foot in a warm slipper.. Had I used it, what would that line have been?

“In my case, that would involve wearing green and singing Abba songs while invading Poland”.

See? Something identified with each country, wrapped up in a pithy, free-flowing sentence. What could go wrong, right?

8-)

Like I said, in the end, I didn't use it. I didn't need to use it. And, truth be told, in the end I probably wouldn't have used it, even if I needed to. But like George Carlin, I spent a lot of time trying to find the right word, the right rhythm, to make sure the line was all that it could be.

Because, as I keep saying, if you're gonna steal from someone, it might as well be from the best. Even if it's something you know you'll never use.

(jim@wmqt.com)