Your "Laugh and the World Laughs With You" Quizo Update

You may have noticed that last week at the bar I promised that there would be a recap up on the website sometime in the middle of last week. If you noticed that, you may have further noticed this did not happen.

If you did notice these things, please stop being so observant. You're making me look bad.

The reason the aforepromised recap did not happen was that while shoveling snow on Sunday I did something to my already-bad back that is most closely approximated as hiring a frustrated German to walk up behind you and repeatedly club you in the lower spine with the business end of a 20-pound sledgehammer. This laid me up for several days and, frankly, the stuff I needed to write the recap was in my bag downstairs. That's the kind of week I had. No recap because the Quizo material was downstairs.

Now, aside from the metaphysical lumbar clubbing, here's something else interesting from last week. Before my world became a haze of lower back pain and prescription painkillers, I had asked my father if he liked the little bit about our attempt to watch Battlestar Galactica in last week's e-mail. He assured me - this was Tuesday, I think - that he had. He said he found it quite funny. In fact, he thought that he deserved more credit for the fact that he had managed to become less annoying while other people were trying to watch television.

Then, later in the week, when I was barely living on this planet, he said to me, "hey, how come I'm the butt of all the jokes in the Quizo e-mail? That's not fair."

At this point, let me tell you a little story:

Many years ago, back in the ancient mists of forgotten time when I used to do standup comedy (i.e. 2003), I was performing one Saturday at Standup New York. A friend of mine had come up for the show. We'll call her... let's say... Chrissy. Now, I had a whole bit in my act about how her and another friend of mine hooked up at a party and how I thought this was a disaster and how they were both retards for doing such a thing. Once I found out she was actually coming to the show I briefly thought about doing another joke in its place but decided against it because a) it was a good bit, and b) screw her anyway if she didn't like it.

Standup New York is, as comedy clubs go, pretty crap, but by some trick of the light the only table in the club that I have a decent view of from the stage is the one where Chrissy is sitting with her friend Sean, and as I go into the joke and get to the end I can see clearly - CLEARLY - that she is laughing. After that I look elsewhere and continue with my act.

Unbeknownst to me, however, during this joke this conversation is happening at the table:

Chrissy: [laughing]

Sean: Hey, I think he's talking about you.

Chrissy: No he's not.

Me: [makes joke on stage that clearly identifies Chrissy as the person I'm talking about]

Sean: Uh, I'm pretty sure he is.

Chrissy: [stops laughing for the rest of the show]

After my act I was standing out on 82nd Street smoking and Chrissy came screaming out the front door.

"I can't believe you told that story about me!" she is screaming.

"Why can't you believe that?" I said. I had been stealing my friends' life stories for various things for years at that point. Surely it should not be a surprise.

"You made me look like a total bitch!" she shouts.

"No, that was the joke AFTER the one about you. You, I just make look a little silly."

"I can't blah blah blah yackity schmackity yell scream (shrieking harpy noises) joke about me!" I have, honestly, long since tuned out this part in my memory. This goes on for a solid 30 seconds before I, exasperated, finally shout:

"YOU LAUGHED!"

"No I didn't," she protests.

"Yes, you did. I could see you laughing. You laughed."

And then I uttered the phrase that would protect me from the abuse of friends (and now family) ever since:

"If you laugh at the joke, you don't get to complain about being the punchline."

By the way, Dad, you've been mentioned in precisely three e-mails over the last six months, and you didn't even have lines in one of them. So, you know, nyah.

For what it's worth, while I was laid up, the only thing more fun than watching Chelsea's 4-0 FA Cup win this Saturday was watching Phil Mickelson (who we all know I despise) return to the Phil of old and absolutely choke his guts out yesterday at the Nissan Open. We missed you, Phil. Keep up the good work.

JLK