A joke is a self-conscious plea for laughter. We rarely laugh at jokes. We laugh a lot. But mostly at attitudes, sounds, references, situations, timing, and nonsense. Jokes can only talk about those things, they can’t be them. Laughter for us is a cat swatting at a ghost — an unexpected exhalation of playful intent from a spontaneous heart. It’s not looking for your approval.
Why are we laughing?
The world is immense and time is infinite. “Life is made up of so many different moments, and sometimes I get this urge to laugh……just like that……like a sneeze,” said Marcello Mastroianni to Sophia Loren in the Italian film “A Special Day”.
“Does that ever happen to you?”
Set in Rome in 1938, “A Special Day” looks in on a fascist’s housewife and her fey neighbor who stay inside at home instead of joining the crowd outside, trying to catch a glimpse of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini finding their “common destiny”. This was a dangerous time. And yet, there was laughter, like a sneeze — a burst of air forced from Marcello’s lungs out. Involuntary. Life is immense and time is infinite.
Sometimes we laugh because we’re put in untenable circumstances. Sometimes we laugh because our plans fall apart. Sometimes we laugh at clumsiness, or its cousin, dogma. We might laugh because the world can accommodate anyone, anytime, any place — a congressmember in Washington D.C.; a clown in Rifle City; Hitler and Mussolini in Rome; or an ugly absolutist in Orange County, California — breeding ground for election-deniers, anti-vaxxers, born-again corporatists, all.
Which reminds me…
Life is immense and time is infinite. There are no duplicate points. It’s pretty obvious the world is not single-minded. It’s an uncompromising spectrum of situations and consequences. For example: the world is not home to one kind of bird. It is home to 10,000 different kinds of birds. Some of them peck. Some of them caw. Some of them fly thousands of miles. Some stay put. We’re like a bird. There’s nothing absolutist about us.
On the other side of the spectrum, Absolutists, like Hitler and Mussolini appear not as birds, but in human form only — often as narcissists and always as ignoramuses. Their intent is single-minded. They want you to think the way they think. It makes them feel like god. No one is quite sure why.
Insecurity? Lack of imagination? Control issues?
At any rate, their god is too small. An Absolutist in full flower is a dictator. Birds are smarter than that.
Absolutists go against the laws of nature. They think there’s only one answer to the infinite. When we hear anyone say, “only I can fix it,” air is forced out from our lungs involuntarily. On lucky days, it feels like we can die from it.
I died laughing on October 2, 1986. The incident that caused this involuntary exhalation made the back pages the local newspaper. A collection of baseball lovers — of which I was a member — were being harangued by a collection of absolutists — a good 3 dozen of them — exercising their first amendment intimidation rights, protesting outside Irvine City Hall (the old one on the corner of Jamboree and Alton), their neck vein’s red glare, their amygdalas bursting in air, in a hot and twisted dyspepsic patriotic burlesque.
It’s been said that Absolutists have a higher volume of gray matter than Pluralists in the right amygdala region of their brain — the region which is active in helping humans identify and respond to threats — real or unreal. This makes change difficult from them. Pluralists, on the other hand, have a higher volume of gray matter than Absolutists in the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain. The anterior cingulate cortex is active in helping humans cope with and sort through uncertainty — real or unreal. One way to cope with uncertainty is to have a good sense of humor. That means knowing funny in all its forms — not just jokes.
My preliminary diagnosis was that these Absolutists screaming outside City Hall that October day had terminally hyperactive right amygdalas. Their brains saw me as a threat. Why? Because we approved of playing baseball with all comers, in this case Communists. It’s baseball. It’s fun. It’s the most unfair game in the world. Why wouldn’t we Pluralists love it? To express my Pluralistic love, I’d been asked to write a speech for then-Mayor of Irvine, Larry Agran welcoming the Nicaraguan baseball team to Irvine. The team came at the invitation of the Irvine City Council to an event organized by the group “Bats Not Bombs.”
The Nicaraguans had visited dozens of other cities in the US without incident. They were visiting my earth-toned, “master-planned community” Southern California community after participating in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles two years earlier. (It should be noted that at the time, Ronald Reagan and Ollie North were busy trying to overthrow the Sandinista-led government in Nicaragua by financing “rebels”. According to Mr. Reagan, the rebels were the ”moral equal of our Founding Fathers.” (If, that is, our founding fathers were absolutist thugs.)
In as much as you can’t be tolerant of intolernce, you can’t be an absolutist about your pluralism, But go figure, Daniel Ortega, the newly-elected president of Nicaragua turned out to be an Absolutist, himself — not unlike some Major League Baseball owners. But that’s too far off course for now.
Set the stage. “Laughter arises from a certain fundamental absurdity.” – Jacques Tati.
Irvine City Hall was located in a single story industrial complex. It was utilitarian. The crowd in the council Chambers arranged their folding chairs and politiely applauded as the Nicaragian team arrived. There were greetings. and speech, and hand shaking, coaches spoke, plyers smiled, and at the end of the event Mayor Agran, who, in the early 1960s, played second-base for the North Hollywood High School Huskies, spoke earnestly about peace, love, understanding and the harmonic convergence created by a ball, a bat, and a glove. Whatever you may think of Mr. Agran — and some people have thought about him way too much — he gave no praise for the Sandinista government, only encouragement for two teams from different countries to play the game: Nicaragua versus the 1984 NCAA World Series Champion Cal State Fullerton Titans at Goodwin Field.
Agranistas When the ceremony at City Hall was adjourned, the audience in the council chambers cheered, and shouted “play ball”. The fun continued when we stepped outside. There, our before-mentioned troop of Absolutists had gathered, intent on demonstrating their excess right amygdala brain mass. Somehow, Ronald Reagan’s anti-Sandanista policy had convinced the Absolutists that the only way to deal with anyone who was Nicaraguan or Nicaraguan adjacent was with insults and threats, and saliva. The Nicaraguans weren’t esposing Marxist theory. They weren’t spreading socialism to Irvine. They wanted to get on base, advanced the runner, and shut the Titans down.
For point of reference: I lived in the richest country in the world. It was 1986 and My favorites players were Fernando Valenzuela and Pedro Guerrero. my favorite American politicians were the mayor of Burlington and George McGovern. I had already been driven off Culver Drive by a pickup full of absolutists for displaying a Vote for Mondale/Ferraro bumper stick on my car. I knew the terrain. I was a target. Now, I was unexpectedly confronted by Absolutists doing their best insane monkey impressions, unconsciously mimicking that from which they believed they were not descended. The Absolutists spit at me. They glared at me. They stomped their feet, called me a communist and a Jew, shouted “turn on the ovens,” veins on their necks distended, growled and bared their teeth. It was a rage destined to end either in a cerebral stroke or a shit-slinging appearance on Jerry Springer, all because my friends and I had welcomed a baseball team from Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Maybe it was their irrational passionate intensity. Maybe it was their unnecessarily unrelenting loud and cracking voices. Maybe it was their insistence that the best way to make their lives better was to shout us down.
And just like that I laughed. It came from a very unidentifiable, wholesome place. At first it was a shudder. The air was starting to escape. At first a few bubble of spit. I could hold it no more. I burst out laughing in the face of stupid. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.
There is a look in the eyes of Absolutists when the right amygdala region of their brain is outputting so much excess threat response, that you can see the adrenaline reaction plunging them into a deep barbaric state.
Just as a placard that read “No Communists / Down with Agranistas” was rising to come down on my head, a trio of black and whites rolled up.
“Hey. hey, hey.”
When the night sticks came out, peace was restored. No contact. No arrests. Just a warning to the Absolutists… and a request to clean up their mess and disperse, which they did chattering slogans into their cars. I was lucky I wasn’t beaten.
Thirty years later, the Absolutists found a leader. Only he can fix it. I take Absolutists more seriously, now. But still I laugh. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop.
Which reminds me…
An Absolutist visits a Pluralist for a digital exam. The Pluralist puts on his latex glove, lubricates his probing finger, and tells the Absolutist to bend over. With that, the Pluralist inserts his finger into the Absolutist’s rectum and begins exploring… deeper and wider… searching for something grave, twirling his finger until, with a flourish, he pulls a bouquet of flowers straight out of the Absolutist’s ass. Bursting with gorgeous pink roses, lavender carnations, stargazer lilies, and baby’s breath, it brings delight with every detail.
“Holy, shit,” the Absolutist says, “Where did those come from?”
“I don’t know,” says the Pluralist, searching through the flowers with his ungloved hand. “There’s no card.”
