Sometimes the old adage, “the customer is always right,” still applies. For example, one visibly outraged customer complained to me that I wasn’t funny enough to meet his demands to make him laugh.
I quickly retorted “humph!” and left him still fuming. Not funny eh, we’ll see who’s not funny around here. In a hiss, I left.
I was mad as hell. But after thinking for awhile, I noticed that in the good old days, I would have retorted with a clever-yet-funny anecdote, just so the customer can get what he’s paying for – a laugh. But no, I went the other route, snapping back with a vengeance instead of a rib tickler.
What’s with me these days? I quickly interrogated a staff member of the Nation magazine and discovered that yes, sadly, I just wasn’t funny anymore.
In a quandary and puzzled to heck, I couldn’t come back with another doozie to dazzle the most unimpressionable minds. Then I thought back in time to when I got that fateful call from the head of the then only locally famous Nation Magazine (before they went international). “Hey dude, we need your words on paper for the ’notes. Think you can do it for now?”“Sure, why not?” I replied. With visions of Pulitzers dancing around my dreams for awhile, I agreed like the ignoramus I was in those days. Easy, I thought, 600 words twice a month. A fifth grader could do it.
Well, that “for now” turned into more years than I can remember; in other words, more than six. I’ve seen my share of funny, perplexing, idiotic and maniacal things, enough to carry me every two weeks for all that time.
But now it seems funny things aren’t popping up as much as I needin order to write funny on a biweekly basis. Heck, now people who need their funny bone tickled have stopped stalking me on the streets for a spiel of jokes and riddles.
Instead, the casual bystander now often requires a few coins just to pretend to go along with my lame jokes. I’m plumb out of gags and quaint sayings and thinking about it even more, I realized that I’m now regarded as a professional funny man who must deliver, whether I like it or not.
Well, I called my lawyer, who used to work and give advice to OJ Simpson, and realized that I was practically driven like the slaves who built the pyramids for the last several years without a break! JC (OJ’s lawyer, the one who defended him through a famous murder trial before OJ became just an alleged armed robber) advised me, through a séance (because I think he died awhile back), that I could sue for a vacation at least once a year. A vacation? What’s that? Nobody ever took a break working for the pharaoh.
Armed with this knowledge that I could sue someone for a pittance, I hung up on JC, patted the exhausted and sweating seer on his back and wrote up a writ to my pharaoh.
Hey, give me a break okay? Slaves can’t produce forever at this back-breaking, mind-wracking pace; they need their staff and wheat too.
So I proposed to the Son of the Sun to give me a two-week break until the next Rez Notes have to be produced and I’ll be back to being funny again. And for those faithful readers who keep me going with their encouraging words … thanks.
