insider
column. People want to share their best LOL stories and jokes.
Often unsolicited. As in pummeling me with material cribbed
directly from online sources like “Another 40 OMG-Good
Jokes” while my mouth is full of croutons and Romaine lettuce.
What could I reply with but “Mmhph!” right?
here are some of the gems I’ve been assured are slam-dunk
knee-slappers.
From my parents: “Talk about that time with the breadbox. You
know. The thing. With the other thing? Hilarious.” (They’ve
mentioned this “thing” so many times over the years that I’m
not too embarrassed to ask what the heck they’re talking about!)
From my two-desks-over colleague at work: “Trump and
toasters and I forget the other thing. I had it a moment ago.
Hmmm. I’ll email you when I remember it. But it was so, so
over the bay?” (“A bagel.”)
From Daughter #2: “Where does a king keep his armies?”
(“In his sleevies.”)
From Daughter #2 again after gathering her composure after
that “sleevies” hit: “Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl in the
bathroom?” (“Because the ‘P’ is silent.”)
With material like this, the column pretty much writes itself!
It really makes me wonder if Lenny Bruce, Jerry Seinfeld,
source material. Surely, odds are that we all can’t be so lucky.
It only seems fair, though, to give you a clearer sense of the
in the precise order that they come to me as I sit here in a
Cheetos-induced haze, laptop propped up by three neveropened
Yellow Pages books, as I watch Thursday Night Football
in Mandarin because my TVs SAP button is messed up.
JANUARY 2018 | SARASOTA SCENE 109
Laughing MATTERS
by Ryan G. Van Cleave
You might be asking yourself, “Why does this Ryan Van
Cleave person have a humor column in Sarasota Scene
ene
Magazine and I don’t?”
Great question. I’ve been asking myself this very same question
for about two weeks now. I’ve come up with three answers.
tion
• After a bout of particularly successful class clowning some
years back, my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Birkeback (imagine
the fun we had with that name!), cornered me outside the
boys’ bathroom and confessed that I was “mildly amusing.”
I heard “wildly amusing.”
Like Silly Putty and the Sunday funnies, a heavenly match
was made.
• I’ve read exactly three Miami Herald pieces by humorist
Dave Barry. Two of them made me laugh.
• I asked my editor, Julie Milton, if I could write a humor
column for Sarasota Scene Magazine.
“Are you funny?” she asked.
“Not particularly,” I said.
She shrugged.
I shrugged.
And a column was born.
BOOM! Case closed. Not even Johnny Cochran could argue
against evidence like this.
But here’s the thing. On more than one occasion, my wife has
declared me to be less than hilarious. If memory serves, the
latest evidence of this was when she said I was “as funny as a
colonoscopy by a nearsighted proctologist.”
This strikes me as a potential setback for somebody who DOES
have a monthly humor column in Sarasota Scene Magazine, after
all. It also got me thinking about sending my own proctologist
a Pearle Vision gift card for Xmas.
A week back, long after the kids went to bed, I snuck away
from a “Gilmore Girls” marathon with my wife to fetch a
blueberry Pop-Tart from the kitchen…and en route, I stepped,
barefoot, on a LEGO brick, generating about 18 zillion Pascals
of pressure and, from the depths of my soul, let loose with a
scream so loud that it might’ve launched shock waves all the
way down to Naples. My wife told me to stop being a baby. I
replied with “I’m pretty sure this hurt more than childbirth,”
which caused her to bonk me on the head with a Bounty roll.
Clearly her judgment is way off-kilter, so her challenge to my
humor IQ can be dismissed. Whew! Crisis averted.
Here’s something I’ve discovered about having my own humor