“We’re not like Fox News”

     Here it is, my final funny post of the semester. By far, I believe I’ve saved the best for last:

     Finals week can be a real downer. We all know this. It’s nothing new. One of my classmates, Austin, has even posted about finals week and how, in order to get through it, we need to laugh. I completely agree with him. We all need to take a break during finals, and yesterday, I got the perfect break.

     I had just gotten out of my Spanish final, and I was really stressed. I went to my friend Jena’s room to chill out and vent (because everybody needs that time after a tough exam), and she showed me the video linked above to cheer me up. This video is a sneak peek from Gabriel Iglesias’s upcoming Comedy Central special.

      Gabriel is one of my favorite comedians, so I was really excited to watch this video. Yes, it is 20 minutes long, but it’s worth it. (Seriously, take the time to watch it if you haven’t.) This video really put things into perspective for me. I obviously laughed because it’s Gabriel Iglesias and he’s hilarious to me, but after watching this video, I specifically thought about this course and how Gabriel’s story outlines what Dr. Williams has been trying to show us all semester.

     Laughter brings people together. It really does. As long as we have laughter in our lives, we have a way to connect with people. People make each other laugh. It’s just what we do. We may not intend to do it sometimes, but we do it nonetheless. Gabriel proved this on his trip to Saudi Arabia, and I’m glad he’s sharing his story with the rest of us.

     Gabriel’s story proves that everybody has a sense of humor, and, in my opinion, that there’s still hope in the world. As long as we can laugh at ourselves, I think everything is going to be okay. The fact that Jeff Dunham is the number one comedian in Saudi Arabia is impressive to me, and the fact that Gabriel’s driver quoted Achmed floored me even more. The Saudi Arabians can laugh at themselves, or at least at the stereotype they’ve been given (since we know that they aren’t all terrorists).

     I think this video should be shown to students in this class in the future, should Dr. Williams continue to follow a humor theme for this Lit and Civ course. It shows the diversity and humor around the world, and, most importantly, reminds us that everyone is different. “We’re not all like Fox News.” If everybody believed every stereotype the media portrays, where would we be as individuals living in a diverse world? We need to learn to think for ourselves and remind ourselves to keep laughing.

     Since this assignment requires that I state why this video was funny to me, I have to make note of that. This video was funny because it largely provided comic relief to me in a time of extreme stress. It’s full of cognitive shifts I would’ve found funny even if I wasn’t stressed out.

     I wanted to share this video with you all because it is funny. But more than that, I wanted to show this video to you all because I think it’s important. It reminds us all that we’re only human and that it’s okay to laugh, both at ourselves and at others. 

“Better than you do, Alex”

     Here we go with funny moment number two in throughout this semester:

     Obviously, speech and debate was a huge part of my life this year. I spent my entire last post talking about my participation in the Forensics world, and have mentioned it several times before in this course blog. I’ve had a lot of good times on the TCU Forensics team, which is why two of my humorous posts revolve around things that happened because of my participation in speech and debate. I know you guys are dying to hear the next story, so here goes.

     I left off talking about my experience making it to nationals, and now I’m going to tell y’all about my experience at nationals. The American Forensics Association national individual speech tournament is a big tournament. It’s the hardest national speech tournament to qualify for in the country, and, due to its size, spans for three days of competition. Mind you, these are long competition days. Each day lasted 12-14 hours, so you can understand that by the end of the second day, our brains were pretty much fried.

     Only one other person from TCU made it to nationals this year: Alexa Aragonez. So the national tournament team consisted of Alexa, myself, and our coach. Because there were so few of us, we decided to go out to eat with two other teams we’re friends with at the end of the second day. Note that this means 20 fried speech contestants and coaches were all sitting around a table trading silly stories about one another.

     We were all laughing and joking, and for some reason we started talking about middle names and weird spellings of names. Alexa apparently does not have a middle name. Her parents just decided not to give her one. We discussed the fact that her name was simply Alexa Aragonez, and then started talking about how bad judges at speech competitions have butchered the pronunciation of Aragonez. Alexa was complaining that it’s hard for people to say because they can’t spell it, at which point I piped in that I didn’t think it was that hard to spell. Alexa, feeling sassy by that point, decided to challenge me and said “oh yeah, then how do you spell it?” Without missing a beat, I looked back and said “Better than you do, Alex.”

     Alexa, my coach, and I died laughing. Keep in mind that we were all sleep deprived and the comment I made was a pretty good burn. But then we noticed that nobody else was laughing along with us (as probably many of you are confused at this point, too). We quickly explained the context of the joke to our friends sitting next to us.

     At the district competition, in Alexa’s final round, she messed up signing her name on the marker board for the judges to copy onto their ballots. It was the last round of another long day of competition and she apparently wasn’t thinking. Because of that, she connected the last A of her first name with the first A in her last name. This means that, to the judges, her name read “AlexArogonez.” Alexa didn’t realize she did this, but the rest of the team and I did. That’s why when the announcer called her name as “Alex Aragonez” during the awards ceremony, we laughed and she got confused.

     When I made the joke that I could spell Alexa’s name “better than you can, Alex,” I was referencing Alexa’s mess up at district competition. Alexa’s name is apparently so hard to spell that she can’t even spell it when she’s tired, which is why the joke was funny, and why the cognitive shift in my response was so perfectly timed both in the moment and in the context of the conversation at hand.

     After we finished explaining why my joke was funny to our friends at dinner, they laughed too. It was a pretty good burn, after all (if I do say so myself). Hopefully you all got a laugh out of it too, once the context was explained to you. But, if the joke was lost somewhere in translation, that’s okay. I still got a great laugh out of it with my team at nationals, and it’s definitely a memory I’m going to keep with me as I continue my speech and debate career. I doubt we’re ever going to let “Alex” live down her spelling mistakes. 

So that’s why the French talk that way…

     Dr. Williams asked us to blog about four funny things that happened to us this semester and why they were funny to us. Since the Laugh Lurker assignment counted as one of these blogs, that brings me to sharing three of the most memorable and funny experiences I’ve had this semester.

     I decided to wait until the end of the semester because I wanted to share moments with you all that really meant something to me—moments that still make me laugh days, weeks, (even months) after they happened. So here we go with funny moment number one:

     If you’ve been keeping up with my blogs, you know from a couple of my conversation partner writings that I’ve been doing a lot of dialect work this semester. This year was my first year on the TCU Forensics Speech and Debate team, and one of my individual speeches was a Program of Oral Interpretation (POI). A POI is basically a bunch of things spliced together to build an argument. You can pull an excerpt of pretty much anything you want to put in your program: prose, poetry, newspaper/journal articles, tweets, published diaries, etc. The only catch is that the speech has to be performed in an interpretive manner. That means you’re basically performing a one-man show with as many different characters/voices/personalities that you want.

     So, long story short, my POI addressed handicap accessibility issues in Europe. I argued that there was extremely little concern for people in wheelchairs trying to survive every day life in various European countries. (If you’re interested in learning more, let me know and we can talk about it.) I had four different characters, and I started this speech in January.

     Now, let me tell you, getting these characters to work was not an easy job. When I first started competing, I consistently got dead last in every competition I entered. Judges kept telling me that they couldn’t tell a difference in my characters, that I needed to add to my argument, etc. I have no idea how many hours my coach and I put into that piece, and how many times we changed the characters and voices I tried to pull off.

     I kept failing and failing, and by the time February rolled around, we were coming up on our last chance tournament to qualify for nationals: the district tournament. I finally had three of my characters down pat: a southern belle, a Midwesterner, and a British teacher. It was the week of the competition, and I still couldn’t find a way to make my fourth character distinct and memorable enough to even have a chance at making it to nationals. The competition was on Saturday, and I met with my coach on Tuesday morning to practice. We ran my piece once and went back to the same struggle of trying to figure out what to do with the fourth character. Finally, she had an idea. She turned to me and said: “You’re going to want to shoot me, but…can you do a French accent?”

     That definitely caught me off guard. I had spent two weeks trying to perfect a proper English accent and still had trouble with it sometimes. She wanted me to get a French accent four days before the competition? But, I wanted to make it to nationals, so I agreed to give it a try. We made a deal: I would work on the accent over the next couple of days, and if it wasn’t good by the time we met on Thursday morning, we would nix it and take the piece to competition as is.

     So, I came back to my dorm and spent hours trying to perfect the distinct sounds in a French accent. Luckily, I happen to have a friend in my dorm that spent four years of his life living in Belgium; therefore, he was pretty much my savior. Matt coached me for a good three to four hours that Tuesday night, trying to get me to say my vowels and “Rs” properly. By about one in the morning, we were both tired and a little brain dead from my inability to produce the proper sounds.

     We were about to give up, and I only had one more question for him. I had been watching how he moved his mouth to pronounce words for the past hour, trying to mimic him, and I just couldn’t understand how he seemingly wasn’t moving his lips when he talked. I looked at him and asked him how he was making his mouth so still and why he was puckering his lips outward to make the French sounds. Now, when Matt gets tired, he can come out with some pretty ridiculous and random things to say. As it was one in the morning, he’d reached his limit. He just looked me straight in the eyes, and, using his French accent, responded: “It iz becuz ze French, they want zeir lips to be closer to yours when ze speak.”

     Matt’s answer completely caught me off guard. Here I was legitimately trying to figure out how to move my mouth, and he came out with the most unexpected response playing upon the stereotype of the French being overly-sexual people. We both died laughing, and I still smile when I think about this occurrence today. It was the perfect comic relief to the frustrating situation I was in, and it was funny because I definitely was not expecting that cognitive shift. I’m just sad nobody else was around to witness the moment, because every time I’ve tried to tell somebody about it, it’s just not as great as when the original moment happened.

     To put a happy ending to this story, Matt’s coaching somehow managed to get me to perfect a French accent in two days. My coach approved the accent on Thursday morning, and I competed in districts with the accent on Saturday. It seemed that the snooty French character was just what my piece had been missing all along, because I made it to nationals. And, when I look back on my first year in debate, what I’m most proud of isn’t the fact that I made it to nationals my first time trying Forensics. It’s hard to do, but it’s a feat that other people have accomplished. What I’m most proud of is going from placing dead last in every competition to getting a French accent in three days and using that to fight my way to nationals. My underdog story is what I’m proud of, and the fact that I got to have a memorable laugh to go along with it just makes the story even better.

A Final Reflection: Looking Back at Readings

     I decided to do my final reading reflection blog as kind of a reflection across the entire semester. So, here’s my spiel about every reading we’ve done this semester….

     We all remember starting with Morreall. None of us really liked him. It took him 20 pages to say what he could’ve said in three. As a student in the Schieffer School, that especially pushed my buttons because I’ve been taught to write tightly. Nevertheless, I think he had some good things to say and some interesting thoughts about humor theories. I particularly enjoyed reading about the evolution of laughter from the play mode onward. I wish there was some way to cut down on the sheer amount of pages we had to read, as I often found myself counting pages instead of actually enjoying the material. I don’t know that there is a way to cut down on Morreall in the future, however. If there is a way, I suggest doing that. Less is really more when it comes to busy students (especially if we’re expected to really digest and think about the material).

     Next we read stories from The 50 Funniest American Writers. I have to admit, when we first began reading stories from this book, I was not impressed. I was actually even frustrated. I didn’t find any of the stories funny at first. The story we read about the family vacation was downright disturbing to me. Like, really, truly, disturbing. It made no sense to me why a person riding next to a corpse for a few hours in a car was something to laugh at. By the time we got to the story about the difference between men and women in relationships, however, I really began to enjoy the book. Everything we read after that was hilarious to me. I’m going to look through the book more this summer to see what other potentially humorous stories are in there, because I enjoyed the ones that made me laugh so much.

     After The 50 Funniest American Writers came Slaughterhouse-Five. Many of my classmates didn’t enjoy this book, but I actually found it very entertaining. This was actually my favorite book we read throughout the course. I think the reason so many people didn’t like it is because it’s based upon dark humor. In my experience, dark humor is kind of hit and miss with people. Either they find it hilarious, or completely unentertaining. It’s kind of the same thing that happens with dry humor; some people like it and some people don’t. I don’t think Dr. Williams was wrong for introducing this type of humor to us, however. I think it’s a type of humor we all should be exposed to, because it clearly does exist in the world. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, having a deep and meaningful class discussion on it (that seemed to be the only really deep conversation we had over a reading this semester), and doing the “Life of Meaning” blog project based on Slaughterhouse-Five. Everything surrounding this book was really enjoyable for me, and I wish that more of my classmates had found the experience as enjoyable as I did.

     But, we all have our likes and dislikes, as I clearly found out when we got to reading The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain. I absolutely hated this book. Downright hated it. This book also seemed to be hit or miss with the class, but unfortunately, it was a miss for me. I found no point whatsoever in reading a bunch of random quotations from Mark Twain, most of which I found neither profound nor funny. What really made me angry, however, was getting to class and finding out the book Dr. Williams wanted us to read appeared to only be 30-40 pages in length. I wasted several hours reading over 300 pages of meaningless quotes, and it was worth completely nothing, because I wasn’t even supposed to read that many! This is where ISBN numbers come in handy, and why I would’ve really appreciated them in the syllabus. I could’ve been saved so much time and frustration had I known which edition of the book I was supposed to read.

     ISBN numbers would’ve come in handy on a lot of our readings this year, actually. I really enjoyed reading Tales of Juha, but it was hard to follow along in class because none of us knew what page which story was on because we all had different editions of the book. Nevertheless, Juha was an entertaining character for me, and I appreciated learning from him. I feel like I learned a lot about humor, not only in the Arab culture, but around the world. Every country/culture has its own Juha. We all have our fables that we use to teach children, and I found it extremely interesting to see a huge collection of them all put together. I think Juha did a good job addressing all sorts of humor, from witty puns to taboo humor. I wish we could’ve had a major in-depth discussion over this book like we had over Slaughterhouse-Five, but, unfortunately, that didn’t happen. In the future, I think many things can be done with this book in Lit and Civ, so I hope Dr. Williams keeps it and discusses it more with future students (should he continue to go with a humor theme).

     The only other readings we did were from Only Joking and Anguished English. I have to say that I really enjoyed these books as well. I wish we could’ve read more from Only Joking, though I do understand it’s a costly book. I understand Dr. William’s concern for offending us, as well, but I do think we’re all adults here, and, as honors students, have the capacity to study potentially offensive material in a professional manner. We can’t be shielded from offensive material when we get out into the real world, so I think it’s good for us to discuss this type of material in a healthy and safe environment (that way we know how to deal with it when we get into the real world). As far as Anguished English goes, I really enjoyed starting every Wednesday with readings from that book, and wish it would’ve been longer. I’ll definitely be keeping that book to look at in the future for a good laugh.

     The readings this semester were kind of all over the place for most of us, I think. I feel like we all had readings we absolutely loved and readings we didn’t like so much. I appreciate the fact that we were exposed to so many different styles of humor, and looking back, I only wish we had gotten the chance to dissect the readings more in class.