Double Flee A

I had a conversation with a friend recently about the varieties of sketch comedy, and what makes some better than others. He took a broad view and said that for sketch comedy, stories, self-contained, and with a beginning, middle, and end, were probably the best. He cited Kids in the hall as an example of comedy done right. "Girly drink drunk" is the only one they did that I can recall, not bring a true aficionado of tv chuckles, but I had to agree. So it was a conversation in which I was for the most part the amicable recipient of new information.

There is a glut of bad comedy on tv. I stopped watching it for that reason; when something that is supposed to be funny, isn't, it disturbs me in varying degrees, anywhere from a light grimace to the full-on collywobbles. When last I tuned in to SNL, it was so bad I watched an infomercial until weekend update and then shut it off. (I dig Tina Fey and wanted to see if she did the character I submitted to her people. That character was "old man" and I sent some jokes along with that. He was probably wrong for the show now; silly and pointless enough to go over in the early nineties, but now he'd be out of place.)

Unfortunately, as a comedy-for-tv writer, I'd be more likely to come up with Herlihy-type stuff (Toonces) than more timeless stuff (Kids in the hall). Which brings me to my point, the dream I had just before waking up. It was a comedy dream, and it came with a theme song. Music doesn't translate well to blog, but it was like an epic rock song. It's about a woman who wants an enduring love, who's looking for her salvation, so to speak, in the form of a hunky dude. The video accompaniment to the song shows her fleeing the office, picking up her paycheck smiling, and then heading into the bar like it's the greatest day of her life. The song goes "The day, it is done! The pay, it is won! Here she comes to fall in love!" She then flirts with every single man she sees, with the intention of finding a love that lasts a lifetime. Obviously, hilarious misadventures ensue. It writes itself.

Anyway, that was my dream. "The kids" had topical stuff, now that I think about it, like chicken lady. And "looking for love" is, I think, one of the most under-poked-fun-at afflictions of our age. If you buy everything the media sells you about love, then you could go looking for it, I suppose. I wonder if there are other things that would work on that scale, speaking of media messaging.

posted by dale @ 9:47 AM