Humor Writing
Feb. 8th, 2007 06:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kybearfuzzDuring my internet hiatus, I spent a little time going through some things in my old college trunk. This trunk is full of junk, that's the kindest way to put it. However, it is hard to let go of the things in it, as they bring back great memories of college life.
Set the wayback machine to January 1993, my short term class my junior year. The class was called "Humor Writing."
Normally the short term catalog was full of cool classes you could take, just one for the month, while you got other odds and ends done, like financial aid papers. You could travel and take odd things, but generally I avoided any class that involved a "ten page research paper." I remember that this class caught my attention because it involved writing jokes, etc., and I figured how hard could it be. Hah! It was a freaking upper-level English class, so that should have been a tip off to how much hard work was involved.
This is Dr. Scott Emmons, a Ph.D. in Classical Languages, who taught the class. He was awesome and I revere him to this day (and not because he's cute, but it never hurts). He said all types of humor was okay in the classroom and we analyzed why things were funny. We started out with 10 guys and 4 women. Three of the four were hard-core femi-Nazi English majors. They lasted about two days before dropping the class, particularly insulted by several sexist jokes from the guys, despite having done their own personal man-bashing humor. They were such hypocrites. The single remaining female was as brash and unforgiving as the rest of us and we loved her.
Our first assignment was to craft 10 new jokes overnight. Sounds simple, but in practice it was horrible. To get 10, you must write 30 and discard the worst and even then, the remainder was mediocre at best. I carried a notepad with me all day, in case a good idea hit me. It drove![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aceofspace crazy when he came to visit one weekend, as I tried many out on him. As far as the first jokes went, mine bombed, but so did everyone else's, so I was in good company. We eventually got better as we recognized by the third day that sex was funny, though why we didn't know that before was a mystery. We made our way through writing jokes, situational humor, the humorous essay, stand-up comedy, and my personal favorite, the cartoon gag. Dr. Emmons said he thought mine were as good as many being printed, high praise from a man who actually had his jokes published. Segments of our stand-up routines made it to the local radio station. Dr. Emmons was written up in the Berea Alumnus for his class. I have two copies.
I finished the class with an "A." Though I thought there were folks in the class who were much funnier than me, I think we were graded on effort more than success. Speaking of success, Dr. Emmons eventually left Berea College and went to work for Hallmark, where he now works in the humorous writing division. I think it's a perfect place for him. When I worked in Kansas City in the late 1990's, I ran into him at a used book fair and he's as handsome and funny as always.
I looked through the folder of my material, my humor portfolio from the class and think that I could have done better. Of course, I'm much older and out of the closet now, so who knows what I might have written at that time had things been different. And, yeah, sex is still funny :)
Set the wayback machine to January 1993, my short term class my junior year. The class was called "Humor Writing."
Normally the short term catalog was full of cool classes you could take, just one for the month, while you got other odds and ends done, like financial aid papers. You could travel and take odd things, but generally I avoided any class that involved a "ten page research paper." I remember that this class caught my attention because it involved writing jokes, etc., and I figured how hard could it be. Hah! It was a freaking upper-level English class, so that should have been a tip off to how much hard work was involved.
This is Dr. Scott Emmons, a Ph.D. in Classical Languages, who taught the class. He was awesome and I revere him to this day (and not because he's cute, but it never hurts). He said all types of humor was okay in the classroom and we analyzed why things were funny. We started out with 10 guys and 4 women. Three of the four were hard-core femi-Nazi English majors. They lasted about two days before dropping the class, particularly insulted by several sexist jokes from the guys, despite having done their own personal man-bashing humor. They were such hypocrites. The single remaining female was as brash and unforgiving as the rest of us and we loved her.Our first assignment was to craft 10 new jokes overnight. Sounds simple, but in practice it was horrible. To get 10, you must write 30 and discard the worst and even then, the remainder was mediocre at best. I carried a notepad with me all day, in case a good idea hit me. It drove
aceofspace crazy when he came to visit one weekend, as I tried many out on him. As far as the first jokes went, mine bombed, but so did everyone else's, so I was in good company. We eventually got better as we recognized by the third day that sex was funny, though why we didn't know that before was a mystery. We made our way through writing jokes, situational humor, the humorous essay, stand-up comedy, and my personal favorite, the cartoon gag. Dr. Emmons said he thought mine were as good as many being printed, high praise from a man who actually had his jokes published. Segments of our stand-up routines made it to the local radio station. Dr. Emmons was written up in the Berea Alumnus for his class. I have two copies.I finished the class with an "A." Though I thought there were folks in the class who were much funnier than me, I think we were graded on effort more than success. Speaking of success, Dr. Emmons eventually left Berea College and went to work for Hallmark, where he now works in the humorous writing division. I think it's a perfect place for him. When I worked in Kansas City in the late 1990's, I ran into him at a used book fair and he's as handsome and funny as always.
I looked through the folder of my material, my humor portfolio from the class and think that I could have done better. Of course, I'm much older and out of the closet now, so who knows what I might have written at that time had things been different. And, yeah, sex is still funny :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 03:59 pm (UTC)But you do remind me of a lyric from a song written by an ex-Harvard math professor, Tom Lehrer, who had a brief and bizarre 15 minutes of fame writing comedy songs...
"Bright college days, those carefree days of life...
Soon you'll be sliding down the razor blade of life..."
Hey, I did say his fame was brief!
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 05:16 pm (UTC)It was a pretty cool class too :)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-08 05:14 pm (UTC)