My comedic ways

If I may laugh, I can make a good point as to why.

On this page I discuss some things I find funny and why.

General lessons learned

There were some things I knew I found funny right from the start. The first was that the commercial song parodist commonly called Weird Al showed me what song parodying meant in the first place. The second was that my disinterested attitude towards romance meant I would like seeing love songs turned on their head. These things have been consistent throughout my parodying days.

However, when my old characters, the Comic Five acted on those premises, they, as usual, got complacencies and went too far, turning all songs into their opposition if at all possible and blindly following the path of changing the song, never stepping back to make any consideration of whether they had actually improved the song.

For these reasons, the successor to the Five, the Black Pearl Crew usually keep the tone of their parodying at least as positive as that of the original song unless it was about loving, and make sure to occasionally write lyrics that do not rely on the reader knowing the original song to make them funny. Just to name a few:

• The extremely literal description of how long the 18th century lasted in 18th-Century World.
• An entire song about trying to stay awake on a night watch.
• The part about the drink early in Pieces of Eight (more on that below).

The funny drunk

Drinking occasionally figures in my parodies - most of all in Meet Me in My Room, where stuff about alcohol is responsible for every laugh that parody gets from its reader. This is interesting to note, because I never drink in real life.

Upon his gate being destroyed, he says Door is open! Come on in! Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo!* Then he says Stop making all that noise! as his castle starts exploding around him, and may, among other silly things, say Happy new year! or wonder where his castle is once it has blown sky high.

*This line is not to be confused with the line There is a doorbell! spoken by Sir Psycho, another opponent in the game. Do not say The door is open! thinking you are quoting Sir Psycho like one of my friends used to.

What makes things funny

When people (including myself) laugh, it is a common practice of mine to drill down to exactly why. I got the impression that this was important after the Comic Five kept failing to be funny because they lost sight of what factored into making that past laughter happen. (Of course, they lost sight of the reason for everything.)

Example

Notice: This section assumes you read the above section The funny drunk. If you want to read this section, you should make sure you get that one down (especially the footnote) so you will know what I am referring to here.

As an example of something that is clearly not funny, let us return to my aforementioned friend who remembered the content of a Duke of Bourbon line with the tone of a Sir Psycho line, conflated the two, and look what happened there.

All these years later, I still remember him saying to me, The door is open! Oh wait, that wasn’t sane, was it? Imagine the look I gave him. And then, a few years later, he said after closing the garage door, The door is not open! It was like, must we have this discussion again?

Lucky for him he had me to set him straight, or he might have committed that one to the recorded voice or written word. And can you imagine when he erroneously explained the incorrect beyond recognition reference? Uh, sir? We found a transcript for the dialogue from Medieval Madness, and the Sir Psycho section does not include The door is open or anything similar.

The cast of the comedy TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 invented the accusation state park joke for lines that are supposed to be funny but are really just pointing out what is happening (like It looks like a state park). The door is open! would certainly be doomed to fit that description. It is not intrinsically funny, a reference to anything, or likely to point out anything not already obvious - and even then a phrasing like That door is open! Do you see that? would be more appropriate. (In fact, all of these points also explain why Sir Psycho never said anything about the door being open in the first place.)

If you are familiar with Medieval Madness and find yourself at any risk of mixing these lines up, here is how to remember: Why would Sir Psycho say the door was open? What point or entertainment value would that have? The Duke of Bourbon does it because he is a partying drunk who invites everyone in. Sir Psycho, who just wants to kill you, has no reason to announce the door is open, so he does not. (I suspect he does not even notice when his gate is destroyed, and that if he did, he would either complain about it or threaten to get you back.)