Sunday 10/16/03 4:25 PM Joe Coluccio

The nose of a clown

For lack of anything substantial to report I want to start revealing to you all of my problems and blemishes. Don't worry it won't take long. A century perhaps two.

I belong to what we laughingly call a comedy group, Lackzoom Acidophilus, perhaps we should adopt the moniker of a comedy troupe. Then again, maybe not. The point is that I often feel inadequate in the face of the others, who yuck and chortle to distraction at our meetings, to produce comedy. Is there anything more pathetic (here is where I release a good sigh and then begin softly to weep) than a person who is part of a group of people dedicated to bringing the best, the highest class, the most intellectual..okay so that isn't Lackzoom either, let's just say a group of people who feel funny today, punk! ,and who is inadequate to the Punch. Laugh if you will at Mr.Pagliacci. Vesti la giubba indeed.

Could it be, I thought, that there is a comic viagra on the market. I looked with a rising interest. Alas, I found little comical about the drubbing my tumescence took from the search or lack of same.

There was a light at the end of the very long tunnel. But upon closer examination it turned out to be some Tibetan guy chanting lustily and casting shadows of obscure Asian animals on the wall with a flashlight whose battery was definitely not lapin. I gave up on the external perusal of the world that is and ought to be.

I looked inward and after I got passed the mess of plumbing that is my human body, after I rode the synapses of nerve to my higher facility, after I stroked my prefontal lobe and gazed longingly at the medulla of oblongata, I reached the very serious cerebrum. Here was the problem, down deep, I am an animal, a savage of prestigious appetite and here sits, like a cooked crust on a pot pie, the cap to what is a seething volcano of lust, greed and carelessness. In short the source of all comedy. The slap in the ass with a wet towel, the kick in the shin, yea and verily I say unto you even the pie in the face.

My problem then is that I am far to kind and gentle to be a comedian. I lack the thrust to the gut, the grab for the jugular that goes along with being funny. This I promise for the health of my commedia del'arte, I will work assiduously at becoming the kind of ruthless pig who can make funny. Forgive me, if I trip you in the hallway and guffaw, it is a part of my art. Don't cluck your tongue if I perform certain bodily function in the high city square at noon. I'm learning. You can't just watch this stuff on TV and laugh, you have to be a part heavy of the mayhem.

So tip up the cap and loose thy bestial nature, let the magma of unconscious desire flow to the surface and drip down over any intellect. Peer into the seering volcano of unproductive lust, inhale! It will make you more funny, honest!

Sunday 11/19/03 3:11PM Joe Coluccio

I've been thinking about Lackzoom Acidophilus and how I have abandoned in this blogging trek items that are either light, witty or comic, for a darker dreamier side of my personality. Is it, I wonder, with a continuing vengeance, because my notions of what is comic have changed? Have I lost my notions of the comic? Worse have I worn out my sense of humor? Have I come to believe, as those who employ themselves bringing their full critical facility to bear on the arts and surrounding aesthetics, that the comic is more flawed and less serious than deadly dark drama that rents our souls?

When, I wonder, was the last time that I had a good gut wrenching laugh at someone slipping on a banana peel? I'd rather eat food, especially in these dire times when I must loose weight, than fight and smear the slimy gooey condiments of my water cress and chestnut "sammitch." The last time a saw a couple "bruisers' poke the eye out of a one hundred pound weakling, it did not leave me laughing with tears pouring out of my rolling eyes. Conservative talk radio should have me convulsing and hiccupping when the careless smug host makes fun of folks far more unfortunate than even people portrayed on soap operas. Instead it just leaves me in a cold rage. I laugh at jokes that make my bald pate the abject object of clowning, but I hardly ever understand the humor. Likewise vomiting and other liquids that squirt from the human anatomy fail to bring in me the gales of hilarity that spit from the lips of others.

I conclude that everyone should take their humor where they can find it. So, please,don't think that I think you any less of a human being because those things listed above, that leave me deflated, bring feelings of relief and laughter to you. There truly is no accounting for taste. I read books that I would swear, face red and puffed, to you on a cannon of Holmes Mysteries that I would never touch. That, my friends, remains my little secret. I really don't think any less of you if you enjoy the most puerile of humor, rather I look into myself and ask what I am missing?

I don't have any answer. I know this, each member of Lackzoom Acidophilus, there are four of us primarily involved, has a different idea of humor and what is funny. And the deal is that each of us respects the common ground of our intellect and our family-like relationships which have been growing for close to thirty years now and can accept what the others are creating. I know where the well spring of my humor lays and how it seeps to the surface. I trust Dean, Foley and Marc in whatever manner they find and tap the field of their creation.

I write this on the eve of a change that is about to happen. It is exciting and daunting. If it comes about our lives will change in a significant manner. I hope that by next week at this time I can make the announcement.

Ciao!