BORN FUNNY IN SERIOUS TIMES!

Swine flu pandemic! Economic crisis and financial collapse! Our relationships with foreign countries in the toilet! Gulp! Quick, Lassie, go for Jim. Tell him to find all the smart people he can to help solve these dilemmas and get us out of this quagmire!

What’s that, Lassie? What is it, girl? Will I be helping? Oh, no. How I wish I could, but – damn this infirmity - I WAS BORN FUNNY IN SERIOUS TIMES!

Not funny as in ha-ha. But funny as in peculiar. Or, as my father insisted, acting like I had my head lodged firmly up my butt. A little harsh? Yeah, I thought so, too. A kinder, less crass parent would just say I was "chronically off-task."

For instance, I probably kissed a career as diplomatic attaché goodbye in my senior year world history class. Mr. Lambeth had just gotten braces that year! Who pays attention to a class syllabus when you’re simultaneously dodging teacher spittle and charting its projectile patterns?

Mrs. Whilmer’s economic class, - riveting, riveting stuff: FIFO, LIFO, GNP. The ONLY thing that kept me awake was the fact that I sat behind Dee Wallace, the school’s IT girl. Dee spent the entire period examining the ends of her honey blond hair and I appointed myself her wing-man and daily conducted search and destroy missions for split ends. Ba-by enrollment in the Wharton School of Business.

Chemistry class? Don’t start with me. I’ll deny to the end that I was the first one who ran out of fifth period yelling "Chromium? I hardly know ‘im!"

It’s crazy: Amidst all the bona fide knowledge you should retain, it’s the insignificant, the trivial, that sticks. The Crimean war – yada, yada – because of the Allied Forces in – yada, yada - by the time the black plague decimated Europe’s – yada, yada . . . But do you realize that it WASN’T Marie Antoinette who uttered that famous phrase, "Let them eat cake!" Hey, speaking of cake . . . .

Cake comments:

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Small But. Small But who? No, Small But Tall."

A pie, a cookie, and a Small But Tall walk into a bar. . .

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other Small But Tall."


Cake facts:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 comediennes but only 12 jokesters.