September 17, 2010
5- JIZZ FACE (I was 30-years-old)
I had recently moved to New York and was hanging out with a bunch of kids who were later dubbed “Warhol’s Children” by New York Magazine. One of the brightest talents in the group was a documentary photographer named Ryan McGinley who didn”t act gay but was gay. We were all sitting around drinking beer and doing drugs at some pretty girl’s apartment when Ryan came bounding out of the bathroom with cum all over his face. He was so covered he looked like the guy that had spent the past three years in solitary confinement holding it in. I”d never seen a male with jizz on his face before.
He said, “Hey guys, are we going to be going out later or do you just want to hang out here for a while?” The fact that he was being so nonchalant about the kind of thing that would give most of us life nightmares, made me slide forward off the couch like I was on a broken chairlift without a safety bar. As Ryan stood there dripping with blobs, I sat there dying on all fours only occasionally looking up to confirm what I was seeing was real. He”d smile and give a knowing nod that said, “Yep, it’s cum” and my head would go back to the floor to continue the Cry Laugh. It was like seeing your dad with tits or your mom with a beard. I had no file for it in my brain. Which brings me to why the gag was so successful: If you are going to scare someone by doing something like leaping out from behind a door, don”t say “Boo.” It’s way more confusing to come stampeding towards the person with some serious question about taxes or where you left your socks. Boo is already filed under “S” for “Someone’s trying to scare you.” Random banter has no file and it gives the joke that secondary umph of confusing impact that really draws out, what is essentially shock humor.
UPDATE: I have since learned that it was hand soap not semen on his face and this blow was so crushing I”ve decided to ruin it for you too.
6- BABY MUSTACHE (I was 29-years-old)
Five years before I had kids, I took a Sharpie and drew a moustache on a baby’s face at a dinner party in the country. The owner was a single mom who was really mad but couldn”t beat me up so I just got yelled at from all the women at the party and that was that.
The only other male and I had to take a knee every time we saw its stupid face. I think part of it was we were over all the oohing and aaahing this six month old was getting and the moustache called bullshit on it. It didn”t hurt that its little oblivious face had no idea what was so funny and its fat cheeks gave it this old, Russian politician demeanor that gave us no mercy whatsoever.
I”ve since had kids and cannot believe I drew a moustache on someone’s baby.
7- CHIN’s PINK HAIR (I was 31-years-old)
Texans really know how to party and I”d move to the South tomorrow if it wasn”t a microwave for six months of the year. This “Pink Party“ in Austin was no exception (check the second last video on the link called “Wash it Out”). An incredibly fey (but straight) bar owner we call Stockbroker was having a party to celebrate some local politician who had been caught with his hand in the penis jar. Everyone was to dress in pink and come to his house to drink. It was fun as hell but an old friend of Stockbroker’s named Chin (short for Christian) couldn”t stop antagonizing Stockbroker. Every time Stock walked by, Chin would knock the plastic cup of beer out of his hand or ram into him or steal his shoe or throw cake at his car. Stockbroker let it all pile up until he had more than enough and went to procure some of the pink industrial house paint he had used to create props for the event. (Incidentally, this was some of that primer paint that doubles as actual paint and although it appears to be more expensive, you actually save money and time in the long run because you do one less coat.)
When Chin approached Stockbroker for injustice number 36, Stockbroker surprised his assailant with a huge cup of pink paint to the top of the hair. Chin was working as a wine rep at that time and I instantly realized he”d be going restaurant to restaurant, trying to sell booze to people while they stared at a giant spiky patch of pink hair.
Then things got really good. Somehow, I managed to convince Chin the best way to get rid of oil-based paint was to hit it with as much water as possible, now! He ran to the bathroom and I held the showerhead while he brought that paint to every corner of his scalp. The laughs you hear in the video are me realizing I had successfully taken that one patch and spread it all over his entire head of hair so now he’s either bald or a British punk rocker from 1979 walking into fancy restaurants in a suit, trying to make a sale. If you listen closely you can hear he knows it’s funny and is letting out some small guffaws of his own.
8- JAY JOHNSTON (32 and up)
I”ve said this before and I”ll it again. Jay Johnston is the funniest human being I”ve ever met. Here’s a random video plucked out of the sky where he sees an old man sitting on a fire hydrant and assumes the man’s ass is like that because it filled with water after someone took the hydrant’s top off. Then he tells the old man to take off his hat so the kids can go play.
9- SARAH THE VANISHING REDHEAD (I was 35-years-old)
This is easily the hardest I”ve ever laughed in my whole life. We were on holiday with some friends in St. Marten. Off the beach there were these floating bouncy castles with no ceiling that propelled you pretty far into the sky on each bounce. Where a trampoline would give you an extra foot for each bounce, this thing gave you a good three feet. My wife, a huge tattooed guy named Trevor, some random Germans, and our redheaded friend Sarah, paid our $5 and were having a gay old time jumping up and down on inflated vinyl on the ocean. It makes you giddy to jump on this thing because you can”t believe how high you’re going. To be giggling in mid-air and see someone you know is so ridiculous and awkward it makes you laugh even harder.
I had bounced over to where Sarah was jumping and we were both having pretty normal laughs going up and down and up and down and—blip. She’s gone. She’s not lying over there or sitting down for a break. She’s completely fucking gone. It was as confusing as talking to a Time Traveler who didn”t choose when she was going to be taken away. While my wife and I stood there questioning physics, we heard Sarah spew out a watery laugh from the ocean on the other side of the short bouncy fence that surrounded us. We quickly realized there is no seam between the “fence” and the floor and she had bounced so close to the edge she literally slipped through the crack and plunged into the water. Holy shit did we die. We weren”t laughing; we were scream laughing like we won the lottery and did the whole world at the same time. It was the laughs of the earlier bounces PLUS the hilarity of thinking physics had been defied and we simply couldn”t deal. After holding each other’s arms and yelling like tweens, we both fell to the mat and saw everyone else was scream laughing too.
Trevor later told me he rolled over and was face-to-face with a German guy and there he was, laughing with a stranger over Sarah’s pratfall. “It was really funny,” he said on laughing with a stranger, “but it was also really weird and it’s not something I”d like to try again.”
10- BALLOON FREAK OUT (This happened last Sunday. I”m 40)
My wife bought this bag of long balloons that comes with a pump. After you inflate the balloon, you let it go and it zips all over the room making a high pitched squeal. If you”re outside and you aim it right, it can climb a good 50 feet into the air before the mass of the latex brings it back down. My four-year-old daughter Sophie was having a play date with her younger friend Cassidy and they were both trying to catch the balloons after they fell out of the sky. My youngest is two and he desperately wanted in on the action but lacked the acumen to zero in on each falling balloon. Every time one of the girls caught one we”d yell “YAAAY!” way too loud and start clapping like idiots. The two losers would see this and become apoplectic with grief. This made us cheer the winner on even more. No pain no gain, right?
So, as my daughter ran towards her third victory in a row, my infant son raced next to her but then, for no good reason, with the balloon still climbing, gave up all hope and collapsed on to his back to begin the tantrum of the century. He was wearing a t-shirt and a diaper and as he screamed, he kicked his legs so fast they became an angry blur.
The fact that he would be this distraught over “ probably “ not catching a balloon combined with the fact that I was hearing my kids cry in a situation that wasn”t an emergency made me laugh so goddamned hard, the other parents got more annoyed than amused. He heard my laugh which made him more mad which made me laugh even harder. Little did that poor bugger know that not only is not catching a balloon not worth crying about. He’s got a whole lifetime of the exact opposite to look forward to.
