|
So how do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
© by Mike Keenan 
Steven Alexander Wright was born December 6, 1955 which makes him shy of senior citizen status by eleven years if my math is correct, but you might want to check because Miriam insists that I missed school the day they taught mathematical concepts such as telling time, adding and subtracting numbers and such that my confusion has become a standing and sitting joke in our family. My defence is that those mundane activities are left brain items and that I am in the more complex right hemisphere of the brain where one must look at the big picture and invent new approaches to persistent problems.
Despite Wright's young age, I estimate to be approximately 54 (give or take 5 years; I always use this balanced approach based upon guessing weight and age at the CNE where as a youth, I would marvel at midway types who fleeced victims with accurate assessments. The weight guessers were particularly clairvoyant. They would scrutinize the contestant, pat body parts to check firmness and then make an educated guess. Invariably the answers were correct and there was a scale there to provide an impartial answer. I did notice that these guys acted quite pleased when judging the weight of pretty girls and that their patting for firmness seemed to kick into high gear. While an ordinary person took only a few moments of rudimentary assessment, pretty girl evaluation went on for quite some time. As true pros, they wanted to be as accurate as possible, but they did annoy the boyfriends.) Where was I? That's the problem with right brainers; we tend to get lost in our diversions. We do not enjoy routine. Save that tedium for the lesser left brainers. Oh yes, Steve Wright from Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard University which he did not attend. Nevertheless, blessed with excellent right brain strength, since 1979 to the present, he has been engaged in movies and stand-up comedy, citing as his major influences both Woody Allen and George Carlin, two of the best right brain comedians who ever lived. Unfortunately, George recently passed on to that great stand-up comedy show in the clouds. Wright appeared on The Tonight Show, and so impressed host Johnny Carson, another formidable right brainer, that he was brought back less than a week later. The interesting component of right brain comedy as practised by Allen, Carlin, Carson and Wright, is that it exposes silliness that most take for granted. With a nice little juxtaposition of ideas, these comics tap into our funny bone. I'm not sure where the funny bone is actually located. I've asked doctors, but they never have time to investigate. I have anatomy and physiology books at home, but nowhere in them can I find reference to the funny bone. In surveying my body today in front of the mirror, I noticed a lot of candidates, but cannot be sure as to which is the correct item. Anyway, the good thing about having a funny bone is that as we age, humour takes a little of the sting out of the process. Pretty soon, my inability to bend and touch the floor will have me rolling in great gales of laughter. Some of Wright's gems are also sure to help. For example, he said he would kill for a Nobel Peace Prize and advises us to borrow money from pessimists as they don't expect it back. Many Wright jokes are mathematical: half the people you know are below average; 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name; 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot; if your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work? OK, so what's the speed of dark? Then there are the existential questions: how do you tell when you're out of invisible ink? If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? And my favourite; a conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. |
