Last night, Mr. Typist and I indulged in a
spontaneous binge-watch of “The IT Crowd.” It’s the one show that makes me helpless
with laughter--I mean the gasping, tear-streaming, could-actually-die-of-laughter
sort of laughing. The episode that really did it for me was the one where Moss,
Roy and Jen go to the theater to see a musical, and hilarity ensues when Roy uses
the disabled restroom, accidently trips the emergency alarm, and has to spend
the entire evening pretending to be paraplegic because he can’t get himself
untangled from a series of panicked lies he tells when the staff breaks down the
door to rescue him. One ridiculous complication after another ensues, and the
episode ends with Roy being carted off on a bus to another town far outside of
London.
It was absolutely genius comedy writing. When I broke it down afterwards, (after I
wiped away the last tear and finally stopped hitching) I realized that what it
made it so funny wasn’t the situation itself—it’s Roy’s total, unfailing
commitment to the lie. He is so terrified of getting in trouble for using the
disabled restroom that he will endure any number of absurdities to avoid being
caught, until he ends up so entrenched in the fiction that it’s impossible to
own up to the truth. I’ve long had a fascination with funny writing, and this is
some of the best. I still have the idea in the back of my head that one of
these days I’m going to write a stand-up set or a comedy sketch, but I keep
running up against the problem of not really knowing how to be purposely funny. It seems like a very technical thing to me,
and I find it intimidating.
Well, I’m at it again with sestinas. I don’t
know why I do this to myself. Now I’m writing one about The Star in the major
arcana of the Tarot. I’m afraid, dear readers, that this is about to become a
thing. And by that, I mean an entire chapbook of sestinas about each card in
the major arcana. Since there twenty-two of them, it’s going to be long haul,
at the end of which any hair that I have not ripped out will be shock-white and
I’ll be rocking myself back and forth in a closet, softly sobbing.
I worked out today, and as such, I’m grumpy and
sore and I really just want to play video games. After a series of false
starts, I found “Echos of Soul”, this afternoon, which is turning out to be
exactly the sort of mindless entertainment my brain is craving after spending
all day yesterday slaving over a hot sestina. All that to say I’m cutting this
post short so I can go shoot magic ice shards at swamp giants. Here’s a clip
from “The IT Crowd.”
--Kristen McHenry
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