Weekend Irony Excercise Follow Up

Sorry about the lack of bloggery and postage yesterday. The day got away from me there.

So, I want to revisit this because (a) I’m an attention whore and want to post video of myself as much as possible, (b) I’m a comedy nerd, and (c) I don’t know, it’s just interesting to me. It’s my blog so I’ll do what I want; is that a problem for you?

So, if you don't want to read me talking about myself, might I recommend looking at pictures of kittens?

Last Fall, I wrote and performed a song in Mrs Gruber’s Ding Dong called “It’s Possible, Not Probable,” which we did for Sketchfest and was video taped and put on YouTube by some guy I don’t even know. My mother, being the proud mother that she is, sent it to a bunch of people. One of those people is the principal of the grade school I used to attend. She asked me to come back and perform that for their 25th Anniversary gala in front of a bunch of parents and teachers.

This is ironic, because watch the video:

Here is a song about crushing the hopes and dreams of children with the reality of their likely mediocre futures, and I’m supposed to play the song for people with children or people whose job it is to teach children. You know all this already - I wrote about it two posts ago.

So I went home this last weekend, Saturday came around and, after the requisite preshow worrying – particularly about whether or not the song would get laughs or get awkward stares, I sang the song and it went over pretty well.

I had a bunch of parents coming up to me afterwards saying things like, “boy, I wish I could show that song to my kids,” which reminded me an incidence during the full run at the Gorilla Tango with a father and his son sitting in the audience. I remember looking out at him while I was singing and the father was laughing and laughing.

I always kind of assumed that the song hits well because the character of this singer is expressing his bitter disappointment with his own life through a song which, given the context of a kids show, is inappropriate. But parents particularly seem to really like the song, and I think it’s because the song says stuff that they must really want to tell their kids or their students but can’t because it’s “too awful.”

So my question is: is the song funny for character driven reasons or for the clash of sweet children’s song conventions with a bitter point of view, or for being a release for inappropriate impulses in the audience?

It’s probably a little bit of everything, but it’s interesting to think about.

Blah blah blah.